A Cuban journalist in prison is the only one from Latin America that appears in the Committee to Protect Journalists' list of journalists incarcerated in 2012. However, the list does not include another Cuban journalist who was sentenced to 14 years in prison on espionage charges.
According to the report, 232 journalists are behind bars around the world, the highest figure since CPJ began documenting the imprisonment of journalists in 1990. In most cases, incarcerated journalists in 2012 were accused of national security crimes like terrorism, subversion and treason, like in the case of 49 journalists in Turkey, the country with the highest number worldwide.
"The imprisonment in Cuba was the only case documented by CPJ in the Americas, where jailings have become increasingly rare. No cases were recorded in the region in CPJ’s 2011 census," the report said.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
