(RSF/IFEX) – On 9 July 2003, a Paris court barred RSF and the French advertising agency Rampazzo from using a world-famous photograph of Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara wearing a beret with a red star on it. The ban came at the request of Diane Diaz Lopez, daughter and heir of the late Cuban […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 9 July 2003, a Paris court barred RSF and the French advertising agency Rampazzo from using a world-famous photograph of Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara wearing a beret with a red star on it. The ban came at the request of Diane Diaz Lopez, daughter and heir of the late Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, known as Korda, who took the picture.
“We deplore this court decision, which plays into the hands of the Cuban authorities,” said the organisation’s secretary-general, Robert Ménard. “We especially regret that the complaint against us, which concerns the principle of the right to use photographs, did not include a discussion of the broader issue of the appalling state of press freedom and human rights in Cuba.” The grounds for the ban will be examined further before RSF decides whether or not to appeal the ruling.
Ménard said the organisation would respect the ban and suspend a planned 8 to 22 July poster campaign using the photograph. He warned, however, that if RSF did not lodge an appeal, it would nonetheless find new ways to publicise the plight of the 30 journalists currently imprisoned in Cuba and try to win their release.
The judge who issued the ban set a fine of 200 euros (approx. US$225) for every time it was infringed upon and ordered the photograph’s removal from RSF’s website. The organisation was ordered to pay 1,000 euros (approx. US$1,140) in damages to the plaintiff and 1,000 euros in costs. However, the judge refused Diaz Lopez’ request for the verdict to be published, at RSF’s expense, in five French national daily newspapers and on its website.
The lawsuit had sought to “stop the publication, distribution and sale” of the photograph, which was to have been used in a poster campaign ont the lack of press freedom in Cuba, aimed at the approximately 120,000 French citizens who holiday in Cuba each year, drawn by the sun, the beaches or the legend of the Cuban Revolution. The planned campaign poster showed Guevara’s face superimposed on a famous image of a police officer brandishing a truncheon and shield that became famous during the 1968 student uprising in France. The caption read, “Welcome to Cuba, the world’s biggest prison for journalists.”
Behind the ideology of the Cuban revolution, which still inspires many tourists, is the reality of a totalitarian regime which uses the image of “Che” in an effort to legitimise repression. The poster also showed how a revolution that inspired an entire generation in the 1960s has now turned into what that same generation detested most – a police state.
Diaz Lopez said RSF could not “plead press freedom to distort Korda’s work for its political and advertising purposes.” Korda’s photograph of “Che” in Havana in 1960, “represented and still represents a symbol of struggle and the future of the Cuban people,” she said.
The Cuban government launched a nationwide crackdown on 18 March in which 75 dissidents were rounded up and sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years each for “undermining the unity and sovereignty of the state” or its “independence”. They included 26 independent journalists, who joined four others already in jail. Cuba thus became the world’s biggest prison for journalists (see IFEX alerts of 6 June, 27 and 22 May, 28, 24, 10, 8, 7 and 3 April, 28, 26, 24 and 20 March 2003).
The heavy punishment of these journalists, who had challenged the state’s monopoly on information, has been made even worse by the authorities’ tactics. Many have been sent to prisons hundreds of miles from their homes, with restrictions on visits from their families, and their conditions of detention are poor.
