Blinken Slams Cuba, Venezuela Repression as LA Summit Kicks Off
- Nations make doing journalism a crime, secretary of state says
- Top diplomat criticizes El Salvador for quashing free speech
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Photographer: Al Drago/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken slammed Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador for repressing journalists as the US kicked off a summit of leaders from Latin America in Los Angeles, with tensions between Washington and the region’s authoritarian nations hanging over the event.
In a speech on media freedoms in the hemisphere, Blinken singled out the countries -- whose heads of state weren’t invited or planned to skip the summit -- for jailing and harassing journalists as well as passing laws that curtail press freedoms.