Cuban President Raul Castro remains on the global list of predators of freedom of information, Reporters Without Borders said here Thursday in a report coinciding with World Press Freedom Day.

“(T)he harassment of independent journalists and bloggers has never stopped” under Raul, who formally succeeded older brother Fidel Castro in 2008, according to the watchdog group known by the French initials RSF.

The Cuba government’s repression of independent journalists “includes police brutality, summonses and searches by State Security and detention for short periods,” the Paris-based organization said.

“The page has nonetheless been turned on the ‘Black Spring’ crackdown of March 2003,” RSF added, noting that Cuba’s Communist regime freed the remaining “Group of 75” political prisoners from the Black Spring period.

“Though we don’t know of cases of long incarcerations lately” and despite signs of economic liberalization, Cuba does not respect “pluralism and the freedom of the press and of expression,” RSF’s Latin America expert, Benôit Hervieu, told Efe.