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In Cuba, journalists jailed for reporting

INTER AMERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION

These are excerpts from a message released by the Inter American Press Association on Wednesday, World Press Freedom Day.

Today, the Inter American Press Association is focusing attention on the deplorable plight of 25 independent Cuban journalists imprisoned for committing crimes of conscience. We call upon the government of President Fidel Castro to release all 25 and immediately provide medical treatment to the 18 who are suffering serious health problems.

The condition of the journalists has deteriorated since they were jailed in March 2003 as part of an official crackdown on a group of 75 dissidents. The decline is due to physical mistreatment and punishment, poor food, lack of medical attention, restrictions on family visits, overcrowded cells and confinement among a dangerous criminal population.

The journalists, who are serving terms ranging from one to 27 years, are: Ricardo González Alfonso, Víctor Rolando Arroyo, Normando Hernández González, Julio César Gálvez, Adolfo Fernández Sainz, Omar Rodríguez Saludes, Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, Mijaíl Barzaga Lugo, Pedro Argüelles Morán, Pablo Pacheco Avila, Alejandro González Raga, Alfredo Pulido López, Fabio Prieto Llorente, Iván Hernández Carrillo, José Luis García Paneque, Juan Carlos Herrera, Miguel Galván Gutiérrez, José Ubaldo Izquierdo, Omar Ruiz Hernández, José Gabriel Ramón Castillo, Léster Luis González Pentón, Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, José Manuel Caraballo Bravo, Albert Santiago Du Bouchet and Oscar Mario González.

The majority are in extremely poor health and suffer a range of illnesses from psychiatric problems to intestinal blockages, asthma, tuberculosis, high blood pressure, arthritis, pulmonary emphysema and cataracts.

The IAPA reaffirms its repudiation and denunciation of the state of freedom of expression in Cuba. In addition to those who are incarcerated, there are about 50 independent journalists who are subjected to obstacles as they seek to exercise their profession. They are victims of constant campaigns to discredit their names, public attempts at censorship, brief arrests, government-organized demonstrations outside their homes and constant threats that they will be sent to jail if they continue reporting.

Beaten in jail

Another example is the plight of formerly jailed journalists Jorge Olivera Castillo, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, Carmelo Díaz Fernández and Edel García, who have been granted visas to emigrate to the United States with their families, but have yet to receive authorization from the Cuban government to leave the country.

Added to the list recently is the case of journalist Lamasiel Gutiérrez Romero, 37. She was initially placed under seven months' house arrest, but was later sent to prison. Released in March, she complained that she was physically beaten in jail.

The IAPA would like to call upon all the government leaders in the Americas and around the world to intercede with the government of Cuba to release all of the independent journalists and those who are serving sentences for the crime of expressing their views.

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Another black spring
Raul Rivero (Cuba) - 03/05/2006 08:44 - (SA)

In the spring of 2003, journalist Raul Rivero was arrested along with 28 of his colleagues and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. He was released from prison on medical parole in November 2004. Poet, journalist and co-founder the independent news agency CubaPress, Rivero's career in journalism is one that spans over three decades. Today the journalist resides in Madrid, where he works as a columnist for El Mundo newspaper and editorial advisor for the magazine Encuentro. Raul wrote this article for the World Association of Newspapers.

Waking up in a prison cell every morning is an experience that weakens the will to live. Breakfasting on a slice of dirty, mouldy bread with sugar-sweetened water, while waiting for a few spoonfuls of rice and herbs for lunch and the same menu for dinner, is an antidote against any glimmer of hope.

If you have to wait three months to see your family for two hours in a cell with stone benches under the watchful gaze of prison guards, you cannot really be restless in anticipation at the prospect of seeing and being with your loved ones.

That was my life for two years. Just as today, on this beautiful spring day in the year 2006, it is the life of Víctor Rolando Arroyo, a journalist with the independent news agency Unión de Periodistas y Escritores de Cuba Independientes (UPECI), in Commander Castro's prison in Guantánamo, a human warehouse that has been operating for over 30 years. The dozens of journalists suffering from hunger, disease and maltreatment in the jails on the island of Cuba are hostages of a group of cronies who took over the power by force and have stayed in power by force for almost half a century, on a throne upheld by the police and propaganda.

The young reporter Pablo Pacheco is undergoing horrendous treatment in the prison of Canaleta, together with his colleagues Pedro Argüelles and Adolfo Fernández Sainz and the young photojournalist Omar Rodríguez Saludes. They were all sentenced to 28 years in 2003 for photographing and filming aspects of Cuban society that the dictatorial regime wants to keep under wraps.

Yet another victim is Normando Hernández, a journalist who launched a small homespun magazine in the city of Camaguey. He only succeeded in publishing the first issue.

The revolutionary courts immediately demanded life imprisonment for Hernández, though the sentence was later graciously commuted to 25 years. Hernández, as many others like him, has also suffered from various inadequately treated ailments due to the lack of medication and overcrowded prisons. In cells originally designed for 20 inmates, there are often 35 or 40, forced to sleep on the floor and to share a single sanitary facility and a rationed water supply.

This exactly is how the poet and journalist Ricardo González Alfonso is living at present in the Combinado del Este penitentiary in Havana. His state is aggravated by the fact that he has undergone two operations in dubious prison operating theatres and that his initial wound, which dates back to November 2004, keeps festering and never seems to heal.

And in much the same way, Fabio Prieto Lorente, a young correspondent confined in a prison on the Isla de Pinos, 120km south of Havana, sees his youth slowly slip away because he reported on the reality of a land where brutality is freely exercised for lack of diplomatic representation and journalists who can record the abuses.

Meanwhile, in Guanajay detention centre, just a few kilometres from the Cuban capital, military doctors have finally come around to admitting that the ailing journalist José Ubaldo Izquierdo, in jail since March 2003, would never get well in such harsh living conditions. The 40-year-old Izquierdo, who worked as a columnist for an independent Cuban press agency, is currently serving a 16-year sentence.

We know that in Cuba World Press Freedom Day can only be celebrated with dignity in the cells of the 300 prisons scattered across the map of the small Caribbean isle. The prisoners are locked away in dark cells where they have been sent for wanting to be free in a country where freedom is no more than a hollow, meaningless word in the mouths of scribes, a word that lands free men in jail if they dare utter it.

But only there, in those cells where hope still subsists, one can legitimately and honestly toast to this day - even if only in a dirty aluminium cup filled with murky, tepid water from the subterranean streams of Cuba. - WAN

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