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Alert

News agency editor and poet Raúl Rivero arrested

(RSF/IFEX) - The following is a 21 March 2003 RSF press release:


Two dozen independent journalists arrested, including news agency editor and poet Raúl Rivero

Government takes advantage of the war with Iraq to launch an unprecedented wave of repression. Reporters Without Borders urges the European Union to send a clear signal by freezing consideration of Cuba's request to join the Cotonou accords

Reporters Without Borders today voiced its outrage at the arrest of some 20 independent journalists, including Raúl Rivero, 1997 winner of the Reporters Without Borders - France Foundation award, and called on the European Union to send a clear signal that it will not tolerate this level of repression.

A poet and editor of the clandestine news agency Cuba Press, Rivero was arrested on 20 March by police, who searched his home. His detention was one of the latest in a wave of arrests in dissident circles that began on 18 March. According to the latest tally, about 20 independent journalists and some 30 other dissidents (government opponents and human rights activists) have been detained.

"The arrest of Raúl Rivero, one of the leading figures of Cuba's independent press, has taken the current wave of repression beyond another threshold," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. "The Cuban authorities are clearly taking advantage of the war in Iraq to crack down while the world looks elsewhere. Human rights in Cuba can therefore be viewed as one of the first cases of collateral damage in the second Gulf war. Human rights in other countries could also soon suffer the same fate," Ménard warned.

In a letter to European commissioner for development Poul Nielson, Ménard called on the European Union to suspend consideration of Cuba's application to join the Cotonou trade accords. "It is essential that the European Union send a clear signal that it will not tolerate the current wave of repression. The European Union must above all be consistent. It is official policy that the expansion of relations with Cuba depends on Cuba's respect for human rights. The European parliament awarded the Sakharov human rights award to Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá last December."

The Cotonou accords, which Cuba applied to join in January 2003, grant 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (the ACP group) economic aid and preferential trade relations with the European Union.

Arrests end a period of relative tolerance

The websites nuevaprensa.org and cubanet.org, which carry the articles of independent journalists who are banned in Cuba, have reported the arrest of more than 20 independent journalists since 18 March. According to the latest estimates, a total of 50 dissidents, including the journalists, have been arrested during the same period.

The authorities have accused those detained of being "traitors" and "employees in the pay" of James Cason, the head of the US interests section, which substitutes for a US embassy in Havana. Cason himself has been accused by the government of directing their subversive activity. A statement published on 19 March in the official daily Granma said that the dissidents would be tried. They were facing up to 20 years in prison.

This wave of arrests ends a period of relative tolerance which Cuba's independent press seemed to have been enjoying for the past few months. Taking advantage of this let-up, several journalists in December 2002 had launched a magazine called De Cuba (available at www.rsf.org), which was the first attempt to challenge the government monopoly of news reporting in 10 years. The arrest of Ricardo González, editor of De Cuba and Reporters Without Borders' correspondent, put an end to the bimonthly, whose last issue came out on 26 February.

Raúl Rivero, winner of the 1997 Reporters Without Borders - France Foundation award

Born in Moron (Camagüey) in 1945, Raúl Rivero used to be a journalist with the official news agency Prensa Latina and was its Moscow correspondent from 1973 to 1976. He resigned from UNEAC, the official association of Cuban journalists and writers, in 1989. He broke completely with the regime in 1991, when he signed "The letter of 10 intellectuals", which called on President Fidel Castro to free prisoners of conscience and to reform the socialist regime. He is the only one of the 10 signatories who is still in Cuba.

He created Cuba Press, one of the first independent news agencies, in September 1995. It has never been recognised by the government. He received the Reporters Without Borders - France Foundation award in 1997 for his efforts on behalf of press freedom in Cuba. He was last arrested on 9 March 1999, the date of the last major wave of arrests. It came just over a year after the pope's visit in January 1998 and was the government's way of indicating there would be no liberalization.

Since then, his international reputation had seemed to protect him from the everyday harassment to which his colleagues are exposed. However, the government never granted him a temporary exit visa so that he could take advantage of invitations to attend events abroad. The only permission it was prepared to give him was for a definitive departure with no return. Rivero had always refused this.

"Cuba, where news is the exclusive reserve of the state"

The Cuban constitution bans any private ownership of the media. Because they cannot publish in their own country, about 100 independent journalists rely on Cuban exile organisations in the United States to put out their articles, mostly on Internet websites. Last year, a score of them were arrested and more than 30 acts of intimidation against journalists were counted by Reporters Without Borders. Nearly 60 independent journalists have been forced into exile abroad since 1995.

Four journalists are currently in prison in Cuba. They are Bernardo Arévalo Padron, of the Línea Sur Press news agency, who was sentenced in November 1997 to six years' imprisonment for "insulting" President Fidel Castro and Vice-President Carlos Lage; Carlos Brizuela Yera, of the CPIC news agency, and Lexter Téllez Castro, head of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña, who were arrested on 4 March last year in Ciego de Ávila while protesting against a police attack on a journalist from the Cuba Press agency; and Carlos Alberto Domínguez, who has been held without formal charges since 23 February last year.

A Reporters Without Borders survey - "Cuba, where news is the exclusive reserve of the state" (published last December and available at www.rsf.org) - describes their conditions of detention. The report notes that despite official harassment, some independent journalists say their activities are more or less tolerated. In reality, it says, this is not so and the government's repression has achieved its goal of keeping independent journalists this side of the "red line," which is putting out unauthorised news to the general population.