14 December 2005
WOMEN'S GROUP BARRED FROM ACCEPTING HUMAN RIGHTS PRIZE
The Cuban government has barred a group of dissidents' wives and mothers from traveling to Strasbourg, France, to accept a major human rights award given by the European Parliament, says Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF).
Las Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, has been named a co-winner of the 2005 Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which will be presented in Strasbourg on 13 December 2005.
The group was established in early 2004 by wives and mothers of some 75 dissidents, including journalists, writers and librarians, who were arrested and jailed in a crackdown in 2003. For the past two years, the women march through Havana streets each Sunday in a silent protest against the jailing of their family members.
Five representatives of the group - Miriam Leiva, Laura Pollán, Loida Valdés, Berta Soler and Julia Núñez - had planned to fly to France on 11 December but were unable to leave the country. As of press time, they have not received official permission to do so.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government systematically denies its citizens basic rights to free expression. It restricts nearly all avenues of political dissent, and uses police warnings, surveillance, short term-detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and politically-motivated dismissals from employment as methods of enforcing political conformity.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 24 reporters, writers, and editors are imprisoned in Cuba, making the country the world's second-leading jailer of journalists, behind China.
For updates on censorship in Cuba, visit:
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/1033/
Visit these links:
- Profile of Ladies in White: http://tinyurl.com/7gwbb
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15895
- RSF on why it campaigns on Cuba: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14352
- CPJ Letter to the Cuban government: http://www.cpj.org/protests/05ltrs/Cuba13dec05pl.html
- Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/10/cuba10306.htm
- Freedom House: http://www.freedomhouse.org/media/pressrel/102705.htm
- IAPA: http://tinyurl.com/au7jb
- Foreign Journalist Recounts Week in Cuba: http://www.slate.com/id/2104649/entry/2104776/
- Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30786
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