(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the interior minister, General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, RSF protested the attacks on and arrests of independent journalists Jesús Alvárez Castillo, Lester Tellez Castro, Carlos Brizuela Yera, Normando Hernández and Juan Basulto Morell. The organisation called for the “attackers to be punished” and for the release of the two journalists […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the interior minister, General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, RSF protested the attacks on and arrests of independent journalists Jesús Alvárez Castillo, Lester Tellez Castro, Carlos Brizuela Yera, Normando Hernández and Juan Basulto Morell. The organisation called for the “attackers to be punished” and for the release of the two journalists still being held. “Violence seems to have become the new way of cracking down on the independent press,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. Ménard recalled that three of the five journalists were beaten by the police in December 2001. In 2001, Cuban authorities were responsible for about 100 instances of pressure or intimidation of independent journalists and arrested twenty-nine of them.
According to information collected by RSF, Interior Ministry police and members of the Rapid Response Brigades (Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida), which are used to crack down on dissidents, beat up Jesús Alvarez Castillo, a Cuba Press agency correspondent in Ciego de Avila (central Cuba). The incident occurred on 4 March 2002 as Alvarez Castillo was about to cover an event organised by the Cuban Human Rights Foundation (Fundación Cubana de Derechos Humanos, FCDH), a human rights organisation not officially recognised by the government. He lost consciousness and came to a few hours later at the Ciego de Avila hospital, where he was found to have a cracked neck bone.
According to the Manuel Márquez Sterling Association, which comprises about forty independent journalists, Tellez Castro, head of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña agency, and Brizuela Yera, who works for the Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camagüey agency, were also beaten and then arrested by police as they went to visit Alvarez Castillo in hospital. Both men are still being held. They were previously detained between 1 and 3 March.
On the morning of 5 March, state security police reportedly went to the home of Hernández, head of the Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camagüey agency. Apparently, the police intended to arrest him, but he managed to escape. Hernández had reported the attacks on Alvarez Castillo, Tellez Castro and Brizuela Yera on the Florida-based radio station Radio Martí, which broadcasts to Cuba.
The Manuel Márquez Sterling Association also reported that on 3 March a stranger hit 70-year-old journalist Basulto Morell on the head with a stick and shouted, “Take that for being a counter-revolutionary!” Basulto Morell works for the Libertad agency, based in the town of Las Tunas, in western Cuba.
RSF recalls that on 25 December, five independent journalists, including Hernández, Tellez Castro and Brizuela Yera, were beaten by uniformed and plainclothes police while covering the inauguration of an independent library in the town of Florida, in the central province of Camagüey (see IFEX alert of 28 December 2001). Independent libraries are set up by private individuals and lend out books, particularly those banned by the regime.
Only the government-controlled press is allowed to operate in Cuba. Independent journalists are routinely dubbed “counter-revolutionaries” by the authorities, who constantly harass them. About fifty journalists have been forced into exile since 1995.
