(IAPA/IFEX) The following is a 13 December 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA calls for release of Cuban journalist, protests harassment MIAMI, Florida (December 13, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today added its voice to the international clamor for the release from prison of Cuban independent journalist Ricardo González Alfonso, who is serving […]
(IAPA/IFEX) The following is a 13 December 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA calls for release of Cuban journalist, protests harassment
MIAMI, Florida (December 13, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today added its voice to the international clamor for the release from prison of Cuban independent journalist Ricardo González Alfonso, who is serving a 20-year term and whose health has deteriorated.
González Alfonso was arrested in March 2003 during the Cuban government’s crackdown on political dissidents and the independent press. His wife, Alida Viso Bello, issued a public request to democratic governments, prominent figures and international organizations around the world “to intercede with the Cuban government on behalf of prisoner-of-conscience Ricardo González Alfonso, who is in an extremely poor state of health”.
The chairman of IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, and editor of the Guatemala City daily newspaper Prensa Libre, Gonzalo Marroquín, declared: “We are committed to continue supporting action on behalf of the independent press in Cuba, and in the specific case of González Alfonso we urge the authorities in that country to grant his immediate release, as well as that of all those convicted and sentenced merely for practicing journalism.”
At the time of his arrest, 55-year-old González Alfonso was president of the Manuel Márquez Sterling Journalists Society, correspondent for the Paris, France-based Journalists Without Borders, founding editor of De Cuba magazine, director of the Jorge Mañach independent library, and a stringer for the IAPA Website http://www.informecuba.com
Along with González Alfonso, 24 other independent journalists are in Cuban jails serving sentences for having exercised the right to press freedom.
In another development, IAPA received a complaint from independent journalist Carlos Serpa Maseira, an Isle of Pines-based correspondent for the independent news agency Lux Infopress and bureau chief of the Puente Informativo Cuba-Miami (Cuba-Miami News Bridge) press bureau. He said his office, which is also his home, was raided by State Security agents on November 29.
He said the four agents seized books, tape recordings, notebooks, diskettes, films, DVD equipment and other items. They also took photographs, he added, and made off with press bureau documentation, threatening to charge him under Law 88 (know as “the gag law”), which makes activities carried out by political dissidents and independent journalists punishable offenses.
“We insist that the Cuban authorities must ease restrictions on free speech and press freedom. A demonstration of their interest in fostering true democracy would be the release from prison of the independent journalists unjustly detained”, added Marroquín.