**For background on the Bernardo Arévalo Padron case, see IFEX alerts of 17 June and 2 March 1999, 29 April, 16 March, 20 February, 9 February 1998 and others** (RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: For immediate release France Four members of Reporters sans frontières face the courts for having thrown leaflets […]
**For background on the Bernardo Arévalo Padron case, see IFEX alerts of 17 June and 2 March 1999, 29 April, 16 March, 20 February, 9 February 1998 and others**
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
For immediate release
France
Four members of Reporters sans frontières face the courts for having thrown leaflets on the Cuban vice-president’s automobile
Four members of Reporters sans frontières must present themselves before the first chamber of Paris’ Police Court on 14 December 1999 at 9:00 a.m.. They will be heard in the context of a suit filed against them for “non-respect of a departmental sanitary law”. They are accused of not having respected the rules concerning “the cleanliness and public health of public ways and areas”. Members of Reporters sans frontières had thrown leaflets on the automobile of Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage during his visit to France on 22 September 1998, in order to protest the imprisonment of journalist Bernardo Arévalo Padron.
For Robert Ménard, Reporters sans frontières’ secretary-general, “these legal proceedings are disquieting. They represent the first time in a democratic country that members of our organisation find themselves before the courts for having peacefully demonstrated against a representative of a particularly authoritarian regime. To try them in the same way as a person who does not teach his dog to use a gutter is simply grotesque. We can laugh about it. Or cry in the face of such an accomodating attitude towards Fidel Castro.”
Reporters sans frontières will be represented by lawyer Jean Martin. A number of celebrities will testify in favour of RSF’s action, including: Paul Bouchet, president of ATD Quart Monde, Alain Genestar, director of the weekly magazine Paris-Match, Laurent Joffrin, director of the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, Claude Katz, vice-president of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), Edwy Plenel, director of the daily newspaper Le Monde and Denys Robillard, president of the French section of Amnesty International.
On 22 September 1998, members of Reporters sans frontières threw hundreds of leaflets on Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage’s procession as he was arriving to the Senate, on the first day of his official visit to France. The leaflets contained information asking for the release of Cuban journalist Bernardo Arévalo Padron. Reporters sans frontières activists were almost immediately pushed out of the way by uniformed and plain clothes police officers.
Bernardo Arévalo Padron was sentenced to six years imprisonment for having referred to President Fidel Castro and Vice-President Carlos Lage as “liars”. The Cuban journalist had stated that Fidel Castro and Carlos Lage had not respected the 1996 Ibero-American Summit Declaration, signed by the Havana authorities, reaffirming that “political pluralism is a universal value”. Four journalists are currently imprisoned in Cuba.
