(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 2 July 2004 IAPA press release: IAPA protests treatment of Raúl Rivero, calls for his release from prison MIAMI, Florida (July 2, 2004) – Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero Castañeda is being subjected to harassment at the Canaleta Prison in Ciego de Avila province where he is being […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 2 July 2004 IAPA press release:
IAPA protests treatment of Raúl Rivero, calls for his release from prison
MIAMI, Florida (July 2, 2004) – Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero Castañeda is being subjected to harassment at the Canaleta Prison in Ciego de Avila province where he is being held, his wife, Blanca Reyes, reported in a telephone call to the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) yesterday.
Rivero, head of the independent news agency Cuba Press and regional vice chairman for Cuba of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for the crime of thinking and writing. He was recently awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2004 Press Freedom Prize.
In an open letter to the international community dictated by telephone to his wife, Rivero gave details of what he described as a “second sentence” – saying that in addition to “the severity of the Cuban prison system” were the hostile actions of the jailers. Blanca Reyes quoted him as saying that the conditions in the prison had deteriorated notably in the last month.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Rafael Molina, protested what he called the unnecessary suffering that Rivero was being subjected to. “The Cuban government should abide by international treaties regarding the treatment of prisoners of conscience,” he declared. “We therefore expect that it will put an end to such practices, provide Rivero with the humanitarian treatment that he deserves and, finally, release him along with the other imprisoned journalists, given that their sentences are totally unjustified.”
There are currently 30 journalists behind bars in Cuban prisons – 27 of them as the result of a wave of repression unleashed in March 2003, and the other three having been imprisoned before or after that date.
