(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the 18 June 2004 release of independent journalist Carmelo Díaz Fernández for health reasons after 15 months in prison. However, the organisation pointed out that Díaz Fernández “should never have been imprisoned in the first place, because all he did was exercise his right to free expression. We hold the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the 18 June 2004 release of independent journalist Carmelo Díaz Fernández for health reasons after 15 months in prison.
However, the organisation pointed out that Díaz Fernández “should never have been imprisoned in the first place, because all he did was exercise his right to free expression. We hold the Havana authorities responsible for his state of health,” RSF added. The organisation strongly condemned the state monopoly on news imposed by the Fidel Castro government and called for the release of the 27 journalists still in prison.
Díaz Fernández was released with another dissident who was arrested and sentenced with him in March 2003. The journalist was granted a special authorisation to leave prison, legally equivalent to being assigned to house arrest, for health reasons. The 67-year-old journalist, who has serious heart problems, told Agence France-Presse that he hoped to get a visa to emigrate to the United States, where some of his family members live.
The journalist was arrested on the night of 19 March 2003 during the Cuban “black spring” crackdown that saw 75 opposition figures arrested and sentenced to jail terms ranging from six to 28 years. He was sentenced at the beginning of April 2003 to 15 years in jail for his trade union activities and independent journalism that was deemed “counter-revolutionary”.
Díaz Fernández, who was in good health before his arrest, began to suffer from high blood pressure while detained at State Security headquarters in Villa Marista, where he was awaiting trial. Six months after his sentence, an echocardiogram carried out at the insistence of his daughter, herself a doctor, led to the discovery of a heart ailment that required surgery. On 15 December 2003, he was transferred from Guanajay Prison in Havana to the prison hospital of Combinado del Este, in Havana Province.
A Christian activist, Díaz Fernández is editor of the Cuban Independent Trade Union Press Agency (Agencia de Prensa Sindical Independiente de Cuba, APSIC), an executive board member of the banned Unitary Council of Cuban Workers (Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos, CUTC) and president of the banned Christian Trade Union of Cuba (Unión Sindical Cristiana de Cuba), founded in 1995. He also devoted himself to the National Centre for Trade Union Training and Labour Law (Centro Nacional de Formación en Sindicalismo y Derecho del Trabajo). He has written numerous articles about Cuban education, economy and society on the websites http://www.cubanet.org and http://www.cartadecuba.org and is the Cuban correspondent for the Venezuelan magazine “Desafios”.
A total of eight dissidents have been released since the start of year, two of them journalists. Four of them were from among the group of 75.
Cuba’s “black spring” provoked strong international protest and the European Union reacted by imposing sanctions on the Havana regime.
Cuba, along with China, is the largest prison in the world for journalists. RSF considers Castro to be one of the world’s 37 “predators” of press freedom.
