(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the minister of the interior, General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, RSF protested the detention of independent journalist Omar Rodríguez Saludes, director of the New Press Agency (Agencia Nueva Prensa, ANP). RSF also protested the harassment suffered by Luis Alberto Rivera Leyva, director of the news agency Eastern Free Press Agency […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the minister of the interior, General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, RSF protested the detention of independent journalist Omar Rodríguez Saludes, director of the New Press Agency (Agencia Nueva Prensa, ANP). RSF also protested the harassment suffered by Luis Alberto Rivera Leyva, director of the news agency Eastern Free Press Agency (Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental, APLO), based in Santiago de Cuba (in the island’s eastern region). Rivera Leyva has been threatened, detained and put under house arrest on eight different occasions since July 2000. RSF asked the minister of the interior to end the daily harassment independent journalists are subjected to in Cuba. “This daily pressure is solely intended to silence them or force them into exile,” noted Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary general. Since 1 January, nineteen independent journalists have gone into exile and twenty-six have been detained.
According to the information collected by RSF, on 9 November, agents of the State Security Department (Departamento de la Seguridad del Estado, DSE) arrived at Rodríguez Saludes’ house. They searched his home and then drove him to the Sixth Unit of the National Police. He was then transferred to a DSE centre, before being released that same evening. News of his detention was made known by his nine-year-old son, who was in the house when the journalist was arrested. In February, Rodríguez Saludes was kept under house arrest for his journalistic work (see IFEX alert of 25 February 2000).
In a separate incident, on 6 November, Rivera Leyva was summoned by the DSE. He was accused of defamation and told the accusation would be withdrawn if he abandoned his work with the independent press. Since July, Rivera Leyva has been detained, put under house arrest and threatened on a number of occassions (see IFEX alert of 22 August 2000).
Cuba is currently the only country in Latin America with a government which has decreed that press freedom must “conform to the goals of socialist society”, and which completely controls the information received by the public. Cuba is also the only country in the region where journalists are jailed. Currently three journalists are imprisoned: Bernardo Arévalo Padron, founder of the independent press agency Línea Sur Press, Manuel Antonio Gonzáles Castellanos, correspondent for the independent press agency Cuba Press, and Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, journalist with Avileña Cooperative of Independent Journalists (Cooperativa Avileña de Periodistas Independientes, CAPI) (see IFEX alerts of 25 July, 28 June, 11 April and 9 February 2000, 10 December, 22 October, 17 June, 19 May, 3 February and 29 January 1999, 16 October and 21 September 1998 and others).
This state of affairs is maintained through the use of repression and by socially isolating independent journalists. The government uses a number of repressive methods: from the seizure of materials and other ways to hinder the work of independent journalists, to the detention and sentencing of journalists to long prison terms. The DSE is the principal body which executes this policy, which is essentially aimed at “allowing” journalists to choose between spending time in prison and going into exile.