(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to General Abelardo Colome Ibarra, the Cuban minister of the interior, RSF protested the detention of three Swedish journalists: Birger Thureson, Peter Götell and Elena Söderquist. The organisation called on the minister to “free the journalists immediately”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, stated: “This is the second time in two weeks […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to General Abelardo Colome Ibarra, the Cuban minister of the interior, RSF protested the detention of three Swedish journalists: Birger Thureson, Peter Götell and Elena Söderquist. The organisation called on the minister to “free the journalists immediately”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, stated: “This is the second time in two weeks that foreign journalists have been detained in Cuba.” On 17 August, the French journalist Martine Jacot, who was sent by RSF on a mission to Cuba, was detained at the Havana airport (see IFEX alert of 21 August 2000).
According to information obtained by RSF, Thureson, from the “Nya Dagen” daily, published in Dagen (north of Sweden), Götell, a former journalist for the “Sundsvals Tidning” daily, published in the city of Sundsvals (middle of Sweden), and Söderquist, from the local newspaper “Arvika Nyheter”, published in Arvika (also in the middle of the country), were detained on 29 August. At 7 a.m. (local time), officials from the Ministry of the Interior showed up at the house in the Centro Habana neighbourhood of the capital where the journalists were renting bedrooms. The evening prior to their detention, Thureson, Götell and Söderquist had interviewed several journalists who work for independent press organisations (non-authorised).
On 17 August, Jacot, who was sent to Cuba by RSF, was also detained and interrogated at the Havana airport by six members of the security services while she was waiting for a flight to Paris. The French journalist was questioned and her equipment was examined for an hour and a half. A video camera, two video cassettes and documents were seized. Jacot had arrived in the country one week earlier, in order to interview members of independent press agencies and journalists who are currently imprisoned.
In Cuba, the constitution stipulates that freedom of the press must “conform to the goals of socialist society” and only the official press is authorised. Hundreds of independent journalists who form a dozen press agencies that are not recognised by the state are subjected to constant harassment. In 1999, 14 were forced into exile, 50 were detained and 41 were under house arrest. Three are currently still in jail. The journalists who remain in prison are: Bernardo Arévalo Padron, Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, sentenced to six years and 31 months, respectively, for “disrespecting” the head of state, and Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, who was detained on 18 January and sentenced the next day to four years in prison, labelled a “social danger”.
