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Reporters Without Borders.
March 27, 2003.
Union calls for their immediate release
The families of several of the independent journalists and dissidents
arrested last week have been allowed to visit them since 24 March in various
places of detention around the country. They were allowed to stay between 15
and 30 minutes, mostly in the presence of a guard who ensured that conversation
was confined to morale or health matters and not about any charges against
them. Many families have been told these charges are being worked out.
Most of the journalists said they had been well treated, though some
families reported some had health problems. Elizardo Sánchez, head of
the CCDHRN, said on 26 March that those arrested had no access to lawyers.
Blanca Reyes, wife of jailed poet and journal Raúl Rivero, told
Reporters Without Borders she had been able to visit her husband at Villa
Marista, the state security headquarters in Havana, on 26 March. He told her
he was being held with common law criminals and had been well treated, but
Reyes said he was being held in conditions of "minimal" sanitation.
The officer present during the meeting told her Rivero and Ricardo González,
the Reporters Without Borders correspondent, would be prosecuted under the "defence
of national independence" law (88).
Their case-file number is 3-48.
Law 88 provides for up to 20 years imprisonment for collaborating with US
policies towards Cuba. Reyes said she was held at the prison for nearly an
hour and a half after the visit, which prevented her from attending a press
conference given by several wives of dissidents for the foreign media.
The Greek presidency of the European Union (EU) condemned the arrests on 26
March and called for the immediate release of those detained, saying it
considered them prisoners of conscience. It said such arrests violated freedom
of expression, which the EU wanted to encourage in its relations with outside
countries. It added that "violations of fundamental civil and political
rights" would be "monitored very closely" by the EU and would "continue
to influence the Union's relations with Cuba." | 
