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HAVANA, June
20 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based human rights group on Tuesday accused Cuban
President Fidel Castro of violating international law by barring journalists
critical of his government from covering Pope John Paul's visit to Cuba.
The Pope is due in Havana tomorrow for a five-day visit. Some 3,000
journalists, roughly half of them from the United States, have been accredited
to cover the event and the U.S. television networks are deployed in
unprecedented force.
In a letter faxed to Castro on Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ) said many international reporters who had written critical stories about
Cuba had been denied visas for the papal visit.
"In the view of CPJ, a policy of denying journalists visas to travel to
Cuba in reprisal for carrying out their professional responsibilities
constitutes an attack on the press and a violation of international law,'' the
letter said.
It was made available in Havana to international news media.
The New York-based CPJ said those denied visas included reporters of the
Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, the Buenos Aires newspapers Clarin and
La Nacion, Argentina's America TV and the Miami-based Spanish-language Telemundo
television network.
"Your government's explictly stated reason for denying a visa to
...(these) journalists its its displeasure with their previous reporting on
Cuba,'' the letter said.
"This action is a clear violation of article 19 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights which grants the right to 'receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.'''
Juan Tamayo, the Cuba specialist of the Miami Herald, said in Miami that
none of the 12 reporters and photographers assigned by the paper to cover the
papal visit had received visas. "Cuba uses visas to intimidate and punish
foreign journalists,'' he said.
The Miami area is home to some 800,000 exile Cubans, many of whom are
hostile to the Castro government.
REUTERS
20:29 01-20-98 |