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Reporters
Without Borders, June 5, 2003.
Reporters Without Borders deplored the Cuban supreme court's confirmation of
sentences imposed on two of the 26 independent journalists arrested at the end
of March and since jailed for lengthy terms. The court upheld on 3 June a
sentence of 26 years on Miguel Galván Gutiérrez (photo) and 16
years on José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández.
"We greatly regret that the Cuban government refuses to listen to
international protests calling for the release of the 26 journalists and the 50
other dissidents arrested at the same time", said Reporters Without Borders
secretary-general Robert Ménard.
"We fear now that the sentences against the other imprisoned
journalists will be confirmed too. The government is going down an increasingly
repressive blind alley as shown by the heavy sentences, of up to 28 years in
prison for simple offences of opinion."
Ménard also denounced new restrictions on the jailed journalists'
families, most of whom are only being allowed to visit them once every three
months instead of every three weeks as the rules state. This is in addition to
their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their homes, making visits
difficult and expensive.
The Internet website cubanet.org reported on 21 May that the wife of
journalist Pedro Argüelles Morán was only told after she arrived to
see him at the prison in Santa Clara (west-central Cuba) that he had been sent
to another, in Combinado del Este (Havana), another 270 kms away from his home
in Morón. The Russian news agency Prima News reported on 3 June that
journalist Adolfo Fernández Sainz and several other jailed dissidents had
begun a hunger-strike to demand their right to see their families more often.
The conditions of detention of several of the journalists are very bad and
at least five are reportedly ill. Reporters Without Borders said it was
especially worried about Oscar Espinosa Chepe (photo), who has serious liver
problems and internal bleeding, and called for his transfer to hospital in
Havana. On 31 May, after strong international protests, he was taken from the
prison in Guantanamo to a hospital in Santiago.
His wife Miriam Leiva said this was a "farce" because health care
at the hospital was no better than at the prison, where officials had not even
given him the medicine she had brought for him. She called for his transfer to a
Havana hospital. The appeal against his 20-year sentence was heard on 4 June and
judgment was reserved.
Last month, a dozen independent journalists who decided to continue their
activities despite the crackdown were threatened with heavy prison sentences by
security officials if they persisted.
See full details
of the imprisoned Cuban journalists in our section "Cuba : the world's
biggest prison for journalists
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned
journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to
inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without Borders has nine
national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok,
Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Tokyo and
Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide. | 
