|
CUBA
NEWS
Yahoo!
Cuba Says Prisoners Weren't Mistreated
By Anita Show, Associated
Press Writer
HAVANA, 25 - Rejecting charges that 75
imprisoned dissidents were being mistreated,
Cuba's foreign minister showed foreign reporters
Thursday videotaped interviews with relatives
of seven inmates who said their loved ones
were fine.
Human rights groups and some prisoners'
families allege that the dissidents arrested
in March 2003 had been denied medical care
and forced to eat bad food and live in unhealthy
conditions, and in some cases had even been
beaten.
"It's a lie," Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque declared during a two-hour
presentation. "The 75 mercenaries imprisoned
in Cuba are treated with respect ... their
physical integrity is respected."
His comments come with the annual session
of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva
under way.
As in past years, a resolution targeting
Cuba's rights record is expected before
the session ends April 23. Perez Roque traveled
to Geneva to defend his country before the
United Nations body earlier this month.
During his presentation, Perez Roque also
called on physicians who indicated that
the severity of ailments suffered by at
least two inmates has been exaggerated.
The 19-minute videotape shown at the end
of Perez Roque's presentation brought together
interviews conducted with the women relatives
by state-controlled Cuban television. The
interviewers' faces were not shown and the
interviews have not been aired here.
Gisela Delgado, wife of government opponent
Hector Palacios, told her interviewer that
her husband had received good medical care
during a recent gall bladder operation.
"The truth is that he's received good
medical care and that you and your husband
are grateful for that care," the male
interviewer said.
"These people worked very well both
humanely and professionally," Delgado
allowed. "It all seems that Hector's
recovery is very good."
Delgado has been among the most vocal of
the imprisoned dissidents, but her complaints
have not centered on her husband's treatment.
She maintains that he - and the other 74
activists - should never have been arrested
and sentenced.
Palacios, president of Cuba's outlawed
Democratic Solidarity Party, is serving
25 years. He and the others were accused
of working for the U.S. government payroll
to undermine the island's socialist system
- charges they and Washington denied.
Blanca Reyes, wife of imprisoned journalist
Raul Rivero, said last week she refused
a government television crew's offer to
interview her because she feared how it
would be used.
Before screening the videotape, Perez Roque
asked the doctors of inmates Oscar Espinosa
Chepe and Marta Beatriz Roque report on
their patients.
Dr. Felix Baez said 63-year-old Espinosa
Chepe, held at a military hospital outside
Havana, does not have cirrhosis as relatives
and rights groups have reported, but does
have a history of kidney problems.
Dr. Annette Alvarez Perez said 57-year-old
Roque does not have breast cancer as some
rights groups have implied, but does have
nonmalignant nodes in her breasts, as well
as high blood pressure - which she had before
her arrest. Alvarez said Roque is receiving
adequate treatment for both conditions.
Entrevista
la televisión cubana a esposas de
presos políticos
Entrevista
TV cubana a esposas de disidentes, exigen
liberaciones
Three Cubans Pulled to Safety Off Florida
By JILL BARTON, Associated
Press Writer, March 25, 2004.
LAUDERDALE-BY-THE-SEA, Fla. - The Coast
Guard and beachgoers pulled three Cubans
to safety from the treacherous surf Thursday
after they were spotted bobbing offshore
on rafts made of lashed-together inner tubes.
As many as five others were missing from
a group that left Cuba for the Florida coast
about three days earlier, said Deputy Fire
Chief Mark Conn.
"The first man rescued said an hour
before the rescue, he only knew of three
that were alive," Conn said. "At
least five had dropped off somewhere."
A Coast Guard diver rescued one of the
Cubans, a woman, from a black inner tube
connected to three other tubes with white
sheets. She was later hoisted into a helicopter.
The two other Cubans, both men, were pulled
to shore by people on the beach who were
among a crowd of about 100 onlookers.
All three were dehydrated and disoriented
from about three days at sea and were taken
to the hospital, authorities said.
The Cubans were spotted offshore on two
rafts, about a mile apart, amid 6- to 8-foot
waves and wind gusts of more than 30 mph.
During the rescue, beachgoers plunged into
the water to help one of the Cubans and
were joined by a firefighter, according
to Jerry McIntee, another firefighter. They
battled "an undertow that would pull
your clothes off," he said.
Authorities planned to interview the Cubans.
Under U.S. law, known as the "wet foot-dry
foot" policy, Cuban immigrants who
reach dry land are generally allowed to
stay in the United States, while those who
are intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba.
Officials searched for the others who set
out on the voyage from Cuba, 90 miles from
Florida.
"Trying to make it to the U.S. in
this type of vessel is a recipe for disaster,"
Coast Guard Lt. Tony Russell said.
Cuban Ministry Protests UNESCO Award
By Anita Snow, Associated
Press writer, Mar 24.
HAVANA - Cuba is protesting UNESCO's decision
to award jailed independent reporter Raul
Rivero its press freedom prize.
Rivero was among 75 Cuban activists sentenced
to long prison terms in a crackdown on the
opposition a year ago. He was given 20 years
on charges of working with U.S. diplomats
to undermine Cuba's socialist system - allegations
he and Washington deny.
"It is deplorable and embarrassing
that the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom
Award has been used for ends separate from
UNESCO's fundamental ideals," read
a communique posted this week on Cuba's
Foreign Ministry web site. The statement
was dated Monday.
The crackdown was condemned by governments
and rights groups around the globe. All
75 were convicted and sentenced to terms
ranging from six to 28 years.
Rivero is among very few independent reporters
in Cuba with past professional training
and experience. He has published numerous
volumes of poetry and news reportage, and
is considered by some to be one of the island's
best poets.
"The Prize is a tribute to Raul Rivero's
brave and long-standing commitment to independent
reporting, the hallmark of professional
journalism," Koichiro Matsuura, director
of the Paris-based United Nations (news
- web sites) Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, said in announcing
the award last month.
"I am deeply concerned about the conditions
in which Mr. Rivero, who is reported to
be ill, is being held and I call on the
authorities to free Mr. Rivero and the other
journalists," the UNESCO head added.
UNESCO officials couldn't immediately be
reached for comment.
Rivero's wife, Blanca Reyes, was enraged
by the government's statement about her
husband.
"What is deplorable and embarrassing,"
Reyes said Wednesday, "is that they
talk that way about a man who is a poet,
who only writes what he thinks.
"He is an honest and decent man,"
she said.
Castro is slave of the people in "up
close" documentary
TORONTO, 25 (AFP) - Fidel Castro moans
in an explosive new Oliver Stone movie:
"I can't help it, I am a prisoner here,
this is my cell," as he paces, gaunt
and erect, around his office like a condemned
man.
That intimate glimpse of the grizzled Cuban
dictator, absorbed in a private exercise
regime, comes in a feature-length documentary
which gets its world broadcast premiere
on Canadian television Sunday.
Castro's self-image as a prisoner of his
people will outrage American critics, who
revile him as a tyrant who jails and kills
opponents while condemning Cubans to decades
of communist-inspired destitution.
"Commandante" a close-up portrait
of a man who has defied a US embargo since
1960, had been due to air on US-network
HBO last year, said the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC), which will show the movie
here.
But it never appeared in the United States
after Castro's government jailed 75 dissidents
and executed three men who tried to hijack
a ferry.
Stone claimed in a press conference in
Morocco in October that his film was hijacked
by the "Cuban mafia" in the United
States, but has since returned to Cuba to
prepare a more critical picture of life
in the country.
"Commandante" features conversations
with Castro, filmed over three days in 2002.
In close ups, by cameras which often peer
right into a single eyeball, or focus on
Castro's gnarled hands, the movie shows
the old revolutionary letting down his guard.
After avoiding political icebergs for nearly
half a century, Castro admits to a fondness
for the movie "Titanic."
He also owns up to a crush on film starlets
Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. Favoured
male icons are Charlie Chaplin and France's
Gerard Depardieu.
Castro shows Stone the comforts of a frugally
appointed Mercedes: a box of candy, a decaying
book and a pistol.
And he grimaces in remembering a tough
drinking session with former Russian leader
Boris Yeltsin.
Hardly politically correct in a diatribe
about Cuba's great leap forward in education,
Castro boasts, without obvious irony: "even
our prostitutes have a university education."
And he even indulges one of Stone's pet
obsessions, conspiracy theories surrounding
the assassination of president John F. Kennedy:
"I have never believed the theory that
it was only one man."
"Commandante" premiered at the
Sundance independent US film festival in
2003, where Stone's treatment of the dictator
was labelled "softball" by some
critics.
Castro was given the right to stop or
cut the movie at any time during filming,
though Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
which airs the movie Sunday, said he never
took up the offer.
He spoke to Stone through a translator.
Though some critics have charged that Stone,
director of "Platoon" and "JFK"
was seduced by Castro, he did question him
on why he did not hold direct elections
and on prejudice towards homosexuals and
blacks.
Stone does not however cross-examine Castro
on US charges that he represses and kills
dissidents.
But the film makes for compelling television,
exposing loneliness and fragility in Castro's
makeup, along with a hint of wildness.
Reflecting his longevity, clips of US presidents
whom Castro has outlasted, and shots of
him as a young revolutionary flash across
the screen.
Stone's critics will no doubt gag, in a
final scene, when he and his crew are seen
accepting hugs from Castro, after he delivers
them to Havana airport.
But the movie suggests, that Cuba's fate
is likely to painful, whatever happens when
Castro finally shuffles off the stage.
"Let's not fool ourselves into thinking,
that what lies ahead will be easy,"
says Castro in a speech taken out of context
and used by Stone just before the credits
roll.
"Maybe what lies ahead may prove to
be more difficult."
|
