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Two journalists face re-imprisonment
in a "judicial farce"
Reporters
Without Borders,
February 28, 2006.
Reporters Without Borders said it feared
that court summonses issued to independent
journalists Oscar Espinosa Chepe and Jorge
Olivera Castillo mean they will be sent
back to jail.
The two men, who were imprisoned in the
March 2003 crackdown, were released on health
grounds at the end of 2004. They then both
sought and were refused permission to leave
Cuba.
"These ill-timed court summonses look
like a judicial farce", said the press
freedom organisation. "What is the
point of trying to get independent journalists
to give up their work, knowing full well
that they will never do so?" asked
the press freedom organisation. "If
the Cuban authorities are so determined
to silence Oscar Espinosa Chepe and Jorge
Olivera Castillo why don't they grant their
request to leave the country? The repression
of dissident voices is in any event doomed
to failure", it added.
Espinosa Chepe, who was sentenced in April
2003 to 20 years in prison, was released
on licence for health reasons on 29 November
2004. "I am in danger of having this
licence revoked which would mean going back
to prison", he told Reporters Without
Borders.
"A new crackdown is sweeping the country
and the independent press is first in line",
he said on the eve of his court appearance
on 28 February 2006 before the Playa municipal
court in Havana.
Olivera Castillo, who was sentenced to
18 years in prison in 2003 and released
on 6 December 2004, is due to appear on
1st March before Old Havana municipal court,
which previously summoned him on 21 February.
At that hearing, the judges informed him
that he was banned from leaving the city
and ordered him to work for a state organisation.
They told him he would be immediately returned
to prison if he broke these rules. The 1st
March hearing could well mean the confirmation
of this measure, since, as he told Reporters
Without Borders as he left court on 21 February,
he has no intention of giving up his journalistic
work.
Elsewhere, the East Havana municipal court
on 15 February sentenced Reinaldo Cosado
Alén, of the independent Lux Info
Press news agency to a "work order
without imprisonment" because of a
fine equivalent to 1,000 euros that had
supposedly gone unpaid for ten years.
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