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Independent
journalist arrested in the centre of the
country
Reporters
Without Borders,
31 October 2003.
Reporters Without Borders today condemned
the arrest of independent journalist Abel
Escobar Ramírez on 29 October near
Morón (350 km east of Havana) and
called for his immediate release. The organization
also called for the return of documents
confiscated from the home of another journalist
in the same region during a search carried
out the same day.
A correspondent for the independent news
agency Cuba Press in the centre of Cuba,
Escobar Ramírez was detained by members
of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR)
on the road between his village, Patria,
and the town of Morón. He had been
heading towards the home of Jesús
Alvarez Castillo, another independent journalist
working for Cuba Press.
He was taken to the regional headquarters
of the Department of State Security (DSE),
the political police, in the town of Ciego
de Avila (south of Morón). The authorities
asked his wife, Alina Torres Martinez, to
bring some of his personal effects to him
there. Alvarez Castillo said this request
has made the family fear that he could be
held for a long time. His family and friends
have had no word of him since his arrest.
Three hours after the detention of Escobar
Ramírez, DSE agents searched Alvarez
Castillo's home in Morón. More than
300 of his books and magazines were seized.
He said the search was linked to his work
as a journalist. He was detained by the
DSE for two hours on 19 September while
in Las Tunas province. Alvarez Castillo
is also the Ciego de Ávila representative
of the Manuel Márquez Sterling Association
of independent journalists, which publishes
the banned magazine De Cuba.
Cuba is now the world's biggest prison
for journalists, with a total of 30 detained.
Twenty-six of them were arrested along with
some 50 other dissidents during an unprecedented
crackdown in March. They were given prison
sentences ranging from 14 to 27 years, in
most cases for "threat to the state's
unity and independence." Three of them,
held in the eastern province of Holguín,
are currently staging a hunger strike in
protest against prison conditions. They
are Iván Hernández Carrillo,
Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Mario
Enrique Mayo Hernández.
Cuba was second from last, ahead only of
North Korea, in a ranking of 166 countries
according to press freedom, which Reporters
Without Borders published on 20 October.
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, Istanbul,
Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington
and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.
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