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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Denied U.S. visa, opposition journalist
seeks French aid
Posted on Wed, Jul. 21,
2004.
HAVANA - (AFP) -- Former political prisoner
Bernardo Arevalo Padrón on Tuesday
asked the French government to grant him
a humanitarian visa, after the United States
revoked the visa it had granted him alleging
he was an agent of State Security, Arevalo
Padrón told Agence France-Presse.
''I am begging the president of France,
Jacques Chirac, to accept the petition that
will be delivered by Reporters Without Borders
for a humanitarian visa for myself and my
wife, because the United States, because
of this paranoid period it's going through,
believes any false rumor, any lie and has
closed its doors to me,'' he said.
Arevalo Padrón, 39, is an independent
journalist who directs the opposition news
agency Linea Sur Press. In November, he
completed a six-year term at the prison
in Ariza, in the province of Cienfuegos
in the southern central part of Cuba.
In April, the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana granted him a visa to travel to that
country, which he planned to do in August.
However, Washington later revoked the visa
because it considered him an agent of Cuba's
State Security agency.
''The information that I am an agent of
Cuban security is false.,'' he told AFP
by phone.
''I believe it was State Security that
transmitted that information through its
agents, who have infiltrated the dissident
movement and the Interests Section, to try
to neutralize me,'' he said.
During his years in prison, Arevalo Padrón
shared prison space with dissident Vladimiro
Roca, , spokesman for the group Todos Unidos
(All United).
''I can testify that he was imprisoned
in Ariza and that he was beaten up,'' Roca
told AFP.
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