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Conditional release for
independent journalist Lamasiel Gutiérrez
Romero
Reporters
Without Borders,
28 March 2006.
Reporters Without Borders today hailed
the release of Lamasiel Gutiérrez
Romero, a correspondent for the Miami-based
Nueva Prensa Cubana website, on completion
of a seven-month sentence on 22 March, but
deplored the fact that her release was only
conditional.
"We welcome her release and we hope
the 23 other journalists held in Cuban prisons,
some without trial, will also soon be freed,"
the press freedom organisation said. "But
we know her release was not an act of clemency
and we note that, bizarrely, she was freed
conditionally despite completing her sentence.
There is no justification for this restriction
and we urge the Cuban authorities to lift
it."
Punched and thrown to the ground when arrested
by National Revolutionary Police in July
on the Isle of Youth, where she lives, Gutiérrez
was sentenced in August to seven months
of house arrest for "resisting the
authorities and civil disobedience."
She was placed in Mantonegro women's prison
in Havana province on 11 October for continuing
her journalistic activities in defiance
of the terms of her sentence.
Gutiérrez says she does not intend
to give up journalism and wants to continue
working for press freedom and free speech,
and for Cuba to become a democracy.
Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Fernández
of the Habana Press independent news agency,
who was arrested around the same time as
Gutiérrez and for the same reasons,
is due to be freed in August. Twenty of
the journalists rounded up during the March
2003 crackdown are also still in prison,
serving sentences of between 14 and 27 years.
Two other journalists, Oscar Mario González
Pérez of the Grupo de Trabajo Decoro
agency and Roberto de Jesús Guerra
Pérez, who writes for Nueva Prensa
Cubana and Payolibre, another website, were
arrested last July and have been held since
then without trial in State Security detention
centres.
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned
journalists and press freedom throughout
the world. It has nine national sections
(Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It
has representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok,
London, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington.
And it has more than 120 correspondents
worldwide.
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