Independent reporter released after seven months in detention

Independent reporter released after seven months in detention
Published on Wednesday 10 April 2013.

Reporters Without Borders hails yesterday's release of Calixto Ramón
Martínez Arias, an independent reporter for the Hablemos Press
information centre, after several weeks of mounting calls for his
release from Cuban civil society and international organizations.

On being freed, Martínez immediately went to Hablemos Press
headquarters, where fellow independent journalists Roberto de Jesús
Guerra Pérez, Denis Noa Machines and Gerardo Younel Ávila Perdomo had
begun a hunger strike the day before to press for his release.

Another journalist, David Águila Montero, had joined the protest at
Hablemos Press yesterday, while many journalists in the provinces –
including Daniel Millet Jiménez, Fernando Vázquez Guerra and Misael
Canet Velázquez in Camagüey, and David Águila Montero and Luis Manuel
Fumero – followed suit.

Martínez had himself staged three hunger strikes since his arrest on 16
September 2012. The first was from 10 November to 13 December. He began
the second on 6 March and ended it on 29 March, after the authorities
promised to free him. Still in detention 10 days later, he began the
third one on 8 April, with his Hablemos Press colleagues immediately
taking it up.

Martínez was arrested for revealing the existence of dengue and cholera
epidemics, which the government confirmed a few days later. He had been
facing a possible three-year sentence on a charge of insulting the
president although the charge was never officially confirmed and he was
never tried.

While his release is to be welcomed, it must not divert attention from
the continuing harassment of independent journalists and bloggers, and
the fate of other detainees such as Luis Antonio Torres, a reporter for
the official daily Granma, held since May 2011, and the writer Ángel
Santiesteban-Prats, author of a blog called "Los hijos que nadie quiso",
held since 28 February.

http://en.rsf.org/cuba-independent-reporter-released-10-04-2013,44361.html