Cuba releases independent journalist after 16 months in prison

Posted on Thu, Nov. 23, 2006

Cuba releases independent journalist after 16 months in prison
By Ray Sanchez
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

HAVANA - Independent journalist Oscar Mario Gonzalez said he was quietly
whisked away from one of Havana´s most notorious prisons Monday for a
meeting with state security agents.

"We hope we never have to detain you again," Gonzalez, quoted one of the
officers as saying. "You´re an old man. You´re sick. We advise you to
stay home, stay calm and stop writing."

Gonzalez, 62, said the agents were cordial and respectful before
releasing him from 16 months of detention without formal charges or even
a trial. He said he tried to be cordial and respectful but direct in his
reply.

"I don´t plan to stop writing," he said. "I´m a journalist. I´m
committed to my work."

With that, Gonzalez was driven to his house in the Playa neighborhood on
the western outskirts of Havana. In the quiet community of mostly
single-family homes, he waited outside a locked gate for Mirta Wong, a
biologist and his wife of 22 years, to come home from work. Some
neighbors who saw him waiting stopped to greet him, others walked by
without saying a word.

On Monday, Gonzalez was released along with a 40-year-old dissident,
Santiago Valdeolloa. They were among more than two dozen others arrested
on July 22, 2005, before and during an antigovernment protest outside
the French Embassy in Havana. Three other dissidents connected to the
protest were released in October.

A mechanical engineer trained in the former Soviet Union, Gonzalez was
working as a journalist with the independent, web-based news agency,
Grupo de Trabajo Decoro, whose founder, Manuel Vasquez Portal, was
sentenced to 18 years in prison during a crackdown on journalists in 2003.

In this communist-ruled country where all media are state-run, Gonzalez
started writing about politics, history and Cuban society for the news
agency in 2001. The Cuban government has long shielded its citizens from
outside sources of news and other information. Independent journalists
such as Gonzalez have increasingly demanded the right to communicate
openly about their society.

Gonzalez said he spent his first month shuttling between several filthy,
vermin-infested police lockups in Havana. He was treated for
hypertension during a two-week hospital stay in mid-October.

"The latrines overflowed with feces that floated around in the putrefied
water within the cells," said Gonzalez. "You are filled with a sense of
total abandonment," he said. "You are nobody."

Gonzalez said he lost 20 pounds while in jail and occasionally received
medication for high blood pressure. He suffered memory loss after a
nearly three-month stay at the notorious 100 y Aldabo prison in Havana,
where he was kept round-the-clock in a tiny windowless cell with up to
six other inmates. The light was never shut off.

"From 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., they gave you an inch-thick mat to sleep on the
floor," he said. "Ants and roaches crawled over you at night. We ate
what the poorest Cubans eat every night: shredded soy, rice and a little
broth."

His final 10 months of incarceration were spent at Havana´s
barracks-style Prison 1580, where, he said, living conditions improved
considerably. He was allowed visitors every 21 days, including 3-hour
conjugal visits.

"I had no bed for two months and slept on the floor," he said. "I was
housed with common criminals - murderers, swindlers and rapists."

Gonzalez, a journalist since 2001, said he planned to start writing
again after regaining his health. "I will be a journalist until the day
I die," he said. "It is the most noble profession."

He appeared frail, his speech punctuated with a chronic cough. The
euphoria of his release on Monday has given way to sadness, he said,
"for those to remain behind bars."

"It is lamentable that decent and honorable men who express their ideas
as independent journalists must go to prison," he said. "They are, for
the most part, forgotten. That is the lesson of my incarceration."

---

© 2006 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/16082260.htm