CUBA
Cuba imprisons journalist, calling him a `social danger'
A dissident Cuban journalist was sentenced to four years in prison after
a one-day trial without a defense lawyer.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
A Cuban dissident journalist was arrested, tried and sentenced to four
years in prison -- all in one day and with no defense attorney -- on
charges of being a ''pre-criminal social danger,'' a press freedom group
said Wednesday.
Oscar Sánchez Madan, a 44-year-old resident of Unión de Reyes in central
Matanzas province who writes for the Coral Gables-based Cubanet network,
was summarily processed Friday, Reporters Without Borders said.
The Paris-based press freedom organization said he is the third reporter
jailed for ''dangerousness'' since interim President Raúl Castro took
over power July 31 from his ailing brother Fidel.
Sánchez's arrest brings the number of jailed journalists in Cuba to 26.
Only China, with 31, has more, Reporters Without Borders said.
''When the transition of power first took place in Cuba, I think people
in civil society thought there would be more freedoms,'' said the
group's Americas director, Benoit Hervieu. 'I think this is strategic
repression to show the world `we are still the masters, and are afraid
of nobody.' ''
Sánchez joined Cubanet in 2005 as one of the dissident or independent
journalists who report on Cuban events.
When a Cuban government official rammed a dissident with a car, Sánchez
wrote about it. He chronicled Cuba's ''new rich'' and sent updates every
time a colleague was arrested or harassed.
''My position is the same: I will continue my work as a journalist, and
nothing and nobody will stop it,'' he wrote last year after several
run-ins with Cuban government security agents, including one that left
him stranded at 3 a.m. on a desolate road three miles from the nearest city.
Cubanet Director Hugo A. Landa said Sánchez had been arrested several
times in the past year, and was once detained and beaten.
''It has been a process of harassment for some time,'' Landa said.
``Oscar was very verbal. He said what he thought and wrote it. He writes
the kind of articles that most bothers the Cuban government -- the ones
that are about real facts and events.''
Cubanet, based in Coral Gables, was founded in 1994 as an outlet for
news about Cuba's human-rights abuses. Six of its reporters are behind
bars, Landa said.
Reporters on the island are paid $5 to $15 a story, and the government
has accused them of being ''mercenaries.'' Cubanet receives funding from
a variety of sources, among them the U.S. Agency for International
Development and Reporters Without Borders.
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