Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
PARIS, France (RSF/IFEX): The Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières
(RSF) has expressed concern about the health and safety of Cuba's
imprisoned journalists, especially Normando Hernández González, the
editor of the Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camagüey, an
independent news agency, who is still waiting for the special medical
release his wife requested for him a year ago because of his poor health.
This concern has been heightened by the news of the death on 24 June
2007 of 47-year-old dissident Manuel Acosta in Cienfuegos provincial
prison, in the centre of the country, where he had been held for three
days for "pre-criminal dangerousness." The authorities said he killed
himself.
"How long do the Cuban authorities plan to keep people in prison for
working as journalists whose state of health has become incompatible
with imprisonment?" RSF asked. "Are they waiting for Hernández to try to
take his own life before finally giving him the special release on
health grounds that he has been demanding for the past year?"
RSF added: "Subjecting ailing people to such treatment, or rather lack
of treatment, is to kill them slowly. The gesture we are waiting for
from the authorities is not a political one. It is purely humanitarian.
The dialogue which Spanish foreign minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos has
begun with the Cuban government should focus on this emergency situation."
The state of health of Hernández, who is serving a 25-year sentence
imposed during the "Black Spring" crackdown of March 2003, is becoming
more and more alarming, says his wife, Yaraí Reyes. She found him in
very poor shape when she visited him on 21 June 2007. He weighed just
117 lbs.
His ailments include severe intestinal problems that prevent him eating
normally. He also has tuberculosis for which he is not getting the
necessary treatment. He has refused to eat several times since 4 March.
Reyes requested a special medical release permit on his behalf on 7 July
2006, without success.
Pedro Argüelles Morán, a journalist serving a 20-year prison sentence,
went on hunger strike on 16 June for the right to have the medicines
which his family bring him. He was arrested in 2003 at his home in the
central city of Ciego de Ávila, where he ran the Cooperativa Avileña de
Periodistas Independientes (CAPI), a cooperative of independent journalists.
The prison authorities on the southwestern Isla de la Juventud have been
refusing to give independent journalist Fabio Prieto Llorente the
treatment he needs for serious pulmonary complications since 10 June.
His family says he was hospitalised in May with acute pains in the chest
and back and low blood pressure, but the authorities returned him to
prison before he had completed all the necessary medical tests. Prieto
Llorente, who is from Isla de la Juventud, has been serving a 20-year
sentence since the "Black Spring."
José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández of the Grupo de Trabajo Decoro news
agency is currently in Guanajay prison in Havana province, where he is
serving a 16-year sentence imposed in 2003. He is in very poor health
and was hospitalised for two weeks in February 2007 for circulation
problems that caused severe cramping. The doctors prescribed a strict
diet that excluded the standard prison food. The prison authorities
ignored their recommendation.
Independent journalist Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona has been waiting
for months for a dentist to repair two broken teeth. After repeated
requests, the prison authorities let him have a mouth X-ray but nothing
else, his wife, Elsa González, said. He also has high blood pressure but
the prison authorities claim they do not have a way to measure it.
Arrested on 18 March 2003 at his home in the western city of Pinar del
Río, Arroyo Carmona is serving a 26-year sentence (one of the longest
imposed on a journalist).
The health of José Luis García Paneque, the head of Libertad, an
independent news agency based in the eastern town of Las Tunas, has also
deteriorated in prison. Held in Las Mangas, near his home town, he was
taken to a hospital in Bayamo with severe abdominal pains in June and
doctors reportedly found a kidney cyst. His weight has fallen from 190
to 110 lbs because of an intestinal ailment. He has been serving a
24-year sentence since 2003.
Pablo Pacheco Avila, a journalist with the CAPI cooperative who has seen
serving a 20-year sentence since April 2003, was returned to prison on 9
June 2006 after 52 days of intensive treatment in the Ciego de Ávila
provincial hospital. He was hospitalised again on 26 April 2007 for
surgery to his right knee.
Iván Hernández Carrillo, who is the correspondent in Colón (in Matanzas
province) for the news agency Patria as well as being a political and
trade union activist and, began a hunger strike on 25 June in "Guamajal
Hombres" prison because he is being mistreated by his guards. He is
serving a 25-year sentence.
Cuba's prisons are currently holding 25 dissident journalists, 20 of
whom were arrested during the "Black Spring" and were given sentences
ranging from 14 to 27 years in jail. After China, Cuba has been the
world's second biggest prison for journalists since 2003.
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