CUBA URGED TO TREAT SICK JAILED NEWSMEN

Rául Rivero, resident vice chairman for Cuba of the IAPAs Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, reported from Havana that journalist Joel de Jesús Díaz, incarcerated in the Canaleta Prison in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Avila, is suffering from hepatitis with high fever and is receiving no medical attention, despite an outbreak of the liver ailment among the inmates there.

Díaz, founding president of the Avila Independent Journalists Cooperative (CAPI), was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to four years imprisonment on charges of "endangerment." He is being held in solitary confinement. Relatives took a urine sample from him during a recent visit and a test confirmed he had hepatitis, Rivero reported.

In a similar case, the family of reporter Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, in prison in the eastern province of Holguín, said he had not been receiving any medical care despite having been suffering from a strong bout of influenza for the past two months. They fear he could contract tuberculosis, an outbreak of which has been reported at the prison.

González Castellanos was Holguín correspondent of the independent news agency Cuba Press before being sentenced to two years and seven months imprisonment for showing contempt of Cuban President Fidel Castro. He will have served two years of his term this October.

Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, issued a statement calling for the two to be given the medical care they need.

"To deny an inmate medical attention is a violation of his human rights," declared Molina, of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, newspaper El Nacional.

He urged that Díaz and González Castellanos be set free immediately, along with two other independent journalists also currently in jail, Víctor Rolando Arroyo and Bernardo Arévalo Padrón.

Details of these cases are posted on the IAPA Web site: http://cuba.sipiapa.org