The IAPA’s special request comes against the background of the inauguration in Buenos Aires this Sunday of Argentine President Néstor Kirchner which will be attended by the majority of government leaders from throughout the Americas, among them Cuba’s Castro.
IAPA President Andrés García publicly called on the governments “to take this opportunity to express to President Castro not only the need for there to be democracy in Cuba but also that the right to write and express an opinion be guaranteed.”
The IAPA request is part of a series of representations the organization has been making to governmental and international agencies in its attempt to secure the release of 75 prisoners, mostly political opponents of the Castro regime and also including 28 independent journalists, serving prison terms of up to 27 years. Among them is journalist Raúl Rivero, sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, a member of the IAPA’s Board of Directors and the vice chairman for Cuba of the organization’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information.
Since the wave of oppression was unleashed in March and because of previous harassment of the independent press, the IAPA has been criticizing the timid attitudes of some governments towards the Castro regime.
García, editor of the Cancún, Mexico, newspaper Novedades de Quintana Roo, also urged hemisphere governments to take up with Castro the issue of a new campaign of repression against the independent press in Cuba. The IAPA has become aware that 12 independent reporters who are continuing to write for various publications around the world have received warnings from State Security in recent days that they should stop writing or face imprisonment.
The journalists concerned are Tania Quintero, Fara Armenteros, Luis Cino, Ana Leonor Díaz, Claudia Márquez Linares, Gilberto Figueredo, Manuel Antonio Brito, Ernesto Roque and Iván García in Havana; Ada Márquez from Guantánamo, now living temporarily in Havana; María Elena Alpizar Plazetas in Villa Clara, and Rafael Ferro in Pinar del Río.
In the case of Iván García, of the independent news agency Cuba Press, he was called in for questioning by agent Jesús Aguila and another State Security official, who warned him to stop writing or face the choice of leaving the country. Otherwise, he would be charged under Law 88 of complicity in a foreign spy network.
Gracía was also warned that the next time he was called in it would
be “a different matter” – meaning that he could face imprisonment.
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