Reporters Sans Frontières, the international NGO that defends the freedom of journalists and of expression, had this to say about Dr. Darsi Ferrer's release:
“We are obviously relieved by Ferrer’s release even if he was finally given a jail sentence to match the time he already had spent behind bars,” Reporters Without Borders said. “No one is fooled about the real reason for his detention as this is a country in which the authorities tolerate no public expression of dissenting views. His release was not in any way an act of clemency or, even less so, a sign of an improvement in respect for basis rights and freedoms.”
Cuba still has approximately 200 prisoners of conscience, who include 24 journalists. One of them is the Reporters Without Borders correspondent Ricardo González Alfonso, who has been held since the “Black Spring” crackdown of March 2003.
Dissidents continue to be the target of harassment, repression and hate campaigns by the authorities and their supporters. Hablemos Press, a small independent news agency, reported that two more journalists, José Manuel Caraballo Bravo and Raúl Arias Márquez of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña (APLA), were arrested on 21 June.
Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to the community of Latin American countries to intercede on behalf of Cuba’s imprisoned journalists and dissidents, some of whom have fallen seriously ill since their arrest
By Laritza Diversent*
In Cuba, there are several forms of expression. The most peculiar one if when you want to criticize the political system. There are several steps you need to follow. First, you need to look around the place where you are. Second, know with whom you are trying to have a dialogue. And third, you need to converse quietly, using signs and codewords.
To many, this may seem like an exaggeration. Some even ask if it is simply fear, or if it is really forbidden to criticize the socialist system. The truth is that many Cubans are afraid to speak up; others protect themselves with aliases and those who speak openly, are taking a risk.
The current criminal statues protect State’s leaders, officials and institutions against negative expressions and opinion from the citizenry. In other words, in Cuba, criticism can be a crime.
The Penal Code includes several criminal provisions that protect people’s honor in general: defamation, libel and slander, and insult. However, the provision of “disrespect” offers exclusive protection to the authorities, in addition to those covered by the previously mentioned crimes.
The criminal provision applies a penalty of a fine or prison from 3 months up to 1 year to whomever “threatens, smears, libels, insults, reviles, or through any other mean defiles or offends, verbally or in writing, the dignity or decorum of an authority, public official, or its agents or assistants, in the course of performing their duties or on occasion or because of their duties.”
Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s initial sentence was for committing this crime. A prisoner of conscience, who died in prison after 86 days on hunger strike, he was sentenced to three years in prison because this crime is considered aggravated when is committed against the president, the members of the Council of State and Minister and the National Assembly. It is a common crime strongly tied to politics.
That means that mocking Fidel Castro or calling the president of the National Assembly a cynic could be interpreted by police as a crime of disrespect.
Don’t they say that in Cuba there is democracy? Then why can public figures not be criticized by the citizens?
But that’s not all. There are Supreme Court rulings stating that inspectors from the departments of Architecture and Urban Planning, Public Health and the night-shift security officers working for the Ministry of the Interior are also protected by this criminal provision of disrespect. What’s more, members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) are also privileged with the protection of this norm, since they are considered authority’s assistants.
Whoever thinks that if they criticize the government without making a reference to a specific official they can avoid the potential judicial sentence is wrong. The criminal legislation also includes sentences for those who publicly defame, denigrates or despise the institutions of the Republic, the political, masses or social organizations in the country, or the heroes and martyrs of the homeland.
I know it sounds like a joke, but it is not. It is legally prohibited to criticize the historical leaders, the government, the parliament the CDR’s, the Cuban Workers Union and every single organization created by the communists.
Coded-talk will continue to be a form of conversation in Cuba, as long as we have crime definitions that attack freedom of expression. We will continue to have those whispers stuck in our throats, choking us and preventing the people from raising its voice against those who repress them.
*This article by independent jurist and journalist Laritza Diversent first appeared in Spanish at http://www.desdelahabana.net/?p=2709. It was translated by Mailyn Salabarria, and revised by #OZT I Accuse the Cuban government Campaign.
Uncommon Sense: Cuban independent journalist released from jail, vows return to his work
posted on Monday, May 17, 2010Mark Masferrrer at Uncommon Sense reports that "Cuban independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias late Friday was released from jail after three weeks in custody.
The experience of surviving time in a Cuban prison has not scared Martínez into silence or submission.
Martínez told Radio Martí that as he was drive home Friday evening, a State Security official warned him to keep a low profile, to abandon the journalism and other activities that had gotten him arrested April 23 while covering an event commemorating the death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Otherwise, the official said, he would find himself back in prison.
Martínez responded by telling the official he might as well take him back to jail because by no means would he give up his work or the struggle for human rights and freedom in Cuba.
Martínez is the second journalist to be released from jail after a recent series of arrests targeting journalists, bloggers and others committed to reporting on the realities of Cuba today. Last weekend, it was Dania Virgen García, who was set free after a couple of weeks in jail, even after a "court" had sentenced her to 20 months in prison on a bogus charge."
Cuban journalist, living in Bayamo
ernestomorales25@gmail.com
Originally published on May 3rd, 2010 by Claudia Cadelo at Octavo Cerco
The last images were fade-outs from a plane, a vision of an island parading along the Havana Malecon, and I noticed from that moment that my mood had changed drastically. The National Television News of Monday, March first, did it in one blow. Ten minutes before, I was living my own life and thinking of my own dead. But after seeing the helplessness in the eyes of Reina Luisa Tamayo, an elderly woman of dark skin and simple words, who from that second, I’m sure, still mourns for what a mother should never have to mourn – the death of her son – nothing could be the same as moments before.
If there is anything about the brazen hidden cameras to be grateful for – as they violated every ethical and moral precept, filming this woman during the medical consultation, showing her naïve hopes in those men in the white coats whom she asked to save her son – it is just this: it taught me to know her face. To know her features to confirm what I already knew: this poor woman can not, could never, understand the death of her son Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the prisoner of conscience who, in my sad Cuba, stopped breathing last February 23, after 86 days on a hunger strike. At most, Reina Luisa knows the pain and now, probably the hate, but not much about the ideology or politics.
And she could not understand why the battered body of her son has to be covered with earth. Because not even I, not one civilized being, proud as we are of our species, can understand the death of a 42-year-old Cuban who died gasping, his body lacerated by the force of starvation, in order to claim with an epic bravery and, why not, somewhat orthodox, what from his simplicity he considered his inalienable rights. In short, what we would call a decent prison.
This death makes us dizzy. It is disconcerting. This death that did not have to be hurts those of us who believe in the best of humanity, which is not about our ideological postures, but about our feelings.
And it leads me to question, inevitably, this Island that many inhabit with pride, others with sorrow, and others with the certainty that it all belongs to them. I think of civilized barbarity, and of how in the name of supposedly righteous causes, a Government can bring out the worst in those it governs: dehumanizing them.
Someone told me recently: we have a sick country. And I say: Yes, sick of apathy, of resentment, of degrading feelings. A country cannot be healthy where National Television shows on prime time news such ignominious material, and where after millions and millions of eyes see it, and millions of brains process it, it does not generate protests, nor even significant movements that question the event. That ask for real justifications for what is not said, for what it purposefully hidden.
I think: the author of such material, the journalist who lent her intellect to such infamy, lives in our country, certainly has a family, perhaps children. This journalist is miserably sick of lies.
Was it a repeated error, every time it was aired on several news programs, that its author was apparently not credited? Or did the same person decide, as a last minute precaution, to hide her identify behind an off-screen voice? Many identified her, assumed her well-known television presenter’s name, but she, suspiciously, preferred to hide it. I wonder how someone whose creed should be truth, someone whose watchword should be “objectivity,” can sleep at night after handling in this way a case that should provoke in all of us, at the very least, a wave of shame.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arrested during the infamous Black Spring. He did not figure among the commonly broadcast names of the 75 independent journalists imprisoned, because instead of a thinker, journalist or intellectual he worked as a humble bricklayer who engaged with frank radicalism in his labor of opposition, and who was sentenced initially for three years privation of liberty as a result of his public demonstrations against this wave of arrests in 2003.
Once behind bars, however, this sentence was increased to a staggering 25 years for disrespecting the authorities, terminology which in practice meant refusing to wear the inmate uniform and to be treated like a common prisoner. Since then, the former worker, born in Banes in the municipality of Holguín, figured as one of the recalcitrant "counterrevolutionaries," who refused to be treated as common criminal, and who maintained his intractable attitude to those who sought to bend him by force.
That was the genesis of the tragedy. Rather, its first act. The second and decisive act opened in December 2009, when Orlando Zapata formally declared a hunger strike.
What motivated this prisoner with his voluntary fast? The report on Cuban television said, coldly and contemptuously, that he wanted “a TV, a kitchen, and a telephone in his cell.” According to the words of his mother, what he fasted for was, “to have the same living conditions that Fidel Castro had when he was Fulgencio Batista’s political prisoner, the same living conditions of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States.”
Perhaps Orland Zapata did not think that his resolution would send him headlong to death. But what I am sure of is that the authorities of Kilo 8 (the prison in Camagüey where he was being held) never imagined the stony determination of his position, even as it cost him his life.
A story that does not explain causes cannot call itself journalism. The material exhibited on our television was dedicated to “dismantling” the argument that Zapata Tamayo was not seen by doctors when his condition required it, nothing more. It was never explained to the millions of viewers how it was possible that the arrogance of a prison system would allow the progressive debilitation of a young man who was not asking for the impossible.
The question is not, “What did the Camagüey doctors do to try to restore life to a body desiccated by hunger?” We assume: a doctor who sits at the heart of the sacred should save lives, could not have done otherwise than to fight tooth and nail against a death that had already won every fight. The question is: “How is it possible that the doctors so unflinchingly ignored the claims of a prisoner whose crime was to think differently, so that from the moment he went into the hospital his deterioration made any attempt to save him futile?” Is it that Orlando Zapata Tamayo chose a slow and horrendous suicide? Is it that he didn’t love his life? Was it irresponsible, as they try to make us see on Cuban Television, that he didn’t measure the reach of his actions, that he did not feel the martyrdom of his hungry body?
I refuse to accept it. Orlando Zapata, a Cuban whom I never met, whose ideas, principles or human values I do not know, whose conduct I cannot even assess objectively due to the disinformation and manipulation to which the official press of my country condemns these issues, Orlando Zapata had the courage, which in “Cuban” translates as “he had the balls,” to live consistent with his ideas. He knew how to do what so many worn out slogans and so many phrases from the podium cannot encompass with their rhetoric: give his life for a cause.
The television report should be stored in our minds. When a person who knows how to build a better country remembers this, the example will teach us how far we can go. How far? Even to publicly showing the hidden camera films of this desperate woman, who was grateful for every word of encouragement that would give her back her faith in the life of her son, and whose words (or those they tried to make her words) would be aired without the least respect for her integrity, her rights, her pain. To present, one more time, private telephone conversations, taped in a zealous spying process too similar to the one the official Cuban press criticized George W. Bush for, with the difference that at least the intelligence service of the nefarious president hid those recordings. They did not air them on prime time television in the United States.
Can they stoop any lower? They can: behind the photo of Orlando Zapata shown on the screen, an image of an evil frown zealously chosen to present to the Cuban public, the author of the material contrasted it with one of those marches of the multitudes Cubans know so well. Those million of Havanians who slithered along the Malecon, in the visual language of this report, strongly disputed Zapata Tamayo. They disputed him, according to the exact words of that ethereal voice-over, with fists high, in response to his blackmail and provocations.
Not a single opposing opinion. Not one argument to the contrary. Not one witness to the living conditions of this prisoner of conscience and what led to his fatal protest. That is, Orlando Zapata was not a “plant” who refused to accept the status of a common criminal and demanded his rights. No. Orlando Zapata was a victim of those who infected him with this idea of rebellion, of the degenerate counterrevolutionaries who pushed him to his death. It’s that simple.
For these captors of the truth, the principle of disagreement with their ideas is a concept so vague, so lacking, that only in this way can they understand that a 42-year-old Cuban would paralyze his stomach to claim the right to be treated with respect. Only in this way: like an irresponsible person. A naïve person exploited by the real enemy
Once again, as Eduardo Galeano would say: Cuba hurts.
We grieve for those who don’t accept that things like this are possible, that deaths like this happen, that suffering like this takes place under our noses. We grieve for those who believe that instead of burying people with different opinions, now is the time to disinter their ideas and build, with all of them, the clever and the crazy, the shrewd and the obvious, a more plural and tolerant nation.
And it should pain everyone who thinks of Marti, a prisoner at sixteen, a victim of abuse and cruelty, for being a political opponent. It should pain everyone who thinks of Mandela, imprisoned for 28 colossal years for opposing the ideas of an exclusionary system. Yes, for being an opponent. It should be felt in the flesh of every decent Cuban, because one more of us, one of those born under the same sun, who built houses with his hands, who suffered shortages and laughed out loud, who drank rum once in a while, perhaps, and who dreamed of a country other than that imposed on him, who died a death that never should have been.
If our flag wasn’t sold for hard currency in this tropical Cuba, and in consequence, if each one of us would raise it somewhere in our homes, raise it to half-staff (although this was not a leader nor a famous man) it would be a just way to maintain a dignified silence before the death of this unknown man. It would be a way to preserve our last wealth: human dignity.
And against that, no ill-fated reporting can do anything.
Note from Claudia Cadelo: I read this article for the first time along with the interview that Ernesto conducted with Yoani and Reinaldo. I had never met him but his texts make me feel like I’ve known him my whole life.
The Ladies in Support to the Ladies in White were verbally warned against marching (according to Radio Martí, in this Spanish language piece) with the latter on Saturday, but then ultimately allowed to march on Sunday as reported by Yoani Sánchez via Twitter. The Ladies in White also stated that they hope some prisoners will be freed during or after the Vatican’s foreign minister’s visit to Cuba next month.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s mother, Lady in White Reina Luisa Tamayo, joined Twitter on Saturday, and already has gathered more than 440 followers.
The platform “Cuba Democracia Ya!” organized in Madrid (Spain) an act of solidarity with the Ladies in White and for the liberation of all Cuban political prisoners in the island.. It was scheduled to coincide with Mother’s Day celebrations in most countries of the Western Hemisphere, including Cuba.
Misceláneas de Cuba reported (in Spanish) that there is a growing sense of alarm among the doctors who care for opposition activist Guillermo Fariñas as his health continues to deteriorate. Guillermo is on his 75th day (today) of a hunger strike he initiated on February 24th, 2010.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF): Cuban Journalist held without trial, more serious charge considered
posted on Friday, May 07, 2010“In the latest ongoing wave of repression, it seems the Cuban authorities are bringing more serious charges against Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, the Hablemos Press reporter, who was arrested with force on 23 April while covering an activity commemorating imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s death.
Initially charged with ‘insulting behaviour,’ Martínez is still being held and is now apparently accused of ‘aggravated violence’ against a police officer at the time of his arrest although the authorities have offered no details about what allegedly took place. The vagueness indicates that the authorities themselves are not sure what they are claiming.
During his transfer to Valle Grande prison in La Lisa, on the outskirts of Havana, on 30 April, Martínez insisted that the charges were baseless. ‘This is an invention designed to stop my work and neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office can agree on the lies they are going to use to convict me,’ he said.”
RSF then “calls for the immediate release of Martínez, who has been arrested many times in the past and deported three times to the eastern city of Camagüey, each time in connection with his journalistic work.”
The organization warns that “[the Cuban] government’s treatment of independent journalists has been worsening of late in a new crackdown on anyone trying to express dissident views under a regime marked by a complete absence of civil liberties."
On a previous note from April 29th, RSF reported on the situation of jailed independent journalist Dania Virgen García, the arrest of Yosvani Anzardo Hernández, editor of the online newspaper candonga.org [at the time this note was being redacted, their web site was not accessible], and the summons to appear before the Revolutionary National Police served to Magaly Norvis Otero Suárez.
Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, the agency’s director writes:
Calixto Ramón was arrested by Security of State agents on April 23rd while reporting on an activity conducted by opposition activists. The act was violently repressed by paramilitary brigades who invaded [opposition activist] Damián Prito Blanco’s home and assaulted the participants. The journalist is accused of assault.
The reporter was beaten by the paramilitary brigades and subsequently arrested by Security of State agents. “I’m being charged with assault” —he said on the phone on April 30th—“although previously the authorities charged me with ‘disrespect’”
“The booking officers stated that I hit a policeman in blue [uniform] inside the house. [However] The prosecution is charging me with hitting a Security [of State] agent.”
“While I was covering the activity, I didn’t see any policeman in blue [uniform]. But, those who came in beating us were dressed in civilian clothes, if they were agents, they did not identify themselves as such. And why did they beat us if they said they were ‘the people’ but turned out to be agents?” —added Calixto.
“This is all a sham to disrupt my work as a communicator, and neither the police nor the prosecution can agree on a lie with which to charge me.”
“Apparently this is a new wave [of repression] from the regime to silence those who try to have an [alternative] opinion,” stated Rodolfo Ramírez Cardoso, president of Movimiento Nueva Línea Democrática, and who sheltered Calixto for a long time.
For more than a month, Cuba's Ladies in White have been getting leaned on. Castro's goons have taken to surrounding them after the women go to Mass in Havana and march for their loved ones in prison. Now Dania Virgen García is in prison.
She didn't have a loved-one in a Cuban jail when she began processing through the streets of Havana with the Ladies in White on Sundays. But she decided to join them in solidarity against the unjust imprisonment of husbands, fathers and brothers rounded up during the Black Spring of March 2003 and handed harsh sentences for speaking their consciences.
She was one of a growing number of women there who call themselves "Ladies in Support."
On April 22 state security arrested the young blogger, and less than 48 hours later she received a prison sentence of one year and eight months. She has been sent to the country's largest maximum security prison for women, known commonly by Cubans as "the black veil." It's easy to guess why they call it that.
The regime's assaults on independent thinkers date back 51 years. But Ms. García's arrest is not without significance. It is the clearest sign to date of the regime's desperation in the face of popular discontent.
Ms. García is what Cubans call an independent journalist. Carmen Ferreiro, director of information and press for Human Rights Cuba based in Miami, says she met Ms. García online "toward the end of 2009" and helped her get her blog up and running. The two women exchanged emails.
"This is how in a short time I came to know that Dania was very devoted to her Catholic faith, that she spoke affectionately about her family, that she enjoyed photography and struggled despite limited resources for human rights in Cuba."
Ms. Ferreiro reports that Ms. García knew she was under surveillance and explained the threat in an email: "Things in Cuba are not well at all, but I am going to continue this struggle to the death or until whatever they want happens; I will continue to support the Ladies in White, even if they continue to beat us, because what they want is for us to be afraid and we are not going to allow that to happen."
Though without Dania now, the Ladies in White surely will be walking in the face of an increasingly dangerous mob again this Sunday. The world might want to take notice.
Independent journalist and Ladies in White supporter arrested and summarily sentenced to prison in Cuba
posted on Sunday, April 25, 2010Several independent journalists report from Cuba that independent journalist and Dama de Apoyo (Ladies in White Supporter) Dania Virgen García was arrested on charges that are yet no clear on April 22nd or 23rd. She was then summarily sentenced to 1 year and 8 months behind bars, and has been sent to the notorious Manto Negro prison.
Here is more from Marc Masferrer.
Blog for Cuba.
And Human Rights in Cuba
CPJ: Cuban independent journalist tells of his ‘dreadful experience’ in prison
posted on Friday, April 16, 2010Recently released independent journalist, Oscar Sánchez Madam, described his three year long experience in a Cuban jail under charges of "dangerousness" to José Barbeito of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ).
“I don’t wish on anybody the dreadful experience I had in prison.” he told Barbeito. He went on to describe the deplorable conditions in which he had to survive during that time, including the filthy conditions and lack of water (“Detainees, including me, were diagnosed many times with severe, chronic diarrhea and parasites.”) in the small cell he had to share "with people who had convictions of 15 or 18 years on charges of murder or other serious, violent crimes.”
He explained how those people beat and harassed political prisoners on a regular basis by command of the penal authorities. He himself was beaten and harassed several times.
However, he remains committed to continue reporting on human rights abuses and the corruption of the Cuban regime: “I would prefer to continue reporting and writing about current affairs on the island, including human rights violations by the Cuban government,”
More details at the link.
