ARCHIVES: Cuba
The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed the release Friday in Cuba of Juliet Michelena Díaz , who had been imprisoned since April after photographing a police operation in Havana. "We are relieved that Juliet Michelena Díaz has been released after spending seven months in jail on baseless accusations," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's Americas senior programme coordinator. "Cuba must dismantle its obsolete legal framework, which punishes independent reporting with jail. Freedom of expression... MORE
The National Revolutionary Police in Cuba have arrested and threatened independent journalist Bernardo Arévalo for the second time in a less than month. This time they arrested both him and his wife as they were travelling to the northern province of Matanzas on 28 September. They held Arévalo for two hours, forced him to undress, took his USB flash drive with four articles he had written for El Cubano Libre de Hoy, and threatened him with a four-year jail sentence if he did not stop writing... MORE
Reporters Without Borders has condemned independent journalist Juliet Michelena Díaz’s detention since April 7, three days before the publication of a by-lined report she wrote for the Miami-based independent news platform Cubanet about a case of ordinary police violence she had witnessed in Havana. Michelena, who was arrested in a heavy-handed police operation, is a member of the Cuban Network of Community Journalists (RCCC), an organisation that defends freedom of information. The police... MORE
Cuban authorities are waging a campaign to intimidate Hablemos Press, a Havana-based independent news centre, presumably because of its criticism of the government. In the past three months, 14 of its correspondents have been threatened and 10 have been briefly detained on at least one occasion, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). According to Hablemos Press director Roberto Jesús Guerra Pérez, the situation began to deteriorate during the 6th Congress... MORE
There are no longer any journalists in prison in Cuba. The last one was Albert Santiago Du Bouchet , who arrived in Spain Friday along with 36 other Cuban dissidents who were released on condition that they agree to go into exile, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The head of the independent Habana Press agency, Du Bouchet had been detained since April 18, 2009 and was serving a three-year jail sentence on a charge of “disrespect for authority.” His... MORE
The Reuters news agency on Tuesday vehemently denied an accusation made on Cuban state television that one of its journalists helped arrange a meeting between an undercover Cuban agent and a US diplomat who the programme described as a CIA operative, Canadian Press has reported. The allegations against former Reuters bureau chief Anthony Boadle were made on a Monday evening program called "Cuba's Reasons," which featured a previously little-known dissident named Raul Capote who said he was in... MORE
Cuban authorities have released journalist Pedro Argüelles Morán . Argüelles Morán was the last of 29 reporters arrested during a 2003 massive government crackdown on dissent to be allowed to leave jail Friday on parole, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Friday afternoon, Argüelles Morán's wife, Yolanda Vera Nerey, and a Catholic Church spokesman confirmed the journalist's imminent release, the Associated Press reported; he returned to... MORE
Iván Hernández Carrillo , a Cuban journalist imprisoned since March 2003, was released on parole Saturday and permitted to remain in the country, bringing to 19 the number of reporters and editors freed after an agreement between the President Raúl Castro and the Catholic Church. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Cuban authorities today to lift all conditions on Hernández Carrillo's release and to free the two journalists that remain imprisoned on the island. In a brief... MORE
Pedro Argüelles Morán , one of four journalists in jailed Cuba, began a hunger strike February 1 to protest against the authorities’ efforts to force him into exile as the price for freeing him. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to him and another jailed journalist Albert Santiago du Bouchet , who has also started a hunger strike, to call off their action. “At the same time we call on the Cuban authorities to listen to reason and recognize that those... MORE
Cuban journalist Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, left, was freed from prison on Friday and exiled to Spain as part of a July agreement between the Havana government and the Catholic Church. Seventeen journalists jailed in the 2003 Black Spring crackdown have now been freed and exiled as part of the agreement. "I feel as if I was born again, trying to get used to cell phones, personal computers and emails, all things that were barely known in Cuba before I was jailed," Fuentes told CPJ in a telephone... MORE
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