CPJ concerned by reports of mistreatment of jailed journalists

CUBA: CPJ concerned by reports of mistreatment of jailed journalists

New York, April 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is
concerned by reports that one jailed independent Cuban journalist has
been beaten, a second has been denied medical treatment in prison, and a
third has been threatened with detention for her writing.

On March 28, independent journalist Normando Hernández González was
thrown down a flight of stairs by a prison guard, the President of the
Cuban Foundation for Human Rights, Juan Carlos González Leiva, told CPJ.
Other guards then dragged Hernández down a hall and locked him in a cell
for seven hours, said González Leiva, who spoke to the prisoner by
telephone on March 29. Hernández suffered multiple bruises and a
sprained ankle.

González Leiva said that previously guards have twisted Hernández’s
arms and beaten the soles of his feet with a wooden board. The beatings
came after Hernández demanded medical attention, refused to stand in
line, and protested his incarceration with common criminals, González
Leiva said.

Hernández, from the press group Colegio de Periodistas
Independientes de Camagüey, was sentenced in March 2003 to 25 years in
prison. He is serving his sentence at the Kilo 5½ Prison in Pinar del
Río, 435 miles (700 kilometers) northwest of his home in Camagüey. His
health has deteriorated in prison, González Leiva said.

Independent journalist Oscar Mario González, who has been held
without charge since July 2005, has been denied medical treatment for
chronic gastritis and high blood pressure, his wife Mirta Wong told CPJ.
González was transferred January 18 from the Havana headquarters of the
Technical Department of Investigations to Havana Prison 1580. Since then
he has not been examined by a doctor or received any medication, Wong
said. She said she has been forbidden from taking him medicine. Prison
officials say González cannot be treated until they receive a file
containing his judicial and medical history. Authorities have told Wong
that the file has been misplaced.

González worked for the news agency Grupo de Trabajo Decoro, whose
director, Ana Leonor Díaz Chamizo, was detained March 25 by two
plainclothes police for an alleged traffic violation. Díaz told CPJ she
was taken to a police station in Havana and held in an empty room for
almost three hours. Two state security officials later questioned her
about her work, and threatened to send her to prison if she did not stop
writing about independent journalists.

“We are alarmed by the treatment of these two jailed journalists,”
said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. “We call on Cuban authorities to
immediately release all 24 journalists currently in jail, and end the
persecution of all journalists.”

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/americas/cuba06apr06na.html