June 18, 1998
Your Excellency,
The Committee to Protect
Journalists is writing to express its concern for
independent journalist Juan Carlos Recio Martínez,
who began serving a sentence of twelve months of forced
labor on June 15. Recio Martínez was convicted in
February for "Acts against the Security of the State" and
sentenced to one year of agricultural labor.
The conviction stems from an
incident in October, 1997 in which Recio Martínez,
who works as the Villa Clara correspondent for the
Buró de Prensa Independiente de Cuba (BPIC),
received a written statement from opposition activist
Cecilio Monteagudo Sánchez exhorting Cubans to
abstain from voting in the upcoming elections. Even
though Recio Martínez did not publish a story on
the document, he was convicted for failing to notify the
Interior Ministry that he had received it.
Recio Martínez is serving
his sentence in the Abel Santamaría agricultural
cooperative in Villa Clara province. While he is
permitted to leave the cooperative after his work is
completed each day, we view mandatory forced labor as a
form of confinement and therefore intend to include Recio
Martínez in our list of imprisoned Cuban
journalists, along with Lorenzo Páez
Núñez and Bernardo Arévalo
Padrón. Páez Núñez was jailed
for defamation on July 10, 1997 and sentenced to 18
months in prison; Arévalo Padrón was
convicted on October 31, 1997 and sentenced to six years
in prison for showing a "lack of respect" toward Your
Excellency and Vice President Carlos Lage.
As an organization of
journalists dedicated to the defense of our colleagues
around the world, we believe that journalists should
never be jailed on account of their work. The
incarceration of Recio Martínez is also a
violation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which guarantees the right to "receive and
impart information and ideas through any media regardless
of frontiers."
We urge you to use your
authority as President of Cuba to pardon Recio
Martínez, Páez Núñez, and
Arévalo Padrón. We also urge you comply
with international law by ensuring that Cuban journalists
are free to practice their profession without fear of
reprisal.
Sincerely,
William A. Orme, Jr.
Executive Director