Increase noted in politically-motivated detentions
Miami (October 5, 2012)—The arrest in Cuba of blogger Yoani Sánchez and another two people brought a sharp protest today from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). The organization called for their immediate release and denounced an increase in detentions in the country for political reasons in recent months.
Sánchez, together with her husband Reinaldo Escobar – also a journalist – and a third person were arrested yesterday afternoon in the city of Bayamo, capital of Granma province in eastern Cuba. They had gone there to cover the trial of Spanish citizen Ángel Carromero, accused of the involuntary manslaughter of opposition activists Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero on July 22. Carromero was driving the vehicle in which the dissidents died in a traffic accident.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gustavo Mohme, declared, “If the Cuban authorities were seeking to minimize international coverage of the trial, putting a stop to the awaited and followed writings of Sánchez they have achieved just the opposite with this arbitrary arrest, which is clearly politically motivated.”
Sánchez, creator of the popular blog Generación Y and the winner of numerous international awards, managed to speak with a family member to report that they were being detained in a police station, the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission (CCDHRN) reported. Sánchez is a stringer for the Spanish newspaper El País, which asked her to cover the trial.
Mohme, editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, urged the Cuban authorities “to show tolerance of freedom of expression and of the press.” The situation in Cuba, along with a number of other countries in the Western Hemisphere where there have been free speech violations, will be reviewed in detail at the IAPA’s General Assembly that is opening in just a week’s time in São Paulo, Brazil.
According to the CCDHRN, quoted by the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald, last month a total of 533 people were arrested for political reasons – “the highest number in the past six months, which underscores the tendency to increase” the number of arrests, the vast majority for only a brief time but which are a powerful act of harassment, censorship and repression.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.