Cuban independent journalist Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez has been held by police for almost two weeks, according to a report by Juan González Febles posted at CubaNet. Apparently, the authorities may be preparing to try Espinosa on charges of being a "social danger."
Espinosa, who works for the Oriente Press Agency, must be a good reporter to be feared by the government like that.
For his part, Espinosa has shown no fear through his reporting, such as in this Sept. 29 story, also posted at CubaNet, about how the Cuban government was staying silent on an outbreak of dengue fever on the island.
This is just the latest move by the government to further clamp down on government opposition. As always, their favorite targets include independent journalists and librarians, two groups that have taken the lead among Cuban dissidents opposed to the Castro regime.
Another journalist, Roberto Santana, was among three people arrested and briefly detained last Thursday, after leaving the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, where they had gone to access the Internet, according to CubaNet.
UPDATED, 11:46 EST
Reporters Without Borders has more on the Espinosa case.
Reporters Without Borders today called for the immediate release of Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez, a journalist with the Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental independent news agency, who has been held by the state security police in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba since 25 October. He will probably be jailed as a “danger to society,” making him the 25th journalist currently imprisoned in Cuba.The press freedom organisation also condemned a recent wave of other cases of independent journalists being harassed by Cuba’s political police.
“Espinosa is likely to get a prison sentence for being a ‘danger to society,’ in other words, not for any crime he has supposedly committed but for the threat he supposedly represents,” Reporters Without Borders said. “His case is a new example of the absurdity of a judicial system that can convict a person without any grounds.”
The organisation added: “We call for his immediate release and an end to the repressive hysteria to which other journalists have also fallen victim.”
The Miami-based news website Cubanet said Espinosa is being held in an isolation cell at Department 21 of the Cuban state security police in Santiago de Cuba pending trial on a charge of being a “danger to society” - a Cuban criminal code provision under which people can be arrested, tried and convicted for the danger they supposedly pose rather than what they have actually done.
UPDATED, Dec. 17, 2008
Espinosa, who was sentenced to 2 years of house arrest in the above-described case, apparenly is no longer in state custody. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2007 listed Espinosa as one of 24 imprisoned journalists in Cuba, but as of Dec. 1, 2008, he was no longer listed as being in jail.
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