Cuban journalist is arrested (UPDATED)

Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia

UPDATED, 10:24 a.m. EST, Dec. 6, 2006 — Amnesty International says Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia may be a prisoner of conscience.

UPDATED, 12:28 p.m EST — Reporters Without Borders has more on Rodríguez, who turns 22 on Sunday, as well as on a 4-year prison sentence handed down to journalist Raimundo Perdigón Brito.

I've worked with a lot of young journalists who complain about long hours and low pay, and editors who just don't understand them. I was a lot like that, too, when I was their age.

But few of the challenges we face as journalists in America — even those that are products of our youth and inexperience — rise to the level of those before Cuban independent journalists like Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia.

Rodríguez, 21, whose stories are frequently cited at Uncommon Sense, was arrested during an early morning raid Monday at his apartment in Old Havana. One witness, the human rights activist William Cepero, said the police made a big deal of the raid and arrest, sending officers in five patrol cars ands seven motorcycles, according to a story by journalist Pablo Rodríguez Carvajal posted at Payo Libre.

And all for a guy who just tells stories.

Of course, those stories — on everything from a government goon squad's "act of repudiation" to a family's rejection of military honors for a dead relative — are considered by the regime to be dangerous weapons. Dangerous, because of how they instruct the public, on and off the island, about the reality of life in Cuba, and how they challenge the dictatorship's control of the Cuban people.

Before Monday, police and the CDR — the neighborhood watch committee — had made a habit of harassing Rodríguez, who writes for the Youth Without Censorship news agency. He was arrested and detained for two days in September, and last week, Rodríguez's life was actually put in danger when during a demonstration by government supporters outside his apartment, someone set the roof on fire.

(There was no word this morning whether Rodríguez was still being held by police.)

Most young journalists I have known — especially those at my current newspaper — work hard and are committed to the highest principles of our profession. But American journalists can be a whiney lot, griping about the pettiest of matters.

I just wish my young colleagues, and other American reporters and editors, would remember journalists like Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia before the next time they complain about how hard they think they have it.

Meanwhile, the Assembly for the Promotion of a Civil Society has information about how another Cuban journalist, former political prisoner Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernandez, was prevented last week from traveling.