Bernardo Arevalo Padron
Reporters Without Borders has the story of Bernardo Arevalo Padron:
Bernardo Arévalo Padrón, an independent journalist based in Cienfuegos, 250 km southeast of Havana, said the police of pressured him to leave Cuba when they arrested him on 6 September because of his reporting for the opposition newspaper El Cubano Libre, de Hoy.
Arévalo told Reporters Without Borders that the Cienfuegos police threatened him with a four-year jail sentence if he did not leave the island.
“I don’t want to leave Cuba, I don’t want to,” Arévalo said. “My decision is irrevocable. I would rather go to prison than leave the country. I want to die in Cuba.”
Arévalo spent six years as a political prisoner, from 1997 to 2003, after being convicted of insulting Fidel Castro and then Vice-President Carlos Lage. Between then and last weekend, he had only been detained once – for eight hours in February 2010.
“We condemn the pressure being placed on Arévalo,” said Camille Soulier, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Americas desk. “Cuba is reestablishing relations with the European Union and EU member countries but its treatment of independent journalists has not changed. Exile or prison, that’s freedom of information in Cuba today.”
Read more about how the Castro dictatorship persecutes independent journalists, here.
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