On Apr 30, 6:01=A0am, PL <pl.nos...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > If they were honestly interested in voicing their opinions and calling
> > for change,
>
> they are and have tried
>
> > the international media has recently been full of accounts
> > of an ongoing and vigorous debate (snip)
>
> Just started, highly orchestrated and higly controlled to ensure no
> criticism of the regime appear.
Let's see your proof? By all accounts I have seen, the debates were
seen in the international media as lively and wide ranging.
> While complaining a toothbrush costs the equivalent o 4 days of work is
> allowed in controlled meetings, blaiming the government isn't, no?
>
In a country in which state-owned stores set the prices, even this
could be seen as a criticism of government policies.
> >> Ra=FAl Rivero is banned from publi****ng in Cuba, his native country,
> >> because he is viewed as a dissident. He was one of 10 journalists to
> >> sign the 1991 Carta de los Intelectuales, a petition urging Fidel
Castr=
o
> >> to free prisoners of conscience. His exit and re-entry permits have
bee=
n
> >> consistently denied.
> >> Ra=FAl Rivero is one of Cuba's best-known dissident journalists and a
> >> figurehead of the country's beleaguered independent press. He has
faced=
> >> relentless harassment from Fidel Castro's communist regime and its
> >> security agency since leaving the state-controlled press in 1988
becaus=
e
> >> of growing disillusionment with Cuba's political system.
> >> Rivero was born in 1945 in Mor=F3n, Camag=FCey, in central Cuba. He
was=
> >> among the first generation of journalists trained at Havana
University'=
s
> >> School of Journalism after the 1959 revolution, and he co-founded the
> >> satirical magazine Caim=E1n Barbudo in 1966. He worked as Moscow
> >> correspondent for the government news agency, Prensa Latina, from
1973
> >> to 1976 before returning to Cuba to head the agency's science and
> >> culture service.
> >> Rivero resigned from the National Union of Cuban Writers in 1989 and
> >> made a formal break with the regime two years later when on June 2,
> >> 1991, he signed the famous Carta de los Intelectuales (Intellectuals'
> >> Letter), a petition calling on Castro to free prisoners of
conscience.
> >> Of the 10 signatories, he is the only one still living in Cuba.
Rivero
> >> abandoned official journalism in 1991, denouncing it as "fiction
about =
a
> >> country that does not exist."
> >> In 1995 Rivero founded CubaPress, one of a handful of independent,
and
> >> illegal, news agencies set up by dissident journalists in order to
> >> provide an alternative to Cuba's state-owned media. Like the
country's
> >> other 40-odd journalists working outside the state media, Rivero is
> >> viewed as a political dissident and cannot publish or broadcast in
Cuba=
..
> >> Instead, he sends his work abroad for circulation on the Internet and
i=
n
> >> U.S. and European publications, although publi****ng abroad can result
i=
n
> >> a jail sentence for spreading "enemy propaganda."
> >> Rivero's movements have been restricted, and he has been routinely
> >> threatened, detained and interrogated by state security forces. He
has
> >> also been harassed by members of El Sistema Unico de Vigilancia y
> >> Protecci=F3n, a Cuban vigilante group tied to the Communist Party.
> >> Officials have told him he can leave Cuba as long as he does not try
to=
> >> come back, but, because he is determined to pursue his profession in
> >> Cuba, his exit and re-entry permit applications have been
consistently
> >> denied.
> >> Rivero is also a poet of renown, and he is regional vice chairman for
> >> Cuba of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Committee on
Freedo=
m
> >> of the Press and Information.
> >> A recipient of numerous press freedom awards, including the IAPA
Grand
> >> Prize for Press Freedom, Rivero was most recently awarded the 1999
Mari=
a
> >> Moors Cabot Prize of Columbia University's Graduate School of
> >> Journalism. He could not accept it in person because he was refused
> >> permission to travel abroad.
> >> In a February 1999 piece entitled "Journalism Belongs to Us All,"
River=
o
> >> reflected on the work of journalists trying to re****t freely on
> >> developments in Cuba. "Nobody, no law can make me take on the
mentality=
> >> of a gangster or other criminal simply because I re****t the arrest of
a=
> >> dissident or bring to light the prices of the basic alimentary
products=
> >> for survival in Cuba or edit a note saying that it seems like a
disaste=
r
> >> to me that more than 20,000 Cubans leave their homeland each year for
> >> exile in the United States or that hundreds of others desperately try
t=
o
> >> get away to some place, any place. Nobody can make me feel like a
> >> criminal, an enemy target or a turncoat or any of the other
name-callin=
g
> >> nouns the government uses to try to degrade or humiliate us. I am
merel=
y
> >> a man who writes. One who writes in the country where I was born."
>
> > [snip]
>
> > Nothing here about this guy being jailed for simply expressing his
> > opinions. He was eventually jailed, however, not being a "dissident,"
> > but for being an illegal paid agent of a foreign regime (snip)
>
> Not according to Amnesty International.
[snip]
That was only their opinion. The fact is, this guy was convicted,
along with several of others for their roles as paid agents of the US
regime, a hostile foregin regime that continues to this day to inflict
genocidal sanctions on the Cuban people. They were convicted based on
the testimony of under-cover police agents who had inflitrated the
ranks of these "di$$idents" to the very highest levels. See:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2003/julio/mar1/26bager.html
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/entrevistas/15once.html
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/entrevistas/silence.html
AI doesn't care about such concerns, of course, but the Cuban people
simply have too much to lose to allow US agents to operate with
impunity on the island. History of full of examples of the US regime's
attempts to subvert the popular will in countries everywhere around
the world. (See former CIA operative, Philip Agee's "Inside the
Company" for an excellent account of this process.)
Dan
Visit my CUBA: Issues & Answers website at
http://www.netcom.ca/~dchris/Cuba=
FAQ.html
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