Amnesty Recognizes Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, a Cuban journalist, a prisoner of conscience

New prisoner of conscience: Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias

UA: 25/13 Index: AMR 25/001/2013 Cuba Date: 30 January 2013

URGENT ACTION INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST DETAINED IN CUBA 

Independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias has been detained since September 2012 in Cuba in relation to his work. Amnesty International believes he is a prisoner of conscience solely detained for peacefully exercising his freedom of expression. On 16 September 2012 Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, a journalist working for the unofficial news agency Hablemos Press, was arrested by the Cuban Revolutionary Police (Policía Revolucionaria de Cuba) at José Martí International Airport in Havana. He had been investigating allegations that medicine provided by the World Health Organization to fight the cholera outbreak (which began in mid-2012) was being kept at the airport instead of being distributed, as the Cuban government was allegedly trying to downplay the seriousness of the outbreak. Upon his arrest, Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias was taken to the Santiago de las Vegas police station, located near the airport.

According to Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias’ relatives, when complaining in his cell at the Santiago de las Vegas police station about his detention, he was beaten and pepper-sprayed in his eyes, and then called out “down with Raúl”, “down with Fidel” (“abajo Raúl”, “abajo Fidel”). Although neither he nor his lawyer – who has not been allowed access to his casefile – have been informed of any official charges against him, Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias is reportedly being accused of “disrespect” (“desacato”) towards President Raúl Castro and Fidel Castro. The Cuban criminal code provides sentences of up to three years’ imprisonment in this case.

After being held for 10 days at the Santiago de las Vegas police station, Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias was transferred to Valle Grande prison until 10 November. Since then he has been detained at Combinado del Este prison on the outskirts of Havana. On arrival at Combinado del Este prison he went on hunger strike, apparently to protest against being forced to wear a prison uniform and having his personal belongings confiscated. The hunger strike reportedly lasted 33 days.

Amnesty International believes Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias’ detention is politically motivated and related to his peaceful exercise of freedom of expression.

Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language: 

• Calling on the Cuban authorities to release Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias immediately and unconditionally, as he is prisoner of conscience, detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression;  
• Urging them to remove unlawful restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly in Cuba.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 13 MARCH 2013 TO: 

Head of State and Government

 Raúl Castro Ruz 

Presidente de la República de Cuba 

La Habana, Cuba 

Fax: +41 22 758 9431 (Cuba office in Geneva); 

+1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban Mission to UN) 

Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission to UN) Salutation: Your Excellency

Attorney General 

Dr. Darío Delgado Cura 

Fiscal General de la República, 

Fiscalía General de la República, 

Amistad 552, e/Monte y Estrella, Centro Habana, 

La Habana, Cuba 

Salutation: Dear Attorney General

And copies to:

Interior Minister
General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones Ministerio del Interior,
Plaza de la Revolución,
La Habana, Cuba 

Fax+1 212 779 1697       

(via Cuban Mission to UN) Email: correominint@mn.mn.co.cu Salutation: Your Excellency

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.

Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.

URGENT ACTION INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST DETAINED IN CUBA

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

Restrictions on the Cuban media are stringent and pervasive and clearly stop those in the country from enjoying their right to freedom of opinion and expression, including freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The state maintains a total monopoly on television, radio, the press, internet service providers, and other electronic means of communication.

Article 53 of the Cuban Constitution recognizes freedom of the press but expressly prohibits private ownership of the mass media: “Citizens have freedom of speech and of the press in keeping with the objectives of socialist society. Material conditions for the exercise of that right are provided by the fact that the press, radio, television, cinema, and other mass media are state or social property and can never be private property. This assures their use at exclusive service of the working people and in the interests of society. The law regulates the exercise of those freedoms.”

Although there is no censorship law that explicitly regulates the functioning of the press or establishes what is published, journalists must join the Cuban Journalists Association (Unión de Periodistas Cubanos, UPEC) in order to practice journalism in the state-owned media. UPEC is self-governing; however, in its statutes it recognizes the Cuban Communist Party as “the highest leading force of society and of the state” and agrees to abide by Article 53 of the Constitution (see above). Compulsory membership of a professional association for the practice of journalism is an unlawful restriction on freedom of expression and a violation of the right to freedom of association. Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that, “no one may be compelled to belong to an association”. In the particular case of UPEC, whose members are employees of the government of Cuba, compulsory membership is a means of exerting political control in the field of communications. Only journalists expressing views in line with official government policies are accredited by UPEC; independent journalists are barred from joining.

The news agency Hablemos Press (Let’s Talk Press) is an unofficial Cuban news agency founded in February 2009 by independent journalists and human rights activists, “for the purpose of gathering and disseminating news within the country and for the rest of the world” according to their website. Hablemos Press journalists are regular victims of short-term arrests and harassment related to their work. Prior to his September arrest, Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias had been detained without charge on a number of occasions in 2012. On 11 September 2012 the director of Hablemos Press, Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, was forced into a car and reportedly beaten as he was driven to a police station. Before being released, he was told that he had become the “number one dissident journalist” and would face imprisonment if he continued his activities.

Name: Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias Gender m/f: m

UA: 25/13 Index: AMR 25/001/2013 Issue Date: 30 January 2013

Cuba: Three years of troubling trends

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and unfortunately the dictatorship in Cuba has been successful over the course of decades in covering up most of its misdeeds and seizing almost all evidence of its crimes, but over the past three years activists inside the island have been able to circumvent controls and provide evidence.

Below is a partial sampling of the regime's crimes and the visual evidence over the past three years.

Extrajudicial deaths with regime involvement

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

 The February 23, 2010 death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo attracted international attention after his previous seven years in prison as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a prolonged hunger strike failed to generate sufficient outrage to save his life. Denied water, in an effort to break his hunger strike, his kidneys failed and he died.

At the time of Orlando's death Oswaldo Payá spoke out: "Orlando Zapata Tamayo, dear brother, we will continue the fight, without hatred, but determined that until Cuba is free and Cubans are no longer suffering this shameful humiliation that is to live subdued by fear to a lie."

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo

A high profile death that occurred on October 14, 2011 just days after the Ladies in White declared themselves a human rights organization dedicated to the freedom of all political prisoners, not just their loved ones was extremely suspicious. Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, one of the founders of the Ladies in White in March of 2003 and its chief spokeswoman was widely admired inside of Cuba and internationally. She fell suddenly ill and died within a week in a manner that a Cuban medical doctor described as "painful, tragic and unnecessary."

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas

On July 22, 2012 Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero died in a suspicious car accident while traveling through Bayamo, Cuba. Further evidence that the "car accident" was a premeditated act arranged to get rid of Oswaldo was that this was not the first attempt; another vehicle had targeted him and his wife 20 days earlier while he was in Havana.Oswaldo Payá was the author of the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that in 2002 had forced the dictatorship to change the Cuban Constitution to make it untouchable. In the months prior to his death he had denounced an ongoing campaign by the regime to engage in a fraudulent change and he was naming names.

Over half a century later the body count of the Cuban dictatorship continues to rise.

Beatings and mutilations

Berenice Héctor González

 Berenice Héctor González, a 15-year old young woman, suffered a knife attack on November 4, 2012 for supporting the women's human rights movement, The Ladies in White. News of the attack only emerged a month later because State Security had threatened the mother that her daughter would suffer the consequences if she made the assault public.

Marina Montes Piñón

Marina Montes Piñón, a 60 year old woman and long time opposition activist, was beaten with a blunt object by regime agents on December 15, 2012 in Cuba. The end result was three deep wounds in the skull and a hematoma in the right eye. She needed nearly thirty stitches to patch up the wounds.

 New prisoners of conscience

Ulises González Moreno and Calixto Ramon Martinez

Cuban labor union activist Ulises González Moreno was sentenced on November 28, 2012 to two years in prison for his labor organizing activities under the charge of "dangerousness" in a trial whose outcome had already been decided beforehand. A day prior to the trial state security agents offered him his freedom in exchange for becoming an informant spying on his fellow labor organizers. He turned down their offer. The sentence was ratified on December 20, 2012

At the end of 2012 there is one journalist imprisoned in all of Latin America, and he is a Cuban prisoner of conscience. Calixto Ramon Martinez is 42 years old and is from  El Jíbaro de San Ramón, a small town at the outskirts of the Sierra Maestra in Granma province in Cuba. In 2009 he co-founded Hablemos Press with Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez with objective of "breaking the wall of silence and censorship" in Cuba. State security agents arrested Calixto near José Martí International Airport in Havana on September 16, 2012 where he was reporting on two tons of medicine and medical equipment that had been damaged, according to Committee to Protect Journalists sources and news reports.

Troubling trends

Three years of troubling trends in Cuba that many have ignored. There are new prisoners of conscience which is nothing new but a tragic status quo that some had prognosticated would change under Raul Castro. Change has taken place but for the worse on the human rights front. The beatings and mutilations of activists and their sympathizers have coincided with a massive rise in arbitrary detentions that reached 6,602 in 2012.  Even more troubling there has been a rise in the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders in and out of custody of state security. Over the past two years figures with great international prestige have died under strange circumstances. 

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias: Cuba's Courageous and Imprisoned Journalist

Thankfully, at the behest of numerous family members, after 33 days on hunger strike Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias ended his hunger strike. Prison conditions at Valle Grande prison are, as Calixto has described them, inhuman. A sampling of his work as a journalist affiliated with the independent news agency, Hablemos Press explains why the dictatorship in Cuba wants him behind bars and silenced.

Imprisoned Journalist: Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias

Who is Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias?

Calixto is 42 years old and is from  El Jíbaro de San Ramón, a small town at the outskirts of the Sierra Maestra in Granma province in Cuba. He signed the Varela Project in 1998, an initiative of the Christian Liberation Movement, and was a founding member in 2004 of the Corriente Martiana, a  nonviolent movement that sought change through the ideals of Cuban national founder Jose Marti. In 2009 he co-founded Hablemos Press with Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez with objective of "breaking the wall of silence and censorship" in Cuba. On ten occasions he was internally deported to his home province by Cuban officials in order to prevent him from doing his work as a journalist. During these "deportations"he was also detained for several days.

Sampling of his stories during last two months in freedom 

The Cholera Outbreak
In the two months prior to his arrest Calixto filed a number of stories that in exposing the nature of the regime in Cuba undoubtedly made him a target:

 On July 13, 2012 he reported that "sanitation authorities declared an alert for cholera in the town of Mantilla, belonging to the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. The cholera outbreak, which began about two months ago in the town of Manzanillo, Granma Province, has spread across the country. On July 11 an alert was declared in the town of Mantilla, after three people were hospitalized as suspected of being infected with the bacteria, reported a local doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals."

Calixto also managed to take pictures of the accumulated garbage and unsanitary conditions in the area.

He also reported on the government's response: "Several neighbors confirmed the alert, and claimed that the same day of the 11th Communal Company cars were picking up the trash,  with a view to sanitizing the town, until late into the night. 'It was after two in the morning and walked yet communal people picking up trash,' declared Rafael Fernandez, a resident of Mantilla when asked [and went on to add that] 'In the afternoon I had reached a coffee kiosk and the clerk said it had suspended sales of liquid foods because of the cholera outbreak.' In other neighborhoods and municipalities of the capital there have been cases of cholera. In the Guajay, Rancho Bolleros municipality, three cases were confirmed, eight in El Cerro and 19 in Central Havana. And there is speculation of at least 5 dead in Havana. Although authorities have only confirmed that only three have died." 

Parents of prisoners of conscience detained and harassed

Marco Antonio and his wife Adisnidia Cruz. Photo: Hablemos Press.

On August 12, 2012 he reported on the mistreatment suffered by the parents of two brothers, Marcos Maikel and Antonio Michel Limas Cruz,  who are imprisoned and recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. In an interview with their father, Marco Antonio Limas Cruz, he obtained the following account of the cruelty of state security:  "My wife  Adisnidia Cruz,a Lady in White, I went to Providencia prison to visit our sons and as we left our home at 7:00am, the political police detained and held us there until 12:15pm and the were able to arrive at the prison at 1:00pm" and over the course of five hours in the heat the food was spoiled, reported Lima.

Young Jehovah's Witness flunked out of 4th grade for failing political test

Jessica Alfaro Oduardo

 On August 31, 2012, Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias reported on the plight of Jessica Alfaro Oduardo, a  Jehovah's Witness who was flunked out of the fourth grade for not writing a speech for Che Guevara and the five spies. She had passed all her other subjects but was failed in the class "The World we live in"for not writing the speech and instead of advancing to the fifth grade she was sent back to third grade. As a Jehovah's Witness her religion forbids engaging in political actions.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has an excellent summary of the circumstances that surrounding his arrest in September:

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, Centro de Información Hablemos Press

Imprisoned: September 16, 2012
State security agents arrested Martínez Arias near José Martí International Airport in Havana where he was reporting on two tons of medicine and medical equipment that had been damaged, according to CPJ sources and news reports. Martínez Arias, a reporter with the independent news agency Centro de Información Hablemos Press, was taken to a police station in Havana where he was interrogated and beaten, Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, the organization's director, told CPJ.

According to Guerra Pérez, Martínez Arias was accused of contempt under Cuba's archaic desacato or disrespect laws for shouting anti-Castro slogans after he was harassed by authorities. Article 144.1 of the Cuban criminal code establishes that those who threaten, defame, insult, or offend the dignity of a public official can be jailed for up to three years.

On September 27, Martínez Arias was transferred to the Valle Grande Prison in the town of La Lisa, Havana province, Guerra Pérez told CPJ. The journalist began a hunger strike in November, according to Hablemos Press. Two people recently released from jail told Hablemos Press that Martínez Arias had been placed in solitary confinement.

At the time of his arrest Martínez Arias was looking into reasons why a shipment of medicine and medical equipment reportedly donated by the World Health Organization had been left to go bad, according to Guerra Pérez and news reports.

Martínez Arias, who has worked for the news agency since 2009, has reported on sensitive issues such as an outbreak of cholera in Granma province, according to CPJ sources and news reports. Prominent human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, president of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation in Havana, told CPJ that Martínez Arias was arrested for his journalistic work.

Martínez Arias has often been harassed by authorities for his reporting, Guerra Pérez said. In 2011, CPJ documented a string of arrests of journalists from Centro de Información Hablemos Press, which prevented them from reporting on the Communist Party Congress.

Taken from: http://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php

Please take action for this courageous reported and sign the petition demanding his release:

Government of Cuba: Free Calixto Martínez Arias, and Stop Harassing Journalists and Dissidents
http://www.change.org/petitions/government-of-cuba-free-calixto-mart%C3%ADnez-arias-and-stop-harassing-journalists-and-dissident

Message from Rosa María Payá on International Human Rights Day

Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Text taken from Pedazos de la Isla and reproduced below:


The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) recorded and released a moving message from Rosa María Payá Acevedo, the young daughter of recently deceased opposition leader Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas, for International Human Rights Day, celebrated this past December 10th.  Listen to the message by clicking the following audio-link:


 
(Transcription by Pedazos de la Isla of the audio) 

“Today, December 10th 2012, Human Rights Day, I want to draw attention to the Cuban people, who currently suffer from not having those same rights.

Today, Cubans cannot democratically elect their president.

Today, Cubans are discriminated against in their own country based on politics, race, and ideology.

Today, Cubans cannot freely enter and exit Cuba, and hundreds of families suffer while separated.

Today, Cubans suffer from not being able to associate or express themselves freely.

Today, the forces of State Security oppress every person who dares to work for the changes that will bring freedom and well-being to our country.

Today, independent journalist Calixto Ramon Martinez is on his 27th day of hunger strike.

Today, Josvany Melchor has been in prison for nearly 3 years simply because his mother is a pro-democracy activist of the Christian Liberation Movement.

Today, in Cuba, the Spanish citizen Angel Carromero has been jailed for 141 days for a crime he did not commit.

Today, it’s been 141 days since, after many death threats, the conditions in which my father died have not yet been cleared up, nor has it been explained why Harold Cepero was left to die.

Today, we want to remind the Cuban government and the world that Cubans also have the right to have rights because we are human beings, and we will not rest until we get them.

"Freedom and Life”

- Rosa María Payá

International Human Rights Day in Cuba 2012: A look back

 The past year has continued to see a deterioration of human rights in Cuba. It began in January with the terrible news that Wilman Villar Mendoza, another prisoner of conscience, had died while on hunger strike in a Cuban prison demanding that his rights be respected. Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's visit to the island in March coincided with a nationwide crackdown on Cuban dissidents while His Holiness was in Cuba. The aftermath has been even worse. Sergio Díaz Larrastegui, died this past April 19, 2012 at the Julio Trigo Hospital in Arroyo Naranjo in Havana, Cuba. He died in the shadows, under the control of Cuban State Security. Less than three months later, Cuban opposition leader and Catholic Layman Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas along with Harold Cepero from the same movement died under suspicious circumstances that appear to have been provoked by State Security on July 22, 2012. Family and friends are demanding an international investigation into their deaths.

The United Nations conducted a review of torture in Cuba and found much to criticize.

The number of arbitrary detentions in 2012 have skyrocketed compared to previous years. At the beginning of December the number was already at 6,035 detentions.  In November and December of 2012 there were also large scale crackdowns on human rights defenders.

Violence and threats of violence against nonviolent activists and their families continues in Cuba to the present day. An extreme but not atypical example is that of Damaris Moya Portieles who initiated a hunger strike on June 3, 2012 demanding that her 5-year old daughter, Lazara Contreras Moya, be kept safe. This was because state security agents made graphic rape threats to the mother concerning her five year old daughter. The worse of the perpetrators was Eric Francis Aquino Yera. Berenice Héctor González, a 15-year old young woman, suffered a knife attack on November 4, 2012 for supporting the women's human rights movement, The Ladies in White. News of the attack only emerged a month later because State Security had threatened the mother that her daughter would suffer the consequences if she made the assault public. Lady in White Sonia Garro who has on more than one occasion been badly beaten by State Security and her husband have been locked up since March 2012. Unfortunately, when a UN goodwill ambassador visits Cuba to discuss violence against women the above practices by the dictatorship go unaddressed. Dissidents have been beaten up and arrested for addressing national and international bodies.

Conditions in the prisons continue to be dire and nonviolent human rights defenders are housed with murderers. There are new prisoners of conscience in Cuba. For example on November 28, 2012 Cuban labor union activist Ulises González Moreno was sentenced to two years in prison for a "predilection to social dangerousness."

Unfortunately international media on the island has been slow to report on crackdowns taking place and are frequently scooped by independent Cuban journalists on twitter because the news media know, from past experience, that if they report on the opposition and the repression of the dictatorship they their bureaus will be shut down and their journalists expelled. Even the case of a British citizen held in Cuba because he only had a British passport but because he was born in Cuba, the regime refuses to recognize it made the news in The Daily Telegraph because the man's family spoke out. Not a word of this when reporting on migration reforms in the island.

It is feared that the year in Human Rights in Cuba will end as it began with a human rights defender dying on hunger strike due to the cruelty and mistreatment amounting to torture by Cuban officials in the prison. Calixto Ramon Martinez who reported on the cholera outbreak and was detained on September 16, 2012 after exposing Cuban government culpability in the deterioration of medicines sent to the island by the World Health Organization (WHO) has now been on hunger strike for 30 days protesting his unjust imprisonment. According to Roberto de Jesus Guerra Perez, the independent journalist is being denied water in order to pressure him into ending his hunger strike. This type of practice is believed to have contributed to the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza earlier this year and to the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010.

The arrests with violence of over a 100 activists on the eve of International Human Rights day under the pretext that human rights defenders is a somber harbinger of what will be witnessed on December 10, 2012.

The evidence is self-evident these are not isolated human rights violations but a systematic pattern of repression to violate the human rights of all Cubans and human rights defenders in particular.

Cuban journalist arrested for disrespectful reporting on hunger strike: Day 24

Breaking story on Cholera outbreak gets you a Pulitzer in a normal country. In Cuba it gets you 2 to 5 years in prison.

“Freedom of expression - in particular, freedom of the press - guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.” - Corazon Aquino

Unjustly imprisoned: Calixto Ramon Martinez on day 24 of hunger strike

Reports continue to emerge from Cuba that cholera is still impacting large numbers of Cubans on the island. There is little coverage of it now in the mainstream press. Nevertheless, some independent voices abroad are reporting that the specter of cholera is impacting Cubans on the island.

However the priority of the dictatorship is not to get rid of cholera but to resist acknowledging that there is a problem and silencing those who speak out.  Cuba is a dangerous place to be a whistle blower. News of a cholera outbreak emerged in July of 2012 and its spread was such that the regime had to eventually admit that there was a problem.

Following Hurricane Sandy and the havoc it wreaked on October 25, 2012 reports emerged that cholera was severely impacting Cubans on the island. The dictatorship has yet to confirm that there is a problem.

However, Calixto Ramon Martinez who reported on the cholera outbreak and was detained on September 16, 2012 after exposing Cuban government culpability in the deterioration of medicines sent to the island by the World Health Organization (WHO) has now been on hunger strike for 24 days protesting his unjust imprisonment.

Early on in his imprisonment Calixto managed to smuggle out an account of the conditions there that was published on November 15, 2012 and an extract has been translated: 

The living conditions in this prison are absolutely appalling, and should be declared uninhabitable. I denounce to international organizations that monitor the respect for Human Rights to visit the prison, that they focus on visiting this prison, due to the poor conditions, and that the Cuban government fill itself with dignity and declare this prison uninhabitable. I should report on the state of overcrowding that is being lived in this prison, because in a space of 13 to 14 meters long and 6 meters wide live together some 36 inmates.

He stands accused of disrespecting Fidel and Raúl Castro and faces the charge of "aggravated contempt for authority."


Calixto is demanding that his human rights be respected and that he be released immediately. Activists are mounting a campaign for his release using different media. 

Human Rights Campaign for Freedom of Calixto