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Ricardo González : un homme libre à Cuba

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Il y a des anniversaires que l’on aimerait ne jamais souhaiter : celui-ci en est un. L’acharnement des autorités cubaines contre un groupe de journalistes emprisonné depuis 2003 à quelque chose de consternant.

Ricardo González en fait malheureusement partie, et ce uniquement à cause de son courage et sa détermination à dire la vérité sur les innombrables fables qu’entretient le gouvernement cubain à destination des médias.Les conditions de détention de Ricardo sont exécrables, comme celles de tous les prisonniers cubains, mais il doit en plus subir les harcèlement moral que l’on réserve aux détenus politiques. Mais au fond de lui même, Ricardo est toujours resté un homme libre.

Cette liberté d’esprit à un prix à Cuba : l’emprisonnement.

LA FICHE

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Ils ont fouillé Å“il par oeil
feuille par feuille
dans mon arbre généalogique
depuis Adam jusqu’à mes vers.

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Le Figaro dans son ardeur
a rasé mon raisonnement
pour me dépouiller de mes illusions
et de mes cheveux.

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Dans un cimetière de papier
avec des linceuls d’encre
ils ont enterré mes empreintes.

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Ils ont capté mon visage
pour mieux me capturer
comme dans le conte du loup.

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Ils m’ont assigné un chiffre
pour pouvoir me déchiffrer
dans cette équation
o๠l’un n’est personne.

Ils ont donné l’ordre
qui m’était destiné depuis toujours :
durant deux décennies
me maintenir reclus.

Ils ont donné l’ordre.
Je n’ai plus ma liberté.

Mais je suis libre.

Ricardo González  (prisonnier politique à Cuba), traduction de Jacobo Machover

Communiqué de Reporters sans Frontières

Très affaibli depuis son incarcération, le correspondant cubain de Reporters sans frontières, Ricardo González  Alfonso a “fêté” le 18 février 2010 son 60e anniversaire derrière les barreaux.

Condamné à vingt ans de prison en 2003 pour le simple fait d’avoir exercé son métier, le journaliste a du supporter les mauvais traitements et les vexations infligées aux prisonniers d’opinion.

En plus d’être correspondant pour Reporters sans frontières, Ricardo González avait fondé et dirigé la société de formation Manuel Màrquez Sterling et le bimestriel “De Cuba”. Il a reçu le prix Reporters sans frontières pour l’année 2008 dans la catégorie “journaliste”.

Ricardo Gonzalez journaliste détenu depuis le printemps 2003
Ricardo González journaliste détenu depuis le printemps 2003

Ricardo González Alfonso a été arrêté le 18 mars 2003, lors de la vague de répression sans précédent lancée par le gouvernement cubain, dite Printemps noir.

Jugé le 4 avril avec son ami, le poète et journaliste Raul Rivero, il a été accusé sans la moindre preuve d’être un “agent à la solde des Etats-Unis” et condamné en conséquence à vingt ans d’emprisonnement. Dix-neuf des vingt-cinq journalistes actuellement détenus à Cuba ont été arrêtés lors du Printemps noir et condamnés à des peines allant de 14 à 27 ans de prison.

Malgré ses problèmes de santé, en particulier pulmonaires, Ricardo González Alfonso reste maintenu en cellule au pénitencier du Combinado del Este (La Havane). Il a subi quatre interventions chirurgicales en 2006 et 2007.

Après un long séjour à l’hôpital carcéral, il a été reconduit en cellule le 27 janvier 2008, malgré un état de santé toujours fragile. Il s’est vu administrer avec retard, le 26 janvier 2010, un traitement qu’il attendait depuis des mois.

Comme d’autres prisonniers politiques, il a séjourné dans des cellules collectives avec des détenus de droit commun et a ainsi été exposé aux violences et aux brimades. “Nous tenons les autorités de La Havane pour responsables de l’état de santé du journaliste”, a mis en garde Alida Viso Bello, l’épouse de Ricardo González Alfonso.

La répression, particulièrement vive contre les blogueurs, n’a pas cessé depuis l’accession officielle de Raul Castro à la présidence, le 24 février 2008 (http://www.rsf.org/Un-journaliste-dissident-arrete-a.html).

Au début de février 2010, le journaliste dissident Carlos Serpa Maceira a dénoncé son exil forcé sur l’île de la Jeunesse, après une brève détention assortie de passages à tabac.

Aucune évolution positive en matière de droits de l’homme ne se fait jour à Cuba malgré la signature par les autorités de La Havane des deux Pactes de l’Onu relatifs aux droits civils et politiques qui incluent la liberté d’expression. Ricardo González Alfonso, comme tous les autres journalistes emprisonnés, doit être libéré.

Benoit Hervieu
Despacho Américas /Â Americas Desk
Reporters sans frontières
47 rue Vivienne
75002 Paris – France
tél : +33 (0) 1 44 83 84 68
fax : +33 (0)1 45 23 11 51
email : [email protected]
skype : rsf_americas
http://www.rsf.org

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L’organisation internationale contre la torture lance une “intervention d’urgence” pour José Daniel Ferrer

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José Daniel Ferrer

MIAMI, États-Unis.- L’Observatoire pour la protection des défenseurs des droits humains (OPDDH), a lancé ce vendredi une campagne d'”Interventions urgentes” en faveur du prisonnier politique et de conscience cubain José Daniel Ferrer García, leader de l’Union patriotique de Cuba (UNPACU), selon une note de Radio Televisión Martí.

(suite…)

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Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?

New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio) Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries. They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes

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universidad-estudiantes_CYMIMA20140902_0010_13
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio)

Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries.

They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes. Some nights they would connect through routers and play strategy video games that made them feel powerful and free. Whoever wants to know them should know that they’ve had “emerging teachers” since elementary school and were taught grammar, math and ideology via television screens. However, they ended up being the least ideological of the Cubans who today inhabit this Island, the most cosmopolitan and with the greatest vision of the future.

On arriving at junior high school they played at throwing around around the obligatory snack of bread while their parents furtively passed their lunches through the school gate. They have a special physical ability, an adaptation that has allowed them to survive the environment; they don’t hear what doesn’t interest them, they close their ears to the harangues of morning assemblies and politicians. They seem lazier than other generations and in reality they are, but in their case this apathy acts like an evolutionary advantage. They’re better than us and will live in a country that has nothing to do with what we were promised.

A few months ago, these same young people, starred in the best known case of school fraud uncovered publicly. Some of those hoping to earn a place in higher education bought the answers to an admissions test. They were used to paying for approval, because they had to turn to private tutors to teach them what they should have learned in the classroom. Many of those who recently enrolled in the university had private teachers starting in elementary school. They are the children of a new emerging class that has used its resources so that their children can reach a desk at the right hand — or the left — of the alma mater.

These young people dressed in uniforms in their earlier grades, but they struggled to differentiate themselves through the length of a shirt, a fringe of bleached hair, or through pants sagging below their hips. They are the children of those who barely had a change of underwear in the nineties, so their parents tried to make sure they didn’t “go through the same thing,” and turned to the black market for their clothes and shoes. They mock the false austerity and, not wanting to look like militants, they love bright shiny colors and name brand outfits.

Yesterday, with the start of the school year, they received a lecture about the attempts of “imperialism to undermine the revolution through its youth.” It was like a faint drizzle running over an impervious surface. The government is right to be worried; these young people who have entered the university will never become good soldiers or fanatics. The clay from which they are made cannot be molded.

Excerpt from:
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?

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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman

Woman drinking (14ymedio) 14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness

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Woman drinking (14ymedio)

Woman drinking (14ymedio)

14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness. Instead of the urgent demands they should mention, all I hear is this appreciation directed to a power as manly as it is deaf.

It’s not about “helping” to wash a plate or watch the kids, nor tiny illusory gender quotas that hide so much discrimination like a slap. The problem is that economic and political power remains mainly in masculine hands. What percentage of car owners are women? How many acres of land are owned or leased by women. How many Cuban ambassadors on missions abroad wear skirts? Can anyone recite the number of men who request paternity leave to take care of their newborns? How many young men are stopped by the police each day to warn them they can’t walk with a tourist? Who mostly attends the parent meetings at the schools?

Please, don’t try to “put us to sleep” with figures in the style of, “65 percent of our cadres and 50 percent of our grassroots leaders are women.” The only thing this statistic means is that more responsibility falls on our shoulders, which means neither a high decision-making level nor greater rights. At least such a triumphalist phrase clarifies that there are “grassroots leaders,” because we know that decisions at the highest level are made by men who grew up under the precepts that we women are beautiful ornaments to have at hand… always and as long as we keep our mouths shut.

I feel sorry for the docile and timid feminist movement that exists in my country. Ashamed for those ladies with their ridiculous necklaces and abundant makeup who appear in the official media to tell us that “the Cuban woman has been the greatest ally of the Revolution.” Words spoken at the same moment when a company director is sexually harassing his secretary, when a beaten woman can’t get a restraining order against her abusive husband, when a policeman tells the victim of a sexual assault, “Well, with that skirt you’re wearing…” and the government recruits shock troops for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White.

Women are the sector of the population that has the most reason to shout their displeasure. Because half a century after the founding of the caricature of an organization that is the Federation of Cuban Women, we are neither more free, nor more powerful, nor even more independent.

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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman

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