Caribbean Net News

Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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Polish, Swiss journalists detained in Cuba

Monday, December 5, 2005

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): A Polish and a Swiss journalist were detained early Friday in Cuba as they met with a member of the Caribbean island nation's political opposition, Cuban human rights activists said Friday.

Anna Bikont and Nelly Norton were detained by Cuban security officials in the town of Santi Spiritus, located 270 miles southeast of Havana, according to Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Bikont works for Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, while the employer of Norton, who has both Swiss and Italian nationality, was unknown.

Also detained was their guide Gerardo Sanchez, Elizardo Sanchez's brother.

According to Sanchez, the reporters were sent back to Havana Friday where they will likely be expelled.

Bikont and Norton entered Cuba on tourist visas and not the journalist visas required by the Cuban government to work on the island.

The two reporters were detained after speaking with Cuban dissidents. Their notes, pictures and air tickets were confiscated, a diplomatic source told AFP.

In Warsaw, Polish foreign ministry spokesman Pawel Dobrowolski confirmed the detention, adding that the "life, health and security" of the two women are not in danger.

"We consider that this amounts to three arbitrary detentions," Sanchez said.

"A journalist can go to any country on a private visit and learn about the country. They were seeing reality and visiting people outside the governmental sphere," he told AFP.

Sanchez said his brother was the only a guide to accompany them "because they were traveling alone and they could have been at risk of criminal actions like those suffered by at least two foreign tourists in the last weeks, who were robbed," Sanchez said.

In May, six Polish nationals, including three journalists who had come to Cuba to cover a meeting of opponents to veteran communist leader Fidel Castro, were detained in the island state.
Days before, two Polish European lawmakers who had travelled across the Atlantic to attend the opposition group's gathering were refused entry into Cuba.

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