An anarchist collective claimed that Cuban customs officials confiscated a mail package containing samples of a Venezuelan newspaper, according to the website Havana Times.
The jailed Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez reported he has suffered from a series of high fevers since Jan. 2 and hasn't received medical attention as of Jan. 5, according to the news agency Hablemos Press, for which Martínez works.
The anti-censorship website from Reporters Without Borders, We Fight Censorship, recently highlighted the case of Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, who was jailed in September, 2012, by authorities after he published a series of articles about a health crisis on the island. The website published the articles that led to his arrest and two telephone conversations offering a rare look into the prison's harsh conditions from the inside.
A Cuban journalist in prison is the only one from Latin America that appears in the Committee to Protect Journalists' list of journalists incarcerated in 2012. However, the list does not include another Cuban journalist who was sentenced to 14 years in prison on espionage charges.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned the "violent detention" of Cuban journalist Roberto de Jesús Guerra, director of the news agency Hablemos Press.
Reporter Without Borders launched on Tuesday a new website that will publish material that has been “censored or banned or has given rise to reprisals against its creator,” the organization said.
The number of jailed journalists in Cuba has gone up since 2011, when the island disappeared from the Committee to Protect Journalists' census of incarcerated journalists.
A few hours after the Inter American Press Association named the well-known blogger Yoani Sánchez as their new freedom of expression delegate in Cuba, the Miami Herald and other news outlets reported that the journalist was detained on Thursday with a group of other dissidents.
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was released on Friday Oct. 5, after being detained for 30 hours, according to the Los Angeles Times and the blogger on her Twitter account.
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez and her husband Reinaldo Escobar were arrested on Thursday Oct. 4, Europa Press reported.
The United States and Cuba are at opposite extremes of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2012 report. According to the New York-based organization, the United States was ranked the second most “free” country in the world for online expression, while Cuba was listed as the second to worst.
An independent journalist in Cuba could face three years in prison for insulting the island's leader, President Raúl Castro, according to Reporters Without Borders.