IPS-English CUBA: Student Denies Arrest, Says Criticism Was ‘Within the System'
 
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:24:48 -0800

 
Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 12   (IPS)  - A Cuban university student who made headlines
around the world when a videotape of him questioning aspects of the
country's socialist system was posted on the Internet defended his
right Tuesday to express constructive criticism from within the system
and said that contrary to rumour, he was never arrested for speaking
out.

”If some students expressed controversial ideas, we did so from the
insideàin order to build a better socialist system, not destroy it,”
said Eliécer Ávila in one of two videos published Tuesday on the web
site of the governing Communist Party's newspaper Granma.

”We will discuss the things that must be fixed, changed or revisedàfrom
within the revolution,” Ávila said in the interview.

He also denied reports by the international press that he was arrested
last Saturday after the circulation of a videotape of a January meeting
at the Computer Sciences University (UCI) in Havana, in which he questioned
things like travel and Internet restrictions in Cuba.

But although Ávila's videotaped interview with Granma was placed
on the newspaper's web site, it was not published in the paper edition.

The meeting at the UCI with Ricardo Alarcón, the speaker of Cuba's
parliament, took place before the Jan. 20 parliamentary elections,
but the videotape did not reach the foreign media until last week.
At the same time, several versions of the video began to circulate
from hand to hand in Havana.

Media outlets outside of Cuba reported Monday that Ávila had been
arrested at his home in the eastern province of Las Tunas at 9:00
AM local time on Feb. 9 by Cuban security agents. Web sites even issued
international alerts.

At the time, IPS was unable to confirm the report of the student's
alleged arrest, which was originally announced by Juan Carlos González
Leiva of the dissident Council of Investigators of Human Rights in
Cuba. 

Students who spoke to IPS that day said that nothing had occurred.

Ávila said in the videotaped interview with Granma that what really
happened was that after he heard about ”the media campaign aimed at
distorting the meaning” of what he had said in the public meeting,
he returned to the university ”as soon as possibleàto deny” the false
reports.

He said he had travelled to his home province for the end-of-quarter
vacation to take care of a health issue, and that he was never arrested.
”My family is completely calm, there is no problem,” he told Rosa
Miriam Elizalde, editor of Cubadebate, a government web site.

In the January meeting with Alarcón, Ávila and other students openly
criticised Cuba's voting system, the fact that many goods are sold
in convertible currency, which puts them out of the reach of ordinary
Cubans, the need to obtain a special permit to travel abroad, and
the restrictions on Internet access.

They also asked why Cubans cannot stay in the country's beach resort
hotels, which are only open to foreign tourists.

But that would have been the end of it, the UCI students told IPS,
if the foreign press had not attempted to ”manipulate” what the students
had said in the meeting, and portray their criticism as a challenge
to the government.

”Some people think that perhaps it wasn't the right place to express
those views, but some of us believe it was,” said a fourth-year student.
”The only thing that we have done so far is to complain about the
manipulation and make it clear that UCI students are with the revolution.”

The concerns expressed by the students were described as ”normal”
by César Lage Codorniú, president of the University Student Federation
(FEU) at UCI, in one of the videos published by Granma.

Lage Codorniú, the son of Vice President Carlos Lage, said the videotape
of the entire meeting with Alarcón at the UCI was placed on the university's
Intranet and was fully accessible to all students.

The criticism voiced by the students was similar to questions raised
last year in spontaneous debates in Cuba conducted by email and on
several blogs and web sites, and in public discussions of the country's
most pressing problems, which were convoked by acting president Raúl
Castro.

A report presented to parliament by Raúl Castro, who has been governing
the country since his ailing brother Fidel underwent emergency intestinal
surgery in July 2006, said that more than three million people have
taken part in the public meetings that have been held at his behest,
and that 1.3 million written proposals and complaints have been gathered.

Some of the most important changes proposed by the public are being
studied by the government and may begin to be implemented, starting
in March, according to sources close to the government.

Among the issues being considered by high-level government officials
are some of the questions voiced by the UCI students, IPS was able
to confirm with sources who preferred not to be named.

Without going into details about the UCI students' meeting with Alarcón,
an article in the Juventud Rebelde newspaper said the announced reforms
of the Cuban system, considered ”a revolution within the revolution,”
would not be hindered, and that the recent media frenzy would not
fuel internal ”reactions” aimed at blocking the reforms.


*****
+ Kaosenlared.net - in Spanish (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=52018)
+ Granma  (http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/)
+ Q&A:  ‘Being Silenced Is So Serious That the Reason Pales in Comparison'
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39688)
+ CUBA:  Social Beefs, Proposals Voiced in Widespread Debates (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39620)
+ CULTURE-CUBA:  Exorcising the Ghosts of the Past (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36701)


(END/IPS/LA CA IP HD IC ED CS/TRASP-SW/DA/DM/08)


 
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