Desde Dentro de Cuba.

Distribuido por Cuba Free Press, Inc. - http://www.cubafreepress.org

September 11, 1998, Cuba Free Press.

CUBA PRESS CORRESPONDENT, TRUJILLO PIS, REPORTS THREATS By Hector Trujillo Pis

(Editors Note: The writer of the following article, who lives near Caibarien in Villa Clara province, reports that on September 5 he was directed to go from Havana to Caibarien by governmenty agents who also told him he might be the next case like that of Reinaldo Alfaro, recently sentenced to three years in prison for helping relatives of political prisoners write a letter he made public. Trujillo Pis has reported the threat to the organizations known as Reporters Without Frontiers, the Interamerican Psress Society, the New York City Press Club and other such groups. )

CAIBARIEN When "Darlin," an official of the Santa Clara political police, and another man named Antono Guevara approached me in Havana, they explained that they did not plan to interrogate me but only to conduct a large conversation with me about my work as an independent journalist. They said they would have the conversation with me in Caibarien, not in Santa Clara, because of the poor state of health of my mother.

After this introduction, they told me that "to be Trujillo Pis is to be a man of shame." They said they had not decided to process me judicially although they "had all the evidence to bring me to trial on charges of disseminating false news to counterrevolutionary and subversive radio stations," mainly Radio Marti, the U.S. radio station broadcasting from Miami.

They also said they could take me before the tribunals for having endangered the immigration agreements with the United States and showed me an envelope they said contained a great amount of information from abroad. They also showed me the government newspaper, "Granma," which reported the sentencing of Reinaldo Alfaro Garcia to prison.

"This name" (Alfaro), they said, "could be displaced by the name of Trujillo Pis," and they repeated that they did not want to reach such an extreme with me.

Later, they moved on to another phase, constantly repeating that they were not threatening me but only "helping me." They reminded me that journalists of the agency, "North Central," including Gustavo Rafael Rodriguez and Edel Jose Garcia, and myself were on the list of members of the organization known as the Frank Pais Democratic Party of November 30, a political group they consider to be terrorist. And they said they knew of the Pais groups plans and expected that we would divulge to the world the subversive actions that the commandos of the Pais group were planning.

They spoke to me about the news program in which Jose Balulto, leader of the Brothers to the Rescue, had appeared and about a telephone conversation in which Basulto told me that the group would designate some resources for my work in journalism. They said Basulto in that convesation had made reference to documents on the civil struggle that would be sent me but which never have arrived.

Then they showed me a folder full of documents, describing them as "highly subversive." During the five hours of the "conversation," they also named all the people that had phoned my home from overseas.

Seeing that I was firmly holding on to my right to continue by work in independent journalism, they said that I "had disappointed them because they had not expected such a response" from me.

They then proceeded to present me with a warning which says I have a proclivity for subversion of the public order and, because of this, that I deserve a sanction for the supposed crimes of transmitting "enemy propaganda" and "false news abroad and "instigating criminality" and "helping the enemy."

By Hector Trujillo Pis, Cuba Free Press