Distributed by The Cuba Free Press Project.

Paris, December 10, 1997, RSF

Press Release

Raul Rivero (Cuba), Winner of Reporters Sans Frontières Award - Fondation de France prize 1997.

The Reporters Sans Frontières - Fondation de France 1997 award is attributed to Raul Rivero, a Cuban journalist and director of the news agency Cuba Press. It will be presented on :

Wednesday 10 December 1997 at 11.30 am
at the Espace Electra, 6 rue Récamier, 75007 Paris
(Métro Sèvres-Babylone)

Raul Rivero is unable to collect his prize in person because he fears that he might not be allowed back into Cuba to continue his work as head of Cuba Press. Eduardo Manet, a Cuban writer and winner of the Interallié Prize in 1996, will receive the award on his behalf. It will be presented by the 1996 winner, Turkish journalist Isik Yurtçu, editor of the pro-Kurdish daily Ozgür Gündem, who was arrested on 28 December 1994 and sentenced to 14 years and 10 months in jail. He was released on 15 August 1997.

The prize is given to journalists who, through their work, beliefs or attitudes, have demonstrated their devotion to the ideal of press freedom.

Worth 50,000 French francs, it was awarded in previous years to Zlatko Dizdarevic (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992), Wang Juntao (China, 1993), André Sibomana (Rwanda, 1994), Christina Anyanwu (Nigeria, 1995) and Isik Yurtçu (Turkey, 1996).

The Reporters Sans Frontières international office put forward five candidates for the 1997 award : Gabriel Michi, a journalist with the weekly Noticias (Argentina), San San Nweh, a journalist and writer (Burma), Faraj Sarkuhi, director of the monthly Adineh and Doan Viet Hoat, director of Dien Dan Tu Do (Vietnam).

Raul Rivero, one of the pioneers of the independent press in Cuba with Nestor Baguer, director of l'Apic, is determined to stay on the island. In spite of threats from the state security services, he is continuing to run the Cuba Press news agency, which he founded in 1995.

Since the heads of three other independent news agencies - BPIC, Habana Press and Patria - went into exile, tension has been mounting around the remaining figurehead of dissident journalism : Raul Rivero was arrested in July and then held for three days in August 1997, and six of his agency's staff have recently run into trouble with the political police.

Born in 1945 near Camaguey, in central Cuba, Raul Rivero was one of the first generation of journalists trained at the Havana faculty of journalism after the 1959 revolution. In 1966, he was one of the 13 founders of Caiman Barbudo, a critical cultural magazine. He was Prensa Latina's Moscow correspondent from 1973 to 1976, and on his return to Cuba he headed the science and culture service of the state news agency.

In 1989 Raul Rivero resigned from the official National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC). Two years later he made a clean break with the regime by signing the "ten intellectuals' letter", a petition calling on President Fidel Castro to free prisoners of conscience. Of the ten signatories, Raul Rivero is the only one still living in Cuba. He abandoned official journalism in 1991, denouncing it as "fiction about a country that does not exist".

Raul Rivero is also known for his literary activities. In 1968 he was awarded the Julian del Casal prize for his first poetic works. He has published several collections of poems in Cuba : The Role of Man (1969), Poetry on Earth (1973), Heart to Offer (1980), Public Poetry (1981) and A Certain Poetry (1984). In 1980 came a collection of interviews with Cuban intellectuals, Strictly Personal, and the same year he recounted his Soviet experiences in The Snow Conquered - Moscow Chronicles. Raul Rivero's latest book, Signed in Havana, was published in Miami in 1996. His books are now banned in Cuba.

For more information, please contact Catherine Nasser - Tel: (33 1) 44 83 84 84

REPORTERS SANS FRONTIERES 5, rue Geoffroy-Marie - 75009 Paris - FRANCE Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 84 / Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51