Student refutes international news media
Student refutes international news media
A service by the Radio Progreso Alternativa Havana Bureau
Eliécer Ávila, a student at the University of Computing Science (UCI), denied he had been arrested, as some foreign media published on Monday, February 11.
In a student meeting at the university with Ricardo Alarcón, Speaker of the Cuban National Assembly of Popular Power (parliament), on January 18, Ávila asked several questions on issues presently being discussed in Cuba, such as the right to travel abroad and to register at hotels. He also pointed out the need for members of parliament and ministers to have greater contact with the population.
A portion of the video of the meeting was broadcast by international media which manipulated the students’ questions and concerns as a showing of disaffection with the Cuban government, suppressing the fact that Ávila himself approached the issues from a revolutionary and “socialist” point of view, just as he stressed at the meeting.
On Tuesday, February 12, the official Granma daily presented, in its digital version, a video in which journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde interviews Ávila (See the You Tube video in Progreso Semanal). In the video the young student firmly denies having been arrested and says that he had gone to his hometown of Puerto Padre due to health problems. When he found out about the manipulation of his statements, he went back to the UCI.
“ The fact that I expressed some concerns… was for construction of a better of socialism,” he said.
Ávila’s interview can be heard in Spanish clicking on the February 12 broadcast of the program “Ayer in Miami”. To know about Ávila’s full exposition, click on the February 8 broadcast of the same program or read the text in today’s front page article by Manuel Ramy.
No more “White Card”?
Cubans call the permit to travel abroad the “white card”. Its abolition is one of the claims citizens have made at massive meetings at neighborhoods and workplaces.
“ The exit and entrance permit should be abolished,” said the well-known singer/songwriter Silvio Rodríguez shortly after the premiere of the documentary Men on Deck on February 5. The film is about a trip Rodríguez made aboard the fishing trawler “Playa Girón” from September 1968 to January 1969. From that seagoing adventure, dozens of songs were composed by this man considered the Cuban Nueva Trova’s greatest icon.
“ That is something that was done for other reasons, and it has survived too many years in Cuba, and I do not believe there is a reason to maintain it,” he stressed.
When he spoke in favor of abolishing the entry permit, a requisite that Cuban residents abroad must keep, Silvio is referring also to the issue of emigration.
The famous white card seems to be among the issues that the Cuban government is discussing at present.
Fidel Castro refutes McCain
Cuban media published , on three consecutive days (February 11, 12 and 13), commentaries by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in which he answers attacks on Cuba by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain.
A former U.S. Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in Viet Nam during the bloody American intervention in that Asian country, McCain has said that during his captivity he knew that several of his fellow U.S. prisoners had been tortured there by Cubans.
The war of aggression against the people of Viet Nam ended with the defeat of the United States.
In the first of his articles, Castro recalls the embarrassing images of Americans fleeing from the advancing Vietnamese troops, some of them clambering into helicopters from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, at present Ho Chi Min City.
Papal envoy to Cuba
Cardinal Tacisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and the Holy See’s Number 2, will visit Cuba from February 20 to 26. Sources from the Catholic Church confirmed that Bertone will meet with acting president Raúl Castro and other top authorities of the Cuban government, and that he will officiate at a mass on the 21 st at the Cathedral of Havana.
The Cardinal’s program will include the inauguration of statue of the late Pope John Paul II at the city of Santa Clara, a visit to the sanctuary of El Cobre, where Cubans venerate their patron saint, and a tour to the city of Guantánamo, in the eastern region of the island.
In an unusual interview in Cuban TV’s main news broadcast on February 11, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, said the visit by the Church’s high dignitary will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the visit to Cuba by John Paul II, in January, 1998.
Book Fair kicks off
A day late on account of heavy rains, Cuba’s International Book Fair was inaugurated on February 13 at La Cabaña Fortress. Dedicated this year to the Spanish region of Galicia and to National Prizes of Literature Graziella Pogolotti and Antón Arrufat, the Fair will tour 42 Cuban cities and will attract hundreds of thousands of Cubans. According to the Organizing Committee, over 8 million books will be on sale.
