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Employee
of Cuban embassy in Paris was armed when he faced
demonstrators in April 6f3y5i
Reporters
Without Borders. ,
17 October 2003.
Freelance journalist files complaint alleging
"threat with a firearm"
Reporters Without Borders announced today that
it is ing a complaint filed on 14 October
by news photographer Ricardo Vega against an unidentified
employee of the Cuban embassy. The complaint alleges
"threat with a firearm" and "complicity"
in the use of violence by embassy staff to break
up a protest outside the embassy by Reporters
Without Borders activists on 24 April.
Vega took this step after discovering that the
employee can be seen loading a revolver outside
the embassy perimeter in the video that Vega recorded
during the incident. Vega was badly beaten in
the face by a member of the embassy in the course
of the incident, and he was re-examining the videotape
in an attempt to identify his assailant when he
spotted the armed employee.
He previously ed a complaint at the headquarters
of the investigative police in Paris alleging
"deliberate violence resulting in eight days
of disability." He included this accusation
in the new complaint he filed on 14 October with
a senior investigating judge.
"Not only did of the embassy come
out with iron bars to hit us, but one of them
was carrying a firearm, which he loaded while
outside the embassy," Reporters Without Borders
secretary-general Robert Mnard said today.
"This new element is extremely serious -
it is unacceptable that persons linked to a foreign
embassy commit such offences on French territory,"
he added.
In the 24 April protest, some 15 Reporters Without
Borders activists together with a number of leading
literary and artistic figures went to the Cuban
embassy in Paris to hand in a letter to the ambassador
calling for the release of 26 journalists who
had been arrested three weeks earlier and sentenced
to up to 27 years in prison.
When the ambassador refused to receive the letter,
the activists put chains around the embassy's
entrance in a symbolic protest, and handcuffed
themselves to its railing together with the personalities
present. of the embassy came out and punched
and beat them with iron bars. The ambassador himself,
Eumelio Caballero Rodrguez, accompanied
his employees, giving them instructions.
Several journalists present were also hit, including
Vega, a photographer with the French daily 20
Minutes, and a cameraman with the Spanish television
station TVE. Vega's lawyer, Serge Lewisch, said
doctors have told him that some of the symptoms
resulting from the blows he received will never
go away, that he will have to receive constant
medical follow-up care.
The video of the incident is available on the
Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org).
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned
journalists and press freedom throughout the world,
as well as the right to inform the public and
to be informed, in accordance with Article 19
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Reporters Without Borders has nine national sections
(in Austria, Belgium, , , Italy,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom),
representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Istanbul,
Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington
and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.
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