According to information provided to IPI, three Polish journalists, Seweryn Blumsztajn, editor-in-chief of the Krakow edition of Gazeta Wyborcza, Jerzy Jurecki, publisher and journalist for Tygodnik Podhalanski, Wojciech Rogasin, a journalist for the Polish edition of Newsweek, and their interpreters Maciej Sarna and Marta Cichocka, as well as human rights activist Wojciech Modelski, were detained in Cuba after they arrived in the country to report on a major opposition rally in Rio Verde. They were then taken to the airport and deported from the country.

Cuban police reportedly took Jurecki to a detention centre close to the airport from his hotel on the night of 19 May. He was able to conceal his mobile phone, and sent a message, and then called the Polish television news channel TVN24. The news channel played the recorded conversation during a broadcast.

“We are being taken in, we need help,” he wrote in a mobile phone text message to the station. Gazeta Wyborcza, a major Polish daily, reported that it feared that Blumsztajn, had been detained along with Jurecki.

Francesco Battistini, an Italian journalist for Corriere della Sera, who arrived in Cuba on 19 May to cover the rally, was detained on 20 May, and has reportedly also been deported. According to reports, several other Italian and Spanish journalists were not allowed to enter the country to cover the rally.

According to media reports, the Cuban ambassador to Poland said the journalists had travelled to Cuba on tourist visas and were thus violating Cuban law.

On 19 May, Czech Senator Karl Schwarzenberg, an aide to former president Vaclav Havel, and German lawmaker Arnold Vatz were expelled from Cuba. On 17 May, two Polish European members of parliament, Boguslaw Sonik and Jacek Protasiewica, were refused entry to Cuba, when they arrived at Varadero airport, east of Havana.

All four individuals travelled to Cuba for an opposition rally, organised by prominent Castro opponents Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez. German politician Arnold Vaatz, who also wanted to attend the rally was detained in his hotel, taken to the airport, and sent out of the country.

The rally, also dubbed the National Congress, has been called to launch democratic transition plans for Cuba.

International Press Institute (IPI) Director Johann Fritz called the detention “a violation of journalists’ rights under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to which everyone has the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

“It is clear that the real reason for the deportation of these journalists was the critical coverage they were going to provide by attending the rally, rather than a procedural violation. This is yet another attempt to stifle dissent by inhibiting freedom of the media,” Fritz said. “We call on the Cuban authorities to stop harassing reporters, and make sure that journalists and other media workers are not arrested in the future for practicing their profession.”