The wife of Cuban writer Raul Rivero has written an impassioned letter from Havana pleading with Nelson Mandela to facilitate leniency for her husband who recently began a 20-year sentence in Cuba for treason and subversion.
Blanca Reyes sent the letter to the Daily Dispatch newspaper in East London because she said she did know how to contact the former president directly and hoped that he would read it in the newspaper.
Rivero (57) was one of dozens of dissidents and writers who were recently rounded up and charged with subversive activities.
His case was heard in April behind closed doors and, within one week of his arrest, he was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
Before his arrest, Rivero wrote articles that were often critical about the government of Fidel Castro. They appeared in several foreign publications, including the New York Times, Le Monde of Paris and El Pais of Madrid.
In her letter to Mandela, Reyes said Rivero, who seldom kept newspaper clippings, had for years kept one about Mandela’s years of imprisonment on Robben Island.
”I know that you should never have been in prison and that my husband should be free,” she said.
”I pray Mr Mandela that you approach the Cuban authorities and obtain leniency for my husband. I pray Mr Mandela that you, a man of fairness and justice, will help me to see my husband free, a good man, a good poet also, who every night dreams of light, of freedom (from) the deep obscurity of a cell in a Cuban prison.”
In an email interview with the Daily Dispatch on Friday, Reyes said she admired and respected Mandela and his leading role in the ”fight for racial equality”.
”We only want for Cuba, the freedom you today have in South Africa. We want journalists to be able to write what they want to without fearing 20 years of jail.”
She said she had only been allowed to see Rivero in jail once since his trial because the authorities had taken exception to her weekly public meetings with relatives of other political prisoners in Havana.
However, she said that on that one visit he seemed in ”good spirits” despite the ”horrible” conditions and lack of basic amenities. ”He had been authorised to have some written material and he told me he was working on a new poetry book.”
Rivero’s poetry is banned in Cuba and he is not allowed to publish there.
From 1995 he founded and ran Cuba Press, an independent, illegal news agency which produced copy for publications abroad.
His movements were restricted and he was routinely threatened, detained and interrogated by state security forces before his last arrest and imprisonment. He has received numerous press freedom awards abroad but has consistently been refused exit and re-entry permits by the Cuban authorities.
At the time of going to press, Mandela’s spokesperson Zelda la Grange, had not responded to an e-mail request for comment. – Sapa