Article on treatment of Canadian Journalist in Havana.
Link to full story.
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Star's man in Havana caught by Castro
Star reporter in Havana gets a taste of official Cuba at its most oppressive
Aug. 4, 2006. 08:14 AM
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
HAVANA"Mr. Timothy, you must come with me. There is a problem in your room."
I had just tucked into a pork sandwich at the hotel bar when the ominous voice from behind stopped me in mid-bite.
I was about to get a hard lesson in the sensitivity to foreign journalists poking around in Cuba as long-time President Fidel Castro potentially lingers near death.
For three days here, the Star was prevented from reporting on the situation in this country, even as other journalists arrived on tourist visas and reported without official detection.
Our crime? Playing by the rules, applying for the needed visa upon arrival in Havana, an instance when honesty did not necessarily pay.
As I was escorted by hotel security from the poolside bar, I was led into the main building where waiting for me were a uniformed member of the Cuban ministry of the interior, an official-looking balding gentleman who may have been his superior and a fourth man who appeared as if he could have been a maintenance worker brought along for an interrogation he may have found amusing.
All the while, the hotel security man mumbled something into his wrist.
I was marched through the lobby of my upscale Havana hotel as if I was some type of flight risk who might try to swim to Miami, brought up six flights on the elevator, directed to my room, told to open it so we could deal with the "problem," and made to hand over my passport to the hotel security agent who interrupted my sandwich in the first place.
It was the fifth time in two days here that some official had walked away with my passport without explanation.
This was official Cuba at its most oppressive a world away from the welcoming vacation beaches known to most Canadians.
The fact that the interior ministry could immediately find me at a hotel restaurant not in my room led me to believe that I had been closely monitored during my stay here.
Who had so easily pointed them in my direction? Hotel security? Perhaps the cab driver with whom I chatted on the way back to the hotel, maybe the two young Cuban men with whom I had shared a beer the evening before?
Were they listening in on my phone calls?
That possibility had led to a roll of the eyes and laughter from a government official with whom I had met earlier in the day, but my visit came five hours after I left her office.
"You are a journalist," the government official kept telling me.
I readily agreed, but time and again I told him I had written nothing, mindful of the half-written report that sat on a computer downstairs in the hotel business office.
Where was my camera? They wanted to know.
Who was my boss? Where did I work? Who had I spoken with?
What was that tape recorder doing on my bedside table?
The official, the little man with the tie none offered identification or names would gratuitously and randomly throw out English words and phrases, for no apparent reason.
"Be careful, be very, very careful," he said solemnly, his tone reminiscent of some old black-and-white Hollywood product he had once seen.
The only words in English offered by the man in uniform caught me off guard.
"Are you sick?" he said.
I hesitated, wondering whether he was offering a judgment on my state of mind.
"Are you sick?" Then he pointed to a handful of ibuprofen that sat on my desk, an over-the-counter drug I use to ease back pain.
It was made clear that if I wrote anything about Castro, I would be gone, "bye, bye," the one man said as the other chuckled sardonically, but the tone also suggested that my penalty would not be an air-conditioned limousine ride to the airport.
I would never come back to Cuba. Did I understand?
In the midst of the interrogation, a surreal element was injected when the power went off in the hotel. In the darkness, he didn't miss a beat and continued his questioning.
I could go to the pool and enjoy the hotel, I was told.
Could I go downtown, I asked? Oh sure, I was told after a moment's hesitation.
Eventually, it was explained that I was simply being "reminded" about a promise I made at the Havana airport during a four-hour odyssey after which I was finally admitted as a tourist, while vowing to seek the proper papers.
I did, although it was clear no one was eager to accommodate me.
The questions at immigration included queries about what I knew about Castro's illness, how I found out, what did I think of Castro, what kind of stories about the president does my newspaper publish?
After 90 minutes of appeal, I was granted entry, only to face almost three hours more of waiting and sweating at Cuban customs.
Every piece of paper I had in any bags was scrutinized. At one point, six officials huddled in deep conversation while they studied a scrap of paper on which was written my computer password, a piece of gibberish even to English speakers.
I was questioned about an old travel itinerary from Washington to Ottawa, which had been simply left in the bag for no apparent reason.
In fact, anything that indicated my U.S. address came under intense, microscopic scrutiny, including whether I had been to Miami the scene of loud anti-Castro protests and whether I knew the "mafia" there.
After a couple of hours, I forged a relationship with my overly efficient customs officer, who ultimately wanted to know if I was rich. That provided a much-needed moment of levity.
Ultimately, I was convicted of a terrible crime and made to hand over the day's copies of The New York Times and The Washington Post, plus some printouts of wire service stories dealing with Castro's illness.
But first, I was asked to offer a cursory translation and everyone huddled around to look at the newspaper accounts.
The paperwork dealing with the seized newspapers which I gleefully and politely offered to simply hand over took another 90 minutes of lecturing, passport seizures by one official after another and endless forms handwritten in triplicate.
Finally, here was the Toronto Star's crime quickly getting to Cuba to try to tell readers about the mood on the street, the fallout of a protracted illness or death of Castro, and the future of the country.
News of Castro's illness broke very late Monday evening.
Six hours later, at 4:30 a.m., I was headed for the Washington airport to catch a flight to Toronto where I could get a connector to Havana. Clearly no time to obtain the needed papers, an explanation that curried no favour here.
So, at the beginning of the third day here, essentially under house arrest, I did what they wanted.
I left.
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