BERNARDO AREVALO Padron called the IAPA office by telephone from Cuba on December 29, 2003, to thank its officers for having always denounced his imprisonment and for continuously asking for his release.
Arevalo told the IAPA that he would spend New Year's with his mother, Warquria Paola Padron Sotolongo, his wife Libertad Acosta Diaz, and his 12-year-old son, Iran Abiff Arevalo Carillo.
On the evening of December 31, Bernardo gave thanks for this freedom. He travelled to Jesus de Nazareno Church in Aguada de Pasajeros, located 270 kilometres from Havana, where he was born 39 years ago, on January 5, 1965.
Bernardo gave an enormous thanks to the IAPA and all the other organisations that defend press freedom and worried about his case. "These constant protests are a major reason why totalitarian regimes try not to treat us that badly", he said.
SEMESTRAL REPORTS
AND RESOLUTIONS
Bernardo always knew that the IAPA never abandoned his case and that his name was included in all the semestral reports and resolutions. "My wife gave me information about the Chicago Assembly which mentioned me". Bernardo expressed that as a result of these protests "they held off more and stopped beating me... the IAPA campaign saved my life."
Bernardo was released on November 13, 2003. The Castro regime gave him his freedom 48 hours before finishing his complete sentence of six years in prison guilty of insulting President Fidel Castro.
"This was a joke, they gave me 48 hours, and the head of the Interior Ministry, Hermes Hernandez Alvarez, told me so..." Bernardo said he was threatened with imprisonment for another 15 years.
LIVED IN CELL FOR SIX YEARS
In his story to the IAPA, Bernardo said that the worst thing about living in a four by two metre cell for six years was the physical and psychological torture. "They not only seized my paper, pencils, and journalism books, but they refused visits from family members".
He remembered two dates, November 12, 1998 and September 16, 2001, when his son and father visited him, after travelling 300 kilometres from the town of Vertientes, and were told they could not see him because he was being punished for not behaving.
"They said that if I wrote to Castro asking for forgiveness, they would let me see my son ...they were blackmailers", he said.
In spite of his release, Bernardo's future is not promising. He went to the Labour Minister looking for a job as a barman or railroad worker, two of his trades, but they told him that if he wanted a job he should join the military; something he did not accept.
Perhaps, with his mother's backing, he will agree to leave Cuba. "I am an only child", Bernardo said. On January 14, at 8:30 in the morning, he has an interview with the Refuge Section of the U.S. Special Interest Unit in Havana.
