In a novel jab at Cuba, a group of U.S. journalists is accusing the Mexican company that runs Cuba's telephone system of "collaborating" with Havana security agents to silence dissident jounalists.
Cuban agents tap the phones of independent journalists, cut off many of their international calls and deny them access to fax and computer links operated by Mexico's Grupo Domos, the group complained.
Domos is "effectively collaborating with the Cuban government in political repression aimed at silencing journalists," wrote William Orme, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
The complaint adds to the problems facing Domos, named by the U.S. State Department last week as one of the firms that might be sanctioned for "trafficking" in properties confiscated by Cuba from U.S. owners. A Domos spokesman did not return Herald calls Monday.
Domos owns 37 percent of a joint venture, with the Cuban telephone company, that runs Cuba's phone system, seized from ITT in the 1960s. The Cubans own 51 percent and an Italian firm has 12 percent.
Domos and other foreign firms operating in Cuba have long rejected any responsibility for abuses in the island, in essence arguing that "business is business."
But the complaint from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a respected independent group, makes a novel attempt to link human rights, Grupo Domos and Cuban abuses of the business and equipment involved.
Dissident Cuban journalists, "like reporters everywhere, require the unobstructed use of telecommunications services... to carry out their professional obligations." Orme wrote to Grupo Domos chief Javier Garza Calderon.
Grupo Domos "is not responsible for the... public information policies of the Cuban government. However, to participate in and profit from such totalitarian constraints on press freedom is nonetheless deserving of condemnation," he wrote.
"I wonder what might have happened if [Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto] Pinochet had sold part of the phone company to AT&T and then used it to silence opponents," Orme added in a telephone interview.
"There would be ... nuns marching and picketing outside AT&T headquarters right now," he added.
The issue of Grupo Domos and Cuban security controls on telephone communications was first raised last week by a Miami-based group that works on behalf of the opposition coalition Concilio Cubano.
While government agencies and foreigners have access to fairly modern phone services, he added, ordinary Cubans cannot own fax machines, link up to the Internet, buy cellular phones or make collect calls to the United States, said Rodolfo Gonzalez, head of the Concilio Cubano Support Group.
Dissidents suffer even worse service, he added, with state security agents monitoring their lines and cutting off calls when the dissidents start to complain about the human rights situation.
Grupo Domos "collaborates with the Cuban intelligence services in enforcing a system of 'telephonic apartheid' against Cuban dissidents," Gonzalez added.
Tuesday, June 4, 1996, THE HERALD