Cuban student backs government, denies arrest

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban student who criticized state restrictions on travel and access to the Internet reappeared on Tuesday in a government video saying foreign media had distorted his words.

Eliecer Avila denied he had been arrested, as claimed by opponents of Fidel Castro's government in Miami. He made the denial in an interview posted on the Web site of the Communist Party newspaper Granma -- www.granma.cubaweb.cu/.

Avila, 21, and other computer science students criticized low wages and lack of government accountability at a town-hall style meeting on January 19 with the speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon.

Videos of the meeting, in which Avila demanded to know, among other things, why Cubans had to work 2-3 days to buy a toothbrush, circulated like wildfire in Havana.

The student criticism came as more Cubans begin to speak out about the shortcomings of the Caribbean island's socialist system, a debate encouraged by acting President Raul Castro since he took over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006.

The comments were covered widely by foreign news media in Havana, including CNN, as a reflection of growing criticism of the government. The headline in Spain's El Pais newspaper was "University students openly challenge Cuban regime."

But in the video on the Granma site, Avila said his criticism was internal to the socialist society born of Castro's 1959 revolution.

"If some students dealt with certain controversial matters there ... the intention is to improve socialism, not to destroy it ... so that things that have to be fixed, changed or revised can be done so within the Revolution," Avila said.