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.

TOOTHACHE, NO ARREST

Avila said he had gone home to have two wisdom teeth extracted in Puerto Padre, in the eastern province of Las Tunas, when he was informed about a "media campaign" against Cuba using his criticisms.

He said he was fetched by Cesar Lage, student leader at the University of Computing Science and son of Vice President Carlos Lage, to return to Havana to make a denial.

"It was never an arrest. My family is completely at ease. There is no problem," Avila said in the video interview with four other students, including Cesar Lage.

On Monday, Cuban-American congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida, condemned Avila's arrest by "Cuban regime thugs" and said the Castro government was trying to perpetuate itself by stopping young Cubans from speaking out.

One anti-Castro group even set up a "Free Eliecer" blog -- here

The meeting with Alarcon was a rare public challenge to the authorities coming from some of the best-informed university students in Cuba.