Posted on 04/08/2003 12:55:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA -- Fidel Castro's government dealt a crippling blow to Cuba's opposition movement Monday, sentencing peaceful activists, journalists and an economist to up to 27 years in prison for allegedly collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist state.
Prosecutors sought life sentences for the dissidents, who were among 80 facing closed trials that began Thursday. It was unclear how many dissidents were sentenced Monday.
Opposition political party leader Hector Palacios, among those originally recommended for a life sentence, received 25 years, said his wife, Gisela Delgado.
"This is an injustice," Delgado said after leaving the courthouse. "We are as Cuban as members of the Communist Party."
The Communist government accuses the dissidents of being on Washington's payroll and collaborating with U.S. diplomats to harm Cuba and its economy. In many trials, undercover government agents who infiltrated opposition ranks revealed their true identities to testify against dissidents.
International condemnation of the sentences was swift.
The U.S. State Department said the proceedings amounted to a "kangaroo court."
"The Castro government is persecuting journalists for acting like journalists. They're persecuting economists for acting like economists, and peaceful activists for seeking a solution to Cuba's growing political and economic crisis," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
Jose Miguel Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, criticized the trials as a violation of human rights norms and called on the United Nations Human Rights Commission now meeting in Geneva to condemn Cuba for the sentences, which he characterized as "draconian."
The crackdown ended several years of relative government tolerance for the opposition. It began when Cuban officials criticized the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, for actively supporting the island's opposition.
Cason said journalists were being punished for having such books as Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, and others written by Groucho Marx and Stephen King.
"They're books that they themselves allowed us to bring in for years and years," Cason said.
Cason denied Cuban government accusations that the U.S. mission had local dissidents on its payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than embassies in other countries.
A list of 36 sentences confirmed by the nongovernmental Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation showed the longest thus far was 27 years for independent journalist Omar Rodriguez Saludes.
The crackdown began on March 18 with arrests and house searches. That was followed last week by one-day trials in court rooms filled with Communist Party members and security agents while only three close relatives of the prisoners could attend, the wives said.
In all, 78 people were arrested and 71 have been convicted while seven trials are still underway. The Cuban government does not announce sentences but the Cuban Human Rights Commission was able to gather information on 36 sentences on Monday, most from relatives.
Half the 78 dissidents on trial had organized a signature drive to petition for reforms to Cuba's one-party socialist state. The effort was known as the Varela Project, which united Cuba's small, divided dissident movement into the first major internal challenge to Castro's rule in four decades.
"The trial was unfair. He met his lawyer five minutes before it started and had no time to study the charges," said Claudia Marquez, wife of Osvaldo Alfonso.
The wives have three days to appeal, but said they had little hope the sentences would be shortened. "These terms were dictated by President Castro. In Cuba there is only one voice," said Reyes.
Government informants who had infiltrated dissident groups testified against the prisoners.
U.S. diplomats were surprised to learn that Manuel David Orrio, who had led a meeting of opposition journalists at Cason's house last month, testified against Rivero and said in court testimony that he was a state security agent.
Western diplomats and foreign journalists were barred from the trials. International rights organizations accused Castro of trying to knock out his political opponents while world attention was focused on Baghdad.***
Still, the petition has Castro worried to the point where he staged huge rallies in defense of his revolution last summer and had the Assembly declare that Cuban-style socialism would forever be the governing ideology on island. And just to make sure that Paya's initiative would not evolve into a broad-based opposition, the recent wave of arrests silenced the organizers who were responsible for signature-gathering in provincial cities.
Castro, a master at politics, is less adept in economics. He bet heavily on government-dominated tourism, which has slumped following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. His disdain for small business has throttled independent economic activity. No wonder so many want to leave. In the last two weeks, two Cubans hijacked airplanes to Florida, and others tried to divert a Havana ferry there. The vessel ran out of fuel and ended up in Mariel -- scene of the 1980 boatlift -- where Cuban security forces overpowered the hijackers and freed 50 hostages last Thursday.
The US government warns that all hijackers will be prosecuted if they reach the United States. And it wants no repeat of the boatlift, when, in another economic crisis, Castro allowed 125,000 Cubans to leave. But the United States also guarantees that any Cuban who reaches US soil will not be returned to the island, and this policy encourages hijackers.
The United States needs to figure out a better policy toward Cuba -- one that allows controlled immigration, encourages opposition to repression, and seeks to improve the economic lot of the people. One step to this goal would be to lift the economic embargo and allow unlimited visits by Americans.
Castro knows that this increased economic activity would provide some relief to the Cuban people while exposing his policies as the real reason Cuba has endured a long-running depression. The crackdown on dissent has a double benefit for him: It discourages domestic opposition and makes it more unlikely that the United States will lift its ineffective trade embargo. [End]
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 4/7/2003. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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It's the brutal communist dictator, stupid.
The imprisonment of these political dissidents should be setting off cries of protest around the globe. To a certain degree, it has. The United States, the European Union and Canada have decried the repressive dragnet. Also, some organizations with considerable clout in Latin America have spoken out, such as the Catholic Church and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States. While large groups of legislators in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and other countries have condemned Cuba's assault on the dissidents, Latin American governments have been utterly silent.
Mr. Castro has any number of possible motivations for crushing the push for democracy. Clearly, his political repression and the abysmal economic conditions on the island are prompting some Cubans to resort to desperate measures to flee - as evidenced by recent air and sea hijackings to the United States. This widespread discontent could at some point lead to a revolt. Also, Mr. Castro probably thought that, with most of the world's attention focused on the war in Iraq, little international attention would be paid to the jailing of pro-democracy activists in Cuba.
The crackdown rather abruptly halts the heightened tolerance that the Cuban regime had allotted the democracy movement in recent years. Also notable is that many of the people jailed were involved in the Varela Project, which seeks democratic change within the framework of Cuba's constitution and is considered a moderate opposition movement. Approximately 11,000 Cubans have signed pro-democracy petitions that Varela advocates have been circulating on the island.
Regardless of the dictator's motivations, leaders of democratic Latin American states must speak out against the Castro regime's violations of democratic principles. While they delay, Cuban dissidents despair. [End]
The Deomcratic Party has almost moved into Castro's camp. These party faithful will choose the next Democratic Party Presidential nominee. They will lose the 2002 election.
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