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At least 43 Cuban dissidents have been arrested in areas near where Pope Benedict XVI visited last week, dissidents said Tuesday, as the United States urged their immediate release. "We have been able to confirm that 43 opposition members have been detained -- 10 women and 33 men -- in a crackdown on Monday in the Santiago de Cuba area. All remain under arrest," said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the outlawed but tolerated Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.

HAVANA (AP) - Ailing former leader Fidel Castro made a rare mention of his government's crackdown on political opponents five years ago, defending the action and exhorting the United States to treat its prisoners with the same humanity he said Cuba uses with its inmates. "What an enormous difference between the methods of the United States and of Cuba!" Castro wrote in an essay published Monday in state media, apparently referring to how the U.S. government treats terror suspects. "None of the mercenaries were tortured or deprived of attorney or trial," Castro said of the 75 dissidents rounded up beginning...

Prominent Cuban author and dissident, Armando Valladares, has predicted the collapse of communism in Cuba after the death of former president Fidel Castro. Valladares said that people in Cuba were tired of 'acquiescing to state terrorism' like others had in communist Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Valladares said that the young "sons of the revolution, are becoming ever more politically active... The author who spent 22 years in prison was in Italy to present a new edition of his most popular work, Against All Hope: a Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulags, in the Italian capital in Rome. He also critised...

HAVANA -- Voices that once whispered are rising to a crescendo. Sylvia, a chemist and self-described socialist, vents that she feels betrayed by a revolution that ''enslaved'' her. Felipe, a carpenter, asks in front of his co-workers why Fidel Castro can come up with an idea one day and have it become law the next. Lisette, a nurse, tells a total stranger how the medical system has deteriorated since thousands of Cuban doctors were sent to Venezuela. Call it the law of unintended consequences: Since Cuba's interim president, Raúl Castro, called for public meetings to debate the country's innumerable problems,...

Raúl Castro has started to make cautious changes in Cuba which could signal plans for political and economic reform. Since he took over from his brother Fidel, dozens of dissidents have been released, an olive branch has been extended to Washington and there is talk of easing communist controls on property and agricultural production. Three political prisoners have been freed in the past fortnight, the latest being Armando Betancourt Reina, a journalist jailed for 15 months after reporting on the eviction of a family in Camagüey. Analysts said Raúl, 76, who has been acting president since illness forced his brother...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is considering pulling out of the amateur World Boxing Championships in Chicago in October to avoid new defections by its boxers, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Wednesday. "Imagine all the sharks of the Mafia wanting fresh meat," the convalescing 80-year-old Castro wrote in a column published on the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma. "I must tell them: we are not keen on delivering it to their doorstep," Castro said, commenting on an attempt by German boxing promoters to hire two of Cuba's top fighters during the Pan-American Games in Brazil last month....

MIAMI The number of political prisoners in Cuba dropped by 37 in the past six months, but the island still has the highest number of such prisoners per capita in the world, according to a new report by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. The report of a decrease comes as Defense Minister Raul Castro completes nearly a year as the country's acting president, and experts look for signs of new policies. But human rights activists warn against reading too much into the drop, because it was largely a result of the release of prisoners who completed...

Night was no time for rest. On the contrary, that was when the horrors began. At nine or so the executions would start.... Although we couldn't see the shootings from my galley, we could hear even the slightest sound. The still of the night and the echo of the pit made them even more pronounced." — Former political prisoner Jorge Valls,

With strong faith, seminarian stood up to Castro and was expelled from Cuba Cuban-born Enrique Corona, a diocesan seminarian, most likely has never heard of Richard Stockton, one of the America's Founding Fathers. Although separated by 230 years of history, both men have this in common - each of them put his own freedom on the line, enduring a prison sentence for having gathered up the courage to put pen to paper in voice of freedom.   At the dawn of the American Revolution, Stockton, a New Jerseyan, made the brave decision to sign the Declaration of Independence - an act...

A WIRY figure with dark, defiant eyes, Oswaldo Paya is not easily intimidated. His house is under constant surveillance and he has received numerous death threats. Most of his followers are in jail. Cuba’s leading dissident will not be deterred, however, from a campaign to promote democracy in one of the world’s last communist outposts. “It is time for change,” he said last week as the country struggled to adjust to its first new leadership in almost half a century. “The oppression and lies must end.” Behind its sunny, palm-fringed facade as a trendy tourist destination, Cuba was racked by...

Walesa becomes US' man in Havana From correspondents in Havana January 22, 2006 US diplomats arranged for Cuban dissidents to get a pep talk from former Polish President Lech Walesa today in the latest chapter of Washington's long-running ideological battle against President Fidel Castro's communist government. "The system will fall because nobody believes in communism," said Mr Walesa, the founder of Poland's Solidarity movement which toppled Poland's communist government and led to the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. "You are close to your goal," he said in Warsaw in a video conference with dissidents gathered at the Havana...

Cuban Freemason Dr. Alfredo Manuel Pulido Lopez is being held prisoner in Cuba. My name is William John Hagan and I am an American Journalist who is working to get Brother Pulido freed from his political prison in Cuba. If any Brother reading this is are in the employ of a government or agency which could put gentle pressure on getting Castro to free Brother Pulido then please contact me at: William_Hagan@excite.com Or visit me on the web at http://williamjohnhagan.blogspot.com This man will soon die without our help. Below is a letter from his wife regarding this matter. Freeing Brother...

HAVANA -- The Cuban government has confiscated the land where an unprecedented gathering of Cuban dissidents took place earlier this year, an activist said Friday. Felix Bonne and his wife, who hosted the gathering on a lot next to their home, received a letter Thursday signed by an official from the agriculture ministry, said Martha Beatriz Roque, who also helped organize the gathering. The letter said the land was not being used sufficiently, Roque said. "We feel even more repressed, more crushed, than usual," Roque told The Associated Press. "But we are not going to back off, not one millimeter."...

A summary of the latest news regarding the Castro regime forceful crackdown on peaceful citizens trying to exercise their right to protest: The three main leaders of the Assembly to Promote the Civil Society (APCS), Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne Carcasés and René Gómez Manzano, were arrested. The AP is reporting Saturday morning that the three were released today after spending the night in jail. A pro-Castro mob accompanied by several policemen entered the residence of Katia Sonia Martín, injuring her and her twin daughters who are only 2 years old. Her husband was handcuffed and taken away by police....

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States condemned communist Cuba's authorities for their latest crackdown against dissidents. "Yesterday, July 22, the Cuban government arrested Rene Gomez Manzano and detained at least a dozen members of the Asamblea para Promover la Sociedad Civil (Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society), including Marta Beatriz Roque, the group's president. Their only crime was attempting to exercise their basic human rights and freedoms," said Adam Ereli, the State Department's deputy spokesman. Roque, a 60-year-old economist, is president of the assembly, which had organized a protest in front of the French embassy in Havana Friday to...

HAVANA, July 23 (UPI) -- A new crackdown on political opposition is under way in Cuba, with at least 20 dissidents arrested, the BBC reported Saturday. Those detained were said to include the three main organizers of a public meeting of dissidents that took place in May. The Cuban government, which did not confirm the arrests, has long insisted dissidents are not representative of public opinion, but, rather, are mercenaries in the pay of the United States. Cuban opposition sources told the BBC state security agents visited scores of houses across Havana Friday. Most of those arrested were reportedly planning...

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's communist government has jailed 13 more political opponents this year, most on charges of "dangerousness," a veteran rights activist reported Tuesday. The report released Tuesday by the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation said the total number of political prisoners as of June 30 was 306. The charges against those jailed highlight the government's practice of making ambiguous accusations against its opponents, said Elizardo Sanchez, the activist who runs the non-governmental commission, which releases reports every six months.

Cuba dissidents debate democracy Cuban dissidents have spent the last day of their defiant public meeting in Havana debating democracy bills. Chanting "freedom" and "democracy now", about 100 dissidents voted for a steering committee to lead the group. "We are satisfied that each and every one of us has fulfilled our duty to our nation," said Martha Beatriz Roque, the lead organiser of the event. Cuban authorities did not intervene but had earlier expelled several European politicians who planned to attend. On the first day, the meeting was attended by about 200 dissidents as well as Western envoys. The dissidents...

HAVANA — With shouts of "Freedom" and the singing of the Cuban national anthem, more than 200 people opened a rare opposition assembly in Cuba yesterday, uninterrupted by authorities despite the expulsion of European lawmakers, journalists and others who planned to attend. Martha Beatriz Roque, the meeting's lead organizer and a former political prisoner who attempted a similar gathering nine years ago, called it "a point of departure" for future work. "There will be a before and after for May 20 in Cuba," Mrs. Roque said, contending it was the first such gathering in Fidel Castro's 46 years of Communist...

Hundreds of Cuban dissidents chanted "freedom, freedom" and "down with Fidel Castro" at the start of a gathering of pro-democracy campaigners held near Havana.But the opening of the convention, held in an orchard, was overshadowed by a wave of arrests and the expulsion of visiting European parliamentarians and journalists, as President Castro's secret police acted against the island's first multi-party democracy conference. Five European legislators, with several journalists and human rights activists from the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, were seized. At least six Poles were believed to be in Cuban jails. Among those expelled was Karel Schwarzenberg, formerly an...