A Visit with Cuba's Persecuted

Spiegel ^ | 8/3/06 | Carsten Volkery

[Valin]

Oswaldo Paya sits in his living room in Havana's Cerro district. The door is locked and the window shutters are closed. Pictures of his three children hang on the wall next to a framed award certificate -- the Sacharov Prize the European Union's parliament awarded him for his commitment to human rights. Paya sways nervously back and forth on his rocking chair. He wipes his brow with a handkerchief. "It'll start in a moment," he says.

The Cuban national hymn blasts from loudspeakers outside as he gives an interview to European journalists. Paya gets up and peers through a gap in the shutters. Cuban flags hang suspended on the walls of the building opposite. A group of people stands in front of the building and yells insults in his direction. "You worm!" they holler. "Long live the Revolution!" Paya asks his visitors not to take any pictures. He doesn't want to provoke anyone. In the past demonstrators have vandalized his house, but this time there is no physical violence.

The Cuban version of the medieval pillory is called "Acto de Repudio" -- act of repulsion. Paya is Cuba's most well-known dissident and he often has to endure this kind of treatment. The government regularly drums together groups of people and urges them to pay visits to critical citizens and to brand them as counter-revolutionaries. Usually undercover policemen or other strangers are recruited for the purpose. Sometimes the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution pressures neighbors to do the job. "Afterwards a few of them come by and say they're sorry," says Jaime Leygonier, a journalist critical of the regime.