Castro Regime Says Jailed Dissidents Were Mercenaries of the U.S. Empire *** The toughest sentences were for independent journalists -- 28 were arrested -- and organizers of the Varela Project, a petition for democratic reforms that gathered more than 11,000 signatures last year. The initiative's leader, Oswaldo Paya, who won the European Union's top human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, in December, was not arrested, but his organization, the first nationwide opposition network, was dismembered in the roundup.
Luis Enrique Ferrer, a local coordinator in the city of LasTunas for the Varela Project, was sentenced to 28 years in prison, the stiffest sentence, the Cuban Human Rights Commission said.
Cuba's best-known dissident poet, writer and journalist, Raul Rivero, 57, and economist Martha Beatriz Roque -- the only woman put on trial -- got 20 year sentences.
International rights groups said the draconian sentences given after one-day trials by improvised courts, where undercover agents that infiltrated the dissident groups were produced as witnesses, was a throwback to Stalinism. Amnesty International called the jailings appalling and "a giant step backwards for human rights" in Cuba.
The Castro government was undeterred by an outpouring of criticism from foreign governments and rights groups and insisted that the dissidents were a tool of its longtime ideological foe, the United States. The wives of jailed dissidents said they had three days to appeal, but were not hopeful the sentences could be changed. "These terms were dictated by President Castro. In Cuba there is only one voice." said Rivero's wife, Blanca Reyes said after hearing his sentence on Monday. "This is like a Roman circus."***
Jeff Jacoby: A wave of repression in Cuba *** Every few years Castro unleashes a brutal crackdown, sweeping scores of innocent victims -- dissidents and democrats guilty of nothing more than thinking for themselves -- into his dungeons. It isn't something he does because he has been insufficiently exposed to commerce and tourism, or because he resents the US embargo, or because Jimmy Carter and other credulous liberals haven't lavished him with his usual quota of flattery. He does it because he is a ruthless tyrant who craves power more than anything else. For 44 years he has let nothing weaken his stranglehold on Cuba, and neither concessions nor sanctions nor international condemnation will change his behavior now. The only one way to reform a totalitarian despot like Castro is to topple his regime. Peacefully if possible, by force if necessary.***