Violent Clash Outside The Cuban Embassy in Paris*** A cameraman from Televisión Española (TVE) as well as two directors from Reporters Without Frontiers (RWF) are among the injured in yesterday's confrontation outside the Cuban Embassy in Paris, when members of the security detail of said Embassy attacked a group of protesters gathered there to deliver a letter to Cuban Embassador Eumelio Caballero, protesting the recent wave of oppression set loose in the island. "The Ambassador did not want to accept the letter. They didn't even open the gates. Then, some members of Reporters Without Frontiers chained themselves to the fence', said Cuban author Zoe Valdés, currently residing in Paris.
In her telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald, Valdés indicated that Embassy personnel "who are obviously not diplomats, but rather oppressors", exited the Embassy building carrying hammers and sledgehammers to break the protesters chains, whose hands and harms they beat, as well as striking several observers standing near by. "The objective of delivering this letter, addressed to Fidel Castro, to the Ambassador was not achieved, but all the press present at the site bore witness of the violent attacks by these purported diplomats", said Valdés.***
Castro's preparing "the way for his own exit from the world stage in a hail of flames" - Criticism From Leftists Surprises Cuba -*** But some of the strongest criticism came from Cuba's supporters, who have stuck by the government's 44-year rule despite complaints about its human rights record. "Must they learn the bad habits of the enemy they are fighting?" wrote Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who once praised Castro as a "symbol of national dignity." "The death penalty is never justified, no matter where it is applied." Fuentes, a Mexican novelist and longtime Cuba supporter, was even more disillusioned. He lumped Bush and Castro together and declared himself against both. Castro, he said, needs "his American enemy to justify his own failings."
"As a Mexican, I wish for my country neither the dictates of Washington on foreign policy, nor the Cuban example of a suffocating dictatorship," he wrote in a letter published in Mexico City's Reforma newspaper. He wasn't alone. Saramago, a Portuguese writer who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for literature and considered himself a close friend of Castro, said Cuba "has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams."
Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who lives part-time in Cuba, has been silent on the issue. But his magazine, Cambio, published an article saying "few other repressive waves have left a government so isolated and rejected." The government responded by publishing rebukes in the Communist Party daily Granma. In one letter published Saturday, a group of well-known Cuban intellectuals urged their colleagues to stop criticizing the island. ***