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In Cuba's Tropical Gulag*** Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has taken a number of initiatives in recent months to make the world aware of this tropical gulag, and the reaction of the Cuban authorities has been increasingly virulent. During a peaceful protest outside the Cuban Embassy in Paris in May, Reporters Without Borders activists were attacked by a gang of thugs armed with iron bars. They were accompanied by the Cuban ambassador in person, who was screaming and shouting insults and urging his men to attack the demonstrators.

A few weeks later, the Cuban authorities welcomed legal proceedings instigated in France against our NGO. We had used the famous photo of Che Guevara with beret and ruffled hair in a poster denouncing Cuba as "the world's biggest prison for journalists." It was not to the liking of the daughter of Alberto Diaz Gutierrez ("Korda"), the photographer who took the picture. The poster was banned and RSF was ordered to pay damages.

The latest chapter in this saga is that RSF has just been suspended from the U.N. for a year at Cuba's initiative. The governments that voted for this ban -- a fine band of human-rights predators themselves -- even refused to let our activists defend themselves. And what was our crime? To have ridiculed the human rights commission's current chairwoman, Najat Al-Hajjaji, the representative of Libya, a country not known for scrupulously respecting human rights.

But our plight is very small indeed compared to what Cubans face every day. The latest crackdown on political dissidents and independent journalists and the execution on April 11 of three young men who had tried to hijack a ferry in order to reach the coast of Florida set off a wave of condemnation and even got the European Union to rethink its cooperation with Cuba. It was high time. It remains for those who regularly visit the Cuban beach resort of Varadero to ask what is going on out of view in the backyard of Latin America's last dictatorship.***

U.S. Seeks Ideas to Promote Cuba Change *** Noriega, a former ambassador to the Organization of American States and a one-time aide to former Sen. Jesse Helms (news, bio, voting record), R-N.C., said the administration will seek ways of overcoming Cuba's jamming U.S. government television and radio broadcasts tailored for Cuban audiences. Another key goal, he said, is to increase support for independent libraries and human rights groups on the island which have persisted despite a major anti-dissident crackdown last March and April.

Seventy-five dissidents were rounded up and sentenced to long prison terms for alleged ties to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba. To the extent that independent libraries and rights groups continue to exist, Noriega said they need U.S. and other international support "so that they have a little more reach, so they can get the word out about what's happening on the island."

Wayne Smith, a former U.S. diplomat who has long favored a U.S. accommodation with Cuba, said Noriega's ideas could undermine the dissidents. "The more the United States talks about backing the internal dissidents, the more it undercuts their position by making them appear to be agents of the U.S," Smith said.

The U.S. delegation dispatched to Miami consists of Otto Reich, White House special envoy for Latin America; Dan Fisk, a top State Department Cuba specialist; and Adolfo Franco, an assistant administrator at the Agency for International Development.***