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HAVANA : Cuba has 100,000 prisoners behind bars, though just 4,000 were imprisoned before Fidel Castro came to power 45 years ago, according to what dissidents call the first study of the "tropical gulag." The president of the Cuban Human Rights and Reconciliation Commission, Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, told journalists the "huge statistic" was "the bitter fruit of the totalitarian system." Sanchez, a former political prisoner, said the year-long study was done with the help of prisoners' families who tallied the numbers of inmates across the country. Cuba's population roughly doubled since 1949, from 5.5 million to the current 11...

HAVANA, 11 (AFP) - Cuba has 100,000 prisoners behind bars, though just 4,000 were imprisoned before Fidel Castro came to power 45 years ago, according to what dissidents call the first study of the "tropical gulag." The president of the Cuban Human Rights and Reconciliation Commission, Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, told journalists the "huge statistic" was "the bitter fruit of the totalitarian system." Sanchez, a former political prisoner, said the year-long study was done with the help of prisoners' families who tallied the numbers of inmates across the country. Cuba's population roughly doubled since 1949, from 5.5 million to the...

The World Medical Association is pressing the Cuban government for information on four physicians and two dentists who have been in prison in Cuba for the past two years for human rights activities. This month marks the second anniversary of their imprisonment. The WMA is urging its 80 national medical association members to write to their governments and to the European Commission requesting them to put pressure on the Cuban government to disclose information about what, if any, trials the six are facing and the exact nature of their sentences, and to ask for their fair and humane treatment in...

Fidel Castro's daughter is speaking out against the arrest and jailing of 27 journalists a year ago for voicing their opposition to the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. "At least we can try to keep those people alive by keeping them in the news," Alina Fernandez (Castro) told the Montreal Gazette from her home in Miami, Fla. "We have to take every opportunity to let people know about the situation [in Cuba]." Invited to come to Canada by Reporters Without Borders, which calls her homeland with 30 reporters behind bars to date the world's biggest prison for journalists, Fernandez said: "The...

A YEAR AGO Cuba's Communist government cracked down on nonviolent dissidents, independent journalists, human rights activists, librarians and teachers. Within weeks, 75 of them were in prison, sentenced to terms ranging from 6 to 28 years after one-day closed trials. Carried out while the world's attention was focused on the war in Iraq, this was President Fidel Castro's attempt to destroy a pro-democracy civil society that had been peacefully emerging. A year later, the bad news is that those 75 political prisoners are still locked away, in many cases under inhumane conditions. The worse news is that Mr. Castro has...

Wives of Jailed Cuban Dissidents March Through Havana Demanding Husbands' Release Mar.19, 2004 By Andrea Rodriguez/ Associated Press Writer HAVANA (AP) - The wives of 15 Cuban political prisoners jailed in last year's crackdown on dissent held a rare public march in Havana's streets Friday demanding amnesty for their husbands. The women - dressed all in white, with many pinning their husbands' photographs to their chests - started their march early Friday at the well-known Coppelia ice cream restaurant in the city center. "Freedom for the 75 political prisoners!" the women shouted as they marched up to Department of Prisons...

The Abandoned Librarians Castro's Judges Burn Books 'Lacking Usefulness' January 29th, 2004 1:30 PM Carla Hayden, president of the American Library Association: "committed to intellectual freedom," with certain exceptions (Hilary Schwab Photography) s I've been reporting in this column, there has been a fierce civil war within the American Library Association as to whether that body—the largest organization of librarians in the world—will help free the 10 librarians locked up in Fidel Castro's gulag for the next 20 or more years for making available to Cubans such subversive documents as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and George...

On January 14th, the American Library Association (ALA), which is the world's largest library union, tacitly approved of Fidel Castro's March 2003 arrests and persecution of dissidents when they brushed aside the fate of 14 jailed Cuban Independent Library members, who had copies of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm in their possession. Visiting the ALA's San Diego winter meeting was Cuban librarian Gisela Delgado Sablon, whose husband is one of the librarians jailed. Sablon begged the ALA to demand the dissidents' release from their 20-year prison terms and an amendment calling...

IN DANGER LIFE OF INCARCERATED CUBAN PHYSICIAN DR. OSCAR E. BISCET Confined in a "dungeon" since November 2003 January 3, 2004 "My husband is unrecognizable since I last saw him four months ago; he is so thin, pale and ill looking", declared Elsa Morejon, wife of the Cuban civic leader, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, " these punishments are destroying him and if he continues where he is he will die. Cuban prisoner of conscience, Dr. Oscar E. Biscet Gonzalez, who is serving a 25 year prison sentence, continues confined with a common criminal in a cell with no windows...

With many of his most vocal critics silenced or in prison and island's tourism industry on the mend, 77-year-old President Fidel Castro had much to celebrate on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution that brought him to power 45 years ago on New Year's Day 1959. The bearded, one-time guerrilla leader now shows his age, but still has the stamina to give a speech lasting eight hours, as he did at a parliamentary session earlier this month. A major address by Castro was considered likely over the next few days, although nothing had been announced by Wednesday. Numerous...

New York, November 18, 2003-Imprisoned Cuban journalist Bernardo Rogelio Arévalo Padrón was released last week after serving his six-year sentence on "disrespect" charges. In a phone interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), he described physical and psychological torture at the hands of prison authorities. "The allegations of torture are extremely troubling and warrant an immediate investigation," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper, "and increases our concern for the other 28 journalists in jail in Cuba who have alleged mistreatment." Arévalo Padrón was released from the Ariza maximum-security prison, in the central province of Cienfuegos, on November 13. The...

HAVANA, November 18 (www.cubanet.org) - Hospital administrators fired a doctor and suspended his medical license for nine months after he loudly expressed his frustration with widespread inefficiency in Fidel Castro's government. Mario Ariosta, a gynecologist, rushed into an operating room at National hospital in Havana to perform an emergency Cesarean section and found there were no gloves or sterilized instruments available. In his frustration, Ariosta loudly excoriated the government's inefficiency. Ariosta is off the job, but he has appealed the suspension of his medical license to a labor court. CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We authorize...

<p>Cuban journalist Manuel Vazquez Portal will not be available to receive the 2003 International Press Freedom Award that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will present to him and other reporters on Tuesday.</p> <p>He is in a prison cell in Santiago de Cuba, passing time on a dirty mattress without blankets or pillow under a ceiling that leaks when it rains and with a toilet that's more of a "hole regurgitating its stench 24 hours a day."</p>

CUBAN PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE, DR. OSCAR E. BISCET IS TRANSFERRED TO ANOTHER MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON AND PUNISHED IN A "DUNGEON" WITH A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL November 19, 2003 Cuban prisoner of conscience, Dr. Oscar E. Biscet Gonzalez, serving a 25 year prison sentence, was transferred on November 12, 2003 from Kilo Cinco y Medio Prison to another maximum security prison in the province of Pinar del Rio called Kilo 8, where he is confined in a punishment cell he referred to as a "dungeon", with a prisoner who has committed 12 criminal assaults. On November 11th, at Prison Kilo Cinco y...

After six years of beatings and brutal treatment a courageous Cuban journalist has finally been released from prison where he had been confined for the crime of insulting Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Cuban journalist Bernardo Arevalo Padron founded the outlawed independent press agency Linea Sur Pres in 1996 and reported on human rights violations in Castro's Cuba, according to the BBC. In 1997 he was given a six year sentence for having insulted Castro and despite protests from all over the world that he be granted an early release, he was forced to serve the full term. BBC reports that...

HAVANA, (AFP) - Cuban independant journalist Bernardo Arevalo Padron hhas been freed from a prison in eastern Cuba after having served six years on conviction of committing an "outrage" against the Communist government of President Fidel Castro, his friends said "Effective yesterday (Thursday), Bernardo was released and is with his wife in Camaguey," 500 km (310 miles) east of Havana, Laura Pollan, wife of imprisoned dissident Hector Maseda, told AFP. Maseda is serving a 20-year sentence imposed last March after his arrest with 74 other opponents of the Castro regime. Arevalo Padron, founder of the former independant press agency Linea...

HAVANA - (KRT) - Cuba's most significant showcase for third world artists, the Havana Biennial, kicked off its eighth edition this weekend despite a serious cash crunch and allegations of censorship from Latin American artists. Featuring about 150 artists from 48 countries, the Biennial was already operating on a shoestring budget when three European foundations announced they would withdraw a total of about $200,000 due to the Cuban government's crackdown on dissidents earlier this year. Cuban organizers call the move "an anti Cuban campaign" in line with the European Union's decision to downgrade diplomatic relations. The director of a Dutch...

<p>Havana · Authorities here interrogated Claudia Marquez, wife of an imprisoned Cuban dissident and editorial board member of the opposition magazine De Cuba, on Wednesday, Marquez reported after leaving the police station.</p> <p>Two State Security agents arrested her at the house of Laura Pollan, wife of imprisoned dissident Hector Maceda, and then drove her to a police precinct in a working-class neighborhood of Havana, Marquez told EFE News.</p>

<p>President Bush yesterday announced a new effort to weaken communist dictator Fidel Castro's stranglehold on Cuba, vowing to step up enforcement of U.S. travel restrictions to the country and to increase the number of Cuban dissidents allowed into America.</p> <p>In a Rose Garden event to commemorate the day Cuba celebrates the 1868 start of its quest for independence from Spain, the president said free nations have urged Mr. Castro to move toward democracy by holding "free and fair elections" for the good of his people, all to no avail.</p>

Don't Forget the Victims In Castro's Gulag The Wall Street Journal /The Americas By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski," Andrei Sakharov exclaimed when he met Jeanne Kirkpatrick in Moscow. "I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." The reason why, wrote National Review's Jay Nordlinger when he related that incident in June 2001, was because she had named names of Soviet prisoners, "giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope." Mr. Nordlinger's piece sought to draw attention to Cuban repression, more than a decade after...