Chronicle on Cuba - October 2005

Exile Community

October 4: A group of Florida International University students fasted to show solidarity with two jailed Cuban dissidents who are on a hunger strike protesting long prison terms and dismal conditions. The FIU students, some of them Cuban Americans, organized the fast with the help of Directorio Democrático Cubano (Cuban Democratic Directorate), a Hialeah-based organization that supports pro-democracy movements on the island. (The Miami Herald, 5/10/05)

October 5: Blanca Reyes, wife of Cuban journalist, poet and dissident, Raúl Rivero, met leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups to promote the candidacy of the Ladies in White– a movement of wives and mothers of political prisoners in Cuba– to the Sakharov Prize. The Ladies in White are among the finalists for this year’s edition of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament. (El Nuevo Herald, 5/10/05)

October 11: Raúl Rivero, a Cuban poet, journalist and former political prisoner was able finally to appear before the Americas' main press organization to deliver his report on how the Communist regime quashes freedom of expression, calling on media and governments not to forget the 26 independent reporters still jailed on the island for trying to inform the citizenry. Rivero, released from jail in Cuba last year on medical grounds and now an exile in Spain, addressed the general assembly of the Inter American Press Association in person for the first time. For more than a decade, Havana denied one of the island's most prominent intellectuals the right to travel abroad. In his speech to the IAPA meeting in Indianapolis, Rivero implored editors, publishers and media executives from throughout the hemisphere not to forget their colleagues condemned to prison in Cuba for defending freedom of expression. (EFE, 11/10/05)

October 10: Twenty-four Cuban oppositionist organizations agreed in Madrid on a “Road Map for the democratization of Cuba” during a meeting that in spite of differences demonstrated the almost unanimous rejection of violence. Some 80 delegates from liberal, social-democrat and conservative groups of Cuban residents of the US, the UK, Sweden, Portugal, Costa Rica, France, Belgium, Cuba and Spain, met in the Centro Cubano in Madrid. [Posición común de los Demócratas Cubanos] (AFP, 11/10/05)

October 12: A delegation of Cuban exile women “M.A.R. por Cuba” (Mothers and Women Against Repression) and representatives of "Plantados hasta la Libertad y la Democracia en Cuba" (Firm Until Cuba is Free and Democratic), displayed a big Cuban flag with a black crepe, as a symbol of mourning for the suffering of the Cuban nation, a few steps away from the official grandstand of the military parade on Spain’s national day. (Infonet, 13/10/05)

October 13: Miami Dade College's Florida Center for the Literary Arts invited Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero for his first public appearance in South Florida. He read his works to a captive audience after two whirlwind days of stops on Calle Ocho, where he was honored with a proclamation from the likes of City Manager Joe Arriola and was presented a pen by the Cuban American National Foundation's Jorge Mas Santos. Himself the beneficiary of negotiations with Castro - the Spanish government secured his release - Rivero encouraged the use of dialogue to free Cuban political prisoners. ''It would be selfish, stupid and miserable if I tell the governments to slam the door to dialogue,'' he said. ''I respect the people who feel that way, but for my own personal dignity, I cannot call for that door to be closed.'' Rivero criticized the Latin American governments that ignore the Cuban opposition, while the European Union works hard on their behalf. (The Miami Herald, 14/10/05)

October 14: Cuban dissidents asked a Spanish court to indict Fidel Castro on charges of genocide and other offenses, resorting to a Spanish doctrine that allows criminal charges in human rights cases even if the offense is alleged to have been committed abroad. The suit was filed at the National Court by a dissident group called the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba. Besides genocide, it accuses Castro of crimes against humanity, torture and terrorism. The court must now decide whether it will consider the petition, but the request is almost certainly doomed because Castro is still in power and thus enjoys immunity from prosecution. (AP, 14/10/05)

October 16: The twenty-five member organizations of Consenso Cubano organized a three-day workshop. The organizations, ranging from socialist democratic leftist groups to conservative ones, agreed to work together to reach their “objective” of a democratic Cuba, indicated Julio Pich, Director of the Cuban American National Foundation. That means we need to have a strategy. What’s important, said Carlos Saladrigas, director of the Cuba Study Group, is not “how the conflict that leads to the transition is going to end; the important thing now is to prepare ourselves for its beginning”. (El Nuevo Herald, 17/10/05)

October 18: During a Congreso hearing, senators had few questions for a Cuban exile from Miami who was a top Latin America policy advisor in the Bush administration and is now on the verge of becoming director of the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Emilio González, introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee by two Florida Republicans, Senator Mel Martinez and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said he would ''bring an understanding of national security and my own personal immigration experience to bear'' on the new job. González, whose family fled Cuba when he was 4, was an advisor on the National Security Council and served 26 years in the US Army. (The Miami Herald, 19/10/05)

October 27: The European Parliament's decision to award Cuban activists its annual Sakharov Prize is a highly deserved honor, but the European Union must do more to hold the Cuban government accountable for its ongoing human rights abuses, Freedom House said. "The Ladies in White are the wives, sisters, and daughters of Cuban political prisoners, and through their dignified and courageous acts of defiance they have awakened the world's conscience to the brutal nature of the Castro regime," said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. "The EU's decision to honor and support the work of Cuba's Ladies in White, while commendable, must be followed by a renewed commitment by European leaders to support the peaceful work of Cuba's democracy advocates and to hold the Cuban government accountable for its continued violations of individual freedoms and the rule of law," said Ms. Windsor. (FH Press Release, 27/10/05)