August 29, 2003: Cuba 's internationally renowned art festival, the Biennial of Havana, has become the latest victim of soured relations between Europe and the communist island. While the event will be held as planned later this year, it will have to make do with about $200,000 less than expected, now that three European foundations have withdrawn their support. "It's a heavy blow," Rafael Acosta de Arriba, president of Cuba's National Council of Plastic Arts, acknowledged. The event, featuring about 300 exhibitions around Havana, will now have a budget of about $156,000, he said. Acosta de Arriba told reporters that the groups withdrawing funds this year include the Prince Claus Foundation, named for the late husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Two other foundations, one Dutch and the other French, also withdrew their aid proposals, he said. (AP, 29/8/03)
August 29, 2003: Foreign diplomats in Havana said they would still trust the information reported by Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights. "Whether he is a state security agent or not, the figures are accurate and very useful, and we will continue using them," a European diplomat said. (Reuters, 29/8/03)
August 26, 2003: The Government of Greece refused Fidel Castro's request to visit Athens during the 2004 Olympic Games, informed the daily "To Wima." "Fidel wants to come, Athens says no", reads the headline quoting a spokesperson from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the spokesperson, Athens cannot ignore the political decisions of the European Union, which reduced substantially the level of diplomatic relations with Havana in the wake of the arrest and sentencing of more than 70 Cuban dissidents last April. (DPA, 26/8/03)
August 26, 2003: Five months after the communist government's crackdown on the opposition, relatives of some imprisoned Cuban dissidents say their loved ones have become sick behind bars and are receiving poor treatment. The Cuban government has not responded to the family's specific complaints about poor hygiene and substandard medical treatment for their jailed loved ones, but authorities insist their human rights and health are being respected. Writer and poet Raul Rivero, 57, has lost 50 pounds and "looks like a little old man," his wife, Blanca Reyes, told the press. Gisela Delgado, wife of jailed political activist Héctor Palacios, said her 62-year-old husband has an ear infection. "His daily life is hell," Delgado said of Palacios, who is serving 25 years in the western province of Pinar del Río. (AP, 26/8/03)
August 25, 2003: Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern at the plight of three imprisoned independent journalists - Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Saínz and Iván Hernandez Carrillo - who have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days in the town of Holguín, in eastern Cuba. They are demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners who have serious illnesses. "Most jailed independent journalists in Cuba, especially Mayo, are being held in bad conditions that gravely endanger their lives," it said. "Their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their families exposes them even more to illness and lack of food." It called for the release for "humanitarian reasons" of Mayo and other journalists who were ill. Mayo, head of the Félix Varela news agency, and Fernandez Sainz and Hernandez Carillo, both of the Patria news agency, stopped eating on 15 August, along with four other political prisoners in Holguín. ( Canada News Wire, 25/8/03)
August 25, 2003: The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights expresses "its continued concern about the deteriorating health of Cuban economist and independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe". (The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 25/8/03)
August 21, 2003: A spokesman for the German Foreign Affairs Ministry informed the press that Germany will not participate in Havana's 2004 International Book Fair. German authorities took the decision after "recent incarceration of 75 oppositionists and the reintroduction of the death penalty in Cuba. Havana´s book fair is dedicated to a foreign country each year. This time Germany was going to be invited as the main country by Cuban authorities. (Europa Press, 21/8/03)
August 20, 2003: The wife of a Cuban political prisoner called on Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos "to take a closer look" at the reality on the island, where the novelist is currently staying as a guest of Fidel Castro. "I am merely the wife of a Cuban intellectual sentenced to 18 years in prison for exercising his right to freedom of thought and speech," Yolanda Huerga said in an open letter published in the Asuncion daily Abc Color. Huerga identifies herself in the letter as the wife of Manuel Vázquez Portal, "a poet and journalist arrested and sentenced during the wave of repression in March 2003, along with 74 other peaceful opposition members and independent journalists." "I was astonished to learn that Augusto Roa Bastos, who I have respected and admired since I first read his book "Yo, El Supremo", several years ago (...) had joined in signing the manifesto titled here (in Havana) Solidarity with Cuba, but it's not in any way solidarity with the Cuban people but rather with the regime." (EFE, 20/8/03)
August 16, 2003: The European Union development assistance that Cuba now refuses to accept was always more a "publicity stunt that real humanitarian aid," Fidel Castro told Paraguayans in his latest caustic tirade against his former Old World friends. "Europe is guilty of a naive and ridiculous farce," he said in a five-hour berating of the governments that dared to criticize Cuba's human rights record, that he delivered in Paraguay. He told a packed soccer stadium that "Often we spend three years discussing (aid projects) with them, so that they can travel first-class in their airlines and stay at five-star hotels, and when they get here it just goes on and on." (EFE, 16/8/03)
August 11, 2003: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by the deteriorating health of imprisoned journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe. (CPJ Press Release, 11/8/03)
August 11, 2003: The United States said Cuba should allow international supervision of its treatment of 75 Cuban dissidents jailed in March and serving long prison sentences, claiming that at least two of them are seriously ill from inhumane treatment. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker asked that organizations such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Frontiers be allowed to supervise the prisoners' conditions. "The United States once again expresses its deep concern over the ill health and poor treatment of Cuba's political prisoners, in particular" that of journalists Raúl Rivero and Oscar Espinosa, Reeker said. (AFP, 11/8/03)
August 9, 2003: Blanca Reyes, wife of Cuban journalist and poet Raúl Rivero, jailed in April after a crackdown by the regime of Fidel Castro, says she's "very concerned" by the "unacceptable and subhuman" prison conditions of her husband. According to Reyes, Rivero is in a "high security" prison, and can only see visitors once every three months, instead of every month, including spousal visits; consequently, she can only take food to him every three months. (Europa Press, 9/8/03)
August 8, 2003: Cuban dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe was transferred to the Carlos J. Finlay military hospital in Havana after his health deteriorated, said his wife, Miriam Leyva. He is reportedly suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver and anaemia. (El Nuevo Herald, 9/8/03)
August 5, 2003: The wife of dissident Roberto de Miranda, who is imprisoned in Cuba and who was awarded the Pedro Luis Boitel Freedom Prize in Miami, told the press that her husband would have dedicated the award to the children and "the freedom of the Cuban people." The award, which takes its name from Pedro Luis Boitel, a Cuban political prisoner who died while on a hunger strike in 1972, was created by Rumanian physicist Gabriel Andreescu in 2001, with the support of eight Central and Eastern European human rights groups, with the aim of paying tribute to internal dissidents in Cuba. (EFE, 5/8/03)
August 1: According to the spokesman of the European Union's Executive, Erick Maner, the EU is awaiting for clarification from the Cuban government as to how it intends to implement its decision to reject EU's assistance. The spokesman said the European Commission "regrets" the decision adopted by the Cuban government. (Radio Martí, 4/8/03)
August 1, 2003: The Italian Presidency protested on behalf of the EU against the treatment of sick dissidents imprisoned in Cuba. A press release issued by the Italian foreign ministry notes that Italy and the European Union are extremely concerned at the state of health of several dissidents currently imprisoned on the island, particularly the economists Oscar Espinosa Chepe and Martha Beatriz Roque. Cuba's ambassador to Rome, Hugo Ramos Milanés, was summoned to the Italian foreign affairs ministry. (Agence Europe, 1/8/03)
August 1: The Italian Presidency protested on behalf of the EU against the treatment of sick dissidents imprisoned in Cuba. A press release issued by the Italian foreign ministry notes that Italy and the European Union are extremely concerned at the state of health of several dissidents currently imprisoned on the island, particularly the economists Oscar Espinosa Chepe and Martha Beatriz Roque. Cuba's ambassador to Rome, Hugo Ramos Milanés, was summoned to the Italian foreign affairs ministry. (Agence Europe, 1/8/03)
August 1, 2003: The government of France expressed concern over the health of jailed Cuban dissident Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello. The French foreign ministry spokesperson, Hervé Ladsous, said that France's embassy in Havana has been instructed to pass France's concerns to Cuban authorities. (Radio Martí, 2/8/03)
August 1, 2003: The Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs has released a new fact sheet on political prisoners in Cuba. (US Department of State, 1/8/03)
August 1, 2003: Fidel Castro launched a new tirade against all those who have criticized his government's human rights record, telling them to "go wash out their mouths, have a good gargle" for besmirching his country's good name. "Go ahead and offer a million dollars, or 20 million, to the first person who can show there has ever been a single man tortured or an extrajudicial execution in the 44 years of revolution," Castro told over 1500 nursing school graduates. "What are they going to tell us?" he asked and made an obvious swipe at the European Union. "These are the shameless ones who have killed, executed, started wars, shed so much blood, defended their colonial or imperial interests and condemned millions of human beings to poverty and under-development," Castro said in his three-hour Havana harangue, "They want to tell us off? Better they should go wash out their mouths, have a good gargle, and use whatever they've got handy to sterilize their mouths before they utter the name of Cuba, the most exemplary country there ever has been." (EFE, 1/8/03)
August 1, 2003: The Cuban government has officially confirmed that it is turning its back on EU aid. In a letter sent to Member States' embassies in Havana and to the European Commission, it says the Cuban government has decided to reject official development aid sent to Cuba by the EU, noting that the practical implications of the decision will be detailed in time by the Cuban foreign investment ministry. The Cuban decision is in reaction to "unacceptable conditions" policy of the European Union, notes the letter, which confirms the statements made by Fidel Castro. (Agence Europe, 5/8/03)
