September 30, 2003: Cuba has been "totally exonerated" of any responsibility for the war of words and snubs that led to a breakdown in its formerly cozy relations with the European Union, a senior Cuban official has said. Deputy Foreign Minister Angel Dalmau accused the Europeans of using a "double standard" when it criticized the Cuban regime for imprisoning 75 peaceful dissidents and independent journalists and executing three young men who staged a failed hijacking. Speaking at the opening of a seminar on European studies, Dalmau said "the European attitude cannot be justified" by unsupported claims that its own ideas of what constitutes human rights and democracy are universally valid for all. The thrust of his arguments was based on a kind of political relativism: that under the guise of "human rights" Europe was seeking to "impose its own notions and standards on all other human beings, without regard for their differences". He argued that Brussels has neither the right nor the authority to subject the rest of the world to its opinions nor to use them as a stick to beat "the political system that the vast majority of Cubans have decided we want for ourselves". (EFE, 1/10/03)
September 30, 2003: The Spanish Congress approved a bill deploring the closure of the Spanish Cultural Centre in Havana. Four parties, including the Socialist Party and the Popular Party, are asking Cuba "to respect human rights and to install democracy" in the island. (El País, 1/10/03)
September 29, 2003: Film stars and intellectuals including Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau, Pedro Almodóvar and Jorge Semprún attended a soiree in Paris supporting the Cuban people and striking out against repression by leader Fidel Castro. Actress Deneuve opened the event, organized by the association Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), at a theatre on the Champs-Elysees. Special homage was paid to poet and journalist Raúl Rivero, sentenced recently to 20 years in prison at a closed-doors trial for "attacking the sovereignty of the (Cuban) state." Actress Sophie Marceau read a poem by Raul Rivero and Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, brandishing a fan bearing the words "Cuba sí, Castro no" expressed the hope that Castro would restore Cuba's freedom and get rid of dictatorship. (AFP, 30/9/03)
September 29, 2003: Fidel Castro has lashed out against American and European Union policies toward his island state. "Only a country such as this can sing the truths of the United States and Europe, and tell them they are getting a bad humanitarian image," Castro said. The Cuban leader spoke during a closing address Sunday to a Congress of The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Havana. "We don't need you in order to live, creators of poverty, of exploitation and misery," Castro added in remarks reported by the state press agency. The foreign press were not invited to hear Castro's reported three-hour speech at Havana's Karl Marx theatre, which was attended by some 1,500 delegates from across Cuba. (AFP, 29/9/03)
September 26, 2003: Organized by the Cuba Democracy "YA" Platform, Cuban exiles demonstrated in front of the Cuban embassy in Madrid against violations of human rights in the island. International coordinator of the Platform, Rigoberto Carceller, said that this first demonstration gathered over thirty persons. (AFP, 27/9/03)
September 25, 2003: Some 200 people staged a demonstration outside the Cuban embassy in Prague to protest against human rights violations and to remember the fate of 300 Cuban political prisoners. The demonstration was staged while the Cuban charge d'affaires David Paulovich was hosting a reception at the embassy on the occasion of the end of his mission. Reception guests had to pass by the demonstrators, who were chanting various slogans such as "Shame", "We wish you to enjoy yourselves and good appetite for the political prisoners" and others. (CTK, 25/9/03)
September 25, 2003: The German government protested against Cuba's refusal to allow Germany's adviser on human rights, Claudia Roth, to visit the island. "The current self-isolation of Cuba is hurting the Cuban population," the foreign ministry said in a statement. It said Cuba's decision not to issue Roth an entry visa "is not in line with international practice. Neither is it the positive signal hoped for from the Cuban government." (Reuters, 25/9/03)
September 25, 2003: Cuba denied the Germany's commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, Claudia Roth, permission to enter the island telling her she would not be welcome. Roth, a member of the Schroeder's coalition partner Green Party, had planned on travelling to Havana to check up on the 75 dissidents and independent journalists who were sentenced to up to 28 years in jail in summary trials earlier this year. (EFE, 25/9/03)
September 24, 2003: A group of Cuban dissidents called for the release of imprisoned opposition activists on the day of the Virgin of Mercy, patron saint of prisoners. Close to a dozen members of the banned Pro-Human Rights Party, led by René Montes de Oca, attended a Mass in the patron saint's Havana church to demand the government release 75 dissidents who were arrested during the harshest opposition crackdown on the island in years. During the Mass, celebrated by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Vicar of the Havana Archdiocese, the dissidents raised their hands upwards - displaying the two-finger "V-for-Victory" sign - lit candles and sang religious hymns. At the end of the ceremony, the dissidents yelled "Freedom for Cuba's Prisoners," and "Long Live Human Rights!" (EFE, 24/9/03)
September 23, 2003: Wives of 30 imprisoned Cuban dissidents have called on Brazil's president to raise their husbands' cases with Fidel Castro during a visit to the communist-run island this week, some of the women said. "I appeal to his (Lula's) prestige, his humble background and position as a friend of Fidel Castro to intercede with the president and gain the release of my husband and the other 74," Blanca Reyes, wife of jailed independent journalist Raúl Rivero, told the press. (Reuters, 23/9/03)
September 23, 2003: In an open letter, Reporters Without Borders calls on president "Lula" to meet with the families of imprisoned journalists. "Your long friendship with President Castro and your ideological affinities with the Cuban regime are well known. However, no democrat of the left or right would understand if these affinities were to take precedence over respect for human rights,"the letter says. (Reporters Without Borders, 23/9/03)
September 21, 2003: Senator Norm Coleman, visiting Cuba, backed away from earlier calls to end sanctions on the communist country, saying that lifting the restrictions now would send the wrong message. Coleman cited the Cuban government's crackdown on the opposition in March, when 75 dissidents were rounded up and sentenced to prison terms of between six and 28 years. "I think about the folks in prison and what message that gives them," the Minnesota Republican said. American moves to eliminate the 40-year-old trade and travel sanctions have "been building for some time, but it's not there yet," Coleman told a small group of American reporters in Havana. "And the March actions create a problem." Coleman, however, said releasing some or all of the 75 dissidents "would be a good gesture," and would "increase the prospects" for American support to end the trade embargo and travel restrictions. (ABCNews, 21/9/03)
September 21, 2003: Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá asked Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, to not only meet with government representatives but also with members of the dissident movement. "Brazil should (...) demand the release of political prisoners in the country, who are kept in cages and who live in horrible environments", said Payá. (El Nuevo Herald, 22/9/03)
September 19, 2003: France is exploring new "ways" to channel aid to the Cuban population after Fidel Castro cancelled cooperation programs between the two countries. The Cuban decision has "undoubtedly had an adverse effect" on the population and "we are going to search for other means so that the population can benefit" from our aid, said the spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry, Hervé Ladsous. (EFE, 19/9/03)
September 19, 2003: Former Czech President Vaclav Havel is leading an international campaign to press for democracy in Cuba and mobilize opposition to Fidel Castro's regime. The International Committee for Democracy in Cuba, based in the Czech capital, Prague, will lend support to political prisoners in Cuba and to the opposition movement, Tomas Pojar, the president of the committee, told the press yesterday. Its members include former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former Polish dissident Adam Michnik, former Bulgarian Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov and Elena Bonner, the widow of Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov, Pojar said. (Bloomberg, 19/9/03)
September 18, 2003: The UK Government's response to human rights challenges around the world over the last year is set out in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Annual Report on Human Rights, launched by the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. In the last year the UK Government has taken up human rights concerns, of Cuba, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran and Saudi Arabia, amongst many others. (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 18/9/03)
September 18, 2003: After being confined for more than six months without trial, dissidents Migdalia Hernández Enamorado and Rafael Benítez Chui, were sentenced to two and four years in prison respectively for the alleged crime of contempt. According to the information, State Security troops arrested both activists when they protested the regime's crackdown against internal dissidents last March. (Puente Informativo, 21/9/03)
September 18, 2003: A group calling itself the Dominican Patriotic Youth staged a march in Santo Domingo to condemn "the atrocious repression unleashed by Fidel Castro in Cuba against opponents of the communist regime." According to a press release by the group, the demonstration was organized to show solidarity with Castro's adversaries six months after Havana "resumed its persecution of those who reject the communist ideology." (EFE, 18/9/03)
September 18, 2003: Brazil 's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim, said that the upcoming trip of President Luis Ignacio 'Lula' da Silva to Cuba is motivated by a policy of "engagement", which is the best way to work with the island, "including on human rights issues". (Europa Press, 19/9/03)
September 18, 2003: The Cuban-American Bar Association has filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of jailed Cuban dissidents and asked the international body to sanction Cuba for violating the human rights of those who oppose its government. The petition calls for dozens of dissidents who were jailed in March to be released and asks that Cuba treat them humanely. It also urges the commission to monitor Cuba to ensure it does not violate the dissidents' human rights, among other measures. (Sun Sentinel, 18/9/03)
September 18, 2003: The wife of Cuban writer and poet Raúl Rivero, sentenced to 20 years in prison called on Brazilian President, Luis Ignacio 'Lula' da Silva, to intercede with Castro on behalf of her husband and other political prisoners. Blanca Reyes made the appeal in an interview published by Brazil's daily 'O Globo de Rio de Janeiro'. (Europa Press, 18/9/03)
September 17, 2003: Three former political prisoners who became presidents are demanding a unified Western approach to Cuba. The heroes of Eastern Europe's anti-communist movement denounced Fidel Castro's "Stalinist" regime in Cuba and demanded action from the West to encourage its peaceful overthrow. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, Vaclav Havel, the former Czechoslovak president, and Arpad Goncz, the former Hungarian president, made their call in a letter to The Daily Telegraph and other leading newspapers abroad. (The Daily Telegraph, 18/9/03)
September 17, 2003: After obtaining some improvements in his prison conditions, Manuel Vázquez Portal has ended a hunger strike started eight days ago. (Cubanet, 22/9/03)
September 17, 2003: Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa, an icon of Latin American music and longtime leftist, has broken with Fidel Castro over the firing-squad executions of three youths who tried to hijack a boat to Florida this spring. ''My love stops here,'' said Sosa. ``I believe one must assume noble positions in the face of things that are not right.'' (El Nuevo Herald, 18/9/03)
September 16, 2003: A handful of German publishers plan to ignore a foreign ministry decision to boycott an international book fair in Cuba over human rights abuses, Berlin daily Junge Welt reported. A spokesman for the Berlin-based "Havana Book Fair 2004 Office," Reinhard Thiele, told the newspaper that the group was acting to "motivate publishers, authors and artists to participate" and that at least five publishing houses had already signed on. Thiele sharply criticized Germany's boycott. (AFP, 16/9/03)
September 11, 2003: The Cuban government took another step in deepening the institutional crisis with Europe by closing the Spanish cultural center in Havana. Spain is the first European country to be sanctioned by Fidel Castro's regime, in what is thought to be a rebuke for criticism of the human rights situation on the island. (El País, 11/9/03)
September 11, 2003: Although a video tape presented by Cuban authorities has raised doubt among some about Elizardo Sánchez's relationship with government agents, other opposition leaders in Cuba remain supportive and raise their own questions about the credibility of the tape. ''In the worst of cases, Elizardo is a government agent; but in that case he obviously didn't do the work the government wanted him to,'' Vladimiro Roca, another prominent dissident, told the press in a telephone interview from Havana. "Otherwise, they wouldn't have done what they did.'' "Instead of paying attention to Elizardo, we should be paying more attention to the Government's policy towards oppositionists." (The Miami Herald, 12/9/03)
September 11, 2003: Cuba presented a video of human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez receiving a medal from state security agents, in the latest government attempt to paint one of the island's best-known dissidents as a spy. Sánchez, who spent 8-1/2 years in prison in the 1980s, said in a telephone interview the video was part of the government's "dirty war" against dissent, and insisted he had no memory of the event, implying he may have been drugged. "There is one day when I lost my sense of reality and time. I have no idea what happened, only a very cloudy memory," he said, acknowledging that he had no proof of having been drugged. In the video presented to the press, Sánchez appears singing the national anthem with a group of state security agents, after which a statement is read congratulating him for "distinguished service." The video clearly shows the colonel pinning an Interior Ministry medal on Sánchez's chest. Then the two embrace and toast the award. "It is all part of the same gross manipulation. People can believe the government or believe me," Sánchez told the press. "They give medals to everybody (...) In my conversations with them I never harmed anyone." (Reuters, 11/9/03)
September 9, 2003: Rafael Acosta, president of the Cuban National Visual Arts Council and head of the 8th Havana Biennial organizing committee, announced that 50 projects by artists from 47 countries will be on show from November to December. He explained that the Biennial, whose theme this year is Art and Life, is taking place "even though European foundations that have traditionally helped us have withdrawn, pressurized by anti-Cuban campaigns and measures generated by the European Union." (Granma International, 9/9/03)
September 9, 2003: The Cuban Roman Catholic Church called on Fidel Castro's government to allow more religious, political and economic freedom, and begin a dialogue toward national reconciliation. The Cuban Conference of Bishops expressed its concern over the government's "return to language and methods used during the first years of the revolution," asking it to release 75 dissidents sentenced to average 19-year prison terms earlier this year in the most severe repression in decades. "We once again ask the country's authorities for a gesture of clemency for these people in prison, above all taking humanitarian considerations for their age, state of health, and gender," said the document by the Cuban Bishops Conference. "It is reoccupying that currently all thoughts and actions which do not coincide with official ideology are considered lacking in legality, disqualified and combated without taking into account the truth and goodness they might possess," said the Cuban Conference of Bishops in the statement, which marked the feast day of Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity. The bishops also criticized the summary firing-squad execution of three Cubans who hijacked a Havana Bay ferry in April to try to reach Florida. (Reuters, EFE, Sun Sentinel, 9/9/03)
September 7, 2003: After obtaining some improvements in his prison conditions, Manuel Vázquez Portal has ended a hunger strike started eight days ago. (Cubanet, 22/9/03)
September 5, 2003: Philippe Richert, Senator from the South Rhine region in eastern France, asked the French minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin, ''to do whatever is possible" to obtain from Cuban authorities the liberation of an independent journalist who is in jail on hunger strike. (AFP, 7/9/03)
September 5, 2003: A delegation of German lawmakers met in Havana with relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents and members of opposition groups, spokespersons for the internal opposition reported. A statement signed by the president of a leading dissident group, Rene Gomez Manzano, who attended the meeting, said that discussion "centered on the current political and economic situation in Cuba and bilateral relations with Germany." The communique also said that the talks "placed special emphasis on the very difficult situation faced by political prisoners in Cuban jails." The German delegation met with Miriam Leyva and Gisela Delgado, the wives of Oscar Espinosa and Héctor Palacios, respectively, two of the 75 dissidents sentenced in March and April to jail terms averaging 20 years. Also participating were the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá; a spokesman for Todos Unidos, Vladimiro Roca; Elizardo Sanchez, the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation; Felix Bonne of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society and Roberto Larramendi and Jose Avalos of the College of Independent Scholars. (EFE, 5/9/03)
September 5, 2003: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed great concern about a hunger strike begun by three independent Cuban journalists - Manuel Vázquez Portal, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and Normando Hernández González - in Boniatico prison, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, to protest against their conditions of detention. Since they started the protest, they have been transferred to another prison in an unknown location. (BBC, 5/9/03)
September 4, 2003: Cuba cancelled its participation at the Frankfurt Book Fair after Germany withdrew from the 2004 Book Fair in Havana. In a letter, the Cuban Book Institute told the Frankfurt Book Fair management that Cuba would not take part in the industry's biggest trade event, book fair spokesman Holger Ehling said. (Deutsche Welle Culture & Lifestyle, 4/9/03)
September 4, 2003: The European Parliament condemns human rights violations in Cuba and urges Fidel Castro to release political prisoners. (Ress Release, 4/9/03)
September 3, 2003: The European Union said it had seen no movement by Cuba to meet EU worries over human rights violations. The EU, Cuba's main trade partner, source of tourists and foreign investment, was angered by the island's execution of three men who hijacked a boat to try to make it to the United States and the jailing of 75 dissidents for up to 28 years. "We have to say that the Cuban government has not taken a single positive step to meet the goals that Europe has set and in fact the situation of human rights has worsened yet further," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Frattini, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, complained to the European Parliament that Cuba had to reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty and called on the government of Fidel Castro to release political prisoners. (Reuters, 3/9/03)
September 3, 2003: Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya publicly denounced a "system of cruelty" against political prisoners on the island while family members announced that six detainees had begun a hunger strike. Guards are limiting medicines, withholding food brought by family members, and abusing both prisoners and visiting relatives at the "Kilo 8" prison in the central-eastern province of Camaguey, Paya said in a statement issued to the foreign news media. The abuse and deplorable living conditions - a combination of unbearable heat, plagues of mosquitoes, lack of ventilation and bad hygiene - are part of a "system of cruelty" against detainees, Paya said. The conditions "have no other objective but to provoke suffering among those who already have been unjustly convicted (...) and that of intimidating the Cuban community so that it doesn't demand the rights and changes that we will achieve anyway," he said. (AP, 3/9/03)
September 2, 2003: The sentencing documents of the 75 Cuban dissidents convicted in the Castro government's crackdown on opposition earlier this year show the lack of basic freedoms, human rights and impartial justice on the communist island, supporters of a university project said. The documents were obtained by Florida State University, which launched a Web site containing the hundreds of pages of court records. The university's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights worked with the US Interests Section in Havana to get the documents but the center funded the Web site independently, university officials said. (AP, 2/9/03)
September 1, 2003: Prison guards transferred four political prisoners who were staging a hunger strike in Boniato prison, Santiago de Cuba, to a place or places unknown. The four, independent journalists Manuel Vázquez Portal and Normando Hernández, and government opponents Nelson Aguiar and Próspero Gaínza, had started a hunger strike to protest prison conditions. Department of State Security officials in Havana told Vázquez Portal's sister, Xiomara, that they had been transferred to Aguadores prison, also in Santiago de Cuba. (Cubanet, 2/9/03)
September 1, 2003: Wives of 25 jailed dissidents protested that Fidel Castro's communist government was holding their husbands in "subhuman" prison conditions and feeding them rotten food. The wives handed in a letter at the Interior Ministry calling on the government to "change the inhuman conditions that our loved ones are subjected to." "They are undergoing very high temperatures, plagued by insects. They have no running water and the water they are given is not drinking water. The food is insufficient and many times rotten," they wrote to Interior Minister Abelardo Colomé. The husbands are among 75 dissidents arrested in March and sentenced to jail terms of up to 28 years. (Reuters, 3/9/03)
September 1, 2003: Thirteen Cuban dissidents who have been jailed since April for allegedly conspiring against state security launched a hunger strike to protest harsh prison conditions, relatives said in a statement. Seven opponents of the communist government have been jailed in Holguín in eastern Cuba and six in the Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba, also in Cuba's east. They launched the demonstration against what they called inhumane treatment. (The Miami Herald, 3/9/03)
