October 16, 2004: Cuban dissident leaders condemned the arrest and deportation of one Spanish and two Dutch lawmakers. They said the incident illustrated the ruthlessness of Fidel Castro's regime. "This illustrates the intransigence of the Cuban government and shows that it will never change its position," said Marta Beatriz Roque, director of the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society. "This should serve as the first lesson for the Zapatero government of what the Cuban regime is capable of," said Roque, who was among 75 dissidents jailed last year in a government crackdown but was freed on health grounds. "It is infantile to think that you can provoke a change of position" through dialogue with Fidel Castro's regime, she said. Another leading Cuban dissident, Vladimiro Roca, took the same view: "How can the Rodriguez Zapatero government try to recreate a relationship with Cuba under these conditions?" (AFP, EFE, 16/10/04)
October 16, 2004: The Dutch government expressed outrage after two Dutch deputies were arrested and deported from Havana. A Dutch government spokeswoman said Cuba's envoy to the Netherlands would be summoned to explain why Boris Dittrich, head of the Liberal-Democrat group in the Dutch parliament, and Christian Democrat Kathleen Ferrier, were expelled. Dittrich's spokeswoman said the lawmaker had kept her informed of his situation via SMS text messages from his detention cell. "I am furious. I have never experienced anything like this," Dittrich said. Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot was also outraged by the incident. The Dutch ambassador in Cuba was also demanding an explanation from the Cuban government. Dittrich, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, said he would press Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot to cut the EU's diplomatic relations with Cuba to a strict minimum. ( AFP, ANP, 16/10/04)
October 16, 2004 : Spain summoned Cuban ambassador Isabel Allende to protest the removal of deputy Jore Moragas, external relations spokesman of the conservative opposition Popular Party. "The Spanish government deems it unacceptable that Cuban authorities refused entry to Jorge Moragas, deputy of the Popular Party, refusing him access to consular officials in Havana," a foreign ministry statement said. Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said the expulsion was "unacceptable", while urging the Popular Party to back Madrid's attempts to establish "dialogue with the Cuban authorities but, above all, deepen democracy with respect for human rights and individual freedoms." (AFP, 16/10/04)
October 15, 2004: Combined forces of the National Police and that of the State Security forced their way into the home of the peaceful opponent Lázaro González, located in Sibanicú, Camaguey, declared Juan Carlos González Leyva in a telephone conversation with Acción Democrática Cubana. Said agents accused Lázaro of civil disobedience and proceeded to brutally beat him and drag him all the way to a Jeep and threw him inside, taking him to the police station. The day before the incident, State Security agents incited his neighbors to throw rocks and to threaten the physical integrity of the opponent, and that of his wife, Marilyn Díaz Fernández, an independent journalist who was also beaten mercilessly in front of her 10 year old son who at the time of this violent beating tried to escape through the only door of the house screaming. (Puente Informativo, 19/10/04)
October 15, 2004: Political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", was finally transferred to a prison close to his home in Santa Clara. After several protests by the prisoner and his relatives, that included a hunger strike, Antúnez was transferred from Ariza prison, in Cienfuegos, to La Pendiente, in Santa Clara. A month ago, Bertha Antúnez Pernet, the prisoner’s sister, had gone into hunger strike in demand of better conditions for her brother in jail. (Puente Informativo, 15/10/04)
October 15, 2004: Cuba's communist government barred three European lawmakers from entering the country on a visit to support Cuban dissidents, a foreign ministry statement said. Deputy Jorge Moragas, of Spain's opposition Popular Party, and Dutch legislators Boris Dittrich and Kathleen Ferrier were told to reboard their Air France flight and go back to Paris when they arrived in Havana. Moragas, an opposition party member who led the trip, had planned to meet opponents of Fidel Castro in a show of support after the new Spanish government announced it would try to mend relations between the European Union and Cuba. "The publicly declared objectives of his visit are a flagrant violation of our sovereignty," the ministry said. "This is a gross political provocation for Cuba." The Cuban statement said Mr Moragas was illegally entering Cuba on a tourist visa. (AP, AFP,16/10/04)
October 13, 2004: The Cuban Pro Human Rights Party, affiliated to the Andrei Sajarov Foundation celebrated a vigil for the liberty of all political prisoners, specially for the liberty of their General Secretary René Montes de Oca. The vigil was held at the home of Modesto Leopoldo Valdivia Varela, who resides in Barrio Azul, municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. After the invocation and the National Anthem, there was a moment of silence in memory of the Cubans that have disappeared in the Florida Straights trying to get to the United States due to the communist regime. After the vigil concluded, everyone was advised that Montes de Oca is in an isolation cell at the prison La Pendiente in Santa Clara and he is not allowed to receive correspondence and cannot receive any telephone calls. (Puente Informativo, 20/10/04)
October 13, 2004: Vladimiro Roca, the president of the illegal Cuban Social Democrat Party, said that the speech by Don Carlos Alonso Zaldívar, the Spanish ambassador to Havana, during a diplomatic reception celebrating Spain’s National Day, was “a remembrance of the old and mistaken policies” between “the motherland and the people of the faithful Island of Cuba”. According to Roca, the Spanish government considers “a failed policy to invite the Cuban dissidence to their diplomatic activities, but it had no choice but to proceed with the invitations. ” “This disrespectful speech in front of the Cuban tragedy, brought forth the feared reality that the Spanish government seems willing to accept the blackmail of the oldest and merciless dictatorship this hemisphere has suffered in all of its history”. Roca had addressed a letter to the president of the Spanish government, José L. Rodríguez Zapatero, complaining for a potential change in Spain’s position with regards to the EU’s diplomatic sanctions towards Cuba. (Puente Informativo, 13/10/04)
October 12, 2004: Spain's new envoy to Cuba has criticized the European Union's policy toward the island and said Madrid would work to thaw relations with President Fidel Castro's Communist government. Ambassador Carlos Alonso Zaldivar indicated that Spain would not break with the EU's common position on Cuba, which is based on human rights concerns. "Unfortunately, the current situation of relations between Cuba and Spain, and between Cuba and the European Union, is profoundly unsatisfactory," Zaldivar said in a speech at a diplomatic reception celebrating Spain's national day. "We want to overcome the present situation, but we want to do that in agreement with the rest of the EU," he said. (Reuters, 12/10/04)
October 12, 2004: The Cuban dissidents who attended the diplomatic reception at the Spanish embassy in Havana were very upset with the Ambassador’s speech during the event. At the diplomatic reception celebrating Spain's national day, Carlos Alonso Zaldivar said Spain was working to improve relations with Cuba’s government. About 20 dissidents and relatives of political prisoners attended the event. After the Spanish Ambassador’s comments, many of them said they respected Spain's position but that they hoped the European Union would continue to unwaveringly support the island's opposition. Elizardo Sanchez, an activist at the event who heads the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, said the Spaniards face "an arduous task" ahead, as the Cuban government is not likely to be receptive to their requests, he said. Dissidents Martha Beatriz Roque and Oswaldo Paya left the event after the Spanish Ambassador said his country would thaw relations with Fidel Castro’s communist government. Payá told the press it was a gesture to show his displeasure about the Spanish position. Vladimiro Roca, who also attended the event, issued a letter addressed to the president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, requesting from Spain to abstain from reestablishing normal relations with Havana while political prisoners remain in jail. (Reuters, AP, Netfor Cuba, VOA, 13/10/04).
October 8, 2004: In a public communiqué, prominent dissident, Oswaldo Payá, denounced as an “abuse” the actions taken by Cuban officials against Berta Soler. “We must clarify that her request is for her husband, Angel Moya, to be taken as a patient to a civil hospital to have a surgery done”, Payá says in his statement. “There was no violation of the law, nor alteration of the order, and no expressions of political content of any kind in the park. They were waiting for an answer to a request, which is their Constitutional right to do so, in a public place, a park”, Payá added. “The answer, consequent with the cruel treatment that Angel Moya is being subjected to, was abuse with brute force.” (Puente Informativo, 8/10/04)
October 8, 2004: The wife of ailing Cuban dissident Angel Moya achieved her goal of getting her husband transferred from prison to a Havana hospital, where she visited him, after staging a public protest in a city park close to the Revolution Square. "Everything was in my favor and I had the hope that the transfer would come about," Berta Soler Fernandez told the press upon her return from visiting her husband in the Carlos J. Finlay military hospital. She has said that her spouse needs urgent medical attention for a herniated disc. About 50 Cuban police forcibly removed Soler from her protest "camp" in "Parquecito de Comunicaciones" along with several companions. She and her supporters had been therefore two days. "They weren't really violent with us, there was no violence. But for just 10 people, there were 50 of them with many cars and even ambulances," one of the women told the press. Gisela Delgado, Alejandrina Garcia, Margarita Borges and Ines Guerra, relatives of some of the 75 dissidents sent to prison last year in the communist regime's harshest crackdown on peaceful protest in decades, were evicted from the park along with Soler and her sister-in-law. According to Delgado, authorities told her that "this is an act we're not going to tolerate (…) (and) they took us by force, put us in cars and drove us to the doors of our houses." (EFE, AP, 8/10/04)
October 7, 2004: Blanca Reyes, the wife of Cuban political prisoner and journalist, Raúl Rivero, said that her husband’s jail conditions have been improved. She said to the press that jail authorities have rescheduled her visit to the jail –that was cancelled in September--, and that two criminal prisoners, who were in the same cell with Rivero, have been transferred to another cell. In a phone conversation with Reporters Without Borders, Reyes said that Rivero still needs some medication that was previously denied to him by the prison authorities. (Europa Press, 7/10/04)
October 6, 2004: During a telephone conversation with Havana, organized by the Madrid based Platform “Cuba Democracia Ya”, Cuban dissidents expressed their concern on the Spanish government attempts to change the European Union position on Cuba. Juan Carlos González Leiva, Cuban oppositionist currently under home arrest, said that many lives could be at risk if Europe lifts diplomatic sanctions against Havana. Leiva expressed his doubts on the potential release of all political prisoners by the Cuban government, as response to a request by the Spanish government. Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación and main promoter of the Varela Project, expressed same concerns in a public letter issued in Havana. (Europa Press, 6/10/04)
October 6, 2004: The wife of a jailed Cuban dissident demanding her husband to be transferred to the capital for medical treatment refused to leave her spot in a park after an authority told her the government was working on her case. Bertha Soler Fernandez, protesting delays in the transfer, vowed to stay until she saw her husband in person. "I am going to wait patiently here,'' Soler said. A government official approached Soler, some 30 hours after she planted herself in a park across from Havana's Revolution Plaza. Soler then met with the official in nearby offices for nearly an hour, during which time she said he told her the request was being dealt with. "He told me they are trying to find a solution to the case,'' she said. Soler said her husband Angel Moya Acosta is suffering from severe back pain due to a herniated disc in his prison cell in the eastern province of Granma. On August 10, Soler said authorities told her they would grant her request to temporarily transfer her husband to a civilian hospital in Havana. But more than 55 days later, he has yet to arrive, and Soler said she would stay in the park until she sees him or authorities arrest her -- whichever comes first. (AP, 6/10/04)
October 5, 2004: Marta Beatriz Roque, a prominent dissident economist and the only woman arrested and jailed in the crackdown against dissidents in 2003, said that the protest carried out by wives and relatives of political prisoners in Havana’s Revolution Square “is the right thing to do at a time like this." "It seems to me that it is time to move past reporting things, issuing letters, and move from written words to active deeds," in defense of the dissidents, who "are more and more harassed every day," Roque charged. Demonstrators have numbered fewer than 15 but "if this starts getting serious, if more dissidents come, if people start wondering why we are here, and find out, then I think there will be repressive action," Roque said. (AFP, 5/10/04)
