Spotlight on Cuba: Crackdown on Dissidents

Chronology of Events - May 2006

May 31: Frail and fed through an intravenous tube, hunger-striking Cuban dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas finished a fourth month defying communist authorities and demanding Internet access even to his death, relatives and dissidents say. The 42-year-old journalist and opponent of Fidel Castro's rule is in hospital in the central province of Villa Clara where he is rejecting solids and liquids, sustained only by an IV solution, they said. Over four months his weight has plunged from 78 to almost 50 kilos (172 to 110 pounds), they added. Fellow dissidents have pleaded urgently with him, in a letter signed by 100 of them, not to keep endangering his life. But he vowed in a letter he released five days ago, that: "My hunger strike will continue until my death unless Cuban authorities give me the right" to get on the internet and obtain information freely.  In the letter from Farinas released by dissidents, Farinas pleaded with the new United Nations human rights council to sanction Cuba for denying Cubans the right to communicate and seek information freely. "I demand that the Castro government installs Internet in my home to set a precedent, as all Cubans want to communicate freely with the civilized and democratic world," wrote Farinas. Dissident sources say this strike was his 20th protest hunger strike. (AFP, 31/5/06) 

May 31: Reporters Without Borders blasted Cuba for jailing a reporter for his coverage of the eviction by police of homeless individuals who had taken up residence in a drainage pipe. "We firmly condemn the arbitrary arrest and solitary confinement" of Armando Betancourt, who reports for the Miami-based Nueva Prensa Cubana news Web site, RSF, as the Paris-based organization is known, said in a statement. The press watchdog group said that, by arresting Betancourt, Cuban authorities "are highlighting their determination to censor news and information. Betancourt must be freed at once." (EFE, 31/5/06)

May 30: The EU could do more in support of human rights in Cuba and other dictatorial regimes in the world, Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel said at a Brussels conference devoted to the EU policy towards Cuba. Havel said the Czech Republic should not present itself as "a poor relative" in the EU, but it should act as a full-fledged member who has something to offer. Apart from elementary human solidarity and civil aid to people in totalitarian countries, international and institutional solidarity is needed as well," Havel said. "In this respect, the EU could do more not only in relation to Cuba but also other dictatorships in the world," he said. (CTK, 31/5/06)

May 30: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the detention of independent Cuban journalist Armando Betancourt who was arrested while covering the evictions of dozens of families from their homes in the central city of Camaguey, sources told CPJ. On 23 May, authorities forcefully evicted families allegedly occupying homes illegally, according to local sources. Betancourt, a reporter for the news agency Nueva Prensa Cubana in Camaguey, was arrested along with several people who were protesting the evictions, a relative told CPJ. The journalist did not participate in the protests, according to several sources. (BBC, 31/5/06)

May 24: Cuban human rights activist, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, denounced that he is suffering constant and systematic acts of provocation and threats to his person and his home by Cuban State Security. The activist and his father were awakened suddenly when a huge stone was violently thrown against the gate of their house in the city of Ciego de Avila. According to testimony by Juan Carlos, a post of military personnel that constantly keeps a vigil on him has been established facing his house. When he walks through the streets of Ciego de Avila, State Security agents threaten to beat him up, they shout insults at him, and chant pro-governmental slogans at him, humiliating him publicly. Gonzalez Leiva was incarcerated without a trial and suffered physical and psychological tortures for 26 months for having peacefully demonstrated along with other members of the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights at a hospital in Ciego de Avila where an independent journalist who had been brutally beaten by forces of State Security was taken. (Netfor Cuba, 29/5/06)

May 24: Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, on an open-ended hunger strike since January 31, was submitted to minimum access surgery to extract blood and air out of his left lung, reported his mother, Alicia Hernández. Fariñas remains in critical condition at Arnaldo Milián Castro Hospital, in Santa Clara. Refusing food or water in demand of free access to Internet, he is being administered medication and hydrating fluids intravenously. (EFE, 24/5/06)

May 23: Human rights abuses were widespread in Latin America last year with slave labor in Bolivia, government critics reportedly harassed in Venezuela and dissidents intimidated in Cuba, Amnesty International said in a report. "There were continued concerns that critics of the government were being harassed” in Cuba, “including through the criminal justice system," it said. Fidel Castro's regime maintained "tight control" over its critics and nearly 70 "prisoners of conscience" remained jailed. "There was increasing international concern about Cuba's failure to improve civil and political rights," the report said. (AFP, 23/5/06)

May 21: The Evangelical Czech Brethren Church sent a letter to Fidel Castro with a request to release immediately Cuban human rights activists. The letter demands that Cuban authorities respect the citizens who are seeking dignified life in freedom to the benefit of their own country. The synod of the church, which ended in Prague, also informed the World Council of Churches (WCC) and other international church organizations about the step. It has called on them to pay attention thoroughly and persistently to the discriminated Christians and persecuted activists in Cuba and not to limit their ecumenical contacts to official representatives, recognized by the regime. A few days ago, the Czech Brethren organized a seminar on Cuba as an appeal for the European and global ecumenical movement. (CTK, 21/5/06)

May 19: Martha Beatriz Roque, leader of the illegal Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, disclosed a letter that she sent to her attorney Amelia Rodríguez Calá, from the “Salvador Allende“ law firm, in downtown Havana, in which she requests her attorney to intervene to put an end to the harassment that she is subjected to or make the necessary arrangements for her to return to the penitentiary establishment where she will serve out the remainder of her sentence. Roque, who received a 20-year prison sentence during the crackdown against political dissidence of 2003, is under medical extra penal license due to health reasons. (MartiNoticias, 19/5/06)

May 16: Reporters Without Borders condemned the brutal and unfair arrests of Odelín Alfonso, a regular contributor to Cubanet and Milisa Valle Ricardo of the Jóvenes sin Censura news agency on 13 May 2006 and the continued detention of Alfonso without any specific charges being put to him. “These arrests reveal once again an unfairness and denial of justice. No real reason exists to explain these repressive acts. It is pure and simple intimidation directed against peaceful opposition figures whose fate varies, apparently, according to the mood of their jailers,” said Reporters Without Borders, adding, “We hope that Odelín Alfonso will be quickly released”. (RWB, 16/5/06)

May 16: Young Cuban Americans gathered around a telephone at Princeton University in April to hear Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina talk fervently from his home in Cuba, about growing discontent among the island's youths and their yearning for freedom. Three days later, Cuban authorities arrested the dissident leader. They held him until May 12. Rodriguez was released after Raices de Esperanza, the Cuban-American youth group that he addressed at Princeton, mounted an international campaign to denounce the Cuban government for oppressing political discourse and to demand that he be freed from prison. Rodriguez, director of the Center for Alternative Studies for the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy, delivered an impassioned speech to Raices in a conference call with his brother, Nestor, in late April. "Freedom of expression, freedom of association, free access to sources of information, the right to investigate, to doubt, that is simply enough to motivate our struggle," Rodriguez told about 100 Raices members. (The Miami Herald, 17/5/06)

May 13: Cubanet correspondent Odelín Alfonso was held for a few hours at a National Revolutionary Police station in the Havana district of Arroyo Naranjo after being arrested with his wife on their return from a meeting organised by the Ladies in White. Two days before the meeting, a member of the State Security (the political police) had told him not to attend. He has been fined for “resistance and outrage.” (RWB, 17/5/06)

May 13: Ladies in White, wives and relatives of Cuban political prisoners, demonstrated along two kilometers of Havana’s streets paying tribute to Cuban mothers on the eve on Mother’s Day. Over 15 women dressed in white walked with flowers in their hands from Laura Pollán’s home to 23 and I in El Vedado, where they laid a wreath under a commemorative plaque to Leoner Perez, mother of Cuba’s national hero Jose Marti. (AFP, 14/5/06)

May 12: Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, leader of the illegal Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, said she was told that she would not be allowed to leave her house in Havana on May 20, Cuban Independence day. Last Independence Day, Roque helped organize an unprecedented assembly of about 200 members of country's opposition movement. She was imprisoned in 2003 and released the following year for medical reasons. In recent weeks she has complained of harassment, including an attack on April 25, when she reported that she was punched by a man outside her home. In a letter Roque wrote to a Cuban lawyer, she said a group of people she did not know who gathered outside her home told her she would no longer be able to receive packages. "The manner in which the government wants me to live my life is unbearable...'' she wrote in the letter. (AP, 12/5/06)

May 8: The US government condemned the repression suffered by Cuban dissidents and the campaign orchestrated by the Havana authorities to harass and intimidate some of them. "The Cuban government recently directed mobs to intimidate and harass peaceful dissidents including Hilda Molina, Felix Bonne, and members of the Sigler Amaya family," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement. He added that on April 25 former political prisoner and the head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, Marta Beatriz Roque, "was attacked in her home and prevented from attending a U.S.-sponsored event." "The United States reiterates its support for these brave individuals and all those in Cuba who are being deprived of the freedom they desire and deserve," McCormack said. The official US statement, he said, came several weeks after the third anniversary of the so-called "Black Spring," an allusion to the harshest wave of repression launched in recent years in Cuba between March 18-20, 2003. (EFE, 8/5/06)

May 8: The wife of Cuban political prisoner Nelson Aguiar Ramírez was denied access to the premises of the Cuban Council of State. Dolia Leal, who participates in demonstrations with the Ladies in White demanding the release of her husband, showed up at the offices of the Council of State to turn in a letter addressed to Fidel Castro, but the Council employees refused to allow her to enter the building and to receive the letter. According to Leal, she had to leave without turning in the letter while other citizens were entering the premises without any objections. (Netfor Cuba, 8/5/06)

May 8: Arco Progresista, a coalition of moderate opposition organizations, requested that, to be consistent with its aspiration to integrate the new UN Human Rights Council, the Cuban government amnesty political prisoners and put an end to the harassment against dissidents. In the declaration, AP also called upon the government of Fidel Castro to improve imprisonment conditions and “promote institutional and educational advocacy of human rights.” (AFP, 8/5/06)

May 8: Fernando Martínez Calzadillas, president of the illegal Western Cultural Civic Center (Centro Cívico Cultural de Occidente) was sentenced to 4 years in jail by a military tribunal for the alleged crime of bribery. The trial took place on April 28th, less than twenty-four hours after of his arrest, and Martínez Calzadilla was immediately transferred to the Kilo 5 y medio Prison to serve his sentence. He denied all charges, but the State Attorney of the military tribunal relied on testimony of two witnesses who accused Martinez Calzadilla of selling false documents to some youth who wanted to leave the armed forces. (Puente Informativo, 8/5/06)

May 5: On World Press Freedom Day, Cuba claimed that its reporters were the freest in the world. "In Cuba (...) we say: we are the freest journalists because we are a part of the people with the most freedom, a country where there is a revolution that is the most just, most ethical and dignified social project that any nation ever had," stated Granma, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in 2005 there were 24 imprisoned journalists, the highest figure after China. (Reuters, 5/4/06)

May 4: The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) said in a press release that Cuban prisoner Emilio Manuel Pérez, arrested and imprisoned along with other fifteen people by the authorities of Havana in July, 2005, has declared himself on a hunger strike. Pérez is determined not to eat any type of food until they improve the conditions of his imprisonment and his rights are respected. (EFE, 4/5/06)

May 3: Sylvia Iriondo, president of the exile group Mothers and Women Against Repression and for Cuba, said in Brussels that "the European Union policy of dialogue with Cuba has been a great failure, since it has only served to strengthen the Castro regime and continue the repression." "The more the measures are eased, the more the repression increases in Cuba," Iriondo said. Iriondo, who visited the European Parliament at the invitation of Transnational Radical Party Eurodeputy Marco Panella, was accompanied by Angel de Fana, a former political prisoner, Manuel Vazquez Portal, one of the 75 dissidents jailed in the spring of 2003, and Blanca Gonzalez, the mother of jailed journalist Normando Hernandez. (EFE, 3/5/06)

May 3: A week after being beaten up by Castro supporters, Cuban dissident Marta Beatriz Roque urged the European Union to modify its policy toward the Communist-ruled island, saying the bloc's suspension of diplomatic sanctions encouraged the regime to step up repression. Roque, who was attacked in Havana April 26 by a mob she said had "the go-ahead from the regime," took part in a teleconference staged by Cuban exiles at the seat of the European Parliament in Brussels. "We're in a high-risk situation," Roque said, adding, ahead of the review of the common EU policy toward Cuba set for next month, that the European offer of a dialogue with Havana had not only failed to lead to a softening of the Castro regime's position but had actually resulted in its hardening. "Everything has indisputably worsened," Roque said. In January 2005, the Council of Europe accepted a Spanish proposal and lifted diplomatic sanctions against the Cuban government imposed in 2003 in response to the arrest and conviction of 75 dissidents. (EFE, Europa Press, 3/5/06)

May 2: Eliécer Consuegra Rivas, president of the illegal Democratic Alliance of Eastern Cuba, remained besieged for more than 80 hours in his home by groups organized by the Cuban State Security Department. The incident occurred as Consuegra was on his way to an event organized in the province of Camagüey and was threatened by nearly 20 individuals armed with sticks and rocks. (Cubanet, 2/5/06)

May 2: Cuba remained in 2005 the Latin American nation where news-gatherers have most to fear from the state, holding onto the dubious distinction of being "the world's second-largest prison for journalists" after China, according to Reporters Without Borders. The wave of repression launched by the Castro regime in the spring of 2003 continued last year, as three additional independent reporters joined the ranks of the 21 jailed at the beginning of the crackdown, the Paris-based group says in its annual report. RSF, as the organization is known, is releasing the document to coincide with the observance of World Press Freedom Day. (EFE, 2/5/06)

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