Spotlight on Cuba: Crackdown on Dissidents

Chronology of Events - November 2006

November 23: Dissident Alberto Hernández Suárez, in detention since midyear, was set free. Hernández Suárez, the director of an independent library in Pinar del Río, had been serving one year in jail at the Taco Taco prison, in Pinar del Río, since April 12, under charges of “dangerousness”. (Cubanet, 23/11/06)

November 23: A member of the Ladies in White – wives and relatives of political prisoners -- was attacked with stones by a State Security collaborator while walking along the main street of the town of Palmarito de Cauto, in Santiago de Cuba. Ana Belkis Ferrer García said the local chief refused to recognize the allegations when she reported the attack to the police. (Cubanet, 23/11/06)

November 22: Dissident Oswaldo Payá called upon Cubans “to raise their voices” for the release of political prisoners on the island, two weeks after making a similar call of support to the United Nations Human Rights Council. “Once again we call upon all Cubans, inside and out of Cuba, to raise their voices in favour of the release of those subjected to suffering by cruel and inhuman imprisonment”, said Payá in a statement of the Christian Liberation Movement, over which he presides. (EER, 23/11/06)

November 21: Human Rights First welcomed the release of Cuban journalist Oscar Mario Gonzalez Perez, who had been held without trial since his arrest in July 2005. A week before, the New York-based advocacy group mounted a campaign for Gonzalez's release, following reports from his wife that his health was drastically deteriorating in prison and that he was being denied medical care. More than 1,000 Human Rights First supporters sent emails and letters to Cuban authorities urging that Gonzalez be freed. (PRNewswire, 21/11/06)

November 21: The Cuban government released without explanation two dissidents who had been in prison since their arrests last year, an opposition leader said.  The regime set free Oscar Mario Gonzalez and Santiago Valdeolla, who were arrested along with 20 other people on July 22, 2005, as they were organizing a demonstration in front of the French Embassy, the head of the illegal Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, or CCDHRN, Elizardo Sanchez, told the press. Ricardo Medina and Francisco Moure, who had been arrested at the French Embassy protest, were set free on October 25. The head of the CCDHRN said that at the beginning of the year the island's communist government freed Jesus Adolfo Reyes, another member of the embassy protest group, but still in prison without any formal charges against them are Rene Gomez Manzano, Julio Cesar Lopez, Raul Martinez and Miguel Lopez Santos.  Sanchez said that in August and September there had been a general decline in "acts of political repression" by the communist regime, but he added that in October and so far in November there had been "dozens of arrests." "It seems that the government is replacing the repression ... (of) long-term imprisonment with low-profile political repression: short-term arrests, threats, interrogations, (and) physical or verbal attacks," he said. (EFE, 21/11/06)

November 21: Independent trade unionist Lázaro González Adán was sentenced to three years in prison after a trial held in the municipal court of Sibanicú, province of Camagüey. After two years in detention without charges or trial for the alleged crimes of disobedience and public disturbance, the court issued its sentence against González Adán. (Cubanet, 21/11/06)

November 19: The health of 62 year-old Cuban journalist Oscar Mario Gonzalez Perez has deteriorated considerably since he was detained and imprisoned in July 2005. Mr. Gonzalez has been held without trial and is being denied adequate medical treatment for serious health problems. Cuban prison authorities have refused to administer necessary medical tests despite pleas from his wife and a physician's diagnosis that such tests are needed. (Cuba News, 20/11/06)

November 18: The Acting President of the Independent Movement for an Alternative Option, Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya, was forcefully arrested along with his son, Gulliver Sigler González. Juan Francisco and his son were thrown in a police car when they tried to cross a cordon of police forces and pro-government mobs that for several days impeded access to the block where some of their relatives live. (Cubanet, 25/11/06)

November 16: Independent journalist Julio Aleaga Pesant was detained and handcuffed on the streets and taken to a police station in a patrol car. The incident took place minutes after the reporter, along with a group of colleagues, took part in a televised lecture on journalistic techniques sponsored by Florida International University, at the US Interests Section in Havana. (Cubanet, 21/11/06)

November 16: The European Parliament decided to send a delegation to Cuba to deliver a prestigious human rights award to a group of women - wives, mothers and daughters of political prisoners - who were barred by the Communist regime from traveling to France to receive it. Last year's Sakharov Prize was awarded to the Women in White. When the Castro regime denied the activists permission to travel to this city that is the seat of the EU legislature, the women asked the body to send representatives to Havana to give them the prize there. The decision to do so was made during a conference of the heads of parties represented in the body. (EFE, 16/11/06)

November 9: The Ladies in White movement, made up of women relatives of “the 75” dissidents sent to prison in the spring of 2003, informed the vice-president of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott, of the problems that prisoners of conscience face in Cuba. In a communiqué, the Ladies in White expressed the “horrible prison conditions to which political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are subjected”. (El Nuevo Herald, 9/11/06)

November 9: Cuba's best-known dissident urged member nations of the UN Human Rights Council to demand the release of all Cuba's political prisoners, a day after the world body's General Assembly voted against a similar measure. Oswaldo Paya, whose signature drive for democracy in 2002 gained him international attention and prompted the government to declare socialism in Cuba "irrevocable," said he was lodging letters urging the motion at several Havana embassies for countries on the 47-nation Human Rights Council.  "It's scandalous that this is not a scandal," he said of Cuba's imprisonment of political activists. Paya said his Christian Liberation Movement is against the trade embargo, and glad the world is pressuring the United States to lift it. But just as important for Cubans, he said, are freedom of expression and the right to choose their political and economic systems. "They are denying Cubans the right to have rights," he said of countries who fail to recognize this need. "We need international solidarity, and moral support." (AP, El Nuevo Herald, 9/11/06)

November 8: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the two-year house arrest handed down by a Cuban court to a journalist who reported on a dengue fever outbreak that the authorities censored. Journalist Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez of the independent agency Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental (APLO) was convicted by a court in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on the uniquely Cuban charge of “social dangerousness.” The authorities often use this vaguely worded charge to silence critics. Under article 72 of the Cuban Penal Code, “any person shall be deemed dangerous if he or she has shown proclivity to commit crimes demonstrated by conduct that is in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality.” It is punishable by up to four years in prison. “It is outrageous that the Cuban authorities would seek to censor an outbreak of a deadly disease and punish a journalist for performing a vital public service by exposing it,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. (CPJ Press Release, 8/11/06)

November 8: The Progressive Arch coalition urged the Cuban government to stop the “acts of repudiation” against dissidents and to fulfil the government’s international commitments on terrorism. A written statement signed by the spokesman of the movement, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, calls such acts of repudiation a “particular form of State terrorism”. (AFP, 8/11/06)

November 6: Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental (APLO), an independent news agency, was sentenced by a court in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to two years of house arrest for being a “danger to society.” Espinosa was brought before the court after being held for 12 days at Department 21 of the state security police. The court also ordered Espinosa to get a state job and banned him from continuing his journalistic activities or he would be sent to prison. Espinosa worked as a nurse until three months ago when he was fired because of his dissident views. (RWB, Cubanet, 6/11/06)

November 1: The human rights branch of the Organization of American States condemned Cuba for jailing 75 dissidents and swiftly trying and executing three hijackers during a 2003 crackdown on dissent. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommended that Cuba free the prisoners, compensate the victims and their families and modify its laws to ensure the independence of the judiciary and the rights of its citizens. The opinion, stated in two separate reports, likely will have little immediate impact because Cuba has long refused to recognize the commission's decisions. But human rights lawyers say it might lay the groundwork for future legal actions, including suits for reparations, if there's a change of government. The Cuban American Bar Association and the rights group Cuban Democratic Directory acted as plaintiffs for the jailed dissidents. The hijackers, Lorenzo Copello, Barbaro Sevilla and Jorge Martinez, were executed by firing squad on April 11. The family members were never informed of the trial and weren't allowed to see their bodies afterward. (McClatchy Newspapers, 1/11/06)

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