April 24: Cuba accused the United States and local dissidents of working together to subvert its government, the harshest warning it has issued to its opponents since a political crackdown in 2003. It said US diplomats in Havana have encouraged protests, hosted dissidents at receptions, invited them to take part in video conferences, provided them with access to the Internet and given them material support. "The United States Interests Section in Havana has been consolidated as the leading edge of the North American government's subversive policy and has strengthened its role as the general headquarters of the internal counterrevolution," the government said in a statement published in the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma. It was the second complaint of US interference since police broke-up a peaceful sit-in by 10 women near Havana's Revolution Square to demand that new President Raul Castro release 55 of the 75 dissidents jailed in 2003 that are still behind bars. The government said a statement issued by the Interests Section deploring the incident and expressing support for the women demonstrators was "irrefutable proof of US efforts to foment subversion in our country." "Cuba affirms its right to impede, neutralize and respond to these provocative actions conceived, financed and encouraged by the government of the United States and its Interests Section in Havana," it said. (Reuters, 24/4/08)
April 23: Cuba and the US have exchanged words following the brief detention of women who were protesting to call for their jailed dissident husbands to be freed. The Cuban government has accused the women of working for the US. Washington responded by saying the women had the right to free assembly, as guaranteed by human rights accords which Cuba has signed. The women's husbands are among 75 people imprisoned during a 2003 crackdown on dissidents. Some 10 women from a group known as the Ladies in White, were staging a peaceful protest to call for their husbands' release. The women were detained by the police, forcefully put on a bus and driven home. The Cuban press launched a series of attacks on the wives, accusing them of working with the US to subvert the Cuban revolution. State-run television showed photos of the women meeting the head of the US Interest section in Havana. Washington responded by issuing a statement deploring the police action. It said the women were exercising their right to free assembly as guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Cuba recently signed up to. The statement also urged the Cuban government to unconditionally release those imprisoned in the crackdown. (BBC, AP, 23/4/08)
April 22: The break-up of a demonstration by a small group of Cuban women demanding the release of their imprisoned dissident husbands came just a few days after a government warning that in Cuba there is no space for "subversion" or the dreams of "internal mercenaries." "This is a bucket of cold water for those who believe in a gradual democratisation of our country," moderate dissident Manuel Cuesta told the press, commenting on the incident, when female police officers broke up a sit-in by 10 members of a group known as the Women in White. Cuesta, spokesman for the Arco Progresista, a dissident coalition of small groups with social democratic tendencies, said he is "worried" because he sees the police removal of the protesters as an indication of a change in attitude from the stance seen since Raúl Castro took over as president from his ailing brother Fidel in February. He said the authorities had been taking a more lenient stance with respect to the few street protests held by dissidents, but "the message sent out now is much stronger, because the government’s power was brought to bear on these women." (IPS, 22/4/08)
April 22: The outcome of the quiet protest by 10 women, half of them members of the dissident group Ladies in White, underscored the Castro government's willingness to lift some restrictions on the lives of Cubans while refusing to tolerate even the slightest dissent. "The message is clear: zero political tolerance," said dissident Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commision for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which is illegal but tolerated by the state. "At least in the area of human rigths, there is no significant change in Cuba." A government statement read on the state media called the demonstration a "crude and shameful provocation" by mercenaries carrying out orders of anti-Castro forces in Miami. The statement was published in the state press. (Sun Sentinel, 22/4/08)
April 22: Cuba launched a blistering attack on the wives of imprisoned dissidents, accusing them of working with its arch-enemy, the United States, to subvert one-party socialist rule. The women, known as the "Ladies in White", have staged an unprecedented series of small demonstrations since their husbands were arrested in a political crackdown in 2003 that landed 75 dissidents in prison on charges of working for the U.S. government. Fifty-five remain behind bars. On April 21, ten of the women staged a sit-in next to Havana's Revolution Square to demand that President Raul Castro's government release their relatives. They were detained, put on a bus and driven home by police. A government statement carried by Cuba's official media attacked the women's protest for being a "provocation (…) ordered by their Yankee masters". State-run television showed photos of the women meeting with Michael Parmly, the head of the US Interests Section in Havana, which a commentator called "the headquarters of the Cuban counterrevolution." The "Ladies in White," who earned their name by marching silently every Sunday along a Havana boulevard dressed in white, were defiant in the face of the government attack. "We were born out of government repression and we have no particular political agenda," said one of their founders, Miriam Leiva. "Our objective is purely humanitarian, to free the prisoners of March 2003." (Reuters, 22/4/08)
April 21: A group of Cuban women peacefully demonstrating for the release of their jailed husbands were roughed up by a mob and arrested near the offices of President Raul Castro. The 10 women, members of the "Women in White," gathered at a park at the edge of Cuba's Revolution Square, where the government and Communist Party headquarters are located. They wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the faces and names of their loved ones, but carried no signs. "We are here to demand the release of our husbands and won't leave until they are free or they arrest us. We have waited long enough, we want to talk to the new president," group leader Laura Pollan said. Moments later, a bus pulled up and about 20 female corrections officers tried to arrest the women, who sat on the sidewalk, clasped arms and refused to move. "They are dying, they are dying," one women yelled with tears in her eyes as the corrections officer tried to move her toward the bus. A mob of about 100 government supporters, mainly women from nearby government buildings, quickly entered the fray, pushing the women, picking them up, throwing them into the waiting bus and yelling insults. The women's husbands and other relatives were arrested in a massive government crackdown in 2003, which landed 75 dissidents in prison for long terms on charges of working with the United States to subvert the government. "After forcing them into the bus they dropped the Havana residents at their homes and sent the others back to their homes in the provinces," Marta Bonachea, a spokesperson for the women, told the press in a telephone interview. (Reuters, 21/4/08)
April 18: One of Cuba's youngest "prisoners of conscience" was recovering after he was nearly strangled to death by a fellow prisoner, while security personnel watched nearby, pro-democracy activists and family said. Normando Hernandez Gonzales, 38, was allegedly attacked on April 14, by a fellow inmate at the Carlos J. Finlay military hospital in Havana, where he has been hospitalized for seven months due to tuberculosis and several other potentially life-threatening diseases, all of them contracted in jail. He was transferred last September from Kilo 7 Prison, in central Camaguey Province, north to the hospital in the Cuban capital, a nine-hour bus ride away. His wife Yaraí Reyes Marín explained in a telephone statement released by the Cuban Democratic Directorate (CDD), a pro-democracy group, that her husband was nearly strangled to death by a common prisoner sentenced for murdering a police officer. The attack happened as four guards were watching, she was quoted as saying, adding that another prisoner unsuccessfully attempted to defend Hernandez Gonzalez. He, "has gouges on his neck and left shoulder...[The guards] waited until he was partially suffocated, and after that, when they saw that the other prisoner was unable to remove the attacker from Normando, that was when they went in to remove him," Reyes Marín reportedly said. (BosNewsLife, 18/4/08)
April 17: In June, European Union member states are expected to consider whether to normalize relations with Cuba. This follows a call by the EU's Commissioner of Development to permanently lift diplomatic sanctions. Within the EU, the Czech Republic leads a group of former communist states that oppose engagement with Cuba. "It is as if the people who are fighting the Cuban regime are their brothers in a political sense, the people who are fighting for the same causes that the Czechs or Polish or the Hungarians were fighting for 20 or 30 years ago," explained Piotr Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies. Cuba's former colonial ruler, Spain, and a handful of other EU countries are pushing Brussels for engagement with Cuba, but the British Conservative and member of the European Parliament Edward Mcmillan-Scott says Cuba has done nothing to merit any change in relations. "I think that the European Commission is quite wrong to pretend that it's business as usual with Cuba; that somehow the departure of one Castro, and his replacement by another, has made some sort of difference. It hasn't. The regime is still as corrupt," Mcmillan-Scott said. (VOA, 17/4/08)
April 15: A small number of inmates from the Nieves Morejón prison in Sancti Spiritus, were selected to attend a presentation of the artistic brigade headed by singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. Only a limited number of prisoners with short sentences and those who collaborate with the guards were allowed to attend the event. The rest of the prisoners watched the show on closed-circuit television, except those who do not support the revolution. (Cubanacán Press, 18/4/08)
April 14: Internal dissidents, exiles and Spanish intellectuals released a manifesto asking the governments of the European Union (EU) “to devise concrete measures in order to engage in a constructive and open dialogue with the entire Cuban civil society, in particular, with the democratic dissident movement”. The signatories of the document titled “Yes to dialogue — with Cuba’s people”, called the current situation on the island deeply “serious”, after the succession of Fidel Castro by his brother Raúl, and warn that “the country continues to be hostage to an elite determined to block any social, political or economic progress.” (EER, 14/4/08)
April 4: The human rights arm of the Organization of American States condemned Cuba for multiple violations, drawing an angry response from its allies Venezuela and Nicaragua, which argued that Havana had been unable to defend itself. In its 2007 annual report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a semi-autonomous unit of the OAS, said Cuba restricted political rights and freedom of expression, lacked free elections and an independent judiciary and "created a permanent panorama of breached basic rights for the Cuban citizenry." The report also faults Cuba for the lack of independent trade unions and threats and attacks against rights activists. The commission also noted that foreign reporters were stripped of their work permits because "their assessment of Cuban problems is not acceptable to the Cuban government," the report said. It said Cuba jailed 26 journalists, more than any other country in the hemisphere. Cuba is also found to have violated multiple articles of international rights treaties and was urged to free jailed dissidents. One of the prisoners, Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo, was confined to 15 months of solitary confinement and "suffered damage to his central nervous system and other pathologies," according to the report. (McClatchy Newspapers, 574/08)
April 3: Lawyer Yamilé Llanes Labrada, wife of political prisoner Dr. José Luis García Paneque, deemed her husband’s situation as “extremely worrisome”. García Paneque, jailed in “Las Mangas” prison in Bayamo, Granma province, lives together with very dangerous criminal prisoners, amidst increasing repression and intimidation, causing his wife to fear for his safety. (Radio Martí, 3/4/08)
April 1: A coalition of internal dissidents demanded the government of Raúl Castro to comply with the two human rights pacts it signed at the UN last February and to publish them “in full,” according to a statement handed to the media. Under the title “Comply with the Pacts,” the Liberal Union of the Republic of Cuba (ULRC) calls on “all Cubans, without exception, to demand from the regime the publication in full” of the pacts signed at the UN and pleads for “solidarity from the international community.” (AFP, 2/4/08)
