Prison furloughs contrast with growing repression
By Laurie Goering. Tribune Staff Writer. March 29, 2000
HAVANA -- These are extraordinary times for Cuba's political dissidents, and no one knows that better than the island's most famous detainees, the so-called Group of Four.
Fidel Castro has long sworn the four will serve every minute of their jail sentences for releasing a treatise called "The Homeland Belongs to All," which calls for free elections and free movement in and out of Cuba.
Recently, however, three of the dissidents found themselves unexpectedly home for the weekend on prison furloughs and free to talk with a visiting foreign journalist, even as Cuba's government cracks down on other dissidents.
"Our bodies are weaker, but our ideas are stronger," said Marta Beatriz Roque, one of the group's leaders, sitting in shorts and a T-shirt on an old metal chair in her barren apartment. Years in prison "have refined our ideas," she said, and the group is "much more
united" than it was before the members were arrested.
Over the past four months, according to human-rights activists, the island's communist government has detained or restricted the movements of nearly 600 political opponents. It is "the largest number of actions of political repression in the last 10 years," said Elizardo Sanchez, the
leading spokesman for Cuba's political opposition and head of the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
With world attention distracted by the plight of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, low-level intimidation of dissidents, from threats to surveillance, is increasing, Sanchez said. Even average Cubans are subjected to frequent document checks by legions of uniformed police, she said.
"Things are getting worse," Sanchez said. "In the last six months we've seen disproportionately repressive methods."
Cuba's government denies any crackdown is under way.
Dissidents, however, say the intimidation has worsened since November's Ibero-American summit in Havana, during which visiting diplomats held high-profile meetings with dissident leaders, embarrassing the government.
But it may be occurring as well because of the growth in political opposition in Cuba. According to Sanchez, the number of dissident groups has grown to about 80, with more than 3,000 members scattered across the island. About 350 political prisoners are held in the island's jails, he said.
"The opposition is multiplying, but unity is very difficult because the security forces block everything with lots of low-intensity repression," Sanchez said.
Most of those arrested have been detained briefly, and sentences for political crimes are notably shorter, especially since Pope John Paul II's visit in 1998.
Dr. Oscar Biscet, a militant physician convicted last month on charges including "public disorder" and "insulting symbols of the fatherland" for hanging a Cuban flag upside down, received a 3-year sentence, less than the 7-year maximum. Moreover, international observers were,
for the first time, allowed into that trial.
International pressure, analysts say, is pushing Cuba toward some degree of moderation, particularly as the island, flattened economically by the fall of the Soviet Union and a 40-year U.S. embargo, tries to move itself into the world economy.
"In Cuba there is carefully calibrated repression," said Max Castro, a University of Miami sociologist and Cuban affairs expert. "The main point is that you have to keep control and not allow any political competitors. ... You want to avoid any snowball effect that could lead to
what happened in Eastern Europe or Tiananmen Square.
"At the same time, though, you want to minimize the political fallout from that internationally. It's a balancing act," he said.
At the center of that balancing act is the Group of Four, considered "counterrevolutionaries" in a nation that claims to have no political prisoners.
Since their initial arrest in July 1997, the dissidents who make up the Group of Four have become an international cause celebre, drawing international demands for their release, including one from visiting Illinois Gov. George Ryan in October.
Fidel Castro, angry at the pressure, has insisted the four will serve every moment of their sentences, which are as long as 4 years. Starting last month, however, his government quietly began allowing three of the dissidents--Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez--unprecedented weekend furloughs.
A fourth, Vladimiro Roca, the renegade son of a Cuban revolutionary hero, has not been allowed furloughs.
Recently, the three temporarily freed dissidents--each from separate prisons--met at Roque's small apartment in Havana to talk.
Bonne thanked Ryan for his visit and talks with dissidents on the island, saying his push for an end to sanctions had been a political help.
"We couldn't see your governor, so please send him a message," Bonne said. "Tell him we send greetings, that he's part of the Cuban people now. Tell him it was a very positive visit."
Roque, an economist who has suffered numerous health problems since being jailed, said she believes their brief releases are part of a changing political scenario in Cuba.
"The government's political views in respect to us are changing a lot, I think, slowly," she said. Rising oil prices, she believes, are putting pressure on Cuba's government to comply with international demands as a way of winning loans for oil imports.
The United Nations' human-rights commission also is meeting in Geneva and is expected to vote within three weeks on whether to condemn Cuba for human-rights violations, as it did by a one-vote margin last year.
Those pressures may be combining to push Cuba to at least put a softer face on its repressive policies, analysts say.
"I think this shows a growing sensitivity to world public opinion," said Wayne Smith, a leading Cuba analyst and head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1979 to 1982.
Smith points to Cuba's government standing by last fall as world leaders attending the Ibero-American summit met with dissidents, stealing the spotlight from the summit.
"Castro clearly didn't like it and didn't want delegates to meet with dissidents, but he had to do it," Smith said. "The more meetings we have like that, the more contact Cuba has with the outside world, the greater are the pressures for these people to be heard, whether Castro
likes it or not."
However, public image remains secondary to political control, analysts agree.
"The Castro government doesn't want to be condemned, but the first priority is to keep Cubans who want to question things under great pressure," said Frank Calzon, executive director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba.
In a report released this week, the U.S. State Department said the island's record had deteriorated over the past year.
Cuba's government often prefers quiet intimidation to keep dissent in line. For instance, it may avoid high-profile jailings by offering persistent political opponents the chance to leave the island, diplomats in Havana say.
Roque and the other furloughed dissidents joke that the government's anti-dissident crackdown has only helped their cause. |