St Vincent Herald,
Thu 10 May 2001.
HAVANA - Cuba plans to try two anti-Castro activists this week, one on a
common criminal charge and the other for allegedly spreading "enemy
propaganda" in news reports abroad, relatives and dissident sources said on
Tuesday.
Isabel del Pino, head of the small Humanitarian Followers of Christ the King
group, was to face a charge of "threatening behavior" before a Havana
tribunal Wednesday following a recent dispute with a neighbor, the sources said.
"The authorities have fabricated this charge against me for political
reasons," del Pino said, quoted by a dissident Cuban news agency which
posts stories on the Internet via contacts in the anti-communist Cuban American
community.
In the second trial scheduled for Friday at another Havana court, Jose
Orlando Gonzalez Bridon, head of another small opposition group, the
Confederation of Cuban Democratic Workers, was to face charges of spreading "enemy
propaganda" and "false information," his family said.
Del Pino remains at home, but Bridon has been in jail since he was picked up
at his home in mid-December.
Bridon apparently incensed authorities with a public act in November where
he and other opposition activists chanted slogans like "Down with Fidel!"
as they symbolically buried Cuba's constitution and penal code in small coffins
in a yard.
Bridon has also been writing anti-government articles for dissemination
abroad, by dictation to Florida, with headlines like "Cuba, a Perfect
Dictatorship."
His wife, Maria Esther Valdes Suarez, said he now faced a maximum seven-year
detention at Friday's trial, which would center on an article he wrote
denouncing "police negligence" in the murder of a woman by her
ex-husband. "We don't want to imagine that the failure to help this young
mother has been because she was an activist opposed to the communist regime,"
Bridon wrote in the August 2000 article, a copy of which was seen by Reuters,
alleging that local police ignored signs the woman was in danger.
NO PUBLIC COMMENT
Cuban officials have not commented publicly on either case or confirmed the
scheduling of what would be the first trials of dissidents of recent months.
Dates and venues of politically sensitive trials, particularly those which gain
international attention, are often changed at the last minute.
Bridon's case has drawn protests both from British-based human rights group
Amnesty International and the Paris-based press freedom body, Reporters Without
Frontiers.
Cuba maintains a one-party political system which outlaws any legal
opposition to the ruling Communist Party. Authorities view dissidents as "mercenaries"
and "traitors" working for the United States, saying they are unknown
by the Cuban population and only exist in the "virtual reality" world
of foreign media.
A copy of the prosecution case against Bridon, seen by Reuters, referred to
him as a "member of the little counter- revolutionary group" and
described him as mixing only "with anti-social elements and people
disaffected with the revolutionary process."
It added that "he delivers false and distorted information about Cuban
society to subversive radio stations based in Miami" and sent the story
accusing the police "with the aim of provoking discontent and public
disorder."
In an interview in her run-down home in Havana's San Miguel del Padron
district, Bridon's wife countered that her husband was simply a peaceful
activist for political reform. "He is not a criminal," she said,
adding that she assumed her husband would be convicted but perhaps receive a
reduced sentence. "I never lose hope. What they are going to do with Jose
is in Fidel Castro's hands."
© 01 St Vincent and Grenadines Herald
Related News
FROM CUBA / Dissident's trial suspended
again / Cuba-Verdad
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suspends trial of anti-Castro dissident / CNN | 