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Cuba Deports Two European Lawmakers

By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer, May 20, 2005.

HAVANA - Cuba deported two European lawmakers who planned to attend a mass gathering of dissidents Friday that already was troubled by infighting among opponents to Fidel Castro and the reported harassment of some participants.

Several years in the planning, Friday's general meeting of the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society in Cuba was designed to bring together dissidents from on and off the island to discuss plans for democratic reforms after more than 40 years under Castro, the world's longest-ruling leader.

While Castro has not commented publicly on the meeting, earlier this week he compared the dissidents, whom he calls "mercenaries," to militant Cuban exiles he accuses of being terrorists.

Authorities escorted Czech Senator Karel Schwarzenberg and German lawmaker Arnold Vaatz from their hotel to the airport Thursday afternoon. "This is typical behavior of a totalitarian state," Schwarzenberg told The Associated Press from his cell phone as his flight was about to leave for Paris. "I did nothing against the law. They just didn't like the people I was visiting. I'm sure it's in connection with the assembly."

Schwarzenberg served as a chancellor under former Czech President Vaclav Havel.

Earlier in the week, authorities refused entry to Polish lawmakers Boguslav Sonik and Jacek Protasiewicz, members of the European Union assembly's conservative European People's Party who planned to attend the assembly.

Still, diplomats from numerous foreign missions in Havana, including the U.S. Interests Section, planned to attend the gathering to be held in the back yard of a prominent dissident's home in Havana.

Castro accuses the U.S. Interests Section of bankrolling the opposition on the island - a charge Washington denies.

Several dozen volunteers were finishing work Thursday on veteran dissident Felix Bonne's yard, where the meeting was planned. Concrete had been poured and bathrooms were built to accommodate a crowd.

"The assembly could be held right now," Carlos Raul Jimenez of the Nationalist Agenda Movement said from the site.

Assembly organizers expected about 500 participants Friday, he said.

It still was not known, however, if the Castro government would allow the meeting to be held. The government also has not commented directly on the deportations and denials of entry in the cases of the European lawmakers.

In a separate setback, the Christian Liberation Movement, led by internationally known dissident Oswaldo Paya, said in a communique it would not attend an event organized by the rival dissident group. The movement issued a statement calling the gathering "a big fraud against the opposition."

The communique accused Martha Beatriz Roque and other assembly organizers of working in concert with Cuban state security members and with the support of Miami-based exiles to the benefit of Castro's government. Paya and Roque long have been at odds.

Telephone calls by the AP seeking comment from Roque and fellow assembly organizer Rene Gomez were not returned Thursday.

Some other dissidents, including several dozen relatives of political prisoners, said in recent days they would not attend the assembly for fear of new arrests.

Roque complained last week that numerous dissidents from Cuba's interior had been summoned to appear at their local police stations the same day as the assembly, and dissidents on Cuba's Isle of Youth were told by authorities they could not travel to Havana for the meeting.

In comparing the dissidents to terrorists, Castro this week mentioned old foe Luis Posada Carriles, who was charged by U.S. immigration authorities Thursday with illegally entering the United States, where he had applied for political asylum.

Venezuela is seeking his extradition for alleged involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Castro complained that while Posada lived in Miami, the United States was funding groups dedicated to subverting his government.

"This is the empire's answer: money to foment destabilization," he said.

An EU spokesman said the denial of entry to Polish lawmakers would be studied when member states review relations with the island in June. Cuba-EU relations have been tense since a March 2003 roundup of 75 dissidents, including Roque. She is among 14 in the original group since freed on medical parole.

On the Net:
Dissident assembly: http://www.asambleasociedadcivilcuba.info/

Cuba's Democrats

Investor's Business Daily, May 18, 2005.

Freedom: Like a green shoot improbably breaking through dilapidated concrete, something extraordinary is happening down in Cuba.

It's not one of those showy people-power street revolutions we see all over on CNN in the post- Iraq war era. It's more like letters John Adams might have written to Thomas Jefferson concerning the nature of government.

Citizens from 365 groups across the island are gathering this weekend to hammer out a compact for the creation of a free post-Castro Cuba. This Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba is meeting for the first time under the most incredible of conditions -- inside communist Cuba. It could make history.

For these Cubans, it's as dangerous as it sounds. Cuba is more than a vile regime; it is the worst tyranny outside North Korea.

There's no freedom at all in the communist system whose citizens raft the high seas to escape its oppression.

The new assembly could create a Cuban Charter 77, the document that served as a road map for the post-communist Czechoslovakia under Vaclav Havel. And the group's reasonings about how to design the new society it believes will happen resemble the deliberations of America's Founding Fathers.

But risks are high. On Monday night, government henchmen pounded on the door to arrest one Society delegate, and several others were roughed up by Castro's goons. As fear grows, there will be more thuggery before the week is done. But Society members vow not to quit, no matter what Castro tries.

Their agenda, according to a Web site done by volunteer supporters in Miami, shows their intent to hammer out a democratic culture, develop a social movement, strengthen the Assembly's organization, extend communication between groups to promote this civil society, fight poverty, recover Cuba's authentic history, clean up Castro's environmental disaster and promote a true independent labor movement.

At first glance, it might look staid.

Civil institutions exist so easily here in the U.S., we take them for granted. But in Cuba, it's profoundly revolutionary, a real threat to Castro's 45 years of absolute power.

The world is full of mass demonstrations that increasingly end up as destructive populist cries blended with inchoate anti-Americanism. Many popular struggles win, but in the absence of strong institutions, they can also slide into weak democracies and disillusion.

What these Cubans are showing is that perhaps that's not needed for now. What's necessary are the building blocks of society to reconstruct their devastated one.

Away from the Internet, these fearless Cubans somehow have kept lit an unsnuffed candle of freedom in their souls, sustained by the memory of what Cuba once was and a vision of what it could become. For tyrants, this can be deadly.

Venezuela says it will not hand Posada to Cuba if US extradites him

CARACAS, 18 (AFP) - Venezuela pledged it would not hand over to Cuba Luis Posada Carriles, the terror suspect the United States has detained in Florida, whom Caracas wants in connection with a fatal plane bombing, and Havana also has sought on terror charges.

"If (Posada Carriles) is extradited to Venezuela he will be tried and if he has to remain in custody pending trial it will be in this country," Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters.

US federal agents arrested Posada Carriles, 77, Tuesday after he gave an invitation-only press conference with reporters at a secret location in Miami.

But the US Homeland Security Department swiftly issued a statement saying it does not send people to communist-ruled Cuba -- or countries believed to be acting in Cuba's name, a not-so-veiled reference to Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez is a close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Declassified US documents released last week link Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, to the bombing of a Cubana airliner in 1976, in which 73 people died. They also said the CIA paid him 300 dollars a month in the 1960s, and he worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976.

He has already been found guilty for an attempt to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro during a summit in Panama in 2000, but was pardoned in 2004.

Venezuela has demanded his extradition. They want Posada Carriles to stand trial for the plane bombing, which happened over Venezuelan territory.

In 2000 Panama convicted and sentenced Posada Carrilles to eight years in prison for trying to kill Castro at a summit in the central American country, but he was pardoned in 2004.

Cuba also wants Posada Carriles for the 1997 bombings of Havana hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles admitted in a New York Times interview that he plotted the bombings, though he later recanted the admission.

Terror suspect Posada Carriles charged with illegal entry into US

MIAMI, United States, 20 (AFP) - The United States has formally charged Luis Posada Carriles, wanted by Cuba and Venezuela on terrorism charges, with illegally entering the country, as Venezuela pressed hard for his extradition.

"US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has served Mr. Posada with a charging document alleging that he entered the United States without inspection in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)," it said in a statement.

"ICE has also notified Mr. Posada that it plans to hold him in custody without bond," it added.

"If he so desires, Mr. Posada will have the opportunity to seek a re-determination of his custody status at a bond hearing before an immigration judge. At such a bond hearing, ICE would present its arguments for holding him without bond," the agency said.

"There are no charges of anything else, whether it is terrorism or other allegations," Posada Carriles' lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said.

Still, Posada Carriles might be in and out of court for some time, even if he is released on bail, Soto said.

"You could be looking at a two-year process," he said.

Declassified US documents released last week link Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, to the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, in which 73 people died. They also said he worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976.

US federal agents arrested Posada Carriles, 77, Tuesday in Miami but he was moved to Texas, a close friend said.

In 2000, Panama convicted and sentenced Posada Carriles to eight years in prison for trying to kill Castro at a summit in the Central American country, but he was pardoned in 2004.

Venezuela formally has requested his extradition. Officials there want Posada Carriles to stand trial for the plane bombing.

"We are demanding consistency," Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel stressed in Caracas, saying Washington appeared to be trying to skirt its extradition treaty obligations.

"It cannot be that there is good terrorism and bad terrorism. Every terrorist deed that is against human life is reprehensible," Rangel said, insisting it would be "a perverse contradiction if (the United States) refuses to extradite" Posada.

The United States has said it would not extradite Posada Carriles to Cuba or any country acting in Cuba's name -- in a clear reference to Venezuela, a close ally of Havana.

Venezuela, Rangel said, "Even if there were no Cuba, would be demanding Posada Carriles, because this is about the Venezuelan state carrying out justice," he said.

Cuba also wants Posada Carriles for the 1997 bombings of Havana hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles admitted in a New York Times interview that he plotted the bombings, though he later recanted the admission. But Cuba has said it supports Posada's extradition to Venezuela.

However, Cuban President Fidel Castro dismissed the idea of sending Posada Carriles for trial in Italy.

"It is a country that has participated in the massacre and genocide taking place in Iraq, ally of the empire (United States)," he said Thursday.

"That country cannot be, as such, in such conditions, a place to try him."

Castro also charged the United States was protecting Posada Carriles, an ex-CIA collaborator.

"It is evident that the US government's goal is to protect Posada Carriles and avoid him being tried," Castro said on official television late Wednesday.

The United States "is experiencing a horrible fear of what he might tell an impartial court -- so many secrets," said Castro.

"The world has the duty, in my view, to support Venezuela," Castro said. "There must be no secret trial; that is what they would like (in Washington). The empire must not be allowed to keep acting with such impunity."

Among the secrets Posada Carriles could spill, Castro charged, is his close cooperation, alongside anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch, with Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile "in the assassination of Chilean communists and anti-fascist fighters in that country."

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