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Cuban activists under siege
By Gary Marx. Chicago Tribune.
Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006 in The
Mercury News.
SANTA CLARA, Cuba - Three years after the
harshest crackdown on dissent in decades,
human rights conditions in Cuba have deteriorated
as authorities intensify a campaign to disrupt
and intimidate the island's small opposition
movement, according to dissidents, diplomats
and political analysts.
Elizardo Sánchez, an opposition
activist who heads the Havana-based Cuban
Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation, said the number of political
prisoners in Cuba increased from 306 in
early 2005 to 333 in early 2006.
Sánchez said that about 100 pro-government
crowd actions, known in Cuba as "acts
of repudiation,'' and other attacks have
occurred against opposition figures since
July 2005.
"The situation with civil and political
rights has worsened in the past three years,''
said Sánchez. "And what's most
worrying for us is that it seems the situation
is going to get even worse.''
Last week, a U.S. State Department report
and U.N. expert Christine Chanet each criticized
the human rights situation in Cuba. Chanet
also said tightened U.S. sanctions have
created "extreme tension'' between
the two nations "which is far from
conducive to the development of freedom
of expression and freedom of assembly.''
One of the activists targeted by pro-government
groups is Noelia Pedraza, who was participating
in a vigil in September for political prisoners
when, she said, an angry crowd cut the lights
to her apartment, shouted insults and threw
rocks and eggs.
Since then, Pedraza, a leader of a small
opposition group in Santa Clara, 165 miles
east of Havana, said she has been detained
by police and assaulted by pro-government
demonstrators while distributing human rights
material in a park.
Cuban officials defend the island's human
rights record by saying they provide universal
education, health care and other services.
They portray the acts of repudiation as
spontaneous outpourings of support.
The attacks intensified after a speech
by Cuban President Fidel Castro last July
in which he denounced opposition activists
as U.S. government lackeys and praised supporters
who two weeks earlier disrupted a dissident
protest in Havana.
"The people, angrier than before over
such shameless acts of treason, intervened
with patriotic fervor and didn't allow a
single mercenary to move,'' Castro said.
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