Cuba releases two 'Homeland' authors. But 350 dissidents still are jailed.
Eidtorial . Published Thursday, May 18, 2000, in the Miami Herald
First, we are thankful. Cuban dissidents Marta Beatriz Roque and Félix Bonne have been released by the repressive regime that jailed them for nearly three years.
Yet no person or nation should be fooled into believing that their welcome release signals a change in Cuba's totalitarian government.
In 1997 Ms. Roque and Mr. Bonne, along with René Gómez and Vladimiro Roca, authored a critique of Cuba's Communist state entitled The Homeland Belongs to Us All, which was republished in The Herald on March 28, 1999. The four were each convicted of incitement to sedition and
sentenced from 3 1/2 to 5 years.
Hard time did not break their spirits.
``I see no reason to change my political objectives,'' Mr. Bonne said upon release. ``I believe the same as I did when I went in,'' Ms. Roque affirmed. Both pledge to resume their efforts to create alternative political voices on the island.
Such aspirations are consistent with the Universal Code of Human Rights. But if the regime had any respect for basic human rights, the four never would have been charged or jailed and held in prisons despite serious health maladies.
Their ``crime'' was to criticize publicly Cuba's one-party state -- a state that criminalizes even peaceful criticism.
Meanwhile Mr. Gómez and Mr. Roca still await their deserved releases. They are among some 350 political prisoners still languishing in Cuba's harsh prisons -- in spite of appeals from Pope John Paul II, Amnesty International and countless other human rights organizations and national
governments for their release.
Perhaps Cuba's dictatorship wants to placate international critics in the wake of condemnation this year from the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
But real change will only come when the system does not create political crimes or political prisoners in Cuba.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |