'Subversive' acts cited after visit with dissidents
By Mimi Whitefield. mwhitefield@herald.com. Published
Wednesday, January 17, 2001, in the Miami
Herald
In an unusual move, Cuba signaled Tuesday it would put on trial two Czechs
-- one a parliamentarian -- who were detained after visiting island dissidents,
accusing the pair of maintaining "subversive contacts'' at the behest of
the "Cuban-American mafia.''
Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party, said the Czechs
would be tried for "violating their tourist visas and following
instructions'' from the U.S.-based "Cuban-American mafia'' -- a term
frequently used by the government to describe anti-Castro groups.
Analysts say the prospective trial of Ivan Pilip, a member of the Czech
Republic's Chamber of Deputies, and Jan Bubenik, a student leader during
Czechoslovakia's 1989 Velvet Revolution and head of a pro-democracy foundation,
suggests the Cuban government's growing impatience with ideas and aid from
residents of countries that were once their Soviet-bloc allies.
Granma mentioned a series of contacts by Eastern Europeans with "small
counterrevolutionary groups'' beginning last year, and said they were acting in
the service of Freedom House, a nonpartisan, Washington-based organization that
promotes political and economic freedom.
Last year, Granma said, several Eastern Europeans -- two Latvians, a Pole, a
Romanian and a Czech -- were discovered in Cuba, making contacts with dissidents
and delivering money and other resources to carry out their activities, as well
as bringing in their "experiences about anti-socialist activities.''
Freedom House did not specifically address the allegations in Granma.
However, Jennifer Windsor, executive director of the organization, said in a
statement: "Freedom House supports and encourages person-to-person contact
in all societies.''
And Freedom House President Adrian Karantnycky said the organization was
especially interested in encouraging dialogue and discussion "between
citizens who have navigated their countries through a democratic transition and
those who remain in closed societies.''
Freedom House also called upon the international community to "roundly
condemn the arrest of these private citizens and to call upon the Cuban
government to release them immediately.''
In the early 1990s, as economic conditions in Cuba deteriorated, it became
commonplace for supporters of Cuban dissidents to carry medicines, books, money
and items as mundane as shampoo and toothpaste to island activists.
"I often asked people to carry a knapsack of medicine or a book or $50.
Lots of people from around the world do this, but it is not a conspiracy,'' said
Ricardo Bofill, Miami-based president of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.
Sometimes the deliveries have raised the ire of Cuban authorities, at other
times not, but the general way of handling foreigners whom the Cuban government
believes have stepped over the line is to detain and then deport them.
Petr Janousek, press attache at the Czech Embassy in Washington, said it is
the Czechs' understanding that the Cubans have until noon Thursday to officially
charge Pilip and Bubenik with a crime. "If no charges are filed by then,
they should be released,'' he said.
Meanwhile in Prague, the Czech Foreign Ministry sent its second note of
protest on Tuesday to the Cubans. It called for immediate release of Pilip and
Bubenik, asked that they be permitted contact with Czech diplomats and requested
the specific article of law under which the two men are being held.
Pilip and Bubenik were on a private visit, traveling on tourist visas, when
they were arrested Friday in Ciego de Avila -- some 185 miles southeast of
Havana. The previous day they had called upon Roberto Valdivia, of the Cuban
Committee for Human Rights, and Antonio Femenías, a dissident journalist.
The Czechs are being held in Villa Marista prison in Havana.
Granma said their trip had nothing to do with tourism and "their real
purpose was to contact counterrevolutionary elements, give them instructions
[from Cuban Americans] and to deliver money.''
The Czech Foreign Ministry characterized the Granma account as "absurd
and without any basis.''
The Cuban government often uses the term Cuban-American mafia to attack the
Cuban-American National Foundation, a Miami anti-Castro group, but Freedom House
was the only organization mentioned by name.
Dennis Hays, executive vice president of the Foundation, said, "To my
knowledge they [Pilip and Bubenik] were not there on our dime or our agenda. . .
. but we certainly understand their selfless motives to help bring about the
sorts of changes in Cuba that they have helped bring about in their own
country.''
Hays, who led the U.S. State Department's Cuba Desk in the early 1990s, said
the key question is why the Cubans reacted so harshly against the Czechs.
This isn't the first time the Cuban government has made allegations about a
Czech/exile connection.
In April Cuban state television presented a program that denounced Czech
diplomats on the island as U.S. lackeys.
In the past, Hays said, the Cuban government may have tolerated support for
Cuban dissidents because it wanted money to flow into the country. "But
sometimes that can work against their interest. I think there's a pattern
beginning to develop here, and the Cubans are very nervous and battening down
the hatches.''
One cause for concern may be the incoming administration of George W. Bush.
"Relations between Washington and Havana are not going to improve,''
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said earlier this week.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 