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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Pleas made for dissidents' care
By Marika Lynch. Mlynch@herald.com
When Miriam Leiva visited her jailed husband
Thursday, the Cuban dissident journalist tried
to talk but his tongue was sluggish. Oscar Espinosa
Chepe, already debilitated and gravely ill from
a liver ailment, had been given new pills by a
government psychiatrist this week.
''Oscar doesn't even know what they gave him.
We don't even know what kind of treatment they
are giving him,'' Leiva said by phone from Havana.
"They are all powerful, and we are helpless.''
As the health of more than a dozen jailed Cuban
dissidents such as Espinosa deteriorates, U.S.
officials and human-rights groups say the Cuban
government is purposefully denying them proper
medical care.
Their illnesses range from poor circulation to
kidney trouble and gastritis, and ''the Cuban
authorities don't appear prepared'' to provide
them with adequate medication, said Eric Olson,
Amnesty International's Americas advocacy director,
whose office has documented a list of 16 dissidents
being denied proper medical care.
This week, the United States said the 75 dissidents
arrested in a roundup this spring are being held
in "appalling conditions, with very poor
sanitation, contaminated water and nearly inedible
food.''
''The Cuban government appears to be going out
of its way to treat these prisoners inhumanely,''
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
The United States called on the Cuban government
to allow independent groups such as the International
Committee of the Red Cross or Doctors Without
Borders to evaluate the patients.
But when contacted, Doctors Without Borders said
it hasn't had a Cuba program for three years,
having left, in part, after deciding the group
was not being allowed to act independently on
the island, spokesman Kevin Phelan said. The International
Committee of the Red Cross doesn't comment on
sensitive cases, a spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, the United States has not received
a response.
''We've heard nothing to indicate the Cuban regime
will do anything to address their dire medical
ills,'' a State Department official said Wednesday.
Among those in gravest danger are Raúl
Rivero, 57, a writer who founded the independent
agency Cuba Press and who has severe problems
with his circulation, and Martha Beatriz Roque
Cabello, an economist who has lost 40 pounds since
entering jail this spring.
To her family's consternation, Roque -- who already
served time for coauthoring the dissident manifesto
The Homeland Belongs to Us All -- has been diagnosed
by prison doctors with diabetes. Roque, who also
suffers from blood-pressure problems, is now in
a hospital outside Havana, where her family last
visited her Aug. 8.
''She is very pale and she doesn't eat because
the food they give her is in horrible condition,''
said her sister Isabel Roque Cabello, of Miami.
Meanwhile, Leiva, wife of jailed journalist Espinosa,
has petitioned the Cuban government to let her
husband serve out his 20-year term at home, but
she has not been given an answer. The New York-based
Committee to Protect Journalists has also urged
better care.
''They have him kidnapped. They can do to him
what they want, give him to drink what they want,''
Leiva said.
Rancher ships 148 cattle to Cuba
Law allows agricultural sales to island
By Carol Rosenberg. Crosenberg@herald.com
The latest large-scale loophole in the U.S. economic
embargo on Cuba goes moo -- nearly 150 times.
A Naples rancher, J.P. Wright & Co., announced
Thursday that it had delivered 148 dairy cattle
to the island this week in what the firm said
was the largest successful U.S. shipment of cows
to Cuba since the communist revolution.
The shipment, the latest of several summer deliveries,
raised to nearly 450 the number of U.S. cattle
that have been sent to Cuba since Congress in
2000 exempted U.S. food and agricultural products
from the overall trade embargo, provided Cuba
pays cash.
''This is a significant step toward restoring
positive relations between the people of Cuba
and Florida,'' company chief executive John Parke
Wright said in a press release. "This exchange
opens the doors to restored ties between family
farms in the U.S. and Cuba.''
Company publicist Dan Krassner said all the cows
were meant for island farms, with their output
aimed at producing milk and ice cream for people
in Cuba.
The announcement was accompanied by a picture
of Wright in a classic Cuban guayabera shirt,
arm in arm and sharing cigars with a likewise
attired Ramón Castro Ruz, Fidel Castro's
older brother.
John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba
Trade and Economic Council, an independent monitoring
group, valued the deal at about $300,000.
Since Congress passed the exemption, he said,
Cuba has purchased about $250 million in agricultural
and food products, such as cattle, corn, wheat,
soy rice and poultry.
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