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Cuba's
dissidents seek international summit platform
to make their case
Yahoo!
News, November
11, 2003.
HAVANA, 11 (AFP) - Prominent Cuban dissident
Oswaldo Paya made an impassioned appeal
to organizers of an Ibero-American summit
this week to speak out on human rights in
communist-ruled Cuba.
Paya, a Christian democrat who won the
European Parliament's 2002 Sakharov Prize,
has spearheaded an initiative seeking political
and economic reforms under Cuba's constitution.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has rejected it
out of hand.
"Silence has been the watchword at
all the summits," Paya said in a letter
released to the foreign media Tuesday, even
"given the grave human rights situation
in Cuba."
Cuba, the only one-party communist state
in the Americas, has been widely criticized
for a crackdown on dissidents that saw 75
opponents of Castro jailed in April for
up to 28 years.
Monday, eight of those convicted after
Havana's toughest crackdown in years, charged
in a letter smuggled out of "Kilo 5-1/2"
jail that they were being subject to "cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment."
Oscar Elias Biscet (sentenced to 25 years),
Hector Palacios (25), Jose Ferrer (25),
Leonel Grave de Peralta (20), Arturo Perez
Alejo (20), Diosdado Gonzalez (20), Normando
Hernandez (25) and Jose Izquierdo (16) signed
the letter noting "we are not asking
for clemency; we want justice."
Paya appealed for permission for a statement
on the Cuban situation to be read to the
leaders at the summit of Spain, Portugal
and their former colonies in the Americas,
to be held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on Friday
and Saturday.
"We aren't asking for anything and
there will not be calls" for specific
action, Paya said in a letter. "Judge
and decide for yourselves, your excellencies,
as a reflection of the spirit of freedom
of the people you represent, what you should
do" about Cuba's lack of freedoms.
"We are asking for a space at this
summit ... in the name of all of those who
are working peacefully for the rights of
all citizens and in defense of those who
are marginalized, the poor and marginalized
majority in their own country," Paya
continued in the letter.
It would be "the voice of Cubans who
do not have a voice in Cuba, and denying
this to them would be extending to the summit
the exclusion of the regime in power"
in Cuba, he wrote.
Paya's appeal came a day after relatives
of the 75 dissidents, now jailed for terms
of as long as 28 years for "subversion",
sent a leller to Castro pleading for their
release.
On October 3 Paya delivered more than 14,000
more signatures backing the Varela Project
requesting a referendum on political and
economic change.
The Varela Project petition requests a
referendum on five points -- freedom of
expression and association, freedom of enterprise,
amnesty for political prisoners, a new electoral
law and, if the referendum is approved,
elections within a year.
More than 11,000 signatures were collected
for the petition last year, but the Cuban
legislature threw it out in January, deeming
it unconstitutional.
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