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Dissident proclaims
'Cuban Spring'
By Tom Carter. The
Washington Times. March 18, 2004.
Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's most internationally
celebrated opposition figure, yesterday
proclaimed "Cuban Spring" in a
letter released to mark the anniversary
of a government crackdown on dissidents.
In homage to the 1968 Prague Spring, in
which Czech dissidents and artists protested
against communism before a brutal Soviet
crackdown, Mr. Paya said the suffering of
Cuban dissidents had focused the world's
attention on President Fidel Castro's regime.
"They are in cages, without space,
even though they fought for the freedom
of all," he said of 75 dissidents who
have been jailed since their arrest last
year, most for their participation in a
petition campaign demanding basic human
rights.
Mr. Paya said they are "hated, even
though they preach forgiveness and reconciliation;
humiliated and scorned, even though they
have defended the dignity and rights of
all; threatened with death even though they
are defenders of life. ...
"From the darkness of their cells,
they are proclaiming the Cuban Spring, which
is the hope for all people," he wrote
in the letter, released yesterday by the
National Democratic Institute in Washington.
In March last year, Cuba began arresting
dozens of dissidents, opposition figures,
independent journalists, economists and
librarians, in the biggest crackdown on
government dissent in years.
Many of those arrested were associated
with Mr. Paya's Varela Project, which collected
tens of thousands of signatures in an attempt
to force the government to hold a referendum
on democratic reforms.
In one-day show trials, 75 rights activists
were given sentences of six to 28 years.
Among the imprisoned was Julio Antonio Valdes,
who is now in need of a kidney transplant.
"My husband is dying slowly,"
his wife, Cruz Delia Aguilar, said Tuesday
in Havana. "I ask for his release into
the hands of the International Red Cross."
An envoy appointed by the U.N. high commissioner
for human rights to probe Cuban abuses,
French magistrate Christine Chanet, said
last month dozens of Cuban dissidents were
being held in alarming physical and psychological
conditions.
Her report, which also faults the U.S.
economic embargo on Cuba, is being presented
in Geneva this week as the United Nations
gathers to discuss human rights in the world.
The U.S. delegation there is working to
get a declaration passed condemning Cuba's
abuses.
For its part, the Cuban government is
protesting the inclusion on the American
delegation of Luis Zuniga Rey, a Cuban who
spent 19 years in Cuba's prison system and
who remains active against the Cuban government.
In a report released on Tuesday, Amnesty
International said: "The Cuban authorities
must immediately and unconditionally release
all prisoners of conscience."
The Amnesty Report details cases of withholding
medical care, solitary confinement and other
abuses of the prisoners. Cuba does not allow
either the United Nations or the Red Cross
access to its prisoners.
Prisoners' wives in Havana told wire service
reporters that a dozen of the jailed dissidents,
several of them over 60 years old, have
been taken to a hospital for treatment.
These include economist and former diplomat
Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who suffers from cirrhosis.
"They are killing him," said
his wife, Miriam Leyva. "I ask the
government to set all 75 free because their
only crime was to express their ideas."
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