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US tightens ban on Cuban cigars
WASHINGTON, 6 (AFP) - US President George
W. Bush's administration has tightened a
ban on Americans importing Cuban cigars.
"There is now an across-the-board
ban on the importation of Cuban-origin cigars,"
said a notice released this week by the
Treasury Department (news - web sites)'s
Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Previously, the rules allowed Americans
licensed to travel to Cuba to bring back
to the United States up to 100 dollars'
worth of Cuban goods, including cigars.
That loophole was closed in the latest
regulations.
The anti-Cuban cigar rules were already
strict.
For example, Americans are barred from
buying a Cuban cigar in other countries,
even to smoke it outside the United States.
"The question is often asked whether
United States citizens or permanent resident
aliens of the United States may legally
purchase Cuban goods, including tobacco
and alcohol products, in a third country
for personal use outside the United States,"
the notice said. "The answer is no."
Breaking the rules can lead to criminal
penalties, including fines of up to one
million dollars for corporations and 250,000
dollars for individuals and up to 10 years
in prison, the department said.
Dissidents' kin stage rare public protest
in Cuba's Revolution Square
HAVANA, 6 (AFP) - Mothers and relatives
of dissidents camped out in Havana's Revolution
Square for a second day in a rare, bold
public protest seeking the release of one
of 75 dissidents rounded up in a major crackdown
by Cuba's communist government in March
2003.
Dressed entirely in white, the women arrived
at the vast square -- the site of countless
rallies addressed by President Fidel Castro
-- on Tuesday with a letter for Castro,
demanding the release of Angel Moya, 39,
who after a summary trial was sentenced
to 20 years in prison.
"It is the right thing to do at a
time like this," Marta Beatriz Roque,
a prominent dissident economist and the
only woman arrested and jailed in the crackdown,
told AFP. She was released early suffering
from health troubles.
"It seems to me that it is time to
move past reporting things, issuing letters,
and move from written words to active deeds,"
in defense of the dissidents, who "are
more and more harassed every day,"
Roque charged.
Demonstrators have numbered fewer than
15 but "if this starts getting serious,
if more dissidents come, if people start
wondering why we are here, and find out,
then I think there will be repressive action,"
Roque said.
To most Cubans who have access only to
state-run media, the dissidents are unknown
faces. But "when people see something
like this, with women and things on the
ground, they will ask what is going on,"
she added.
The women, demonstrating not far from the
towering portrait of revolutionary hero
Ernesto "Che" Guevara that overlooks
the square, said they were concerned about
Moya's health and asked for him to be transferred
to a civilian hospital for surgery they
say he needs on his spine.
His condition has left him him unable to
walk, his wife Berta Soler Fernandez said.
Moya, who is serving his term at Los Mangos
prison in the eastern province of Granma,
"is living stretched out on a little
cot," she charged.
"We are staying here until the end,
until we get an answer," Soler Fernandez
told AFP late Tuesday. The group, seated
on blankets amid a clutter of personal belongings,
stayed on through the night without incident.
At night and on Wednesday the women heard
encouraging words from dissidents who paid
visits to the high-profile scene, within
sight of government offices and in an area
tourists often visit and photograph.
The crackdown, the harshest in years in
the Americas' only one-party communist state,
prompted an international outcry and drove
a rift between Cuba and the European Union,
while further raising tensions with the
United States and other countries.
Castro has led Cuba since 1959.
Roque, a former leader of the Assembly
for the Promotion of Civil Society, banned
by the government, and who had also headed
the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists,
is among the best-known dissidents in the
Caribbean nation of more than 11 million.
She already had spent three years in jail
between 1997 and 2000.
Jailed dissident Enrique Ferrer Garcia,
who is serving a 28-year term, has started
a hunger strike "to the end,"
claiming he has been treated sadistically
in prison, an associate said September 27.
Garcia, 30, is the youngest of 75 dissidents
who were jailed in the March-April, 2003
roundup after being accused of conspiring
against Castro's government.
Garcia was a coordinator for the Christian
Liberation Movement (MCL), an illegal opposition
group here, run by Oswaldo Paya, who was
awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European
Parliament in 2002 for defending human rights
in Cuba.
Paya is seeking economic and democratic
change from within the current system, so
far to no avail.
Block on Cuban scholars sparks protest
WASHINGTON, 6 (AP) -- The State Department's
decision to deny visas to 65 Cuban scholars
seeking to attend a conference in Las Vegas
drew protests Wednesday from Congress and
academia.
Reps. William Delahunt, D-Mass., and Jeff
Flake, R-Ariz., asked Secretary of State
Colin Powell to reconsider the decision
to prevent the Cubans from taking part in
the Latin American Studies Association annual
meeting, which was beginning Thursday.
Cuban scholars have participated for years;
about 100 attended last year.
"We do not believe that the way to
encourage democracy in other countries is
to close our border to their scholars,"
the lawmakers wrote. They said this is the
first time in 25 years the government has
blocked all invited Cuban scholars from
the conference.
Professors from Harvard University's David
Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
said they are turning what was planned as
a workshop on the Cuban economy Friday into
a protest about the government's action.
"These Cuban scholars are experts
in their fields. They do research, they
have the data," said John Coatsworth,
the center's director. "This is something
our association takes very seriously - when
the government interferes with our capacity
to interact with other scholars."
State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos
said there are no plans to reconsider the
matter.
Cuba to decide fate of Colombian drug
lord wanted in the US
HAVANA, 7 (AP) - Cuba is still investigating
what to do with a major Colombian drug lord
arrested on the Caribbean island while travelling
on a false passport this summer, Cuba's
top anti-drug official said Tuesday.
Authorities have determined, however, that
the drug lord was "in transit"
in Cuba and did not have any intention of
developing a local drug market here, Gen
Jesus Becerra, chief of Cuba's anti-narcotics
agency, told reporters.
Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, an alleged
leader of Colombia's Norte del Valle drug
cartel, was arrested in Havana on July 2.
He simply "chose (Cuba) as a country
to pass through," Becerra said.
"He is detained, he has a defense
lawyer, he enjoys the rights provided by
our constitution," Becerra added. "We
are working (on the case)."
Becerra declined to provide more details.
Colombia is trying to extradite Gomez Bustamante,
alias "Rasguno" or "Scratch."
If Gomez Bustamante is returned to his
homeland, the Colombian government would
likely arrange for his extradition to the
United States, where he and two other kingpins
were indicted earlier this year by a federal
grand jury in New York for conspiracy, money
laundering and drugs.
The US government had offered US$5 million
(euro 4 million) for information leading
to the capture of Gomez Bustamante, whose
cartel is believed to be the source of as
much as 60 per cent of the cocaine consumed
in the United States, according to the US
Drug Enforcement Administration.
Becerra made his comments during a day
of meetings with journalists to offer details
about Cuba's drug prevention and eradication
campaign, launched in January of 2003 to
fight an incipient drug market on the island.
Cuban officials have said drugs are a vice
of capitalism and not a serious problem
on the island, but also acknowledge that
tourism has generated a drug market in Cuba
since the early 1990s.
Since 1994, Becerra said that Cuba has
seized 75 metric tonnes of drugs on the
island, including 55 tonnes of marijuana
and 19 tonnes of cocaine.
Confiscations of houses and cars linked
to drug trafficking, tougher laws, police
crackdowns and anti-drug operations on the
island's coasts are all part of Cuba's drug
strategy, Becerra said.
"Our fight is for society not to get
contaminated," he said.
Sotomayor: Maradona will recover
HAVANA, 7 (AP) - Javier Sotomayor, the
legendary Cuban high jumper, says he is
confident former soccer great Diego Maradona
will be overcome his cocaine addiction on
the Caribbean island.
"I have faith that Diego will completely
recover in my country,'' Sotomayor told
The Associated Press late Wednesday.
Maradona returned to Cuba on Sept. 20 to
begin treatment for his addiction. Reporters
greeted him at the airport, but he has declined
to make any public statements.
Maradona, 43, is secluded at a mental health
centre in a quiet, palm-tree lined area
of western Havana. The centre is in the
same neighborhood where Cuban President
Fidel Castro, who has characterized himself
as a friend and admirer of Maradona, is
said to live.
While undergoing treatment in Cuba in the
past, the hero of the 1986 World Cup stayed
at an upscale health tourism resort where
he could come and go as he pleased and invite
people to his guest house.
Even Sotomayor, a former Olympic gold medallist
who retired in 2001 and says he has been
friends with Maradona for more than 15 years,
has not been able to communicate with the
Argentine since he arrived last month.
"I called him on the phone but was
only able to talk to his doctor, Alfredo
Cahe, who assured me that he is getting
better and in good spirits,'' said Sotomayor,
who still holds the world high jump record
of 2.45 metres, set in 1993.
Dr. Guillermo Barrientos de Llano, in charge
of the Cuban health ministry's mental health
and addictions division, said that Maradona
"is a patient that has every right
to his privacy.''
Maradona's arrival to Cuba came after a
relapse confined him to a psychiatric hospital
in his native Argentina and sparked unsuccessful
attempts by his family to keep him at home.
Maradona has been repeatedly hospitalized
over the last four years, most recently
in April when doctors said he was suffering
from a weakened heart and severe breathing
problems.
Since then, Maradona has received treatment
in a Buenos Aires psychiatric hospital,
where he had been held under strict orders
by his doctors and family before being released
in early September.
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