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Fidel Blinks
By CBS News Producer Portia
Siegelbaum, October 8, 2004.
HAVANA, Oct. 8, 2004 - The wife of an imprisoned
Cuban dissident emerged from their first
visit in 83 days saying that only an unprecedented
public protest won her husband's transfer
to a Havana hospital.
"This is the first time we've gone
to the Council of State to raise a scandal,
as they say," Berta Soler said, referring
to the nearly two days she and a small group
of supporters spent defiantly in a public
park adjacent to Revolution Square, normally
the site of massive pro-government rallies.
The Castro government does not tolerate
public protests. Therefore, dissidents hold
anti-government activities inside private
homes. In the last year however, the wives
of some of the 75 dissidents jailed in the
spring of 2003 have reached out to the foreign
press to publicize their cause.
They began dressing completely in white
and attending the same Sunday Mass. Several
of these "ladies in white", as
they're known, joined Soler in her two-day
sit-in Communications Park.
Soler launched her protest Tuesday, after
delivering a handwritten appeal to President
Fidel Castro. In it she asked for the immediate
transfer of her husband Angel Moya Acosta,
who has been diagnosed with a herniated
disk, to a hospital in the Cuban capital.
Moya, a human rights activist has been
serving a 20 year sentence in Las Mangas
prison some 500 miles away in Granma province.
The 40-year old construction worker was
swept up in the government crackdown on
75 dissidents accused of conspiring with
the United States Government and receiving
financial support to overthrow the communist
government. Seven of the 75 have been released
for health reasons in the last few months.
Before taking up position in the park on
Tuesday, Soler hand-delivered a letter addressed
to President Fidel Castro, whose offices
are nearby. The missive asked for the immediate
transfer of her husband, Angel Moya Acosta,
who has been diagnosed with a herniated
disk, to a hospital in the Cuban capital.
Moya, a human-rights activist, has been
serving a 20-year sentence in Las Mangas
prison some 500 miles away in Granma province.
The 40-year-old construction worker and
founder of the group Liberty and Democracy
for Cuba, was one of the 75 dissidents arrested
in a major sweep of the opposition in April
2003. Seven of the 75 have been released
for health reasons in the last few months.
On Thursday, Berta Soler decried the deterioration
in her husband's condition since July 16
when she was last allowed to visit him.
She accused the Interior Ministry of delaying
proper medical treatment.
"I think they were playing a diabolical
game with me," she told CBS News.
Moya, she says, is now in the regular orthopedic
ward of Havana's Carlos J. Finlay Military
Hospital, where according to Soler, the
doctors have already begun diagnostic testing
to determine the best treatment.
Soler admits that a government official
advised her on Wednesday that her husband
would be transferred to a Havana hopsital,
but she decided to dig in her heels and
stay in the park anyway.
According to Soler, her protest ended abruptly
when the government sent some 40 plainclothes
security agents to move her out in the early
hours of Thursday.
She and nine supporters were hustled into
unmarked police cars and driven to their
homes, says Soler, and along the way she
argued with the four government agents.
"When they said you shouldn't have
called the foreign press, I asked, who should
I call? It's the only way I have to let
people, not here in Cuba but abroad, know
what's happening," Soler said. There
has been no coverage in the State-run local
media of the issue.
By mid-day Thursday, she says, a government
representative gave her the news that Moya
was on his way to Havana and that she would
be able to see him in a few hours.
"I expected this result from the pressure
and if I didn't get it I would have applied
even more pressure, would have raised the
ante," Soler said with a shrug. "All
the country's political prisoners should
be freed but at this moment ...all I've
been asking for is a temporary reprieve
for a man to have an operation for his health."
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CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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