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Cuban crackdown brings arrests of 50 dissidents

By Gary Marx Tribune foreign correspondent. August 17, 2005.

In the harshest crackdown on dissent in two years, Cuban authorities have temporarily detained more than 50 opposition figures in recent weeks and encouraged government militants to disrupt opposition activities.

At least 15 dissidents arrested in July remain in custody, and several of them face up to 20 years in prison for threatening to undermine Cuba's communist government, according to Amnesty International and other organizations.

On Friday, more than 60 pro-government militants gathered outside the home of Vladimiro Roca, a prominent dissident leader, shouting "worm," "traitor" and "terrorist" as they prevented Roca from holding an opposition gathering.

The same day, government supporters surrounded the homes of two other dissidents, one of whom planned to attend the meeting at Roca's house.

Roca said the demonstration outside his home was organized by Cuban state security, which had warned him the night before that his meeting would not be allowed to take place.

"They wanted to stop it," Roca said. "The problem is that [Cuban President] Fidel Castro is very afraid and when he is afraid he doesn't want to show it, so he does these acts of terror against the population."

Biggest crackdown since '03

The arrests and other actions represent the most serious attack against dissidents in Cuba since 2003, when 75 opposition leaders, labor activists and others were given long prison sentences. Sixty-one of the 75 dissidents remain jailed.

The latest crackdown, like the one in 2003, has sparked criticism from human-rights groups, the 25-member European Union and other organizations.

Holly Ackerman, Caribbean coordinator for Amnesty International, said Cuban officials designed the crackdown to intimidate and silence internal critics.

"If you harass and arrest people, it terrifies the general population," Ackerman said. "It prevents them from expressing themselves politically."

Wayne Smith, a former leading U.S. diplomat in Havana, said Cuban authorities are concerned about growing unrest on the island triggered by power outages and other problems.

"They are worried about the grumbling--the fact that people are really upset," Smith said. "The crackdown is to indicate that there is a limit on how far you can express discontent."

In his July 26 speech commemorating the birth of his revolutionary movement in 1953, Castro derided the dissidents as a miniscule group manipulated and bankrolled by an aggressive U.S. government. U.S. officials and dissident leaders deny those charges.

Castro warned that the Cuban people would continue defending the revolution.

"This is what will happen whenever traitors and mercenaries go a millimeter beyond the point that our revolutionary people ... [are] willing to accept," Castro said.

Not intimidated

But Martha Beatriz Roque, a well-known dissident leader, said she is not intimidated by Castro's words or the crackdown.

"We have a commitment to the country, and we can't stop," said Beatriz Roque. "We will continue on with our work."

U.S.-Cuba relations with Castro, who recently turned 79, have sunk to their lowest point in several years.

In late July, President Bush angered Cuban officials by appointing a "transition coordinator" responsible for accelerating the demise of the Castro government and providing assistance to what Bush describes as a subsequent democratic Cuba.

Yet Cuba's dissidents remain split by personal and strategic differences, and they are largely ignored by island residents, who know little about their activities because dissidents have no access to state-run media.

Still, more than 150 Cuban opposition activists gathered in Havana on May 20 in an unprecedented event to demand democratic reforms and the release of all political prisoners.

"This might have made the government a bit nervous, and they thought it's time to teach them a lesson and nip this in the bud," said Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

"The last thing the government wants is to let the dissident activity get out of hand," she said.

One of the organizers of the May 20 gathering, Rene Gomez Manzano, is among nine dissidents who remain in custody after being arrested July 22--the same day an opposition demonstration was planned in front of the French Embassy in Havana.

The activists were protesting France's decision to ease European sanctions against Havana by inviting Cuban government officials to its Bastille Day celebration, a rapprochement that angered some dissidents.

Six other dissidents remain in custody after being arrested a week earlier for marking the anniversary of the sinking of a tugboat in Havana Bay 11 years ago that killed 35 people trying to flee the island, according to human-rights groups.

Jorge Gomez Manzano, the dissident leader's brother, said Rene has been charged with violating the Law for the Protection of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba.

Cuban authorities used the same law to prosecute most of the 75 opposition activists in 2003.

"He could get 13 years in prison. He could get a fine. Or he could be freed," said Gomez Manzano. "We don't know what will happen."

gmarx@tribune.com

Cuba Confiscates Land Where Dissidents Met

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press Writer, August 19, 2005.

HAVANA - The Cuban government has confiscated the land where an unprecedented gathering of Cuban dissidents took place earlier this year, an activist said Friday.

Felix Bonne and his wife, who hosted the gathering on a lot next to their home, received a letter Thursday signed by an official from the agriculture ministry, said Martha Beatriz Roque, who also helped organize the gathering. The letter said the land was not being used sufficiently, Roque said.

"We feel even more repressed, more crushed, than usual," Roque told The Associated Press. "But we are not going to back off, not one millimeter."

According to Roque, Bonne's family will be allowed to continue living in their house next to the lot.

Bonne, who does not have a telephone, was not immediately available for comment, nor were government officials.

Many were surprised that the communist government had allowed the gathering to take place, and activists predicted punishment would come later, when there was less global attention on the event.

"With (this latest action) they want to show that everything belongs to the state, to Fidel Castro," Roque said. "I have no doubt that this is about May 20. It's an act of repression, at a time when the government is being very repressive."

In a speech on July 26 marking the anniversary of the start of his revolution, the Cuban president called the dissidents "traitors" and "mercenaries," and defended the recent detentions of dozens of activists and counter-protests by government supporters.

Last month, 33 dissidents planning a protest outside the French Embassy in Havana were detained in a police roundup.

In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested 75 independent journalists, opposition politicians, rights activists and others, accusing them of receiving U.S. aid to overthrow Castro's government and sentencing them to long prison terms.

U.S. authorities have repeatedly rejected charges that it pays dissidents to help undermine Castro's rule.

Cuba, Panama Restore Diplomatic Ties

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press Writer, August 20, 2005.

HAVANA - Cuba and Panama restored diplomatic ties Saturday, one year after they were broken off in a dispute sparked by the decision by Panama's previous president to pardon four Cuban exiles accused of trying to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Castro and Panamanian President Martin Torrijos looked on as a document was signed in Havana declaring normal relations "inspired by the spirit of fraternity that has always linked these two countries."

Torrijos had opposed the pardons issued by his predecessor, Mireya Moscoso, last August five days before she left office, and promised to restore ties with Cuba.

Torrijos is the son of Omar Torrijos, a populist military strongman who had friendly relations with Castro. Before the pardons, the two nations had been on relatively good terms since restoring ties in the early 1970s.

Luis Posada Carriles - branded by Havana as the hemisphere's top terrorist - as well as Gaspar Jimenez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remon, were found innocent of plotting to kill the Cuban president, but were sentenced to terms of seven to eight years in Panamanian prisons on lesser charges. They were allowed to go free on Moscoso's orders.

Castro himself publicly accused Posada of leading the plan to kill him at a summit in Panama in November 2000. Havana also accuses Posada of helping blow up a civilian Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people, and of overseeing the bombings of hotels in Cuba in 1997.

Venezuela is currently urging the United States to extradite Posada, who has been held in a federal detention center in Texas since May on charges he sneaked illegally into the United States through Mexico.

Washington worried by Venezuela, Cuban socialism

HAVANA, 20 (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' visit to Cuba this weekend, to weld his alliance with President Fidel Castro's revolution, is keeping alive a socialist threat in Latin America as far as Washington is concerned.

The leftist-populist Chavez will make his 13th visit to Cuba since taking power in 1999 to visit his personal friend, Castro. At the Latin American School of Medicine, Chavez will attend a graduation of students from several countries, including 400 Venezuelans.

Chavez, who hosts a weekly radio call-in program, "Hello, Mr. President," will this weekend take questions alongside Castro in Havana. The famously long-winded Castro launched a similar program in March, in which he chats for hours before a television audience on policies, both domestic and foreign.

"I don't know how many hours 'Hello, Mr. President' is going to last," Chavez joked.

The two presidents have challenged Washington to demand the extradition of a common foe: anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles. He was arrested in the United States by immigration authorities but is wanted on terrorism charges in Venezuela and Cuba.

Venezuelan prosecutors say he downed a Cuban airliner killing 73 aboard in 1976, and Cuba says he bombed two Havana hotels, killing an Italian businessman in the process.

A third Latin socialist had planned to join Castro and Chavez, Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales, who canceled Thursday to focus on his campaign.

Morales has been on Washington's radar screen, alongside Chavez and Castro.

US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld visited Peru and Paraguay this week to sound out their views of Cuba and Venezuela's activities in the region, particularly in Bolivia.

"There certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways," Rumsfeld told reporters on the flight from Washington.

Rumsfeld declined to elaborate but senior defense officials accused the Cuban, backed by Venezuelan money, of seeking to subvert Bolivia's democratic institutions.

Bolivian protesters have taken to the streets to demand their share of gas export earnings.

Caracas has also ended cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Agency, accusing its agents of violating Venezuelan drug laws.

And Chavez hosted the leftist-oriented World Youth Festival, where he accused US President George W. Bush of having "imperial logic."

Chavez, who declared himself a socialist in January, said socialism was on the rebound, 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc -- with the sole exception of Cuba.

"We do not go around undermining order as president Chavez and I are accused of doing," Castro said. Chavez' "revolution arrived at the right moment to contribute to the second and definitive independence of Latin America."

The two countries have strengthened military ties, and in April, signed 50 trade agreements touted as an alternative to US free-trade deals with Latin America, called the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America in honor of Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar.

The two countries pledged cooperation, in which Cuba receives 90,000 barrels of oil and returns to Venezuela more than 30,000 physicians, sports coaches and teachers.

Venezuela remains one of the top exporters of oil to the United States and is the only Latin American member of the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries.

Cuba is a perennial US concern, just 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the US state of Florida, which is home to thousands of vocal, anti-Castro exiles.

Cuba to trade 17 million for US agro products from Nebraska

HAVANA, 17 (AFP) - Cuba promised to buy 17 million dollars of farm products from the US state of Nebraska, whose Republican governor, Dave Heineman, was with a trade delegation in Havana.

Heineman said his 10-member delegation, which arrived Sunday, was pleased with the deal.

He said the deal was not a matter of international policy, but of trade between Nebraska and Cuba. The United States has had since 1962 an embargo on the only Communist state in the Americas.

US President George W. Bush exempted food and medical supplies from the Cuba embargo in 2001, but tightened other restrictions as of February. For instance, Cuba must now pay for agricultural imports before they are shipped.

That restriction scuppered an earlier deal Heineman brokered for 5,000 tonnes of beans.

Cuba's treasury balked at pre-paying, and refused to write the check. That sent Cuba's import monopoly, Alimport, scrambling to yank the money away from less-crucial budget lines.

Heineman and his delegation were due to remain in Cuba through Wednesday.

Alimport said that it planned to buy 25,000 tonnes of corn, 15,000 tonnes of wheat, 15,000 tonnes of a combination of soy beans and soy flour as well as 100 to 200 head of cattle for its 17 million dollars.

The US delegation was also to explore sales of medical equipment to the Caribbean island despite President Fidel Castro's thorny relations with Washington.

Alimport said that US imports were down from 474 million dollars in 2004 to some 450 million for 2005.

Rumsfeld meets with Paraguayan president amid concerns over Cuba, Venezuela

ASUNCION, 17 (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Paraguay's President Nicanor Duarte Frutos amid concerns over what US officials see as a Cuban-Venezuelan campaign to subvert neighboring Bolivia.

Rumsfeld said the subject of Venezuela and Cuba came up in his talks with Duarte who also discussed on his government's efforts to combat corruption in this poor, landlocked South American nation.

"Countries like Paraguay are interested in growing and functioning in a manner free of external influence," Rumsfeld told reporters after the talks at the president's residence.

Attending the session, which lasted some 90 minutes, were key members of Duarte's team, including the defense minister and the chief of defense.

On the flight to Paraguay, senior US defense officials said a major purpose of Rumsfeld's fifth trip to Latin America as defense minister was to sound out the Paraguayans on their views of Cuba and Venezuela's activities in the region, particularly Bolivia.

"There certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways," Rumsfeld told reporters as he flew here from Washington.

Rumsfeld declined to elaborate but senior defense officials accused the Cuban, backed by Venezuelan money, of seeking to subvert Bolivia's democratic institutions.

"Very clearly in the past year we've seen a return of an aggressive Cuban foreign policy," said one US defense official, who spoke to reporters traveling with Rumsfeld on condition of anonymity.

"The Cubans are back with a big game," he said.

The officials said Cubahas reactivated its underground networks throughout the region, particularly in Bolivia where the government collapsed in June in the face of mass protests led by Evo Morales, a coca grower and leader of the leftist Movement Toward Socialism.

The official said Cubans were providing political guidance, stimulating street violence and attempting to discredit the country's democratic institutions.

"The evidence suggests that Bolivia really is more of a Cuban project so to speak," the official said.

"To the degree that subversive activity is going on and they're trying to wield political influence, it is really the Cubans. Venezuela is certainly providing funding and some morale support," he said.

"It's a concern to all the neighbors. There is an enormous indigenous population that stretches all up the Andes -- Ecuador, Peru even in Paraguay," the official said.

A second defense official suggested Washington also has reappraised the challenge posed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a leftist populist who has gained clout from soaring oil income since surviving a referendum on his rule a year ago.

"A guy who seemed like a comical figure a year ago is turning into a real strategic menace," the official said, also speaking on condition he not be identified.

Washington initially took a wait-and-see approach after Chavez won a referendum on his rule last year, the official said.

"But then we saw within a period of months that he began moving out very aggressively, both internally and externally," he said.

"We see him trying to strangle pluralistic institutions of the country at home and then abroad, we see him moving aggressively in Bolivia, other places, with the Cubans," he said.

The official said a multi-lateral approach was needed to counter the Cubans and Venezuelans.

"We can't respond to it alone. A lot depends on what other countries down here think," he said.

"So a lot of the purpose of this trip, and of the secretary's earlier trips, is to consult with folks in the region to see what they think. But any strategy has to be as multi-lateral as can be."

He said Paraguay and Colombia have taken the developments seriously while other Latin American governments continue to believe the Cubans and Venezuelans should be engaged.

Rumsfeld chose to visit Paraguay to recognize it efforts to strengthen ties with the United States, combat corruption and encourage a free market.

Paraguay, which borders Bolivia as well as Argentina and Brazil, has hosted a series of small scale US military exercises this year. Most involve peacekeeping training and medical readiness teams, but also US special operations forces.

Rumsfeld praised Paraguay's cooperation in stepping up vigilance in the tri-border area, an area that traditionally has been a haven for smugglers operating between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.

"The kinds of problems that the hemisphere faces are problems that don't lend themselves to single nation solutions," Rumsfeld said.

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