RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissidents Launch Appeal for International Support

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 16 2001 (IPS) - Representatives of 73 dissident organisations in Cuba emitted a call Tuesday for the international community to help “halt the wave of repression unleashed by the government” of Fidel Castro that began in 1999.

“We Cubans hope for the solidarity of the international community in the struggle to conquer the right to our rights,” states the Appeal from Havana, distributed Tuesday to the accredited foreign media on the island.

According to the documents, whose signatories all represent illegal groups, “during the year 2000, more than 1,000 acts of repression were recorded against peaceful dissidents, and at least 18 of the individuals remain in prison.”

In December, says the text, the government “broke all records by carrying out more than 300 politically repressive acts, of which at least 270 involved the arbitrary detention of non-violent members of the opposition.”

The “wave of repression” is said to have begun in the run-up to the Ninth Ibero-American Summit, held in Havana in November 1999, during which several presidents and high officials from Spain, Portugal or Latin America met with leaders of groups opposed to Castro’s socialist government.

“We do not want the isolation of, or any repressive measure against the Cuban government,” explained Hector Palacios, head of the opposition Centre for Social Research and secretary of the reporter’s office established to hold the declaration during the signature-collecting process.

What the groups are seeking is political solidarity, Palacios told IPS. “We hope that governments, lawmakers and civil society organisations converse with each other, exert pressure and take measures to improve the situation here,” he said.

The document demands the release of political prisoners and an end to the “practices of harassment, biased trials, unfair and disproportionate prison sentences, arbitrary arrests… and (and end to) the ban on open access to public trials.”

The oppositions groups also call for a halt to “all acts that transgress the essential rights of humans.”

Among those who signed the declaration are Gustavo Arcos (Cuban Pro Human Rights Committee), Oswaldo Payá (Christian Liberation Movement) and Elizardo Sánchez, (Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation).

Any political or social movement that opposes the socialist government headed by President Castro is considered illegal and is banned under the Cuban Constitution.

The authorities affirm that the dissident movement is made up of “mini-groups” that lack the support of the general population and exist only because they are promoted, organised and financed by US-based anti-Castro exile organisations and by the US government itself.

One factor of the bilateral tensions that have separated Havana from Washington since the Castro-led revolution of 1959 is that members of the political opposition are seen as “agents of the enemy” who seek to end to the Cuban revolution or hope to obtain an entry visa for the United States.

Official US documents confirm that resources have been provided for developing civil society organisations on the island, generally interpreted as support for Cuba’s dissident groups.

Such assistance normally occurs through diplomatic means, as equipment such as computers or faxes – difficult to obtain on the island – are provided to the groups, or Internet sites are set up that provide updates about the dissidents’ endeavours.

Both the aid and the policy of “people-to-people” contact encouraged by the Bill Clinton government in recent years are an attempt “to promote the peaceful transition to a democratic regime,” acknowledge US government sources.

The Castro administration, however, maintains that the socialist system is “the most democratic of all” because it calls for public participation in governmental decisions.

The Cuban president also refutes all charges of human rights violations, and instead stresses the high levels of education and medical access developed on the island over the last four decades, achievements recognised by several United Nations agencies.

The mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Cuba, the newspaper ‘Granma,’ confirmed Tuesday that Czech citizens Jan Bubenik and Ivan Pilip were arrested last Friday for “maintaining subversive contacts with members of counter-revolutionary mini-groups.”

According to ‘Granma,’ Pilip, a lawmaker, and Bubenik, of the Czech Pro-Democracy Foundation, passed instructions and resources on to dissident groups at the behest of Freedom House, an institution created by the US government.

The daily added that two Lithuanians, a Pole and a Czech, also said to hold Freedom House links, were discovered last year handing over money and equipment to the opposition.

The two Czech citizens arrested last week will appear before Cuban courts, which “will decide the appropriate measures to be taken,” said the newspaper.

According to the dissidents’ declaration released Tuesday, Havana has suffered from “the irrational goal of isolating itself” from an international community “that each day increasingly adopts democratic principles and respect for human rights.”

Palacio affirmed that the “repression against the Cuban civic opposition… tends to create world rejection of the Cuban government, further isolating it, but the government continues its repression.”

It is as if the government “were trying to isolate itself in order to prevent complaints from another government,” he added.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, headed by Sánchez, issued a statement Jan 9 indicating there are as many as 300 people being held in the island’s prisons for political reasons.

Sánchez reported that “the status of civil and political rights in Cuba worsened during the year 2000,” and he predicted an even greater deterioration this year.

The dissident leader affirmed that this decline in rights would not occur if the Castro administration were to “initiate and lead a process of gradual, modernising reforms” that would allow an end to the “disastrous totalitarian model adopted four decades ago.”