Communications activist silenced in Cuban jail cell
By Ron Kampeas · March 8, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan Gross has been about communications all his
life: The call-mom-everyday son, the family newsbreaker, the message guy
for Jewish groups, the get-out-the-vote enthusiast for candidate Barack
Obama, the technology contractor who helped the U.S. government bring
the world’s remotest populations into the 21st century.
Now, however, Gross, 60, of Potomac, Md., has been languishing for three
months in a Cuban high-security prison and his rare conversations are
monitored by Cuban officials.
“He spoke with my sister-in-law on a few occasions with someone standing
by him,” Bonnie Rubinstein, his sister, told JTA in an interview Monday.
“He was guarded, he tried to impart that he was OK.”
In fact, not so OK, Rubinstein said, correcting herself: Gross’ call
last week to his wife, Judy, was to ask for the medication he needs for
his gout and that is unavailable in Cuba.
“We’re hoping he got the medication,” said Rubinstein, a director of
early childhood education at Temple Shalom in Dallas. “He lost 52
pounds. We’re very worried about him.”
Rubinstein was arrested Dec. 3 as he prepared to return from Cuba, where
he was completing work on behalf of the U.S. government. He has not been
charged, but leading Cuban figures — including President Raul Castro —
have accused him of being part of a plot to undermine the government.
After weeks of taking a quiet approach to secure Gross’ release, his
family and friends launched a public campaign that is spreading to
Jewish communities across the United States, attracting the support of
U.S. lawmakers and high-profile media outlets. It kicked off last month
when Judy Gross issued a video appeal for the release of her husband of
40 years. The Grosses have two adult daughters.
“Alan has done nothing wrong and we want him home,” she said in the Feb.
18 video. “We’re hoping that U.S. officials and Cuban officals can get
together and mutually agree on a way to get him home.”
Up to that point, Judy Gross added, she had only been able to have three
brief conversations with her husband.
The video marked the family’s decision to go public after several weeks
of hoping to secure his release behind closed doors. Remarks by Cuban
leaders suggesting that Gross was a spy were a factor in the change,
said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the U.S. House of
Representatives Latin America subcommittee, who has met with the family.
“I’m going to continue to make noise about it, it’s the only thing that
can get him released,” said Engel, who raised the matter last month with
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton when she testified before
the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The campaign emphasizes Gross’ Jewish commitment.
“He is helping the Jewish community [in Cuba] improve communications and
Internet access,” Judy Gross said in the video. Later, after outlining
his anti-poverty activism, she added that “Alan also loves the Jewish
community. He’s been involved for as long as I can remember.”
Gross was active as a young man in the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization
and worked several years in the 1980s for the Greater Washington Jewish
Federation.
In a statement, the State Department said Gross was working on “a
program designed to play a positive constructive role in Cuban society
and governance by helping Cuban citizens to gain access they seek to
information readily available to citizens elsewhere in the world.” Such
projects are banned in Cuba.
The State Department did not specify work with the Jewish community, but
a backgrounder distributed by Gross’ family, business associates and
supporters said he worked only with “with peaceful, non-dissident,
Jewish groups” in Cuba. El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish language daily
published by the Miami Herald, quoted one Cuban Jewish leader as saying
she had not heard of him.
Cuba’s once thriving Jewish community was substantially depleted after
Fidel Castro’s 1959 rise to power. Much of the community moved to Miami.
Israel struck a deal with Cuba in the late 1990s that allowed the
emigration of all but about 1,500 Jews.
“His work was humanitarian and non-political,” the backgrounder says.
“Alan was helping Cuba’s tiny Jewish community set up an Intranet so
that they could communicate amongst themselves and with other Jewish
communities abroad, and providing them the ability to access the Internet.”
Friends said he was organizing access to Wikipedia, Encyclopedia
Britannica and Jewish music sites.
Gross’ plight has galvanized at least two communities: the greater
Washington area, where he lives and is active in Am Kollel, a Jewish
Renewal community in suburban Maryland; and in Dallas, the home of his
sister and mother.
Gross’ mother, Evelyn, 87, is ailing from her concerns for Alan, who
called her every day before his arrest, Rubinstein said.
“This is the kind of brother he was, ” the sister said, her voice
cracking. “If anything was going on with our parents, he would be the
one to call. He is fun loving and sociable, everyone loves him. He’s a
‘gut neshama’ ” — a good soul.
Last month, Gross’ congressman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and both
of Maryland’s Democratic senators — Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski —
wrote to Clinton expressing their “overwhelming concern” about Gross.
Van Hollen also is circulating a similar letter to his colleagues in the
U.S. House of Representatives.
Ron Halber, who directs Washington’s Jewish Community Relations Council,
said his JCRC is asking its counterparts nationwide to urge lawmakers to
sign the letter.
“This man’s career has been marked by humanitarian efforts,” Halber said.
The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have weighed in with
editorials.
“Only in the ancient, crumbling regime of the Castro brothers could this
ridiculous charge be leveled,” the Post said Feb. 22, referring to the
insinuations of espionage. “That’s because Cuba is virtually alone, even
among authoritarian countries, in trying to prevent most of its
population from using the Internet even for nonpolitical purposes.”
Rubinstein said Gross had been to Cuba several times prior to the most
recent visit, and that for the first time in his career he seemed
apprehensive.
“He was concerned that whomever he spoke to in Cuba, he couldn’t trust
anyone there,” she said. “He had never felt nervous, not even in Iran or
Iraq.”
A statement by Gross’ company, Joint Business Development Center, on a
Web site promoting voluntarism, said that it “has supported Internet
connectivity in locations where there was little or no access. In the
past two years JBDC has installed more than 60 satellite terminals,
bringing Internet access, email, VoIP, fax and the like to remote
locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Kuwait.”
JBDC was subcontracting from Development Alternatives Inc., which itself
had won a bid for the Cuba contract from the U.S. Agency for
International Development.
According to a Washington Jewish Week story in January, DAI in the past
has been linked to groups opposing the Chavez regime in Venezuela — an
ally of the Castro regime. The newspaper also quoted Cuba experts as
wondering why such assistance was needed, saying that World ORT already
provides computer needs to Cuba’s Jews. Such an officially sanctioned
program, however, would likely not have promoted free Internet access,
as Gross was doing.
In a Dec. 14 statement on the matter, DAI said it was working with the
State Department to “ensure that the detainee’s safety and well-being is
given top priority.”
DAI updated its statement on Monday in an e-mail to JTA.
“We are obviously very concerned about Alan’s well-being and continue to
do everything we can to secure his release,” said the company’s
spokesman, Steven O’Connor. “In that regard, we are grateful for the
efforts of the State Department and remain hopeful that Alan can be
reunited with his family soon.”
The last visit American diplomats were allowed with Gross was on Feb. 2.
The phone number for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington was
perpetually busy on Monday.
In her video, Judy Gross said her husband had visisted more than 50
countries, helping not only to promote Internet access but to build
schools and promote employment. The backgrounder emphasizes his work
with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“His work has had a positive impact in the lives of people in over 50
countries, including the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and
Haiti,” it says.
Friends and Cuba watchers say Gross is a victim of Cuban resentment of
U.S. human rights outreach in the island nation. The autocracy had hoped
that efforts launched under President George W. Bush would subside, but
President Obama — for whom Gross campaigned in 2008 — has maintained
the programs.
“The Castro regime is trying to put pressure on the United States,”
Engel said. “If Raul Castro wants to normalize relations with the United
States, this is a heckuva way to do it.”
Communications activist silenced in Cuban jail cell | JTA – Jewish &
Israel News (8 March 2010)
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