The international community must act against the undemocratic Cuban
regime as it increases its repression of dissidents, argues a member of
the European Parliament's human rights subcommittee

Who is responsible for the death of the Cuban political prisoner Wilman
Villar Mendoza on January 19? Why, on February 3, was blogger Yoani
Sanchez refused permission to travel abroad by Cuban authorities for the
19th time since May 2008? Why were opposition group Damas de Blanco –
Sakharov prize laureates – not allowed to travel to the European
Parliament in Strasbourg to collect that prestigious award for the
freedom of thought?

There are so many questions and almost no answers from the Cuban regime.
The situation of harassment and repression endangers the lives of Cuban
people who defend human rights and civil liberties. We are aware that
the regime is directly responsible for the death of four political
prisoners – Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, Laura
Pollan Toledo and Wilman Villar Mendoza – as well as thousands of
arbitrary arrests and hundreds of beatings, assaults, and acts of
repudiation.

The death of 31-year-old dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza on January 19
after a 50 day hunger strike highlights the continuing repression in
Cuba. Villar Mendoza was detained in November 2011 after participating
in a peaceful demonstration in Contramaestre calling for greater
political freedom and respect for human rights. He was charged with
'contempt' and sentenced to four years in prison in a hearing that
lasted less than an hour. He was not given the opportunity to speak in
his defence, nor represented by a defence lawyer.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a
human rights monitoring group that the government does not recognise,
classified Villar Mendoza as a political prisoner in December 2011. The
Cuban regime denies holding political prisoners and said in a statement
that Mr Villar "was not a dissident nor was he on a hunger strike". The
authorities did not even bother to tell Wilman Villar's wife about the
death of her husband, and she was informed by some human rights defenders.

Almost two years ago, political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in
similar circumstances, also on hunger strike, with the same demands.
Activist Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died last year after receiving a
brutal beating from the political police at Leoncio Vidal Park, in the
city of Santa Clara, Villa Clara province. Less than three months ago,
Laura Pollan Toledo, leader of the Damas de Blanco, died under
mysterious circumstances that have still not been clarified. Numerous
reports issued from within the island over the past three months have
reported an increase in the regime's violence against opposition –
including cases of activists who have suffered fractured skulls after
machete blows, and members of the Damas de Blanco who have been pricked
with needles containing unknown substances while participating in
marches on the streets of Havana.

The regime in Havana and its prisons have a system devised to eliminate
those political and common detainees who protest against the injustice
and inhumanity of their captors by denying them water and medical care,
and confining them in freezing cells. Catherine Ashton, the European
Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,
deplored the tragic death of Mr Villar and urged Cuba to continue
working to make progress on respect of human rights and freedom of
expression. "It's the second death in similar conditions in a very short
time and it poses doubts concerning Cuban's judicial system and
penitentiary," Ashton said.

According to human rights organisations, there is no way to know how
many government opponents remain in jail, as independent investigators
cannot visit prisons. In 2010, Raul Castro freed 52 prisoners who had
been arrested during a 2003 crackdown, but human rights defenders from
the island say that those releases have not changed the attitude by the
regime towards dissidents and repression continues. Last year the regime
decided to release 2,900 inmates, but following human rights defenders
information, the dissidents were not released.

Political prisoners must be released immediately. The persecution of
people for their legitimate demands for freedom of speech, thought and
assembly is unjust. The lack of fundamental rights contradicts the
principles of humanity and is a clear infringement of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory.

One could get an impression that Cuban regime is making free-market
reforms which aim at reviving Cuba's socialist economy by boosting
private enterprise. But the reality is much darker. So-called
free-market reforms will not change much in relations between the state
and citizens: the regime will still control 99 per cent of the economy.
Moreover, those reforms will not provide Cuban citizens with their
fundamental rights, such as freedom of thought, freedom of speech and
freedom of assembly. It is not a surprise that most Cubans desire
economic opportunities and private property ownership, but at the same
time they closely tie these economic changes to political changes in the
form of free elections, free expression, access to information and the
right to dissent.

It is clear that the reality in Cuba is far from the state propaganda of
'reforms' and 'changes'. The regime deserves strong condemnation for
these crimes and persecutions of people. The international community
should take the necessary steps to prevent the further escalation of the
extrajudicial executions by the Castro regime. Any repressive and
undemocratic regime is similar to a dead man walking. The Arab spring
surprised the world in 2011 throwing away one dictator after another.
Spring is unavoidable and inescapable, in Cuba also.

Dr Laima Andrikiene is an MEP in the European People's Party and a
member of the European Parliament's subcommittee on human rights

http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1472/cuban-spring-unavoidable-amid-repression

HAVANA — Ten Cuban dissidents are seeking asylum at the US naval base at
Guantanamo, Cuba, but "are being treated like terrorists," a blogger
close to the Cuban government charged Monday.

The 10 including dissident journalists Olienny Valladares Capote and
Adolfo Pablo Borraza Chaple, have been at the US base on Cuba's
southeastern tip, for three months and started a hunger strike February
3, blogger Yohandry wrote.

The blogger did not say how the group arrived at the tightly secured US
base, which Cuba says the United States operates on its territory
against its will. The United States claims it has a valid lease.

"Both journalists have said that at the Guantanamo Bay naval base
refugees are treated like terrorists," the blogger added, alluding to
the US holding terror suspects there.

Referring to their reported hunger strike, Yohandry said it was not
clear if US authorities were force-feeding the group "as Americans
usually do in such cases."

After the 1959 revolution that brought ex-president Fidel Castro to
power in Havana many Cubans tried to make it to the base, which is
surrounded by mine fields, in a bid to emigrate to the United States.

Cuba — the Americas' only one-party Communist regime — does not have
full diplomatic relations with the United States.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jWZDnmdUpARfJ-2ygmPqi9GZDUpw?docId=CNG.956cc047c755305c8ad4580183554bcc.9f1

The punishment cell is narrow, is five feet wide by two long, cold and
there is not even a blanket for cover. From the hole in the floor that
serves as a toilet, a rat occasionally emerges and looks curiously at
the curled up man lying there. Outside shouts are heard, metal banging,
and the general noise of the Aguadores prison, one of the most feared in
eastern Cuba. This scene, common in our prison system, was repeated in
early January and was had as its protagonist a young man of 31.

He was called Wilman Villar Mendoza was arrested on November 14, 2011
while participating in an antigovernment protest in the streets of
Contramaestre, his hometown. In images broadcast after his death, he is
seen at the head of a group carrying the Cuban flag, while the
astonished passers-by do not know whether to join the crowd or to shout
down the demonstrators. Probably the memories of that place passed
through his head again and again while he shivered within the damp walls
of the dungeon, but that we can never confirm. Because of that place he
would only emerge — already dying — to the hospital and finally to a
grave in the cemetery.

Villar Mendoza, the prisoner who recently died of a hunger strike, made
a living doing carpentry and masonry work. His specialty was the most
slender and beautiful wooden flowers that tourists buy as souvenirs to
remember this island. A stalk and six petals carved with the patience of
one who knows that time is not worth much in Cuba, the minutes will not
bring him anything more successful or happier. He gave form to a piece
of cedar, shaping it for hours and hours, brooding with that frustration
that is always greater among the youth of the province.

In September 2011 this sense of social unrest led him to join the
opposition group Patriotic Union of Cuba. According to the official
propaganda je was a common criminal who had even "brutally" beaten his
wife in July last year. But too many witnesses, including his own wife,
suggests that such insults are only trying to kill his image after the
death of his body.

In Cuba, in the words of a friend, "nobody knows the past that awaits
you," because criminal records of citizens are also determined by their
political behavior. As there is no separation of powers, as the judicial
system is not independent of the party branch, those whose ideology
falls short will find it reflected in their criminal records.

Generals have been known to have shoot their mistresses, ministers
caught in million dollar embezzlement schemes, children and their
fathers involved in various crimes that have never been brought before a
court. But when it comes to an opponent of the regime, it is enough to
have bought milk on the black market, quarreled with your wife, or
parked your car badly, to be taken as a culprit.

The Criminal Code does not include any section for "political offense,"
so that the "inconvenient" are always charged under another section.
Which is what happened to Wilman Villar Mendoza, who resisted police
arrest on July 7, 2011 after a domestic incident. Purely by
"coincidence" he would only be prosecuted for this case four months
later, when he participated in a protest against the government. On
arresting him, an officer shouted in front of several witnesses: "now
we'll make you disappear," and they did.

The practice of turning activists into criminals is nothing new. In
February 2010, when Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 85 days without
food, Raul Castro said publicly that he was a common criminal. He had
forgotten that seven years earlier in the book The Dissenters, prepared
by pro-government journalists to justify the imprisonments of the Black
Spring, Zapata Tamayo appeared with photo, name and surname. Playing
with history and rearranging it tends to create these contradictions …
since no government has ever been able to predict "what the future holds."

Fortunately, a criminal record can not explain all of the attitudes that
a man comes to take in his life. To present Villar Mendoza only as a
choleric husband who beat his wife does not explain why he was left to
die without food. To accuse him as a common prisoner seeks to reinforce
the Manichean idea as that in Cuba there are no decent people, patriotic
and law-abiding, who are also opposed to the government. Hence the flood
of insults that have rained on the memory of the deceased and the
official interest used his civic activism as a way to "clean up" some
criminal past.

A recent editorial in Granma asserts that there was no hunger strike. It
does not explain, however, how someone only 31 years old deteriorated so
rapidly in two months of confinement to the point of dying in a hospital
from "multiple organ failure." There is also the testimony of relatives
and friends who visited Villar Mendoza in jail to convince him to eat
again, but could not get him to stop repeating "Freedom or death!"

To disprove the official version, there are also numerous reports of
fasting that appeared in news media in exile and Twitter accounts of
local activists since mid-December. The Internet shows what the Cuban
press hides.

According to the statement of Maritza Pelegrino, her husband ceased to
feed himself on November 24 when he was sentenced to four years
imprisonment. He interrupted the strike on December 23 because his
jailers made him believe that he would be in the list of prisoners
pardoned by General Raul Castro. But he returned to starvation six days
later in finding out that all those promises were just lies, dirty tricks.

Tied up and naked they then put him in the punishment cell where he
contracted the pneumonia that would kill him. He arrived at the hospital
on January 13 and doctors warned the family that only a miracle could
save him. Less than a week later he was no longer breathing.

Wilman Villar was killed by the late medical intervention and neglect of
those who should have watched over him in prison. A system that has cut
off all peaceful, civic and electoral paths for citizens to influence
national course killed him. He was turned into a cadaver by a judicial
apparatus riddled with irregularities and ideological preferences, where
a political opponent is held guilty of any crime with little chance to
prove otherwise.

It was not just the lack of food or water that caused the sad outcome of
January 19, but having to use one's body as a public square of
indignation, on an island where protest is prohibited.

At his death, Wilman Villar Mendoza had two daughters, aged five and
seven years. Their mother still does not know how to explain to them
what happened.

Originally published in Spanish in El Pais, 31 January 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=14654

Further information on UA: 355/11
Index: AMR 25/002/2012
Cuba Date: 23 January 2012

URGENT ACTION PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE FREED

Cuban human right activists Ivonne Malleza Galano and Ignacio Martínez
Montejo were released from detention on 20 January, along with Isabel
Haydee Álvarez, who was detained after calling on officials to release
the two activists. They had been held for 52 days without charge,
following their participation in a peaceful anti-government
demonstration on 30 November 2011. Ivonne Malleza Galano and Isabel
Haydee Álvarez were released at 5pm and Ignacio Martínez Montejo at 9pm.
On their release they were told by state security officials that they
would face "harsh sentences" ("condenas severas") if they continued
their dissident activities. Amnesty International had adopted them as
prisoners of conscience, as they were detained solely for exercising
their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and had
called for their immediate and unconditional release. On 30 November,
Ivonne Malleza Galano, a member of the Ladies in Support (Damas de
Apoyo) to the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), and her husband Ignacio
Martínez Montejo, were arrested by police officers while they were
staging a peaceful demonstration in Fraternity Park (Parque de la
Fraternidad) in Havana City. The protest was against hunger and poverty,
and they were holding a banner with the slogan "Stop hunger, misery and
poverty in Cuba". Ivonne Malleza Galano was handcuffed and pushed into a
police vehicle. Two police officers arrived, tried to confiscate the
banner and detained her, along with Ignacio Martínez Montejo. Video
footage posted on the internet shows Ivonne Malleza Galano being
arrested by the police officers at Fraternity Park while the crowd
gathered round her and asked the officers to let her go. Isabel Haydee
Álvarez, an onlooker watching the demonstration, was detained after
protesting that the authorities should let the couple go. Ivonne Malleza
Galano is a member of the Ladies in Support (Damas de Apoyo) to the
Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco). The Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco)
are a group of female relatives of former prisoners of conscience and
current political prisoners. They organize peaceful marches where they
distribute flowers and call for the release of those who are still
detained. In 2005, the European Parliament awarded The Sakharov Prize
for Freedom of Thought to the Ladies in White. The Ladies in Support
emerged as a solidarity group who support and participate in activities
organized by the Ladies in White. Amnesty International will continue to
closely monitor their situation and will take further action as
appropriate. No further action is required. Many thanks to all who sent
appeals. This is the third update of UA 355/11. Further information:
www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR25/001/2012/en Names: Ivonne Malleza
Galano, Ignacio Martínez Montejo, Isabel Haydee Álvarez Gender m/f:
Ivonne Malleza Galano (f), Ignacio Martínez Montejo (m), Isabel Haydee
Álvarez (f)

Further information on UA: 355/11 Index: AMR 25/002/2012
Issue Date: 23 January 2012

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/002/2012/en/c67e2d7d-5a35-42f1-bed0-094eb3a229d7/amr250022012en.html

Cuba, Where Sheep Are Trained To Venerate Wolves

With the death of Cuban dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza, Cuba has lost
one of its precious remaining brave souls. While a sputtering dissident
movement shows occasional signs of life, reminding us of the hell the
Cuban people endure, it casts a pale shadow compared to the fury of the
Arab Spring. How is it possible that the Castro brothers have been able
to run one of the world's most repressive and dysfunctional gulags for
so long without their meeting the fate of the Ceausescus by now?

Their technique of how to introduce communism on an island scale is
worth studying.

First, take a geographic area and build a firewall around it. Allow an
elite group of monomaniacal thugs to subject the people trapped inside
to five decades of brutal repression, privation, confiscation, and
humiliation, all bolstered by relentless propaganda designed to convince
victims and observers alike that this is necessary for the greater glory
of the revolution.

Second, enlist an army of global intellectuals to manufacture a
smokescreen of respectability for a governing philosophy that extols the
virtues of equality and sacrifice, despite the fact that it delivers the
equality of poverty and the sacrifice of self respect. Build a few
Potemkin village medical facilities to fool the gullible into believing
some noble purpose or higher achievement motivates the endeavor.

Third, make it is risky, but not impossible, for anyone who possesses
the ambition and courage to rebel to escape instead.

Finally, marinate for two generations as you chase off the best and the
brightest and observe what happens to the character of the people that
survive.

Welcome to Cuba, where the human spirit has been so thoroughly crushed
that a nation of sheep passively waits for their predatory wolves to die
of old age, safely in their beds, not a hand raised against them.

Given the Cuban people's apparent resignation to their own fate, is it
any surprise that the rest of us just shake our heads in wonder and go
about our business, our political leaders impotently decrying the
occasional human rights outrage that escapes the censors and makes it
into the news?

When the nightmare runs its course and the complete story is finally
told, there will be no redeeming chapters.

But what about the lower-than-average infant mortality and longer life
expectancy touted by the Castro regime's boosters, if such statistics
can be believed? Isn't living longer an end that justifies the means?
Think about what living longer implies if you're forced to live under
tyranny. America's founders—and indeed, the leaders of the Central and
South American independence movements—preferred death to that sort of
life, and said so with their words and deeds.

What about the famously low crime rate, where a midnight stroller is
safer in Havana than in Washington, DC? Yes, violent crime is a
government monopoly in a police state. Plus, in a country that has so
little, there is nothing much to steal. After all, how many iPhones can
get ripped off when nobody can afford one and posting the wrong thing on
Twitter can earn you a visit from state security?

It'll be interesting to see what happens to a demoralized people after
Castroism breathes its final breath. A new pack of wolves might try to
keep the workers' paradise going, but at this point even the most
devoted cadres may well be weary of the experiment. Look for them to
enrich themselves by "privatizing" the economy Russian oligarch-style,
as they carve up the island to remodel it into the Caribbean resort
destination it has every right to be—so long as the "right" people profit.

A brief vintage car export market will likely open up as the world's
largest living auto museum sells off its collection. Prostitution will
return, or more precisely come out of the shadows, perhaps along with
the revival of what once was a thriving pornography industry. It's hard
to imagine a manufacturing base springing up to take advantage of the
cheap labor as this needs to be coupled with a work ethic, something the
Castro regime has made every effort to destroy. Surely, some unique
comparative advantage will come to the fore. But having tolerated the
intolerable for so long, will the Cuban people know what to do with
their newfound freedom once liberated from their chains?

That is the experiment that awaits the return of capitalism.

One can imagine a scenario in which an influx of returning expats, rich
in both human and financial capital, blow past the locals as they
reintroduce the courage, entrepreneurship, and work ethic they took with
them when they escaped. A two-tier society could easily emerge, with
returnees and their children lording their success over the bewildered
and resentful locals. Petty theft likely will make a comeback, so expect
a vigorous market for alarm and security services.

Cubans who have managed to get an advanced education under Castro, like
the many doctors staffing its medical system, will probably do fine,
though many might move to the U.S. seeking better pay, filling our
looming doctor shortage. Cigar exports will spike, although once Cuban
cigars lose their naughty cachet they will have to compete with many
excellent products produced by Cuba's neighbors. And the music industry
will thrive once it is coupled with international distribution—some
talents just cannot be stamped out.

But what will happen to the rest of the populace? Many might go to work
as the cooks, dishwashers, waiters, and hotel maids that will surely be
in demand when Club Med comes to town. They'll be much better off than
they are now. But don't expect that to stop the mainstream media from
running nostalgic stories about the equality that should have, would
have, and could have been had Marxism only been implemented properly.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2012/01/31/cuba-where-sheep-are-trained-to-venerate-wolves/

“The responsibility for Wilman Villar Mendoza’s death in custody lies
squarely with the Cuban authorities, who summarily judged and jailed him
for exercising his right to freedom of expression.”
Javier Zúñiga, Special Adviser at Amnesty International
Fri, 20/01/2012

The death in custody of a Cuban prisoner of conscience after a hunger
strike is a shocking reminder of the Raúl Castro government’s
intolerance for dissent, Amnesty International said today.

Wilman Villar Mendoza, 31, died this morning in Juan Bruno Zayas
Hospital in the city of Santiago where he was transferred from prison on
13 January due to health problems allegedly arising from a hunger strike
protesting at his unfair trial and imprisonment.

He was serving a four-year prison term on charges related to his
participation in a public demonstration against the government.

“The responsibility for Wilman Villar Mendoza’s death in custody lies
squarely with the Cuban authorities, who summarily judged and jailed him
for exercising his right to freedom of expression,” said Javier Zúñiga,
Special Adviser at Amnesty International.

“His tragic death highlights the depths of despair faced by the other
prisoners of conscience still languishing in Cuban jails, who must be
released immediately and unconditionally.”

“The Cuban authorities must stop the harassment, persecution, and
imprisonment of peaceful demonstrators as well as political and human
rights activists.”

On 14 November 2011, police arrested Villar Mendoza and eight other
members of the Cuban Patriotic Union dissident group in the eastern town
of Contramaestre for taking part in a protest against the Cuban government.

While he was in detention, police intimidated Villar Mendoza, telling
him he would be disappeared or face imprisonment on criminal charges
stemming from an earlier arrest if he did not stop his protests and
leave the dissident group.

He was released after three days in police custody but was then summoned
to Contramaestre Municipal Tribunal on 24 November. Judges tried him in
private and refused to accept testimony from his wife or other defence
witnesses.

The judges sentenced the activist to four years’ imprisonment and
immediately transferred him to Aguadores prison, in the provincial
capital Santiago. The same day, he began a hunger strike in protest at
the ruling.

As Villar Mendoza’s health deteriorated over recent days, members of the
Cuban Patriotic Union and the Ladies in White opposition group organised
a vigil outside the hospital. On 18 January, state security officials
broke up the gathering and detained more than a dozen people.

Wilman Villar Mendoza is not the first prisoner of conscience to die in
Cuban custody.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of conscience jailed after the “Black
Spring” crackdown on opposition groups in March 2003, died in prison on
23 February 2010 after several weeks on hunger strike.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/cuban-authorities-responsible-activists-death-hunger-strike-2012-01-20

Cuban women on a protest march say police harassed and detained them

They say they were trying to stage a march in the central Cuba city of
Santa Clara when police searched them for cellphones

By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban dissidents say police beat, groped and detained seven women who
tried to stage a march in the central city of Santa Clara to demand the
release of an opposition couple jailed since early January.

In an audio recording provided by the dissidents, women were heard
screaming and repeatedly shouting "Don't stick your hands on my breasts,
murderer" — allegedly as police searched for the cellphones recording
the scene.

"He put his hands inside my blouse, then they lifted my blouse in the
middle of the street looking for my phone," said Idania Yánes Contreras,
who led the march and recorded a narration of the Wednesday
confrontation on her phone.

"We were all punched and had our hair pulled" as police carried the
women to waiting patrol cars, Yánes added. Police also seized a frying
pan the women had been banging on to attract attention.

Six of the women were freed Thursday and the seventh was sent home late
Wednesday, Yánes told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from her home in
Santa Clara.

Yánes said the seven members of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for
Civil Rights, all dressed in black as a sign of mourning "for the
victims of the dictatorship," launched the protest carrying a sign that
said, "For Freedom, Against Impunity."

The march was intended to protest the continued detention of independent
journalist Yazmín Conlledo Riverón and her husband, Rafael Álvarez
Esmoris, who were arrested Jan. 8 on what Yánes described as fraudulent
charges.

The women had gone only about half a block, shouting "Freedom" and "Down
with Repression," Yánes said, when uniformed police and State Security
agents in civilian clothes swooped down on them and began searching for
the phones.

One security official told another, "that person has a cellular there,"
according to a transcript provided by the dissidents. The actual
recording, posted on the blog of Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as
Antúnez, is sometimes difficult to understand.

Antúnez, whose wife Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera was one of the seven
women detained, writes the blog Ni Me Callo Ni Me Voy — I will not shut
up or leave.

The other women were identified as Yaité Diosnelly Cruz Sosa, Yanisbel
Valido, Xiomara Martín Jiménez, María del Carmen Martínez López and
Damaris Moya Portieles.

The Rosa Parks movement is named after the Afro-American civil rights
activist woman who sparked the bus boycott in Montgomery, Al.

Antúnez said police have subjected dissident women to sexual harassment
in the past, and that his wife was once threatened with rape if she
continued her activism against the government.

Dissident Miguel Rafael Cabrera Montoya, meanwhile, has started a hunger
strike in a police station in the eastern town of Palma Soriano to
protest his detention, his wife told Radio Martí. Yelena Garcés Nápoles
said Cabrera is under investigation for a robbery in Havana last year.
But he's not been in Havana in two years, she told Radio Martí.

In Washington, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution
condemning the Cuban government for the death of Wilman Villar, 31, a
political prisoner who died earlier this month after a long hunger
strike to protest a four-year-sentence.

The resolution also asks all governments to push Cuba to halt human
rights abuses and calls on the United Nations to suspend Cuba's
membership in its Human Rights Council.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/02/2621727/cuban-women-on-a-protest-march.html

Amnesty International said Monday that three Cubans held without charge
for 52 days following their arrest at a protest were released last week,
hours after the human rights group named them as prisoners of conscience.

The release of the three also came a day after a hunger-striking
dissident died, prompting condemnation from island dissidents, rights
watchers, the United States and other nations. Amnesty had planned to
designate Wilman Villar, 31, a prisoner of conscience but he died in
custody before it could.

Ivonne Malleza Galano, Ignacio Martinez Montejo and Isabel Haydee
Alvarez were set free Jan. 20 but threatened with "harsh sentences" if
they do not stop their anti-government actions, the human rights monitor
said in a statement Monday.

It said all three were detained at a Nov. 30 protest in Havana at which
Malleza and Martinez held a banner that read "Stop hunger, misery and
poverty in Cuba." Alvarez was arrested for objecting when security
forces took the other two into custody.

"Amnesty International had adopted them as prisoners of conscience, as
they were detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of
expression and freedom of assembly, and had called for their immediate
and unconditional release," the statement said.

Cuba considers dissident activity to be counterrevolutionary, and the
dissidents to be mercenaries out to bring down the communist-run
government. It denies holding any political prisoners in its lockups.

Amnesty, which has strict criteria for who constitutes a "prisoner of
conscience" including a history of nonviolence, had not recognized any
Cuban inmates as such since the previous spring, when the last of 75
dissidents jailed since a 2003 crackdown were freed.

Villar was arrested in November in the eastern city of Santiago
following an anti-government protest.

The Cuban government denied that he had been on hunger strike or was
even truly a dissident. It described him as a "common criminal" sent to
prison for domestic violence, said he received all the medical attention
he needed and alleged that his case was being manipulated for political
ends.

Authorities' indignation continued Monday as official newspapers Granma
and Trabajadores published an editorial titled "Cuba's Truths." Taking
up the entire front pages of both publications, it attacked critics' own
records on human rights and defended the island, citing achievements in
health care, education and literacy, and calling the accusations a smear
campaign by Cuba's enemies.

"The so-called political prisoner was serving a sentence of four years,
following a fair process … and a trial according to the rule of law,
for brutally and publicly beating his wife, threatening police and
violently resisting arrest," the editorial said

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which
monitors detentions of dissidents in Cuba, sent an open letter to the
government demanding access to the investigation.

It said it wanted to confirm or rule out its belief that Villar was
unfairly and disproportionately punished for his political activities,
held in solitary confinement and given inadequate medical care when he
went on hunger strike. Signed by Commission founder Elizardo Sanchez, a
dissident and former prisoner himself, the letter doubted that Villar
was truly imprisoned for beating his wife.

"The family incident from July 2011 should be clarified, as well as the
reasons why he would be freed and sent back to the family home despite
the possible risks from a supposed situation of domestic violence," it read.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/amnesty-cuba-releases-prisoners-conscience-15422861#.Ty7HQYF63To

Cuban dissident blogger says exit visa denied
The Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez says she has been denied
permission attend a film festival in Brazil.

Sanchez recently got an entry visa from Brazil. The sticking point was
whether Cuba would grant the exit visa that islanders must obtain to
travel overseas.

By the blogger's own count, it's the 19th time in recent years that she
has been denied an exit visa.

Sanchez said Friday on Twitter that there were "no surprises" this time
around.

She had lobbied for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to raise the
issue with Cuban officials during a visit this week. But Rousseff told
reporters she considered it an internal Cuban matter.

The issue intruded somewhat on a trip meant to highlight trade and
cooperation between countries.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/03/2623125/cuban-dissident-blogger-says-exit.html#storylink=misearch

Dissident blogger says Cubans wanted more from Brazilian visit

The Brazilian leader had vowed to make human rights a cornerstone of her
foreign policy pointed to the U.S. detention camp for suspected
terrorists at Guantánamo Bay on the island's southeastern tip.
By Matthew Bristow
Bloomberg News

HAVANA — Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said her compatriots had hoped for
more from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who avoided criticizing
the human rights situation on the communist island during a state visit
to Havana this week.

Sanchez said she had looked for at least a "small wink" from Rousseff,
who was imprisoned and tortured for fighting Brazil's dictatorship in
the 1960s, after a jailed dissident, Wilman Villar, died last month
following a hunger strike and President Raul Castro vowed to maintain
single-party rule.

"It was pure chance that she came at this time, but people had hoped for
more," Sanchez said in an interview last night in Havana. "I would've
hoped for a small wink, a phrase with a double meaning that we could
interpret, and that the government could interpret too."

Rousseff, who concludes a three-day visit to Havana today, said that it
was an internal matter for Cuba to decide whether to allow Sanchez to
leave the island after Brazil last week granted the 36-year-old blogger
an entry visa to attend next month a screening of a documentary she
appears in. Sanchez, a critic of the Castro government on the Generation
Y blog, has been denied permission to leave Cuba for four years.

"Brazil gave the visa to the blogger," Rousseff, 64, told reporters
yesterday in Havana before meeting with Castro and his brother Fidel.
"The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government."

Rousseff, who has vowed to make human rights a cornerstone of her
foreign policy, failed to comment on the Cuban government's record,
pointing instead to the U.S. detention camp for suspected terrorists at
Guantánamo Bay on the island's southeastern tip.

"He who throws the first stone has a roof made of glass," said Rousseff,
whose Workers' Party has long supported Cuba. "We in Brazil have our
problems too."

While critical of the Brazilian president's stance, Sanchez said
Rousseff's silence is preferable to her predecessor and mentor Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva's siding with the Castro government after the death
of another jailed hunger striker in 2010, she added.

"I wake up every day and say to myself, today I am going to behave like
a free person," Sanchez said. "Dilma once said the same. She paid a high
personal and physical cost, but in the end life proved her right and
Brazil became a democracy."

Julia Sweig, an author of publications on Cuba and Brazil, said
criticism of the Castro government is more widespread today than it's
ever been since the 1959 revolution and taking many forms that escape
the attention of foreign governments and media. As Cuba's second-biggest
investor, helping Castro ease state control of the economy, Brazil is
well-positioned to discuss the island's rights record behind the scenes
in a productive manner, she added.

"Yoani's situation bears zero comparison to what Dilma went through,"
said Sweig, director of the Latin America program at the Council on
Foreign Relations in Washington. "Unlike Dilma, she hasn't been and
won't be jailed or tortured and I seriously doubt she's going to be
president of Cuba."

Cuba's government relies on beatings, short-term detentions, forced
exile and travel restrictions to repress virtually all forms of
political dissent, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report
this month. Cuba denies it's holding any political prisoners and
considers dissident activity to be counterrevolutionary supported by
anti-Castro "mercenaries" in the U.S.

While blocked from traveling abroad, Sanchez has emerged as a leader
among a group of young dissidents who describe the daily travails of
life in Cuba through difficult-to-access social media. Many of her
chronicles are published by newspapers throughout Latin America. She has
also written a book, "Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth
About Cuba Today."

Sanchez said the visibility she has gained through blogging gives her
some protection from the Cuban government.

"The day I stop blogging, they'll put me on trial," she said.

Rousseff, who travels to Haiti today, discussed the possibility of
hosting Raul Castro at a future date, according to a Brazilian official
with the president who isn't authorized to comment on the two leaders'
talks publicly.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/02/2620793/dissident-blogger-says-cubans.html#storylink=misearch

Members of dissident group "Ladies in White" pray after a Mass and
before the group's weekly march at Santa Rita church in Havana, Cuba,
Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. The group continues to face harassment by
government officials and pro-government groups.

In an ideal world, the Cuban government would adopt "respect human
rights" as its New Year's resolution. Alas, the Cuban government remains
stubbornly opposed to democratic principles, human rights, and
fundamental freedoms.

New incarcerations for political dissent have not stopped. In December
2011, The Government of Cuba used harassment, detention and assault to
block dozens of human rights activists, journalists, and others from
observing International Human Rights Day. Members of the Damas de
Blanco, winners of the Department of State's 2011 Human Rights Defenders
Award, continue to face harassment by government officials and
pro-government groups. Despite government claims to the contrary,
independent human rights groups estimate that more than 60 political
activists remain in Cuban jails.

There have been a few positive glimmers: Cuba's year-end release of 2900
prisoners and the announcement of some economic measures that could
provide a greater degree of economic independence and relief to the
long-suffering Cuban people. However, Cuba still has a long way to go.
When it comes to human rights, the basic outline of Cuba's political
system has not changed. One party rule brooks no dissent and jail awaits
those who dare speak out.

http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials/Human-Rights-Still-Suffer-Despite-Change-In-Cuba–136973043.html

Dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez has issued a video plea after being
denied permission to leave the country since 2004

The dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez – famed for her outspoken
online critiques of the country's communist regime – has issued an
appeal to Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, to help her leave the
Caribbean island.

Sánchez, a Havana-based writer who has been accused by Cuban authorities
of conducting a "cyberwar" against the government, has not been able to
leave the country since 2004 because of migration rules that require
Cubans to receive government permission to travel.

She has now been invited to the Brazilian state of Bahia in February for
the screening of a documentary about press freedom in Cuba and Honduras
in which she features.

But speaking to the Brazilian television channel Record this week,
Sánchez said she expected her latest request for an exit permit would
again be declined without "high-level intervention".

Sánchez told Record she had "exhausted all of the options inside my
country to get them to allow me to travel".

In the video appeal to Rousseff, posted on YouTube, Sánchez called on
Brazil's first female president to intervene.

"Please help me," said the blogger, who says it is her 19th attempt to
get travel permission from Cuban authorities. "Through this small video
I want to send a very respectful [and] very humble message … to the
president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff."

"Unfortunately I am forbidden from leaving my own country – I have not
committed any crime."

Referring to the time Rousseff spent in jail during Brazil's military
dictatorship, Sánchez said: "I know very well that she has felt first
hand … what excessive control and repression is."

"I have done everything that is within my reach but the wall of control,
the wall of censorship, the wall which stops me travelling freely and
returning to my island seems not to move," said Sánchez, whose
supporters have also created an online petition calling on Rousseff to
intervene.

Before Christmas, activists had hoped that Cuba's president, Raúl
Castro, would announce major changes to the country's migration laws,
particularly the rule that means Cubans require exit permits to travel
abroad.

But while Castro, who officially took over from his brother as president
in 2008, announced pardons for nearly 3,000 prisoners, those hoping for
a loosening of travel rules were disappointed.

"The migration reforms … were not announced again," Sánchez says in her
video appeal to Rousseff. "In the 21st century … we are forbidden from
leaving and entering freely our country."

Sánchez has earned international plaudits for her blog, Generación Y, on
which she publishes regular critiques of the Cuban authorities, often
secretively posted from internet cafes.

In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the world's 100 most influential
people. The magazine's profile, written by the American novelist Oscar
Hijuelos, described her "feisty dedication to the truth".

"Under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez
has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot:
freedom of speech," Hijuelos wrote.

But while the blogger's supporters view her as a standard-bearer for
press freedom, Cuban authorities have accused her of conducting a
Washington-backed "cyberwar" against the island's communist regime.

In a recent piece for Foreign Policy magazine, the Cuban blogger said
that while many foreign correspondents in Havana feared expulsion if
they offended authorities, social networks were helping independent
journalists get the message out.

"Opening the world's eyes to the real Cuba … no longer requires a wire
service dispatch; it can be done with a cell phone," she wrote.

Meanwhile, Cuban authorities have vented their anger at a Twitter user
whom they accused of starting a wave of online rumours this week
claiming that the former president, Fidel Castro, had died.

An article posted on the state-run Cubadebate website pointed the finger
of blame at a tweeter called @Naroh.

In the story, entitled: "New lie against #FidelCastro fails on Twitter",
the website claimed that after the rumours began "necrophiliac
counterrevolutionaries, aided by some media, immediately started to
party." Responding to the allegations that he had started the hoax,
Naroh tweeted: "Cuba is blaming me for killing Fidel Castro on Twitter.
Can I now consider myself a Twit-star?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/05/cuban-blogger-appeals-brazil-president

1. The Arab spring

Only when the events in Egypt exceeded the predictions, did the Cuban
press note (with tweezers) some isolated incidents. Nor had it published
anything earlier about the riots in Tunisia and Yemen, nor did it later
dig into the deposition of Hosni Mubarak. On Libya and and the fall of
Muammar Gadaffi, it limited itself to denigrating the role of NATO,
without mentioning the popular movement against the dictator. On Syria,
Cuban press coverage remains minimal.

2. Latin Grammy Awards

As no Cuban artist in residence in the island won a Latin Grammy in
2011, the Cuban press accolades applauded only the Puerto Rican duo
Calle 13, and omitted all exiled Cuban artists who were winners: Amaury
Gutiérrez, Lena Burke, Paquito D 'Rivera and the late Israel López "Cachao".

3. UN special report on Iran's nuclear program

On November 8 the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United
Nations presented a detailed report which showed not only Tehran's
efforts to achieve the atomic bomb, but to do so in record time, based
on special designs of enriching uranium by catalysts process methods.
Not one word of this report was revealed in Cuba, an ally of the regime
of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

4. Convictions for child prostitution

Five were implicated in the death of a 12-year-old child prostitute in
the eastern city of Bayamo and four subsequently arrested for ties to a
child prostitution ring were sentenced in September of this year to
prison terms of between 10 and 30 years. Three of those convicted are
Italian. Despite the national and international turmoil after the death
of the girl, in 2010, the Cuban press did not reflect on the case.

5. Sports defections

In addition to promising young players such as the pitcher Gerardo
Concepción and footballer Yosniel Mesa, two major athletes fled Cuba in
2011 through risky and illegal ways. The great Yoenis Cespedes, member
of the Cuban baseball team and current national home run record holder,
left the island on a boat bound for the Dominican Republic in the
summer, and expects to contract with the major leagues. Paralympic
swimming champion at the 2011 Pan American, Rafael Castillo, crossed the
border and sought political asylum in the United States. Nothing was
said officially in Cuba about either of them.

6. The "cubañoles"

In 2011 Cuba set a record for requests for Spanish citizenship.
According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the Spanish consulate in
Havana has already nationalized some 66,000 Cubans, and it is estimated
that at the end of the process about 190,000 residents of the island
will be citizens of Spain due to the Law of Historical Memory
(qualifying requires having a Spanish grandparent). In Cuba, not only
has this event been silenced, but Internet pages with information about
how to apply are blocked.

7. Hugo Chavez's Cancer

With the exception of an official note on the surgery in June of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, news coverage on successive
chemotherapy treatments in Havana, relapse, revenues emergency in
Caracas and in general the Venezuelan president's illness has been
practically nil.

8. Bill Richardson's visit to Havana

Only after former New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson declared
his frustration with the unsuccessful trip he made to Havana in
September, did the official Cuban press counter with the reasons why the
government had not allowed Richardson will meet with Alan P. Gross, let
alone bring him back to the United States. During his stay in Cuba, Bill
Richardson was ignored by the Cuban media.

9. Pablo Milanes Controversy

Nor was a a visit to Miami by one of the two most important singers of
the Cuban Nueva Trova movement, Pablo Milanes, mentioned, nor was a word
published about his accusatory statements against the repression of the
Ladies in White and the stifling centralization of power. Only by
alternative means did Cubans learn of the controversial Pablo Milanes
concert at American Airlines Arena in Miami, and his public break with
the regime of the island

10. Cuba's first gay wedding

An event covered by the international press found no place in Cuban
journalism: the wedding of Wendy Iriepa, a transsexual, and the
homosexual dissident Ignacio Estrada in August. Not even because this
one-of-a-kind wedding occurred on the "symbolic" date of August 13th
(the birthday of Fidel Castro) did the Cuban media report it.

11. Record for corruption

Scholars of Cuban issues classify 2011 as the "year of corruption in
Cuba." Scandals in the fields of nickel (Sherritt International and
Cubaníquel), telecommunications (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba,
known as ETECSA), the Cuban Volleyball Federation, the Tobacco Industry
(Habanos SA), among others, led to dismissal of ministers such as Yadira
Garcia (Basic Industry ) and legal actions against sports officials such
as the glory of Cuban volleyball, Raul Diago. On all these scandals, the
Cuban media issued terse notes, or in some cases ignored them entirely.

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=13626

HAVANA TIMES, Dec 29 — Upon hearing the news of the pardon of 2,900
prisoners, a friend who's a "revolutionary" warned me that "the streets
are going to turn bad"; while a dissident complained to me that "the
Cuban government's decision was too limited." The controversy sparked my
interest, so I went looking for some of those who were released.

I talked with three of them for a good while. Though those conversations
didn't get me any statistical parameters, it was enough to make me
realize that not necessarily all of those men and women would return to
the streets to repeat the crimes committed in the past.

This also made me wonder about how fair it is to keep a man locked up
for 36 years — married and trained in prison as a level "A" technician
in electricity for machine assemblies — for a crime he committed when he
was a 17-year-old adolescent.

It's certain that some of those pardoned will fail to re-integrate
themselves into society and will return to crime, but that cannot serve
as an argument to deny all the others a second chance.

Prisons shouldn't be used as punishment, but as places of confinement
for those who are unable to live in society without harming the rest of
us. But under this criterion, there's no justification for keeping them
behind bars when they're not dangerous.

It's very healthy that each year the authorities will be obligated to
review the cases of people placed in their custody to serve a sentence;
men and women should never be denied the right to rehabilitation.

The 2,900 released at Christmas time adds to the 200 political prisoners
released since Raul Castro assumed the presidency, and to those figures
should be added the commutations of the death sentences of dozens of
other convicts.

We can hope that this is a first step towards the elimination of capital
punishment, because it's a penalty where there is no turning back, even
if justice is mistaken. It's also a cruel punishment that denies human
beings the opportunity to correct themselves.

I know that my opinion is not shared by many Cubans. In street
interviews on the topic, most people with whom I spoke were in favor of
maintaining the death penalty for serious crimes.

In any case, deputies in parliament raised the need to revise the Cuban
penal code, and I imagine this will be one of the items on its agenda.
However it's certainly not the only one, because the challenges facing
Cuban society today are enormous.

Despite Raul Castro's insistence on the need to prosecute cattle
thieves, the sentence for that crime shouldn't be greater than that
applied to those who caused the deaths of dozens of mentally ill
patients from hunger and cold.

If, as the president said in parliament, the main enemy of the nation is
white-collar corruption, it seems logical that the government would arm
itself with a strategy and a legal structure that allows it to fight
harder and more efficiently.

How much has the country lost through the embezzlement and theft in the
areas of civil aviation, nickel, cigars, telephone services, food
imports, biotechnology, transportation and spare parts, sugar and even
within some companies run by the military?

The truth is that any of those convicted leaders or officials did much
more damage to the national economy in one year than could have been
done in the whole life of some Cuban cattle rustler killing cows.

If the government fails to eliminate the milking of the nation's
industries, it will mean little if ordinary Cubans increase productivity
on their jobs, use less electricity or stop receiving subsidies. The
sacrifices of the people will end up in private bank accounts abroad.

In parliament, the president blasted them as "corrupt bureaucrats." He
accused them of holding positions "to accumulate wealth, counting on the
eventual defeat of the revolution" and he warned that "we will be
relentless" in the fight against that "parasitic plague."

In the same address he announced that there are documentaries and filmed
interviews of "white-collar criminals." Nonetheless, these can only be
viewed by deputies and other leaders, denying that opportunity from most
citizens.

Can people be asked to understand the gravity of what is happening when
most of the information is hidden from them? Is it correct to maintain
secrecy around an issue that affects the entire nation? And will the
national media again bury its head and pretend nothing is happening?

From what has been leaked, few of these cases have anything to do with
national security. The silence only serves to keep people passive in the
grandstands circulating rumors – some true, and others preposterous.

The lack of transparency in fighting corruption seems to prove the
correctness of Cuban writer Lisandro Otero when he concluded that under
capitalism, citizens don't know what will happen, while under socialism
they never find out what has happened.
—
An authorized translation by Havana Times (from the Spanish original)
published by BBC Mundo.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=58621

Jailing of Cuban dissidents denounced
By Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@elnuevoherald.com

Activists and groups advocating individual freedom in Cuba denounced the
jailing in maximum security prisons of three peaceful opponents,
including Ivonne Malleza Galano, who this year carried out a series of
daring street protests.

The arrests coincide with the massive amnesty announced by Cuban leader
Raúl Castro of about 2,900 Cuban prisoners. Five political prisoners
were also released, according to information given on Tuesday by
Elizardo Sánchez, director of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission
of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, based in Havana.

"Suddenly the signs are very negative," Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald.
"Because while there is an amnesty of criminal and political prisoners,
three people who simply staged a small peaceful protest on the streets
without any kind of force or violence are being jailed."

Malleza was transferred to Manto Negro women's jail in Havana together
with dissident Isabel Hayde Alvarez Mosqueda. Both could be sentenced to
five years in prison. The third opponent jailed is Malleza's husband,
Ignacio Martínez Montero.

Malleza, a member of the group the Ladies in White, began to draw
attention in the last few months because of her work in the opposition

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/27/2563791/jailing-of-cuban-dissidents-denounced.htmlmovement.

HAVANA – Prominent Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas was released
without charges several hours after his "violent" arrest in the central
city of Santa Clara, his family and colleagues said Monday.

Fariñas was headed for church on Sunday together with a group of 10
opposition members when "three (police) patrol cars blocked their way
and the cops began to push and shove them inside," Ramon Jimenez,
spokesman for the dissident group United Anti-Totalitarian Forum, told Efe.

"The police were violent with them and Guillermo was treated worst of
all," Jimenez said.

Fariñas' mother Alicia Hernandez confirmed Monday the account of her
son's detention and said that, after returning home around 7:30 p.m. on
Sunday, he had to go to the doctor "because he was in a lot of pain."

The 49-year-old psychologist and independent journalist went on a hunger
strike last year for more than four months following the death of
opposition prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, to demand the release of
political prisoners suffering severe illnesses.

Guillermo Fariñas, recipient of the European Parliament's 2010 Sakharov
Prize for the defense of human rights, was arrested briefly on several
occasions this year, the last time in mid-September during a wave of
detentions of dissidents in Santa Clara and other towns in central Cuba.

According to the opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and
National Reconciliation, the Communist government has intensified the
"interior repression" against dissidence over the last month, and
estimates that 380 people were arrested for political reasons in
December. EFE

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=456174&CategoryId=14510

Just a few weeks after going tweet-to-tweet with dissident Yoani Sánchez
in a bracing welcome to the open debate that reigns online, Mariela
Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and director of the
National Sexual Education Center, has launched a blog.

"El blog de Mariela Castro" featured Castro's first two posts on
Wednesday, although readers have not yet been provided with the chance
to leave responses or comments.

Castro, well-known in Cuba for her work in favor of the rights of sexual
minorities, published her first blog article on the visit she made in
October to Amsterdam and another on the discussions in the Cuban
legislature concerning the "racial problem" on the Communist-ruled island.

In the second piece, Castro says that she was invited on Tuesday to a
working meeting of the National Assembly at which lawmakers discussed
racism and in which Culture Minister Abel Prieto and parliament speaker
Ricardo Alarcon also participated.

According to what she said in her blog post, the 53 years of the Cuban
Revolution confirm that the country must work on an ongoing basis on
educational and social communication strategies to achieve "cultural
changes" in society and "full justice."

The second and last plenary session of the National Assembly this year
will take place on Friday.

Mariela Castro last month opened her first Twitter account
(@CastroEspinM), which in just a few hours engendered debate and a
controversial exchange of messages with independent blogger Yoani
Sanchez, who has – over time – been critical of the Cuban regime.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/12/22/raul-castros-daughter-launches-blog/

(Reuters) – Cuba is abuzz with speculation that President Raul Castro
will soon announce policy changes making it easier for Cubans to travel
abroad from their communist island.

Without being specific, he has promised to ease restrictions that make
it difficult for most Cubans to leave the island and return, one of the
biggest gripes about life under the government in power since Cuba's
1959 revolution.

Castro could disclose the reforms as soon as Friday, when he will speak
to a session of the National Assembly, but there are also rumours they
will be announced in early January.

The government has been tight-lipped about his plans, but Castro said in
an August speech to the assembly that change is coming.

He said officials were working to update migration policy with an eye
toward increasing ties with Cubans who have left the Caribbean island
and are living abroad.

Today's emigrants are leaving for economic reasons, not political, he
said, and "almost all still love their family and the homeland where
they were born."

Cuban exiles, who send more than $1 billion a year in remittances from
abroad, are an important source of money for the cash-strapped island
and are expected to bankroll small businesses and real estate purchases
now permitted under economic reforms by Castro.

How far he plans to go with travel changes remains to be seen, but
Cubans' hopes are high.

They want him to eliminate costly and time consuming requirements for
such things as government permission to both leave and return to the
island and for a letter of invitation from a friend or relative in the
country they intend to visit.

They also would like to see an end to limits on how long they can be
away and on the right to bring their children along on trips, both of
which are in place to encourage their return.

CUBAN EXODUS

Cuba imposed travel restrictions to slow an exodus that began with the
1959 revolution and has continued only partly abated. An estimated 2
million Cubans live abroad with most of those in the U.S. and
particularly in Miami.

Castro said many of the rules "played their role in certain
circumstances," but then "lasted unnecessarily."

Cubans agree. They say they would like to visit family members abroad
and see more of the world than the island most have never left.

"Everybody has the right to travel, to know other countries for family
reasons, economic reasons, work reasons, and I think it would help the
development of Cuban society," student Jose Ricardo told Reuters in Havana.

"I have family in the United States and it would be good for me to go
see them," said retiree Ricardo Cuesta. "It would be good for everyone."

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit from the
country since 2004, said on Twitter that her bags are packed and she was
"ready to test the limits of the possible" by going to the airport as
soon as changes are announced.

"Rights are not to begged for, they are to be exercised," she said.

Even if the government loosens travel restrictions, Cubans still will
face visa requirements in many countries, including the United States.

But under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the U.S. also allows them in
if they cross the Florida Straits and set foot on the beach. (Editing by
Kevin Gray and Anthony Boadle)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/23/uk-cuba-travel-idUSLNE7BM01620111223

On learning of the death of Kim Jong-il, Cuban authorities immediately
declared three days of official mourning. Their action underscored
longstanding ties of intimacy between two of the world's most
oppressive, most anti-American regimes.

The death of North Korea's tyrant also evoked a feeling that the Cuba of
Fidel Castro, age 85, and reigning leader Raul Castro, age 80, will soon
be overtaken by the passage of time, ushering in fresh and similar
regime uncertainties.

Independent-minded Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez sees deep parallels:
"genealogy has been more determinate than ballot boxes, and the heritage
of blood has left us—in 53 years—only two presidents, both with the same
last name. The dauphin over there is named Kim Jong-un; perhaps soon
they will communicate to us that over here ours will be Alejandro Castro
Espin [Raul Castro's only son and possible heir]."

Unlike North Korea, which remains remote and distant from the U.S. and
the West, Cuba continues to enjoy the benefits of travel and tourism
despite its inhospitable political climate. According to Cuban
authorities, the island will receive more than 2.5 million visitors in
2011, many from the U.S., who have taken advantage of Obama-era travel
concessions.

Yet, the stagnant and repressive political system grinds on, and the
regime shows no signs of loosening its grip. It lashes out viciously at
small groups of activists who dare protest the absence of democracy,
such as a December 2 roundup of 46 dissidents, and complains loudly
about intrepid protesters who pulled off a fireworks display off the
coast of Havana to protest human rights violations.

Sadly, friends of Cuban liberty mourn the passing of former Czech
anti-Communist dissident and ex-President Vaclav Havel, the antithesis
of a Kim Jong-il or a Castro.

In a full lifetime, Havel never shied away from support for dissidents,
democracy, and freedom in Communist Cuba. On travel to Cuba, he was
firm: "I don't think we can go to Cuba and lie sunning on the beach,
having a good time and enjoying a drink, without noticing what is going
on around us."

Today's neo-realists in the White House and State Department prefer
relative silence when it comes to Cuba's 50-plus years of dictatorship.
They seek good relations with a regime that admires the regimentation of
North Korea rather than the freedom of the United States. Yet, as former
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright observed in eulogizing Havel's
life and actions, "the urgency in his [Havel's] voice came less from
lofty expectations of human character than from the distress he felt at
those who accepted injustice simply because it was easier to look away
than to resist."

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/21/cuba-north-korea-and-vaclav-havel/

HAVANA – The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation said Monday that in December there have been 388
temporary detentions for political reasons in Cuba.

"We are very disturbed by the increase of what is called 'low intensity'
political repression consisting of being kept in custody for hours, days
or weeks," Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the illegal but tolerated
commission, told foreign correspondents.

"We have absolutely confirmed – up to yesterday, Dec. 18 – 388
detentions for political reasons, many of them violent," he said.

Sanchez said that the political, economic and cultural situation and
that of civil rights in Communist-ruled Cuba "continue to deteriorate."

As an example of his complaint he presented the case of Henry Perales,
who appeared at the same press conference to report that he was
violently arrested and jailed by police together with a group of
dissidents when they tried to carry out a peaceful march on Dec. 2 in
the eastern town of Palma Soriano.

Perales, 27, said that he and his friends were beaten by security agents
and, in his case, by the driver of the bus they put him in.

"When I got on (the bus) I yelled 'Long live human rights!' The driver
had a tool in his hand, he struck me with it and when I called him a
murderer he hit me again," Perales said.

He said police took him to a medical post where he was given nine
stitches to close the wounds caused by the blows. Afterwards he was
jailed for nearly five days and was later released without charges.

Perales said he intended to present a "formal accusation" against the
bus driver, and Sanchez confirmed that the commission will aid the
dissident in his efforts to obtain justice. EFE

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14510&ArticleId=453903

The death of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, has Cuban Americans
and dissidents in Cuba pondering about the day when they will read Fidel
Castro's obituary.

As North Korea urges its people to rally behind Jong-il's youngest son
and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, Cubans in the U.S. can't help but see
the Korean family succession of totalitarian power as an omen to the
future to come for the Cuban people.

For 52 years, Cuban exiles and pro-democracy advocates have awaited the
death of Castro in the hope that it would cripple the Communist regime –
only to see that excitement wane by the appointment of his brother, Raul
Castro, as president in 2006.

Today in North Korea, the realities of a totalitarian government run
through bloodlines have ruled out any hope for democracy in that country.

"Without a doubt, both regimes are similar in concept in that the heirs
to both dictatorships end the same way – family dynasties and
bloodlines," internationally known Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez
told Fox News Latino.

The quick succession to power of Jong-il's son after the father's death
has sent mixed messages about what may transpire after Castro dies. Will
democracy break through? Will native Cubans mourn?

North Koreans have marched by the thousands to their capital's landmarks
to mourn, many seen crying uncontrollably and flailing their arms in
apparent grief over news of the death of their "dear leader," according
to the Associated Press. On the nation's state television, Ri Chun Hee,
known as the voice of North Korea, tearfully broke the news of the
dictator's death on Monday.

"I don't think we are going to see a Cuba filled with images of people
crying in the streets, and tearing their clothes as a sign of their
pain," Sánchez said. "Actually instead, when Fidel Castro dies,
everything will be held in an official ceremony and Cubans will breathe
a big sigh of relief."

Since Fidel Castro came to power, Cuban exiles have hoped to be able to
return — at least for a visit — to a democratic Cuba. Numerous times
during the bearded revolutionary's tenure, exiles thought certain events
would bring down the regime — the end of the Soviet empire, which kept
Castro's government propped up with billions of dollars in aid annually;
news of Castro's health problems; the passage of laws by the U.S.
Congress tightening the embargo against Cuba.

Each bit of news prompted Cuban exiles to say "Next year in Havana,"
about where they would celebrate Christmas.

But the regime continued.

The future date of Castro's death has always been marked as a date of
reckoning – a new beginning. But experts point to Kim Jong-il's death as
a sign of what the current regime hopes will take place on the island.

"People think that whether he lives or dies is the only thing that will
determine the future course of events in Cuba," said Aramis Pérez, a
secretariat member of the Cuban Resistance Assembly and Miami native.
"In order for there to be an end to the regime there is an entire system
that needs to be removed."

Even though the power has already been transferred to Raul as President
of Cuba, and succession plans have been set for years, Pérez believes
there is hope that Castro's death can be more than symbolic.

But, he says, don't expect change to come from the regime.

"I do see great hope in the democracy movement and the real trends of
the ordinary Cuban on the street seeing these activists taking these
risks," said Pérez. "The ordinary person on the street losing that fear
and starting to join more frequently."

Others say Castro's death alone will not bring any miracles.

"The death of Fidel will not be that meaningful now compared to about 10
years ago," said Jose Millares, 71, a Cuban exile and New Jersey
resident who left the island at 23. "When both die that's when change
can happen."

Activists like Alina Alvarez, president and founder of Cubans for
Democracy in New Jersey, believe that unlike North Korea, the
pro-democracy movement is alive and well in Cuba.

"I think his death is still going to mean something," she said. "People
in Cuba are sick and tired of living the way they are living. There were
people that were skeptical. But now Cubans are seeing a different
picture because of tourism, Facebook, and Twitter."

Sánchez, the blogger, says she finds hope in the face of a discouraging
omen from North Korea.

"North Korea is the only country in the world that makes me feel
relieved to live in Cuba today," she said.

Follow Bryan Llenas at @bryan_llenas or e-mail him at
bryan.llenas@foxnewslatino.com.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/12/19/after-kim-jong-ils-death-cubans-wait-for-castros-turn/

CUBA
Dissidents send out images of police crackdown

One dissident got nine stitches, another one
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban dissidents have sent out photos and videos of a large police
crackdown in the eastern town of Palma Soriano that left at least five
government opponents with head wounds, black eyes and other injuries.

One photo of the Dec. 2 roundup of 46 dissidents shows Henry Perales
with two wounds on his shaved head that required nine stitches to close.
Another shows AbrahanCQ Cabrera with one stitch on his forehead.

"That wound bled a lot because it was on a blood vessel, but it was a
kick to the ribs on the right side that made me fall to the ground … It
still hurts," Cabrera told El Nuevo Herald Friday by phone from Palma
Soriano.

The images were sent to the newspaper by Luis Enrique Ferrer Garcia,
U.S. representative of the dissident Cuban Patriotic Union. His brother,
former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, heads the Union and
was one of the men arrested in the Palma Soriano crackdown.

Union members and supporters took two weeks to smuggle out the photos
and videos, via emails, because they had to work slowly and carefully to
avoid police agents who were trying to find and seize the images, Luis
Enrique said.

The Palma Soriano roundup was one of the largest and harshest police
crackdowns on dissident in recent years. All were freed hours or days
later – one of them 12 days later – without charges.

Forty-six men had gathered in a Palma Soriano house starting on Nov. 30
with plans to stage a street protest two days later to demand the
release of all political prisoners and respect for human rights.

Cell phone videos shot inside the house showed many of the dissidents
saying they wanted to show they were not U.S. paid "mercenaries," as the
government brands them, but rather "defenders of human rights."

The unidentified narrator of some of the videos referred to the police
already deployed outside "and the repression that awaits us."

Police indeed arrested the dissidents as they left the house in groups
of four and five, and a video taken from a second-story balcony showed
them punching some of the protesters and forcing them onto a U.S.-styled
yellow school bus parked at the end of the block.

Cabrera said the bus driver, dressed in civilian clothes, hit him as
well as Perales and several other dissidents with a wrench once inside
the bus. A police officer in uniform later ordered the driver to stop
hitting the detainees.

Other photos show dissidents Misael Valdes Diaz and Alexis Yanch OiCQ
with black eyes and Emilio Dinza with a large bump on his forehead.
Other dissidents reported black and blues from police strikes.

Angel Moya, a former political prisoner who was reported beaten in a
police station after his arrest in Palma Soriano Dec. 2, said police
punched him on the way from the house to the school bus but not afterwards.

Moya said Friday that he spent 12 days in a police lockup, in a cell
that was smelly and had no water or lights and that he shared with
common criminals.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/17/2550399/dissidents-sent-out-images-of.html

Bid to tighten up Cuba travel dropped from budget bill

Cuba was one of the last issues holding up a $1 trillion spending bill
in the U.S. Congress. A bid to make it easier for Cuba to buy U.S.
imports also fell.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Congressional leaders dropped both a measure to restrict Cuban-American
travel and remittances to the island and another to make it easier for
Cuba to buy U.S. goods, putting some of the final touches Thursday on a
compromise $1 trillion spending bill..

The agreement stripped a measure by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-South
Florida, that would once again have limited "family reunification" trips
to once every three years, capped remittances at $1,200 per year, and
tightened the definition of "family," said Congressional aides.

In exchange, the Congressional leadership also agreed to drop a measure
by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., that would have eased a requirement that
Cuba pay cash and in advance when buying U.S. goods permissible under
the embargo, according to the aides.

The Cuba issue was one of the last hurdles blocking consideration of the
government spending bill. If the bitterly partisan Congress does not
approve it by midnight Friday, major parts of the government would have
to shut down.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., agreed to the
compromise on Cuba in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to allow the spending bill to be voted on Friday.

House and Senate conferees had reached a compromise this week on a
version of the bill, but Reid, responding to White House concerns, would
not release it until the Cuba provisions and other issues, including
some abortion regulations, were ironed out.

If the Rogers-Reid understanding falls through, the House Republican
majority could push its own version of the spending bill, which would
still retain the Cuba language, according to media reports Thursday.

It was not immediately clear if House Republicans had enough votes to
approve the unilateral version, or how the four Cuban-Americans in the
House would vote. The three Republicans and one Democrat include Rep.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-South Florida, powerful chair of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.

A House committee approved the Diaz-Balart proposal in June by a voice
vote — with no objections — as a rider to a Treasury spending bill. That
bill was later joined with eight other spending bills and rolled into
the $1 trillion measure now before Congress.

Obama, who in 2009 lifted virtually all restrictions on travel and
remittances by Cubans in the United States, threatened to veto the
Florida Republican's rider a month later. But it was not until this week
that Congressional infighting threw light on the issue.

Supporters of restricted Cuba travel contend that the trips and cash are
simply pumping more money into the coffers of Cuba's communist
government at a time when it has stepped up repression of political
dissidents and human-rights activists and holds U.S. government
contractor Alan Gross in prison.

But others argue that the visits help Cuban families reunite, and that
the remittances help Cubans break free of their dependence on the
government and even start private businesses, such as restaurants and
carpentry shops.

Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez tweeted that the Diaz-Balart measure would
be "a terrible step backward" and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo, in another
tweet addressed to Obama, wrote, "We await your veto."

Dissident Havana economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe and his wife, Miriam
Leiva, wrote in an Internet column Thursday that they opposed the
Diaz-Balart measure because the remittances "help Cubans on the island
who face serious shortages and misery."

The spending bill would fund much of the government operations for the
2012 fiscal year. The current continuing spending resolution — the
latest of seven approved this year — is due to expire at midnight Friday.

The White house has urged Congress that if it cannot adopt the full
one-year spending bill to avert a government shutdown, it should pass
another short-term resolution.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/15/2548654/bid-to-tighten-up-cuba-travel.html

The Cuban dictatorship criticizes the possibility offered by the U.S.
government of accepting Cubans who cross the Florida Straits in a bid to
achieve their dreams. They write lengthy manifestos to disguise the
reality of the island, and blame the ones who suffer the problem. Which
means looking at the result and forgetting the cause.

Of course, who in Cuba would question this required view of the problem?
Who would dare to question the "cause" when no name other than the
Castro brothers can come up? What have they done with this country?
Where is the success at the cost of the slain under their orders? What
is the price of human and material losses in the last 50 years? Why does
Fulgencio Batista now not seem so tyrannical? Who took charge of
surpassing him, to be a more extremist dictator? Who filled the prisons
and shot the young people who were dissatisfied, desperate, dissident,
and every one who opposed them? How many years in prison did they get
for attempting to leave the country illegally? They punished them with
the same sentence imposed on Fidel Castro for attacking the Moncada
barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

In 1967 my godfather received a letter from a cousin in Miami, trying to
convince him to emigrate with them, and in which he warned that a
government like Fidel Castro's could become a communist and totalitarian
one. They arrested him and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, which he
served to the day. They had opened his letter, which he never received.
When he came and saw me after almost 11 years, he started to cry for all
the time lost unfairly. He hugged my mother, and pleading with his gay
gestures, said he never wanted to see a man at his side again. He spent
10 years of being used by the beasts, he told my mother in the middle of
crying.

Who has been more of a dictator, Batista or Castro?

We know, according to the story that they told us themselves, that the
Batista government abused, tortured and secretly killed the young
people, then left them lying on the roadside. Which we considered
horrendous. But didn't Fidel Castro shoot them in front of people?!
Desperate young people who tried to steal a passenger launch in the bay
of Havana to go to Miami in order to work, to fulfill their dreams that
were more urgent than a "revolution" that didn't know how to support
them? And who were deceived, after being stranded at sea for lack of
fuel and being towed by the Cuban Coast Guard to the Bay of Mariel and
negotiating with the authorities, who spoke on behalf of Fidel Castro,
after being guaranteed that nothing would happen to them, and if they
surrendered, in exchange they would receive a minimum punishment?

Their own companions in the boat, among them foreigners who testified
that they were not mistreated nor did they understand that their lives
were in danger at some point, even if things were tense, asked for
leniency for the young men. But they were executed in front of Cuba and
the world. Without a trial. Hours after their capture. They waited for
their mothers to leave to get clothing and toiletries for them to clean
up, and before they got home they were informed that their sons had been
shot by strict order of the State Council. Of course, Cubans remained
silent, and some intellectuals and artists were left with dirty hands,
so much so that not even their own poetry will save them from Hell. And
all because of cowardice, by thinking about their own welfare. And now
they repeat like parrots that they had to do it because there was a real
threat that the U.S. fleet would invade Cuba, to complete the practice
of violating the sky and waters. That has never been proven. But if it
were true, it still would have been murder. They did not think about
their children, their grandchildren. Would they have done the same?
Surely not.

Intelligence at the service of mega-malignancy

We can't deny that Fidel Castro has been of uncommon intelligence, only
that he used it for personal gain, and for family purposes. Others would
say in the service of the Devil. But what would have happened if Fidel
Castro had done what he promised from the Sierra Maestra? If he had
fulfilled all those dreams of a better Cuba, without departing from
democracy and the principles of the most advanced civilization? Perhaps
he even would have accepted, in the style of King Juan Carlos of Spain,
being the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Cuba, but without
intervening in the affairs of state. Alone he could have been in charge
of a human revolution, destined to improve the lot of all Cubans,
regardless of race, creed or political affiliation.

But those who have a bit of common sense know that Fidel Castro would
never have been satisfied with ​ overseeing the rules and rights of the
Cuban nation. He wanted more. He always wanted more. In fact, he left
Cuba — too small, like Cinderella's glass slipper was for her sisters —
and began looking for expansion in other continents, so that he forgot
about Cuba. We alone were the means of sacrifice for his mega-dreams,
his mega-revolution, his desire to be a mega-president, a mega-leader.
To this he dedicated his life, trying to hoodwink us in his delight with
words of principles and tenderness, to deceive others and add them to
his purposes with patriotic, heroic, "internationalist" locutions. Fidel
has served as a great magician of the word, I always picture him blowing
a flute to make the snake dance, and in this case the snake is in the
mirror, it is his own image that dances with his own interpretation,
hence the great trick that he has exercised for over half a century:
"the enchantment."

And many fell asleep under his enchantment, are still sleeping, the
minority, because the majority feign sleep, but it's nothing more than
fear that keeps them pretending compliance with the orders of the
magician-dictator.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Translated by Regina Anavy

10 December 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=12947

Cuba is one of the least-connected countries in the world, a time-warped
place where millions of young people have never been online and a
dial-up Internet account is the stuff of dreams.

An undersea fiber-optic cable linking the island to Venezuela was
supposed to change that this year. But six months after its completion,
frustrated Cubans are still starved for Web access.

Watching government-run television newscasts in Cuba is often a strange
experience, but especially so when the topic is social media. Consider a
recent report about Facebook and Twitter: The Castro government wasn't
telling Cubans those sites are something to fear — it was actually the
opposite.

The young reporter sat with a laptop and, without a hint of irony,
extolled the virtues of social networking as a source of real-time
alternative information. But given the low level of Internet access
here, she may as well be describing the surface of the moon.

There are other strange sights on the island, like Cubans carrying new
iPhones and BlackBerrys brought in from Miami or Madrid, which only work
in Cuba for talking and texting.

Desperate For Wi-Fi

Some Cubans have brand-new laptops bought on the black market or sent
from relatives abroad, but no Web access. So they stand outside condo
buildings that house foreign businessmen, trying to catch an open Wi-Fi
signal.

Then there are cybercafes that are woefully short on the "cyber" part.
At one such cafe in Havana, young Cubans line up to pay $1.50 an hour to
send and receive email. A snap poll of a dozen would-be Web users found
only two people who said they'd ever been online.

One was 27-year-old Hamlet Chirino, who saves up each month to pay $6 an
hour for Internet use at a tourist hotel. His other option is to go to
underground cafes that offer black-market Web access over slow dial-up
connections.

"Life is really good here," Chirino said, "but low salaries and the lack
of Internet access are the two biggest problems. The government has been
saying they're going to change those things for a long time, but we're
still waiting."

Raised Expectations

Cuban authorities raised expectations earlier this year when they
announced the completion of a $70 million data cable linking the island
to Venezuela, boosting Cuba's bandwidth by a factor of 3,000.

But Web access remains as slow and scarce as ever, with no evidence of
any urgency to get the cable working. Rumors swirl about technical
problems or bad business deals, with others speculating that Cuban
authorities have been spooked by the Arab Spring and the central role
that social media has played in it.

There's been no official explanation, leaving 20-year-old Jessica Cruz
saying she thinks she won't get online until the Castro government is gone.

"There's a saying here that flies can't get into a closed mouth," says
Cruz, reflecting the view of many young Cubans who see a paternalistic
government trying to deprive them of outside information.

Cuba's lack of Internet access is now a central theme in the 50-year
standoff with the United States.

First the U.S. trade embargo kept the island cut off, Cuba says, and now
Washington wants to use the Internet as a tool of subversion.

A U.S. government subcontractor, Alan Gross, has been in jail here for
two years for trying to set up satellite Web access on the island
outside of government control. And a small contingent of dissident Cuban
Web activists has made Internet freedom one of their central causes.
Blogger Orlando Luis Pardo says the government can't hold back the tide
forever.

"In my opinion, that battle is lost. Not because the opposition or the
independent bloggers are especially strong or very widely known by the
Cuban people, but because the official information in the official media
is very poor, it's very solemn, very unbelievable," he said.

A new Cuban government website called The Social Network could hold a
clue to where things may be headed. The site is such a blatant copy of
Facebook that it even has the word "Facebook" in its Web address.

But there is one big difference: The Cuban version only connects to
other users on the island — not to the wider world.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/14/143721874/in-cuba-dial-up-internet-is-a-luxury

HAVANA — Cuba’s Ladies in White dissident group paid homage to their
late leader while observing International Human Rights Day at her home
Saturday, surrounded by a jeering pro-government crowd for a second
straight day.

Photos of Laura Pollan and messages of condolence adorned the wall of
the house where she lived in central Havana and that served as a
headquarters for the Ladies since the group was formed in 2003.

Next to a lit candle, an empty chair was draped with white clothing that
belonged to Pollan. A single gladiola and a tiny Cuban flag rested on
the lap.

“Laura Pollan lives!” the Ladies cried, and “Freedom for political
prisoners!”

Outside, dozens of supporters of President Raul Castro’s government,
many of them students, massed at the front door and shouted
revolutionary slogans and insults at the women inside.

“Viva Fidel! Viva Raul!” they chanted, draping huge Cuban and
revolutionary flags from the roof.

Bertha Soler, one of the founders of the Ladies and its unofficial
leader since Pollan’s death in October, blamed authorities for the crowd.

“We want to go into the streets, which is the right of the Cuban people,
but the Cuban government prevents us from doing so with these organized
mobs,” Soler said. “The aggression is psychological, not physical, and
it’s a demonstration of the Cuban government’s intolerance.”

Authorities insist such counterprotests known as “acts of repudiation”
are spontaneous acts by citizens disgusted by the dissidents, whom
authorities accuse of being mercenaries paid by the U.S. to destabilize
the island. Little is done to hide coordination with state security,
however.

It was the second counterprotest outside Pollan’s home in as many days.

On Friday, a crowd gathered there as the Ladies held a “literary tea”
inside and a flotilla organized by Miami exile groups parked in
international waters off Cuba, setting off fireworks in solidarity with
the Ladies and other dissidents.

The exiles had also urged acts of protest by Cubans such as banging on
pots and pans, though there was no sign that many people heeded their call.

The Ladies in White was founded in 2003 by Pollan, Soler and other wives
of government opponents who were rounded up and given long prison terms
in a crackdown on dissent.

The last of those prisoners still behind bars were released earlier this
year, and many left the island for exile with their families.

Those still remaining in the Ladies in White have vowed to press for the
release of other inmates who are serving time for politically motivated
but violent crimes like hijacking and sabotage. Because of the violence
tied to their acts, those inmates are not recognized as prisoners of
conscience by outside human rights groups like Amnesty International.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/cubas-ladies-in-white-dissidents-honor-late-leader-on-human-rights-day-amid-counterprotest/2011/12/10/gIQAPO38kO_story.html

HAVANA — Dozens of slogan-chanting Cuban government supporters faced
off with dissident women on Friday and prevented them from marching in
the street on the eve of international Human Rights Day.

About 200 backers of Cuba's communist government crowded a street in
central Havana where 20 women of the Ladies in White dissident group had
assembled in a house.

They carried signs of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and yelled
pro-government and anti-U.S. slogans.

"They're mercenaries," government supporter Elvira Gonzalez said of the
dissident women, who had planned a march to demand the release of
political prisoners.

Cuba's government routinely calls the island's dissidents "mercenaries"
and claims they are on the payroll of its long-time ideological foe, the
United States.

The Ladies in White group was formed by the wives and mothers of 75
dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Castro's opponents. The women
dressed in white to march silently along Havana streets seeking the
release of the prisoners.

The women were expected to try to march again on Saturday, the
anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

All 75 Cubans jailed in Havana's so-called Black Spring of 2003 have
been freed, most of them following a deal between the Catholic Church
and President Raul Castro in 2010.

Dissident protests are regularly confronted by hostile mobs backing the
government, which says the free education and health services it
provides show its respect for human rights.

"There are no human rights here. They don't respect them," said Ladies
in White leader Berta Soler. "We can't go out to walk on the streets of
Havana because the government has these mobs and they won't let us
pass," she said.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/americas/2011/12/11/325528/Govt-supporters.htm

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban dissidents said on Saturday that about 200
people were temporarily detained by the Communist-run island's security
services in the days leading up to an international human rights
celebration.

Government supporters danced salsa and chanted political slogans in a
Havana square to mark the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.

Opposition members who had planned to celebrate Human Rights Day in the
same place, and protest against abuses in Cuba, were blocked from going
to the square, dissidents said.

"Some 200 detentions for political motives have taken plan in the last
nine days in the lead up to the international Human Rights Day," said
Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights said.

"Authorities use a tactic of short-duration arrests, who are released a
few hours or days later, to impede protests."

International rights groups say Cuban laws virtually prevent all forms
of protest and dissent while the government says the free education and
health services it provides show its respect for human rights.

On Friday, government backers blocked the dissident group Ladies in
White from marching in the street.

The women were heckled again on Saturday by a crowd of government
supporters and prevented from leaving a house were they had gathered in
central Havana.

"Here come the people to fight for what is ours. These streets are ours
and that's why we defend them," shouted government sympathizer Mirta
Sosa outside the house.

"The government has prevented us from exercising the right of free
movement in the streets. Here in Cuba, human rights are violated daily,"
said Ladies in White leader Berta Soler.

The Ladies in White group was formed by the wives and mothers of 75
dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Castro's opponents. They have
since been released by President Raul Castro's government.

Havana's "Black Spring of 2003" caused a major fallout between Cuba and
the international community, and while some European nations have begun
a rapprochement since the prisoner release, relations with long-time
ideological foe the United States remain in a deep freeze.

Opposition protests in Cuba are exceedingly rare. Cuba's government,
which came to power in a 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro, accuses
dissidents of being on the payroll of the Washington, which has imposed
a trade embargo on the island since Castro embraced Soviet communism in
the early 1960s.

On Saturday, state media was filled with stories and commentaries for
the anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948.

"The fulfillment of international commitments … has been implicit in
the work of the Cuban Revolution despite the economic war … and also
the systematic plots to destroy it," Jose Luis Mendez Mendez, an analyst
at the research arm of the Interior Ministry, wrote in an opinion piece
on cubadebate.cu.

(Additional reporting by Reuters TV; editing by Anthony Boadle)

http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-dissidents-200-detained-u-n-rights-day-170003989.html

Cuba's 'Ladies' mark Human Rights Day amid protest
By PETER ORSI
Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuba's Ladies in White dissident group paid homage to their
late leader while observing International Human Rights Day at her home
Saturday, surrounded by a jeering pro-government crowd for a second
straight day.

Photos of Laura Pollan and messages of condolence adorned the wall of
the house where she lived in central Havana and that served as a
headquarters for the Ladies since the group was formed in 2003.

Next to a lit candle, an empty chair was draped with white clothing that
belonged to Pollan. A single gladiola and a tiny Cuban flag rested on
the lap.

"Laura Pollan lives!" the Ladies cried, and "Freedom for political
prisoners!"

Outside, dozens of supporters of President Raul Castro's government,
many of them students, massed at the front door and shouted
revolutionary slogans and insults at the women inside.

"Viva Fidel! Viva Raul!" they chanted, draping huge Cuban and
revolutionary flags from the roof.

Bertha Soler, one of the founders of the Ladies and its unofficial
leader since Pollan's death in October, blamed authorities for the crowd.

"We want to go into the streets, which is the right of the Cuban people,
but the Cuban government prevents us from doing so with these organized
mobs," Soler said. "The aggression is psychological, not physical, and
it's a demonstration of the Cuban government's intolerance."

Authorities insist such counterprotests known as "acts of repudiation"
are spontaneous acts by citizens disgusted by the dissidents, whom
authorities accuse of being mercenaries paid by the U.S. to destabilize
the island. Little is done to hide coordination with state security,
however.

It was the second counterprotest outside Pollan's home in as many days.

On Friday, a crowd gathered there as the Ladies held a "literary tea"
inside and a flotilla organized by Miami exile groups parked in
international waters off Cuba, setting off fireworks in solidarity with
the Ladies and other dissidents.

The exiles had also urged acts of protest by Cubans such as banging on
pots and pans, though there was no sign that many people heeded their call.

The Ladies in White was founded in 2003 by Pollan, Soler and other wives
of government opponents who were rounded up and given long prison terms
in a crackdown on dissent.

The last of those prisoners still behind bars were released earlier this
year, and many left the island for exile with their families.

Those still remaining in the Ladies in White have vowed to press for the
release of other inmates who are serving time for politically motivated
but violent crimes like hijacking and sabotage. Because of the violence
tied to their acts, those inmates are not recognized as prisoners of
conscience by outside human rights groups like Amnesty International.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/10/2540542/cubas-ladies-mark-human-rights.html

Exile fireworks show off Cuba irks Castro govt
By PETER ORSI
Associated Press

HAVANA — Fireworks shot from a flotilla organized by Miami exiles
exploded in red and white balls off the coast of Havana to call
attention to Cuba's human rights record. The stunt irritated Cuban
officials but drew few spectators.

The display was visible only intermittently Friday night at a distance
of a little more than 12 miles (19 kilometers) from where the exiles
anchored their boats just outside Cuban territorial waters under
overcast skies and sporadic rain.

Just a handful of people were out along the Malecon seaside promenade,
which normally is bustling with young Cubans who socialize along the
city's "great sofa" on weekends.

When an Associated Press team tried to interview the few who came out, a
pro-government crowd of more than 20 people ran across the wide
boulevard shouting "American press!" and demanding that a video camera
be turned over. Some were holding bottles of alcohol and appeared to
have been drinking.

The journalists identified themselves as accredited members of the press
with the right to work in Cuba. One cameraman was punched in the face,
another's thumb was sprained and a video camera was broken in the melee
before the crew managed to leave.

Exile organizers in Miami said the 18th protest flotilla over the years
was not meant as a provocation, though they also said they were trying
to coordinate the protest with actions by dissidents on the island on
the eve of International Human Rights Day.

The exiles said they were exercising their right to freedom of
expression, and the U.S. government said it couldn't legally stop them.

Cuban officials accused them of having malicious aims.

"There's a whole program of provocative acts," said Jose Luis Mendez, an
official at Cuba's Interior Ministry. "This is not just about innocuous
fireworks. It is subversive."

Before the fireworks, more than two dozen members of the Ladies in White
dissident group held a literary tea and discussion of the United
Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the house of former
leader Laura Pollan, who died last month.

A boisterous crowd of government supporters clogged the street outside
the house shouting epithets like "worms" and proclaiming support for
Fidel and Raul Castro in what is known in Cuba as an "act of repudiation."

The government says such counter-demonstrations are spontaneous
outpourings of revolutionary sentiment, despite thinly veiled
coordination with state security agents. The street outside the house
had been closed to traffic since Thursday.

"We cannot celebrate Human Rights Day here in Cuba. We can't because
they repress us and beat us. Right now there's an act of repudiation in
front of the Ladies in White headquarters," said Bertha Soler, one of
the group's founders. She accused police of blocking some members from
attending the meeting.

Other dissidents also reported that government opponents were briefly
held to keep them from gathering or protesting, though their accounts
could not be independently confirmed.

The government strenuously denies beating dissidents, whom it considers
common criminals. It accuses them of taking money from Washington to
destabilize the island and bring down its socialist revolution.

Flotilla organizer Ramon Saul Sanchez of the small nonprofit group the
Democracy Movement said about 50 protesters put on the fireworks display
from six boats, including an 85-foot vessel and a small security craft.
About a dozen members of the news media followed them.

State Department Spokesman William Ostick said U.S. authorities had met
with the organizers to ensure they complied with U.S. and international
laws. He said the organizers offered assurances they would not violate
Cuban territorial waters or airspace.

"The United States government does not promote or encourage this
activity," Ostick said in a statement. The U.S. Coast Guard said it
would patrol the area to ensure the protesters stayed more than 12 miles
off Cuba.

Nevertheless, Cuban authorities criticized Washington for not blocking
the protest.

"That the Obama administration did not refuse to allow this kind of
action is a very troubling sign, from the vantage point of it could
create situations that nobody wants," Mendez said.

An official in the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Rene Mujica, said President
Raul Castro's government had communicated its concern to Washington but
declined to say whether it had sent a formal protest note.

"The United States is perfectly informed about the Cuban government's
concerns regarding this kind of provocations that have been repeatedly
made against our country," Mujica said.

Past exile actions have included clandestine missions on or near the
island. In 1996, the Cuban military shot down two planes carrying
activists from the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four
members. Cuba maintains the group flew into Cuban territory. The
activists deny the allegation.

Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana and Laura
Wides-Munoz in Miami contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/10/2539883/exile-fireworks-show-off-cuba.html#storylink=misearch

HAVANA — The hottest ticket in Havana is a gory, campy zombie flick with
a wicked sense of humor about Cuba's obsessive relations with the United
States, one that revels in islanders' knack for making the best of
things even when everything around you — buildings, streets, human limbs
— is falling to pieces.

Audiences thronged movie houses this week to catch screenings of "Juan
of the Dead," or "Juan de los Muertos" in the original Spanish, and
organizers had to hastily add extra midnight screenings to accommodate
the crush.

The Charles Chaplin Cinema bustled with several hundred eager spectators
who stormed the doors once they opened Thursday night. And that was just
those with special connections: journalists, family and friends of
people involved in the movie, workers linked to Cuba's film institute.
Hundreds more lined up around the block outside.

"Zombies in Havana, don't you want to see that?" writer-director
Alejandro Brugues said after the screening as he fielded calls on his
cell phone and congratulatory hugs from friends and family.

Brugues said he was "euphoric" to see the crowds in the streets and
credited it to the movie's first-of-its kind nature for Cuba, whose
films tend to be low-budget affairs about ordinary life.

"We don't do much action cinema," he said. "That's something that should
change. We should start doing it."

Trailers for the movie have circulated in the year since it was filmed,
creating a buzz on the streets even before the lights went down.

Yasumari Alvarez, a Cuban film institute employee who was not involved
in the production, said she was drawn by the novelty of a homegrown
production, albeit with Spanish financing, that uses computer-generated
effects to transform the Cuban capital.

It's no spoiler to reveal that even in a city where many buildings are
already crumbling, a zombie apocalypse does not change the skyline for
the better.

"It's the first Cuban film with special effects. All Havana is
destroyed, with zombies in the streets," said Alvarez.

While outright political dissent is not tolerated by Cuba's
Communist-run government, artists and intellectuals have always enjoyed
a measure of freedom, especially when the barbs come wrapped in humor.
Juan of the Dead's edginess is on display from the beginning shot, which
shows a sun-drenched Juan reclining on a fishing raft off Havana's
famous seafront promenade, known as the Malecon.

His sidekick, Lazaro, asks Juan if he's ever thought of attempting the
dangerous crossing to Miami. No, Juan replies, because then I'd have to
work.

Suddenly the movie springs into action as a decaying zombie bursts
through the surf, only to be felled by Lazaro with a harpoon through the
eye.

"This stays between us," the two friends agree.

As attacks by the flesh-eating undead mount, the government keeps
insisting on nightly newscasts that they are not reanimated corpses but
dissident agitators in league with the "empire," an official label for
the United States. Desperate people paddle off from the Malecon on
rickety watercraft in a clear reference to Cuban raft crises.

When Juan, a rail-thin Don Quixote-like figure, and Lazaro, a stouter
Sancho Panza type, gather neighbors on their rooftop to teach
self-defense techniques, Juan tells them this is nothing they don't
already know how to deal with.

Only "this time the enemy is not the Yankees, but a real enemy and
they're among us," Juan says.

Together they form a zombie wrecking crew with a business plan, charging
Havana residents to "dispose of your loved ones." Sometimes, in confused
melees, the clients fare no better than the zombies.

Yet until a news anchor disappears in a spray of blood on a live
broadcast, authorities continue to insist that it's all a Yankee plot
and everything is under control.

By then there are no clients left and it's clear there's nothing to do
but flee. Juan, together with his half-Spanish daughter, Lazaro and
Lazaro's son California, formulate a wild plan to escape the city that
is an homage to Cubans' famous capacity to invent a makeshift solution
to any problem.

Brugues insisted that his movie is not political, despite the jabs that
deflate the official-speak common in the state-run media.

"Politics is bigger than me, it's way over my head," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/irreverent-zombie-pic-juan-of-the-dead-a-runaway-favorite-at-havana-film-festival/2011/12/09/gIQAssM7hO_story.html

Cuban dissidents: Colleagues injured in police crackdown
The dissidents say they want police to free 10 dissidents arrested.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban dissidents vowed to protest at a State Security office Tuesday
unless police free 10 government critics detained in a crackdown where
several suffered head wounds, a broken rib and other injuries.

Police also severely beat Angel Moya, a well known former political
prisoner, in a lockup because he would not stop shouting anti-government
slogans, according to the dissidents. There was no word on his condition.

Dissident Danis Lopez de Moya said that as of Monday police had freed 38
of the 48 government critics arrested Friday in an unusually harsh
crackdown as they tried to start a protest march from his house in the
eastern town of Palma Soriano.

Police likely were holding the rest until the physical signs of the
beatings they received has lessened or disappeared, Wildo Izaguirre, one
of the 38 freed, told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Palma Soriano.

Lopez de Moya, who was himself arrested and released, said many of 38
already had gathered in his house and agreed to march to a State
Security office Tuesday morning unless the other 10 are released.

Izaguirre, Lopez de Moya and Prudencio Villalón, another of the 38
dissidents freed, said the police crackdown Friday was one of the most
violent they had experienced.

"As we left the house in groups of five, police jumped us, beat us and
dragged us to the parked buses," said Izaguirre, who added that police
lined up in a gauntlet pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the face.

Police continued beating the dissidents once inside the government-owned
buses, Izaguirre added, and the driver of one bus also hit several of
the government opponents with a mechanic's wrench.

Eurbis Perales needed nine stitches to close his wounds and Abraham
Cabrera needed five, according to Villalón, who said he spoke with the
pair in a police lockup after they were brought in from the hospital.

Cabrera was bleeding so much on the bus that he smeared some of his
blood on a window, drawing anti-government slogans from some of the
neighbors who were watching the crackdown, Villalón added.

Misael Valdes Diaz was treated for a broken rib and another dissident
suffered a swollen eye, but virtually all were punched or kicked, said
Villalón. He and several of the 20 other dissidents in one of the buses
also vomited when police sprayed them with some type of crowd-control gas.

Police put the 38 detainees into buses that began dropping them off
Saturday and Sunday one-by-one, every half-mile or so, on the road to
Santiago de Cuba, the country's second-largest city.

Still detained were Moya and José Daniel Ferrer García, both former
political prisoners freed this spring as part of a decision by Cuban
Ruler Raúl Castro to release 52 political prisoners.

"I was told they [police] especially vented their anger on Angel and
José Daniel," said Berta Soler, Moya's wife and the leader of the Ladies
in White.

The 52 were the last dissidents still in jail from a harsh crackdown in
2003 that sentenced 75 of them to prison terms of up to 28 years after
one and two-day trials. Most of them — plus another 60 prisoners freed —
agreed to go directly from prisons to the Havana airport and exile in Spain.

Moya, Ferrer and 10 others insisted on remaining in Cuba and continuing
their dissident activities.

As it freed the political prisoners, the Castro government also stepped
up its harassment of dissidents, usually detaining them for brief
periods to avert planned protests such as the Palma Soriano march.

Cuban authorities have carried out 3,327 such "temporal detentions" so
far this year, compared to 2,074 in all of 2010, according to a report
from Havana on Monday by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and
National Reconciliation.

The march Friday in Palma was to have been part of a rotating series of
street protests starting Thursday in Cuba's easternmost province of
Guantánamo and following later from towns and cities to the west.

The "National March Boitel-Zapata Live!" named after two dissidents who
died during prison hunger strikes, was designed to demand the release of
all political prisoners and an end to human rights abuses.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/06/2533003/cuban-dissidents-colleagues-injured.html#storylink=misearch

Havana, Dec 4, 2011 (EFE via COMTEX) — About 50 Cuban opposition
members were harassed and arrested when they began a march on Friday
through the streets of the eastern city of Palma Soriano, relatives of
some of the protesters and people within the internal dissidence
movement told Efe on the weekend.
According to Berta Soler, the spokesperson for the Ladies in White
dissident group, about 50 opposition members were arrested on Saturday,
among them her husband Angel Moya and Jose Daniel Ferrer, both former
prisoners in the "Group of 75."
Soler said that 31 demonstrators were still under arrest and, according
to the version received from some of the 19 who had already been freed,
they were trying on Friday to reactivate the peaceful "Boitel-Zapata
lives" march when they were taken into custody.
"They left the house in which they had gathered and had walked along
just one street when they were violently repressed by a rapid response
brigade (a group of pro-government supporters) and arrested by the
police," she said.
"We hold the Cuban government accountable for the physical integrity of
these men because these people have the right to move about freely,"
said Soler, adding that she demanded "the necessary medical attention
for all those who need it."
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Cuban Human Rights and National
Reconciliation Commission, or CCDHRN, Elizardo Sanchez, said that
opposition sources told him that "there has been much political
repression on the first and second of this month in the eastern
provinces of Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba."
The human rights activist said that in Palma Soriano, in Santiago de
Cuba province, there had been 52 arrests and in Guantanamo at least 35,
the latter people being members of the Resistance and Democracy Movement
opposition group.
"Some have already been released and the forecast is that they will be
temporary arrests and they will free all of them,"Sanchez said.
Nevertheless, he expressed "concern at the high number of arrests for
political reasons that have occurred in just 48 hours"and the
"deliberate violence" of the police in repressing the demonstrators.
The Cuban government considers the dissidents and the internal
opposition to be "counterrevolutionaries and mercenaries paid" by the
United States.

EFE
rmo/bp

http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid={8ecb664b-e2d6-427e-b664-84715ffa3fe5}

Marches are part of campaign for coordinated protests in Cuba

Police reportedly detain about 150 dissidents in two days of attempted
street marches in Cuba.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban police and men in civilian clothes attacked more than 50
dissidents as they started a protest march Friday in the eastern town of
Palma Soriano, leaving many of them bleeding from head wounds, witnesses
and dissidents reported.

The march was part of an effort to stage coordinated protests throughout
the island, starting in eastern Cuba, that had led to the police arrests
of about 150 dissidents since they started Thursday, opposition
activists reported.

Palma resident Liliana Rodríguez said the incident began after about 300
police and many men in civilian clothes closed off the street in front
of her house, where about 50 government opponents had gathered for the
protest march.

The dissidents stepped outside around 10 a.m., chanting anti-government
slogans like "down with the dictatorship" and carrying a Cuban flag, but
were immediately attacked, reported Rodríguez, who said she watched from
the second-story of her home.

The police and men in civilian clothes "fell on them like a swarm of
bees, and demolished them. Almost all had blood on them," she said.
"They were hitting with their fists, kicks and even one of those
mechanic's wrenches."

Her sister Tatiana, who also witnessed the crackdown told the
Madrid-based blog CubaEncuentro that some of the dissidents were "died
red with blood" after the attack.

Police then forced the dissidents onto three buses, pepper-sprayed some
of the protesters who complained about their treatment and drove them
away, Rodriguez told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Palma. She added that
the men in civilian clothes were clearly State Security agents.

Ladies in White member Yelena Garcés said that before the crackdown, she
saw about a dozen police patrol cars and a group of men changing from
military uniforms to civilian clothes aboard a Ministry of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces bus parked near the Rodríguez home.

Among those detained were José Daniel Ferrer García and Angel Moya, two
of the 75 dissidents jailed in 2003 and freed this year. Moya is married
to Berta Soler, the leader of the Ladies in White, a group that demands
the release of all political prisoners.

Rodriguez said police also arrested her brother-in-law, Osmani Céspedes,
who tried to stay in the house so he could report on whatever happened,
and another dissident who tried to record a video of the event.

Garcés told El Nuevo Herald that she could not witness the crackdown
because police had closed off the street in front of Rodriguez early
Friday, but that several neighbors on the street told her what happened
by phone.

Police "hit everyone, everyone. There were busted heads, some with so
much blood their faces could not be recognized," said Garcés, whose
husband, Miguel Rafael Cabrera, was among those who tried to march and
was arrested.

Dissident reports of police violence can seldom be independently
confirmed. The government's news media monopoly almost never mentions
such events, and foreign journalists in Havana are under heavy pressures
to avoid reporting on them.

The Palma Soriano protest was to have been part of a string of attempts
at street marches, starting Thursday in easternmost Cuba and following
later in towns progressively to the west, to demand "liberty and
democracy for Cuba."

About 26 dissidents were arrested by police Thursday in the easternmost
province of Guantánamo and another 25 or so were detained in the nearby
provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Holguin, Ferrer García reported on
Thursday.

Havana dissident Juan Carlos González Leyva reported early Friday
afternoon that he had already received word of about 150 would-be
marchers detained, including the more than 50 hauled away in Palma Soriano.

Most dissidents arrested to prevent public protests or other
anti-government activities are usually freed hours or days later, with a
police warning that they will be brought to trial and sent to prison if
they persist.

Palma Soriano, a largely farming municipality of 125,000 people 18 miles
northwest of Santiago de Cuba, the island's second-largest city, has
seen several harsh crackdowns on dissidents in recent months by police
and government supporters in plainclothes.

In August, police for the first time in recent memory broke up a planned
protest in Palma by using tear gas and deploying a fire truck and a riot
squad, wearing black uniforms and carrying gas masks, shields, helmets
and riot batons.

Among the 30 or so dissidents arrested in that attack was Garcés'
husband. Cabrera was freed one month ago, after spending two months in
jail "under investigation," Garcés said.

The "National March Boitel-Zapata Live!" is named after two dissidents
who died during prison hunger strikes, Pedro Luis Boitel in 1972 and
Orlando Zapata Tamayo early last year.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/03/2529017/marches-are-part-of-campaign.html

Havana – Just days after Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez was named
one of the world's 100 "most influential global thinkers" by US magazine
Foreign Policy, the Cuban government is preparing for "active cyberdefence."

Despite poor internet access for the average Cuban, which the
authorities in Havana blame on the US embargo, Cuba is now stressing the
importance of "occupying the web." The website Cubadebate, the main
pro-government online news outlet, has called for a move "from
cyberwarfare to active cyberdefence."

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Wednesday urged more active
involvement in the web and for greater defence mechanisms to fight what
the island regards as the hostile attitude of major media outlets.

"Euphoria over social networks coexists with the risk of regime change
operations, which has increased, as has the threat to peace. But these
dangerous conditions make it necessary and urgent for us to make those
platforms our own," he said.

"It is essential to have a political strategy in cyberspace."

Rodriguez was addressing a workshop on "Alternative Media and Social
Networks" with participants from 12 countries, to which Sanchez
complained she and other bloggers critical of the government had not
been invited.

The authorities continue "to exclude the alternative part of (Cuba's)
blogosphere and twittosphere," Sanchez wrote on Twitter.

On her Twitter feed, (at)yoanisanchez, the 36-year-old regularly
criticizes Cuban authorities for their attitude to the internet, among
other things. Her campaign to denounce what she termed "political
apartheid" at the event reached her more than 180,000 Twitter followers.

Indeed, on Wednesday, Foreign Policy said Sanchez's influence shows
"that the internet really does go everywhere, even Castro's Cuba."

Sanchez in turn, wrote on Twitter of the limitations of online stardom
in communist Cuba.

"Beautiful paradoxes of life. My name on FP's list of 100 thinkers, and
me now 'thinking' how to stretch the rice so as to get to the end of the
month," she wrote in a post.

Such "cyberwarfare" has been waged for some time. Blogs like Vision
desde Cuba, which openly support the government, seek to counter the
influence of those like Sanchez's.

Despite "the limitations inherent to narrow bandwidth" and the "archaic
and extremely slow dial-up connections," Vision desde Cuba writes that
"revolutionary bloggers" like himself back the government against those
who, they argue, are being financed from abroad. Havana has
traditionally accused dissidents of accepting funds from the United States.

Cubadebate has carried out a broad campaign to promote the use of social
networks. Editor Rosa Miriam Elizalde asked in an article that readers
"accept the technological challenge."

"I do not have the slightest doubt that if (Cuban national hero) Jose
Marti were alive today he would be on Facebook and Twitter," she said.

Mariela Castro, daughter of the Cuban leader as well as head of Cuba's
National Centre for Sex Education, also recently entered the world of
Twitter.

She openly confronted Sanchez, among others, in defence of the Cuban
government. – Sapa-dpa

http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/technology/internet/cuba-calls-for-cyberdefence-1.1191410

Police detain dissidents headed for Havana forum on racism

Dozens of Cuban dissidents were detained to break up 'Day of Resistance.'
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban police detained more a dozen dissidents to force the cancellation
of Friday's session of a forum on racial discrimination on the island,
according to forum organizers.

Dissidents also reported several dozen detentions earlier this week to
avert street protests on Thursday, declared a nationwide "Day of
Resistance." Most of them had been freed by Thursday night.

Antonio Madrazo, national coordinator of the Citizens' Committee for
Racial Integration, said about 40 people attended Thursday's opening
session of the 2nd annual Forum on Race and Cubanness at his Havana
apartment.

But police told him at 7 a.m. Friday that they would not allow any
further sessions. Stationed outside his apartment, they began turning
away people as they arrived, and arresting those who resisted, Madrazo
added.

"Right now Rafael Campos is trying to get in. He's at the door," he told
El Nuevo Herald by phone. Minutes later, he added, "Rafael Campos has
been arrested. Police are taking him away."

Madrazo said that among those detained were dissidents Manuel Cuesta
Morua, Darsi Ferrer and Yusnaimi Jorge Soca, as well as Danilo
Maldonado, known as El Sexto, a graffiti artist whose work often include
political messages.

The only person allowed through the police lines Friday was Juan de Dios
Mosquera, a black activist visiting from Colombia, Madrazo added.

The Citizens' Committee was created in 2008 amid growing complaints that
although the Cuban government has outlawed discrimination against its
citizens of African descent, it has done little to eliminate actual racism.

The forum was first held last year "as a platform for communications to
highlight the debate on the race issue, and also the culture of human
rights," Madrazo declared.

Dissident Jorge Luis García Pérez, "Antunez," meanwhile, said that
police had detained so many dissidents to block the street protests
planned for Thursday that he "had not been able to get a complete tally."

Most of the dissidents, some detained as early as Monday, had been
released by Thursday night, added Antunez, head of the Orlando Zapata
Tamayo National Front for Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience.

The Front has declared the 24th of each month as a "Day of Resistance,"
when dissidents across the island should try to stage whatever type of
protest they can organize.

Protests were reported Thursday in the cities of Havana, Palma Soriano,
Pinar del Río, Santa Clara, Sagua la Grande, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey,
Velasco and Cienfuegos, according to the Miami-based Cuban Democratic
Directorate.

In the capital, well-known government opponent Sara Martha Fonseca and
three other dissidents were arrested after they staged an
anti-government march that left from a city park named after Martin
Luther King, the Directorate reported.

García Pérez told El Nuevo Herald that police detained five men, and
punched one of them, as they tried Thursday to reach his house in the
central Cuba town of Placetas. They were later freed in a remote farm area.

Fifteen protesters marched down the streets of Pinar del Rio, the
Directorate added, and dissidents in Santa Clara read from a statement
demanding civil and human rights and chanted "down with the dictatorship."

Former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer García reported that
several signs saying "Down with Raúl" and "Down with Hunger" had
appeared Thursday morning in the eastern town of Palma Soriano.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/25/2518692/police-detain-dissidents-headed.html#storylink=misearch

Posted By Ellery Roberts Biddle On 23 November 2011 @ 2:19 am In Citizen
Media,Cuba,Digital Activism,English,Freedom of Speech,Human Rights,Latin
America,Photos,Spanish,Technology & Internet,Weblog | 2 Comments

The first post [1] in this two-post series featured highlights from a
discussion between bloggers in Cuba, the United States (US), and Spain
focusing on the use of new media in Cuba, where Internet access and
technological tools are extremely scarce [2].

For this post, I interviewed City University of New York (CUNY)
Professor of Sociology, Ted Henken, a Cuba expert who is the author of
El Yuma [3], a blog that explores social currents in contemporary Cuba
and closely follows the Cuban blogosphere.

I discussed with Henken his recent appearance on Radio Martí where he
helped facilitate a dialogue between several of the most prominent Cuban
bloggers writing today and his students at Baruch College in New York
City. This was a unique event for Radio Martí [4]. Funding and oversight
of the station come from the Broadcasting Board of Governors [5], a US
federal agency devoted to broadcasting radio and television into
countries where media outlets independent of the state are either scarce
or heavily censored.
Ted Henken (on the right) with blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo. Posted
with permission of photographer. [6]

Much of Radio Martí programming is explicitly anti-Castro and supportive
of US policy towards Cuba; the station is seen by many as a symbol of
the political gridlock that has defined US-Cuba policy for decades.
Henken shared his perspective on the political nature of Radio Martí:

You can describe their goals in different ways. You can say that
it's intended as a way to overthrow the Cuban government, or as a way to
get information to people.

Ted Henken is a unique contributor to the online conversation about
Internet use and blogging in Cuba. He is both a scholar of, and active
participant in, the Cuba-focused blogosphere. Henken also takes an
objective approach to studying Cuban politics and culture; he does not
come down firmly "for" or "against" the revolution.

In our conversation, he explained that while he had never wholly
dismissed Radio and TV Martí, he has long been wary of the program. "In
a perfect world, Radio Martí wouldn't exist," he told me. "But the world
is not perfect."

Yoani Sánchez [7] and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo [8] [es], two of Cuba's
best-known "critical" bloggers were featured on the program. Both are
members of the Voces Cubanas [9] [es] blogging collective, where most
bloggers are explicitly critical of the government. While members of
this group are often thought of as "dissident" bloggers, many of them,
including Sánchez, reject this label. Henken commented on the
distinction between "citizens" and "dissidents."

"Even though they have clear systemic criticisms of the
government,their main thing is civic action, working [their voices]
into the dominant discourse. To me that is what the story is."

People try to adopt them as political dissidents, and sometimes
they're presented that way because of their criticisms. Yoani [says],
people try to call me a dissident but I think of myself really as a citizen.

According to Henken, under the Obama administration, Radio Martí
producers are making greater efforts to diversify political viewpoints
in their programming. As part of this effort, they have solicited
interviews with bloggers who have been classified as supporters of the
Cuban revolution, including Global Voices contributor [10] and La
Polémica Digital [11] [es] author Elaine Díaz, who declined the
opportunity [12] [es].

Henken noted that many bloggers who are not explicitly against Cuban
government policies "would not agree to do this, because of the
repercussions it could have for them."

He acknowledged that Radio Martí, a broadcast station that fits cleanly
into the "old media" model of "one-to-many" communication, provided an
unusual setting for discussing the power and importance of independent,
citizen-driven social media. He paraphrased a quote from Reinaldo
Escobar [13] [es], husband of Yoani Sánchez, and an active blogger in
Cuba, who acknowledges that Radio Martí is not the ideal venue for their
message.

"The last thing we want to do is rely on the propaganda of a
foreign government to get our voices out.
We need to communicate with other Cubans. We use the Internet, and
that's limited for all the reasons we know, and we listen to Radio Martí."

In the radio interview, Sánchez mentions that Cubans who want to speak
out critically about their government have very limited options as far
as different media are concerned. So, as Escobar says, they use any
channel to which they can gain access.

"People like Yoani or Reinaldo will talk to anyone who wants to listen
to them," Henken told me. "They're just responding to people who are
interested in hearing what they have to say."

Though scarce, the availability of access to cell phones and the
Internet has strengthened communications between people in Cuba and the
rest of the world. These new technologies, along with the old, have
created a unique collage of new and old media spaces in which Cubans are
able to initiate critical conversations about government policy, human
rights, and the direction in which Cuba is headed, without having to
rely on government entities for support.

Of course these media remain politicized, but civic dialogue in a
politically complex space is better than no civic dialogue at all.
Henken believes that what Sánchez and others are trying to do is
exercise "real rights."

[Yoani] tries to say what she really thinks. She tries to exercise
real rights. This is in some way more radical. Luckily she's eloquent
and responsible. I think she appeals to a group of people who are, if
not middle of the road, at least responsible.

URL to article:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/23/cuba-blogger-and-scholar-ted-henken-on-new-media-in-cuba/

URLs in this post:

[1] The first post:
http://globalvoicesonline.org../2011/11/04/cuba-bloggers-discuss-the-internet-offline-on-radio-marti/

[2] Internet access and technological tools are extremely scarce:
http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/briefings/data/000195

[3] El Yuma: http://elyuma.blogspot.com/

[4] Radio Martí:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_y_Televisi%C3%B3n_Mart%C3%AD

[5] Broadcasting Board of Governors: http://www.bbg.gov/

[6] Image:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/23/cuba-blogger-and-scholar-ted-henken-on-new-media-in-cuba/henkenandorlando/

[7] Yoani Sánchez: http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/

[8] Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo: http://vocescubanas.com/boringhomeutopics/

[9] Voces Cubanas: http://vocescubanas.com/

[10] Global Voices contributor:
http://globalvoicesonline.org../author/elaine-diaz/

[11] La Polémica Digital: http://espaciodeelaine.wordpress.com/

[12] who declined the opportunity:
http://espaciodeelaine.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/a-radio-marti-n-u-n-c-a/

[13] Reinaldo Escobar: http://www.desdecuba.com/reinaldoescobar/

[14] Image:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/23/cuba-blogger-and-scholar-ted-henken-on-new-media-in-cuba/vocescdjlori_bync/

Spain's newly elected government may be less friendly to Cuba

The new Conservative government that won Sunday's elections in Spain may
be less friendly to Cuba, analysts say.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Relations between Cuba and Spain may be headed for choppy waters after
Spain's conservative Popular Party won elections Sunday, although
analysts say neither side is primarily interested in picking a mayor fight.

The PP victory ended nearly eight years of rule by the Spanish Socialist
Workers' Party (PSOE), often criticized as too friendly to Havana's
communist rulers and insensitive to their human rights abuses.

Asked last week about Cuba, Mariano Rajoy, PP leader and Spain's next
prime minister, declared, "I want democracy. I want freedom. I want
human rights. Well, not just me. The whole world wants that."

Yet his party's campaign platform barely mentioned Cuba or leftist
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and his speeches on the stump focused
largely on Spain's tough economic crisis and its 20 percent jobless rate.

What's more, bilateral commerce hit more than $1 billion last year and
more than 200 Spanish companies have significant investments in the
Caribbean island, many of them in the growing tourism sector.

"I would doubt very much that Cuba would become a priority or even an
important issue" for Rajoy, said Joaquin Roy, a Spaniard who heads the
European Union Center at the University of Miami. "He has many other
concerns."

"I also don't believe that Raúl (Castro) and his people would have any
interest in starting something with the new Spanish government. Raúl
also has other important things to do," added Roy.

Castro is in the midst of a politically risky campaign to overhaul
Cuba's feeble economy by chopping back public spending, allowing more
private enterprise and attracting more foreign investments.

Cuba's government-controlled news media on Monday reported Rajoy's
victory relatively straight-forward, not attacking the PP but noting
that the PSOE lost because it wandered away from its socialist principles.

Yet others argue that turbulence in bilateral relations would be
inevitable if Rajoy tries to put even slightly stronger pressure on the
traditionally thin-skinned Cuban government to improve its human rights
record.

"It will not be easy for the Popular Party to carry out a minimally
cordial relationship … due to the Castros' historical predisposition
against any government that questions them," noted the blog Diario de
Cuba (Cuban Diary).

One point of conflict could be Castro's harsh anti-corruption campaign,
which already has put several foreign businessmen in jail. A Spanish
lawyer who represents several enterprises with offices in Havana said
some of his clients are concerned that now they will be singled out for
investigations.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said Spain's policy toward
Cuba under the PP must change "because lamentably, the policy designed
by the (PSOE) government … failed."

Under outgoing PSOE Primer Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain
persuaded the 27-nation European Union to lift the sanctions imposed on
Cuba after it jailed 75 peaceful dissidents in 2003.

But it failed in several attempts to push the EU to lift its "Common
Position," adopted in 1996 to link EU relations with Havana to Cuba's
human rights record.

Zapatero also agreed to receive about 115 political prisoners and
hundreds of their relatives, released over the past year by Castro after
unprecedented talks with Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega, and increased
cultural and academic exchanges.

Rajoy's government should now retain "the positive elements of the
people-to-people exchanges," Diario de Cuba added, and adopt a new
"manifest solidarity toward the internal dissidence and respect for exiles."

Dissident Guillermo Fariñas said he was "very happy" with Rajoy's
victory and hoped Spain would provide more assistance to the Cuban
opposition, as it did under Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, a Popular
Party member defeated by the PSOE in 2004.

The PSOE government was "an accomplice of the Cuban dictatorship,"
Fariñas added by telephone from his home in Cuba.

In Miami, the Cuban American National Foundation said the Spanish
embassy in Havana should quickly start allowing Cuban dissidents to use
its Internet facilities so they can communicate with the outside world.

Ladies in White leader Berta Soler praised the embassy for its warm
treatment of dissidents under Zapatero, but added that she hoped that
under Rajoy it would return to the even better levels of the Aznar
government.

"That was a government that truly saw and watched over the problems that
exist in Cuba," Soler added, "with the Cubans on the streets, with the
opposition groups, with the human rights groups."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/22/2513141/spains-newly-elected-government.html#storylink=misearch

MIAMI — Blogger Yoani Sanchez denounced the travel restrictions and
censorship imposed on dissidents like her in communist Cuba, as she
introduced her latest book at a Miami book fair via telephone.

Sanchez, named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most
influential people in 2008, called in Thursday evening to a Miami Book
Fair International event moderated by Cuban writer Carlos Alberto
Montaner, journalist Alberto Muller and her editor, Eugenio Tuya.

"I couldn't come because of migratory limitations. To feel free in
cyberspace has also brought me immobility as a punishment," she told the
mainly Cuban audience before the connection was lost.

In a pre-recorded video, she touted her blogging manual — "WordPress, a
blog to speak to the world" — as "more than a technical guide because I
included stylistic advice and then some personal experiences."

"I think it is a manual that could be useful both to someone who lives
in New York, with everything in reach, but also someone who like me has
lived in a country with censorship," said Sanchez, whose blogs won her
El Pais's prestigious Ortega y Gasset Journalism Awards in 2008.

The new book was published by Grupo Anaya, Spain's leading educational
publisher, and released in Spain in June. It goes on sale in some Miami
bookstores after the book fair.

After the telephone connection was dropped the first time, Sanchez's
Twitter account was lit up on big screens in the auditorium at
Miami-Dade College, the venue for the event.

"I am sick of narrating my life in the improbable tense… 'If I had
been there,'" she wrote.

"Nobody has the right to prevent another from seeing the fruits of her
tree, of watching her child grow, of seeing her book be presented. But
I'll survive! I will live in a future without so many absurdities, I
will live in a freer, more civil Cuba."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iH8rLAMLaCjFdEI1I6mHqYp8k5Aw?docId=CNG.bb560ae65a071dc80a1c88fdc371ec35.671

Cubans can sell homes now, but how and to whom?

Impact of new law is hard to predict after so many years of illegal
house sales
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Havana widow Olga Ramirez wants to sell her three-bedroom house now that
her son and daughter have moved out and — for the first time in half a
century — the government has legalized the sale of homes.

Yet she worries about the room added illegally eight years ago, and
where she could move to in a country with a housing shortage so huge
that young couples sometimes put off having babies for years.

"Yeah, I could sell, but then were do I go? To an attic someplace? No
way," Ramirez said. "And if they find the room? You know that the only
cement we can get here is stolen from the government, no?"

Clearly, the legalization of real estate sales is one of the most
significant reforms Raúl Castro has adopted in his drive to grow Cuba's
economy by slashing state spending and allowing more private enterprise.

Enacted Nov. 10, the reform brought back a legal housing market crushed
by Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, turned homes into potential cash
and, at least technically, recognized an individual's right to private
property.

Yet much remains unclear about the details of the shift away from a
system that allowed only swaps of dwellings of roughly equal value and
was riddled with corruption, illegal constructions and a myriad other
problems.

Cubans generally have welcomed the housing reform, saying it was about
time the communist-run government recognized their right to dispose of
their property as they saw fit — and, of course, to profit from it.

Most Cubans own their homes after paying the government small monthly
quantities for years, some of them since the government seized all
rental and vacation properties in the early days of the Castro revolution.

The Website Cubisima last week listed about 500 properties for sale in
the Havana area alone, with prices ranging from $14,000 to $280,000.
They included several penthouses and eight properties with swimming pools.

Another 30 were on offer in each of several provinces, including a
five-bedroom beach house in eastern Santiago de Cuba priced at $200,000.

Under the new law, buyers must be resident Cubans or resident
foreigners, restrictions no doubt designed to block exiles from
personally dominating the new market. Yet Cubans emigrating — until now
the government seized their homes — can now sell them or pass them to
relatives before they leave.

Buyers and sellers each must each pay the government 4 percent on
whatever is higher — the declared price of the sale or the value of the
property as appraised by a government architect.

In line with Raúl Castro's promise that his reforms will not permit the
accumulation of wealth, the new law and regulations also allow Cubans to
own only one main residence and one vacation home.

The reform could help resolve the island's critical housing shortage,
estimated by the government at 600,000 units in a country of 11.2
million. More than half of the existing units are reported to be in
"bad" or worse condition, and old houses regularly collapse.

Three and four generations often live together, divorced couples are
forced to remain in the same quarters and tiny lofts — nicknamed
"barbeques" because of their searing heat – are added to many rooms.

At the same time, some retirees, divorcees, widows and widowers are
holding on fiercely to large but mostly empty homes and making ends meet
by illegally renting bedrooms to foreign tourists.

The new reform "is good because people can re-size — sell if their place
is too big and buy if they need something bigger," said one Havana woman
offering a penthouse for $140,000.

Yet many Cubans wonder exactly how the reform will work, given the
widespread corruption used in past years to sidestep the government
restrictions on housing swaps.

"They only legalized what was happening illegally for decades," said
Camilo Loret de Mola, a former Havana lawyer who admits he handled many
illegal cash payments for housing "swaps."

In a country where the average monthly salary officially stands at $17,
and where banks do not offer mortgages, most buyers are expected to get
help from relatives and friends abroad.

Only a handful of Cubans may be able to pay even $10,000 for a dwelling
– perhaps singers and other artists who earn money abroad, perhaps
operators in the island's massive black market.

Yet the new regulations require that payments for real estate be made
through the Central Bank, and that the buyer certify that the money came
from legitimate sources.

Cubans also question whether property titles, which contain the detailed
descriptions of lots and homes, have been kept up to date as required in
the municipal offices of the Institute of Housing.

Many dwellings have been subdivided over the years into apartments and
even single rooms used by as many as eight families, with unclear
boundaries and ownership rights.

Apartment blocks built under the Castro revolution issued property
titles to owners but have no legal arrangement for the maintenance of
common items such as elevators, water pumps or landscaping.

"There's no owners' association here, nothing," said dissident Angel
Moya, who lives in an apartment owned by his mother-in-law in Alamar, a
1980s housing development in eastern Havana.

But if she wanted to sell the apartment, she would have to get his
approval because Cuban law says that anyone who has lived in one place
for five years or more cannot be forced out.

The new law also makes no mention of new construction, or of the many
areas where housing swaps required security clearances because of
military or other activity.

There are Frozen Zones, Restricted Zones, Special Zones and even Speed
Ways – including Havana streets that Fidel Castro's armored vehicles use
between the city and his home in a western suburb.

Loret de Mola noted that the new law and regulations also make no
mention of a pardon for the many illegal housing deals done over the
year with the help of payoffs to government officials.

So many houses in one sector of the famed Varadero beach resort were
bought in the 1990s by South Florida exiles through relatives on the
island that it is jokingly referred to as "Hialeah Heights."

Spaniards, Russians and other Europeans also have bought vacation places
in Cuba over the years, "all on the black market," added Loret De Mola,
who now lives in Atlanta.

Some Cubans remain wary of the political will behind the housing reform,
noting that Fidel Castro put a quick stop to a 1990s program to build
condominiums for foreigners when fancy buildings began popping up along
his route between home and office.

But even some Cuban exiles who have been highly skeptical of Raúl
Castro's previous reforms, like sociologist Haroldo Dilla, now argue
that the housing reforms seem promising.

They "merit applause … because they are a positive and substantial
step," Dilla wrote in a recent column published on the Web site
Cubaencuentro.

The column's headline played off the signs, "This is your house, Fidel,"
that many Cubans displayed in their homes soon after Castro seized power
in 1959.

The title: "This is my house, Fidel."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/19/v-fullstory/2510578/online-head.html

UN report now accepts Cuban data

Havana was not on a previous development list because of questions about
its data
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

A United Nations agency has returned Cuba to its national development
ranking after a year of exile to a separate list that included North
Korea and Eritrea because of doubts about data provided by Havana.

The Human Development Report for 2011, produced by the U.N. Development
Programme and published earlier this month, ranked Cuba 51st in the
world and fifth in Latin America and the Caribbean, behind Chile,
Argentina, Barbados and Uruguay. Cuba had the same ranking in 2009.

The UNDP index, which combines economic, education, health and some
human rights indicators to rank countries on a scale of national
development, ranked Norway first in the world and the United States fourth.

It has been issued annually since 1990, but last year the UNDP left Cuba
out of it main rankings list, noting that the manner in which the island
computes some of its economic figures makes it too difficult to compare
with other countries. Cuba counts the value of government services, such
as healthcare and education — a method not used by others.

Instead, the UNDP put Cuba on a list of other countries and territories
whose statistics were not comparable, missing or too small to provide
reliable indications of development. It included Grenada, Eritrea,
Samoa, Iraq, Somalia and North Korea.

The 2010 report added that Cuba was "currently revising and updating its
international statistics in order to establish internationally
comparable data," and it expressed hope "that in due time comparable …
data will become available.''

The 2011 report said only that a key indicator of Cuba's economy,
purchasing power parity, had been "estimated" but gave no details of how
that was done and did not mention the island had been left off the 2010
list.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a University of Pittsburgh expert on the Cuban
economy who has complained repeatedly to the UNDP about its acceptance
of Havana's data, said he was surprised by the island's return to the
main list. "Nothing new has happened, in terms of statistics, that would
allow them to reach a more reliable estimate," Mesa-Lago said.

Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe complained the new ranking was
based on official Cuban government figures that don't appear to match
the reality of life on the communist-ruled island. It's difficult to
accept Cuba's ranking, he said, when the Cuban government regularly
violates human rights and is struggling to reform an economy that is all
but insolvent.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/16/2507081/un-report-now-accepts-cuban-data.html

A debate encounter sponsored by the Catholic digital publication Espacio
Laical took place on Saturday, October 29th, 2011. The agency EFE, the
leading Spanish news agency, reported the event in a very laudable
manner, as published on October 30th on the digital site Cubaencuentro.
The report states that "The new role that the Catholic Church in Cuba
has undertaken has provided forums for dialogue where even a dissident
or a controversial academician are able to exchange their views in
public with a leading intellectual public official." Additionally, it
exposes details of the intervention of the founder of the Institute of
Art and the Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC) and the director of the
Latin American New Film Festival, Alfredo Guevara, who "gave a lecture
on Cuba's current challenges" by addressing issues of economic
adjustments, the problem of bureaucracy and the need to understand
diversity and tolerance in today's Cuba.

Present at the event were Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the official academic
Esteban Morales, the economist and former political prisoner of the
Black Spring group, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, and a group of students,
intellectuals, economists, foreign diplomats and "local and foreign
journalists." The press release does not specify who these local
journalists were, but they are presumed to be representatives of the
official press, since there has not been any editorial opinion about
said encounter from independent journalists and bloggers.

Nor did the official media give coverage to such a significant event,
though one of the topics discussed was precisely in relation to the
limitations of the press in Cuba and "the concealment of information to
citizens," as discussed by dissident economist Espinosa Chepe, who was
very positive about debates that are "civilized, not offensive, without
exclusions or absurd prejudices, because ideological diversity does
exist in Cuba", and he indicated that it was enough just to walk outside
to listen to people's criticism. As part of his response, Guevara
considered that secrecy had to end "radically".

Another of the aspects that EFE's report emphasizes is the opinion of
many of the meeting's attendees about "the new role being played by the
Catholic Church, providing spaces for dialogue on issues of all kinds
and incorporating diverse opinions" and it added that "Cardinal Ortega
himself stated last Friday that the Church is experiencing a new
relationship with the State and the people of Cuba, and he confirmed
that the dialogue initiated last year with Raúl Castro and his
government continues, and it affects all areas of national life,
including the adjustment process to 'update' the socialist model."

In reality, we must recognize that any debate space that opens up for
dialogue in a nation so tense and fragmented as ours, will, indeed, be
positive. However, it would be desirable that the intentions professed
should correspond more consistently with the facts. Let's say that no
debate about the actual Cuban reality should be considered inclusive
when among the participants there is barely one representative of the
broad array of non-official opinion – call them dissidents — of all of
society, when not one member is invited from independent journalism or
from alternative civil society that has emerged ever so strongly in the
past few years, and other numerous and young voices that have much to
say and to which so many venues have been denied.

One of the notable absentees at this event is the Catholic layman
Dagoberto Valdés editor of the magazine Vitral, for many years and
current host of the group's wonderful magazine Convivencia. There have
been many cultural, literary and civic activities developed by this
group of people from Pinar del Rio, led by Dagoberto, in defense of
diversity, freedom, and Cubanism; however, they don't seem to qualify to
take part in the debate of Espacio Laical.

There were also no representatives from the Cuban Law Association to
offer an alternative view on the new legislation that is being
announced, and the decrees that have been introduced in the very highly
publicized process of government reforms.

Neither the Catholic Church nor Espacio Laical can be considered "new
spaces" as they offer just the stage where discussions are confined to
the thematic framework of the same old speeches disguised as reform,
dictated by the same old speakers that have thrived for more than half
century in the high politics of the country, apparently without
perceiving any errors in the system. If those are the guiding voices, we
are not before what is new or innovative, but rather in the presence of
an opportunistic mutation of the same and already long-lived deadly disease.

Cardinal Ortega's approach also seems, at the very least, ambiguous,
since the idea that the Church is experiencing a new relationship with
the Cuban people and their "dialogue" covers all areas of national life,
including so-called process of updating the socialist model. At least
regular Cubans do not seem to feel the presence of the Church in their
lives, full of all kinds of shortages and lack of places to express
themselves. Monsignor Ortega is far from being considered a
representative of the feelings of the Cuban people, and, so far, he
doesn't seem to have as close a relationship with them as he does with
the General. Nor can I understand the relationship between the purple
and the olive green dialogue or their intention to renew socialism. It
would seem that the Cardinal might soon receive his Cuban Communist
Party membership card.

In fact, this Espacio Laical event has been full of the same secrecy
that was so criticized in the encounter: there were no calls to attend,
no invitation to all active opinion sectors, or media coverage of the
conference and debates, or transparency. It was as if it were a
conspiracy to care for a sacred venue, safe from the sacrilegious
agitators who make embarrassing pronouncements, who plant themselves,
who demand rights, who express themselves respectfully but without
hiding their opinions. Apparently, new parameters have been established
that maintains tight departments or niches, neither more nor less than
the feedback of a new sectarianism, now scented with wax and incense.

Espacio Laical has often published brave and honest editorials, and has,
in more than one occasion, expressed opinions and put forth questions
that reflect the concerns of thousands of Cubans, but, in this case, it
must be recognized that in practice it's losing the opportunity to
demonstrate true commitment for dialogue, because one cannot ignore
players who have been marking the beat on the transformation of Cuban
public opinion long before the government is forced to occasionally
temper its discourse or to implement –much to their dismay- the limited
economic and social changes that seem to dazzle the press today.

The Cardinal, meanwhile, played a positive role as a mediator for the
release of prisoners of conscience, but their freeing could not have
been possible without the courage and perseverance of the Ladies in
White, without the sacrifice of Guillermo Fariñas and without the
ongoing activities of journalists and independent bloggers. None of them
were invited to the event last Saturday, perhaps because the Catholic
Church delicately does not allow itself the risk of offending the
speeches of the holy hierarchy with the more legitimate civil claims, or
because perhaps it considers the people of this country so inept that
they can only be represented either by guns or cassocks.

Thus, I would argue that the real opportunities for dialogue have been
taking place spontaneously outside of institutions. The Estado de SATS
(where Art and thought converge) the groups OMNI ZONAFRANCA, the Blogger
Academy, Voces digital magazine, the group Convivencia, some of these
spaces are inclusive, where all opinions are welcome, where debates
don't have stiff moderators surfeited with authority, or require the
previous dictate of some anointed official. Good for Espacio Laical if
it decides to promote and maintain a new debate forum, albeit
half-hearted, but – let's be fair — the event this past October 29th was
neither so unprecedented nor a dialogue.

Translator: Norma Whiting

November 11 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=12594

Starting today, Cubans can buy and sell property for the first time in
over 50 years. Yet while most are excited to escape the cage of
government restrictions, others fear being kicked out in the cold.

Many Cubans haven't paid for rent, health care or education since 1959,
when Fidel Castro seized power and began nationalizing private property
in one of the staunchest socialist experiments in world history. While
the results were far from perfect, many of Cuba's poorest undeniably
benefited.

During the heyday of the Revolution, most Cubans had job security and
guaranteed food rations. The Cuban government tinkered with novel
programs and ideas, and where those programs failed, the Soviet Union
often stepped in, checkbook in hand, to balance the books. While Cuba
severely limited its citizens' rights and freedoms, it also ensured a
basic economic safety net below which no Cuban would fall. For the most
part, success was more a function of loyalty to the government than it
was a measure of personal skills. This is the government that many older
Cubans identify with.

But after decades of stuttering progress, the fall of the Soviet Union
brought an end to the heavily subsidized years of Cuban socialism, and a
so-called "Special Period" of austerity began. For most young Cubans,
these years of recession and stagnation are all they know of the Castro
regime.

So the reforms of the past five years are evoking mixed emotions among
Cubans. The loosening restrictions on property and trade will finally
allow a burgeoning entrepreneurial class to openly improve their lives.
Cubans can now buy and sell homes and cars, private businesses can be
established, and skilled workers can offer their services freelance.
These reforms are part of an effort by the government to wean its
bloated public sector off of government assistance and flood the private
sector with cash.

Suddenly, Cubans can earn more on their own initiative. As the New York
Times reports, the iconic and ancient cars that sputter through Havana
can be traded or sold, transforming old clunkers into a private reserve
of wealth.

But as Cubans are given their own paddles to navigate capitalism, some
fear the loss of the government life jacket. "What happens if I sell my
home and then I can't find another one to buy? Where do I sleep?,"
laments Félix Méndez, a 47-year-old hospital technician quoted in the
New York Times.

Another risk inherent to the reforms is a widening rift between the
richest and poorest Cubans. People can now sell their homes and move
elsewhere. This newfound mobility is expected to lead to segregation, as
wealthier Cubans (and their money) leave poorer neighborhoods in search
of better living. "Thousands of Cubans have been waiting for this
signal, like runners crouched at the starting line waiting for the gun
to go off," writes Yoani Sánchez, a prominent Cuban dissident blogger.
When the gun goes off, existing inequality will likely be increased as
money is drained from some neighborhoods without the government around
to replenish it.

Spectators on both sides of the ideological aisle call the reforms
necessary. Capitalism's enthusiasts see the changes as inevitable; the
end of an anachronism. Those farther to the left view the reforms as
necessary concessions amidst tough times; concessions to ensure the
survival and restoration of one the few remaining self-proclaimed
socialist regimes in the world.

As Ms. Sánchez writes, "a house, for 40 years an anchor, will become a
set of wings." It remains to be seen, though, who will sink and who will
fly.

http://www.globalenvision.org/2011/11/10/cuba-reforms-invisible-hand-bearing-gifts-and-new-problems

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) — Raul Castro's daughter and an anti-government
blogger are mixing it up in Cuban cyberspace.

Mariela Castro opened a Twitter account and sent her first tweets
yesterday about her work as head of Cuba's National Sex Education
Center. She's an advocate of gay rights.

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez fired the first Twitter salvos,
welcoming her to the social network and asking when Cubans "will be able
to come out of other closets."

Castro shot back that Sanchez ought to study up, saying Sanchez's
version of tolerance reinforces "the old mechanisms of power." She later
grumbled about tweets from unspecified "despicable parasites."

Cuba has a small but growing Twitter community despite the second-worst
Internet connectivity in the world.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Castro-s-daughter–blogger-in-Twitter-spat

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Raul Castro's daughter joined Twitter to discuss a recent trip
- Instead, she locked horns with a Cuban dissident
- Mariela Castro Espin lashes out at anti-government critics

(CNN) — Cuban President Raul Castro's daughter joined Twitter to set
the record straight about an interview she did abroad, but ended up
arguing with one of the communist island's prominent dissidents online.

Mariela Castro Espin wrote on her Twitter account, @CastroEspinM, that
she recently made a trip to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and toured the
city's infamous red light district in her role as director for Cuba's
National Center for Sexual Education.

An interview with Radio Netherlands characterized Castro Espin as
"impressed" with the way the Dutch organize their prostitution. But on
Twitter, Castro Espin said the conversation was taken out of context and
that she would use social media to clarify her position.

"Without a doubt, there have been misunderstandings, manipulations, as
always. At least there is the Web… and WikiLeaks," she wrote on Twitter.

Shortly afterward, Castro Espin was "welcomed" to the social networking
site by Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez, an outspoken critic of the Castro
regime and avid Twitter user.

"Welcome to the plurality of Twitter," Sanchez tweeted to Castro Espin.
"Here no one can shut me up, or deny me permission to travel or block my
entry."

Castro Espin shot back: "Your focus on tolerance reproduces the old
mechanisms of power. To improve your 'services' you need to study."

While there is long-running animosity between dissidents and the
government, it is not common for the two sides to exchange barbs in such
a public forum.

A bevy of critical replies to Castro Espin must have followed, for then
she wrote on Twitter: "Despicable parasites: Did you receive the order
from your employers to respond in unison and with the same predetermined
script? Be creative."

In Cuba, where Internet access is limited or prohibitively expensive,
many citizens use Twitter as a form of communicating, as Tweets can be
posted from a simple text message.

Castro Espin is the niece of Fidel Castro. Her father, Raul Castro,
assumed presidential duties from Fidel in 2006, and became president in
2008. Castro Espin's organization promotes gay rights in Cuba.

That fight for equal rights in Cuba led Sanchez to ask another question
of Castro Espin on Twitter: "How can you ask for acceptance just for one
issue? Is tolerance universal or not?" Castro Espin did not answer.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/09/world/americas/cuba-twitter-fight/

Defiant Cuban dissident Guido Sigler arrives in Miami
By Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@ElNuevoHerald.com

Guido Sigler Amaya, one of 12 former political prisoners who opted to
stay in Cuba after their release from prison earlier this year, arrived
Tuesday at Miami International Airport determined to continue his
opposition to the island nation's regime and denouncing the abuses of
the Castro brothers.

Sigler, 58, was greeted by friends, family members and Cuban exiles amid
shouts of "Down with dictatorship!" and "Down with the Castro murderers!"

"I have come from Cuba with the same idea of continuing to defend human
rights," Sigler said. "And from here I tell my Cuban brothers to
continue fighting to overthrow the dictatorship that oppresses Cuba. We
are going to continue fighting for our country's freedom, the freedom
they have taken away from us."

Sigler, along with other well-known dissidents like Oscar Elías Biscet,
decided to continue his political activism in Cuba while other political
prisoners who had been released departed for Spain. He decided to leave
for the United States in the face of continued hostility from the
government and police.

Two months ago he signed the Declaration of Unity, which asks Cuban
dissidents to unite around key points such as fighting without violence
and respecting human rights, pressing for moves toward democracy and
calling for the unity of all Cubans regardless of where they live.

He also has called for a modern economy that would move away from
central planning.

Sigler is one of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists convicted
in 2003 during the repression wave known as the "Black Spring," a Castro
government plan to silence critical voices and petitions for free elections.

"I feel very happy to be in the country of freedom," he said Tuesday,
draped in a Cuban flag. "I am a patriot trying from here to help Cuba to
be free."

His brothers and former political prisoners Ariel and Miguel greeted him
at the airport.

"Eight years ago we hardly had any communication, and now the entire
family is very happy to have him among us," Ariel Sigler said.

Ariel Sigler arrived in the United States in July 2010 in a wheelchair
after being released from prison due to frail health. In Miami he spent
several weeks at the Jackson Memorial Hospital suffering from
polyneuropathy, which he overcame with a daily rehabilitation program
and intensive care.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/08/2493663/defiant-cuban-dissident-guido.html

HAVANA, CUBA (BosNewsLife)– The leader of a major Cuban network of
independent churches and his family have urged Cuba's government to let
them leave the Communist-run island following years of harassment,
including imprisonment, Christian rights activists told BosNewsLife
Monday, November 7.

Pastor Omar Gude Perez of the growing 'Apostolic Movement', his wife and
two children were granted asylum in the United States in July but were
refused permission to exit Cuba, said advocacy group Christian
Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

"We are deeply concerned at the news that Cuban officials have once
again declined to issue the Gude family an exit visa," added CSW's
Special Ambassador Stuart Windsor in a statement to BosNewsLife.

Pastor Gude, served almost three years of a six and a half year prison
sentence on what his supported called "trumped up charges". He was
released on "conditional liberty" earlier this year but is reportedly
prohibited from preaching or from traveling outside his home city of
Camaguey.

"After receiving asylum in the US in July, the couple was informed by
government officials that they would not be issued exit visas, or "white
cards", as they are called in Cuba," CSW said.

"NEGATIVE PRESS COVERAGE"

Following "negative press coverage" officials told the family they would
in fact "be allowed to leave, but three months on they say they have yet
to see any indication that they will be permitted to go into exile," CSW
explained.

The family reportedly said they are concerned about "the long delays and
contradictory messages."

Another couple, both pastors from the same network in Camaguey as the
Gude family, have also been harassed by government officials and
threatened with imprisonment and forcible closure of their
church,according to Christian rights activists.

"On the most recent occasion, Benito Rodríguez and Bárbara Guzmán were
ordered to appear at the local Ministry of Justice on 11 October and
fined 200 Cuban pesos, approximately a one month's salary in Cuba,' CSW
added in a statement.

These are no isolated incidents. Last month a Baptist pastor in the
province of Santa Clara, Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, was reportedly
put under house arrest on multiple occasions.

GOVERNMENT "WARNS" FAMILY

"Officials warned the family that they could be a target of an "act of
repudiation", government orchestrated mobs often mobilized by officials
to intimidate and attack human rights and democracy activists," CSW
explained. "News of increased pressure and threats against other church
leaders is also extremely worrying," said Windsor. "

He stressed his group has urged Cuba "to uphold its commitments as a
signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and to cease harassment of religious leaders."

"We hope that the government will also honor its promise to the Gude
family to allow them to leave the country and begin a new life in the
United States without any further delay."

Cuban officials did not comment on the latest cases. However the Cuban
government has repeatedly denied holding any political or Christian
dissidents saying those held are mercenaries paid by the United States.

OPPOSITION MOVEMENT DIFFICULTIES

The reported crackdown on Christians come also at a difficult time for
Cuba's small opposition movement.

Leading dissident Guillermo Fariñas was released last week from a jail
in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara after spending two days in
custody. He was detained Tuesday, November 1, when trying to enter
Arnaldo Milian Castro Provincial Hospital to visit fellow dissident
Alcides Rivera, who has been on hunger strike for over a month.

Last year, he went on a four-and-a-half-month fast to demand the release
of political prisoners following the death of Orlando Zapata, who died
February 23, 2010, after a lengthy hunger strike behind bars to protest
jail conditions.

The international outcry over Zapata's death prompted the Cuban
government to launch a Spain-backed dialogue last year with the Cuban
Catholic hierarchy that led to the release of over 100 political
prisoners. Those released included dozens of dissidents jailed in March
2003 amid what observers called "the harshest crackdown" in decades.

Since last month they continue without Laura Pollan, the founder of the
Ladies in White, who every Sunday walk out and march in silence along
Havana's busy Fifth Avenue, dressed in white and carrying red gladiolas.
She died at te age of 63 on October 14 following her peaceful battle for
human rights that included the release of her activist husband Cuban
dissident Hector Maseda, after eight years in prison.

http://www.bosnewslife.com/18935-cuba-urged-to-let-church-leader-family-leave-island

This interview was conducted by Luis Felipe Rojas and published on
"Diario de Cuba" on October 21, 2011.
Eliecer Palma Pupo (Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas)

At a very young age, he left his home to combat Angolans who dissented
from the regime which governed them. He returned as a hero, with three
medals on his chest (Second Class Internationalist, for the Victory of
Cuba-RPA, and Distinguished Service). Afterward, he was left without
employment because he wrote a phrase which mocked Fidel Castro and his
clique. That's when the real war began for him. Marginalized from Cuban
social life, he traversed various obstacles until he became a public
dissident. And it was about these very subjects that Eliecer Palma Pupo
wanted to chat about with "Diario de Cuba".

Where were you stationed in Angola? What was your mission there, what
did you do there?

I left to Angola in 1987, when I was 18 years old. They stationed me in
a place called Matala, in Southern Angola. Later I was transferred to
Lubango, in the province of Huila. I became chauffeur for a Lieutenant
Colonel of the Radio-Technical Unit of Southern Angola. This soldier was
later discharged here in Cuba because he was having an affair, something
very common within the Cuban armed forces. I did not participate in
combat, but I was in the forefront and witnessed the horrors of war. I
lost a friend of mine, he was from my town. Like many Cubans who
participated in that war, I went thinking I was going to do something
just. In reality, I went to get myself into something I shouldn't have.

In 1996 they made me a militant of the Communist Party of Cuba. Years
later, precisely on February 24th, which is a symbolic date for many
Cubans, I was dismissed from my labor post and from that political
organization. They sent me to the street, as if I was some sort of plague.

What were the causes of this dismissal? What happened after?

I worked in the "Urbano Noris" Agro-Industrial Complex of San German,
Holguin. I wrote down a phrase on a piece of paper- it was a joke, a
question directed to Fidel, asking him when we would eat shrimp and
drink some beer. But the writing consisted of 14 letter C's, which at
the same time coincided with the Cuban rulers last name. That was all.
The political police was in charge of all the rest. The First Lieutenant
at the time, Frank Gonzalez, gave me a citation through the director of
the sugar plant and they accused me of promoting ideological diversion,
and therefore, they decided to expel me from my position as Chief of
Security in the Sugar Production Complex.

The current Major, Rodolfo Cepena, was the one carrying out the post
persecution. I was dismissed 8 times from different jobs. Wherever I
turned to, they would tell me I was hostile toward the Revolution, and
therefore could not administer resources from the State. In fact, in the
"Heroes of Moncada" co-operative in 2006, the chief of the Municipal
Attorney, Mrs. Maricelis Olivera, sided with State Security and ordered
to violate the internal rules of the operation. I was once again left
without a job because she pressured those who were in my favor,
declaring that my position against the Revolution affected the
collective mass of workers.

You were a member of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban
Revolution (ACRC), what can you tell us about this organization?

The ACRC is an organization in which you become a member if you are a
war veteran, and nothing is supposed to exclude you from that condition,
but I was expelled from there. In that sense, I have been stripped of
the possible "benefits" I could have been offered because of it- some
sort of prebend like having them sell me food at different prices, or
that they exempt me from some debts from using those electronic devices
which have now been sold to all Cubans.

On the other hand, I was freed from having to pay 10 dollars for being
associated to the group, from having to participate in meetings, and
other compromises which these people are subjected to. Everyone knows
that they do not pay the lest bit of attention to all these so-called
"combatants".

You joined the peaceful dissidence as an active member. Recently, you
were seen taking part in the National March for the Freedom of Cuba in
Baracoa. Are you aware of what you have done?

Yes, and I would do it a thousand times more. The authorities made me
become a public dissident- because in Cuba, many people are against the
government but they do not say it, or the political police does not find
out. Now I have a debt to the peaceful social protest methods, of
confronting the regime, and I do not plan on quitting, despite the many
pressures I am being subjected to. I have already gone through arbitrary
arrests and have had my house surrounded so that I do not participate in
opposition activities. I have already taken a step forward and I have no
plans of stepping back. I want to see a free Cuba, and I know what I am
exposing myself, and my family, to.

There is a generalized notion that Cuba is changing. Are Cubans changing?

The government has not changed at all towards the Cuban people. Now,
there is more repression than a few years ago. There is more poverty,
and they are increasingly dismissing workers and leaving them out on the
streets. I do not know where those changes some claim to see are, but I
don't see them at all.

In regards to Cubans, I do not think they are changing. The fact that,
as they wait in line for a loaf of bread they criticize the government,
does not constitute a change. Many people are afraid. Even the regime is
on alert in regards to what could happen. Popular discontent, lack of
credibility, and the increase of repression: all of this makes up the
fact that something is moving, but there is no real change yet.

Editor's note: On Saturday, October 22nd, Luis Felipe Rojas published a
Twitter message about the communist functionary Machado Ventura and his
arrival to San German, Rojas' hometown. Because of Ventura's visit, San
German officials painted houses and covered holes on the street, while
political police officials were on the move- surrounding and arresting
some dissidents, including Eliecer Pupo, who at the time was in the home
of Luis Felipe Rojas. Here is the Tweet:

@alambradas_en:

Police have just taken dissident Eliecer Palma Pupo from my house for
putting "Laura Pollan Lives" sign on his home

Translated by: Raul G.

23 October 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=12454

In March 2003, the Cuban regime rounded up 75 journalists, librarians
and human peaceful dissidents and quickly hustled them off to prison for
lengthy terms on bizarre, trumped-up charges.

For example, Normando Hernandez, who had been writing articles on
CubaNet since 1999, was found guilty of reporting on the health,
education and judicial systems and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Jose
Luis Garcia Paneque, a surgeon who was hounded from his profession for
his political beliefs, was sentenced to 24 years, with 17 months of it
in isolation. Ill with pneumonia and a cyst on his kidney, his weight
dropped to 90 pounds. Regis Iglesias, a poet, received an 18-year sentence.

All of the 75 Cubans were released by 2010, a few months after an
international outcry over the death of imprisoned dissident Orlando
Zapata Tamayo. But the releases did not come until many of those jailed
in the spring of 2003 — including Hernandez, Paneque and Iglesias — had
spent more than seven years in prison, in terrible conditions for
alleged crimes that amounted to nothing more than the exercise of "the
most elementary of human rights, especially as regards freedom of
expression and political association," as the European Union put it, in
a statement denouncing the prosecutions.

For these three and many of the others, however, the privations did not
end with release from prison. They were exiled to Spain, where they were
denied basic liberties customarily accorded political refugees. In a
column in the Wall Street Journal on June 13 of this year, Mary
Anastasia O'Grady criticized the Spanish government for "assisting the
Cuban dictatorship to disguise the deportation as 'liberation.'"

Among the readers of the column was former President George W. Bush. The
three ex-prisoners learned of his interest, and, on Tuesday, they fly to
Dallas to tell their stories to a packed assembly at an event sponsored
by the Bush Institute.

The Cubans were accompanied by Jose Maria Aznar, former president of
Spain, and Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White, secretary general of the
European People's Party, the pan-European center-right organization that
has been looking out for the welfare of the exiles as the Spanish
government has shirked its responsibility.

The sad fact is that much of the world is either consciously ignoring or
is blissfully unaware of the brutality and repression being exercised by
the Cuba regime against citizens simply asking basic freedoms. While
global attention has focused on the Arab Spring and the liberation of
Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, a Caribbean island has remained for more than
60 years in the grip of a family that has destroyed its economy and
stripped its people of the most fundamental rights.

What's the answer for Cuba? Start with an intensification of
international pressure on the regime. Certainly, the attitude of the
Spanish government will change later this month if, as expected, the
Socialist government so friendly to the Castros is defeated.

But international pressure won't increase unless the world hears the
stories of brave Cubans like Dr. Paneque, who told the rapt audience in
Dallas about the hell of solitary confinement in a tiny cell. He said
that his life would never be the same. You could see the emotional scars.

The Castro brothers probably expected that the experience of prison
would chasten or silence the released dissidents – those in Spain or the
United States or still in Cuba. But it has not. Hernandez, Paneque and
Iglesias remain defiant. They're telling tales of one of the most
repressive governments in the world. "We must seek the truth," said
President Aznar on Tuesday, "and make known the lies of the regime."

Change in Cuba also requires that freedom-loving Americans – especially
high officials — to lend their moral support. Aznar reminded the
audience that freedom "will never come from appeasement and complacency."

When President Bush was in office, he vigorously and publicly put the
weight of his office behind hundreds of dissidents and freedom advocates.

He met with Dr. Paneque's wife and daughter in the Oval Office during
the dissident's fourth year in prison and then, six months later, in the
East Room of the White House for a "day of Solidarity with the Cuban
People." The President even helped Paneque's wife get a better job in
Texas so she could be at home with her daughter at night. He mentioned
Paneque three times in speeches, including an address to the Cuban
people a few days before he left office in 2009.

President Bush also mentioned the jailed Normando Hernandez in three
speeches, and Hernandez's mother joined Mrs. Bush in the First Lady's
box for the 2008 State of the Union address. We know from interviews
with other dissidents that word of this kind of support seeps into
prisons and gives freedom advocates the courage to struggle on.

Finally, the United States and other nations need to be steadfast in
their policies. Any change in relations with Cuba must be predicated on
free elections. Freedom won't come to the nation until the current
regime leaves power and the Cuban people themselves are able to choose
their leaders.

Perhaps nature will have to run its course, but I hope not. There are
non-violent ways to bring freedom to Cuba, and they all come down to
helping courageous Cubans like Hernandez, Paneque and Iglesias succeed.

James K. Glassman is the founding executive director of the George W.
Bush Institute and a former Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs
and Public Diplomacy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassman/2011/11/03/the-cuban-political-prisoners-deserve-a-cuban-spring/

Fariñas, who received the Sakharov Prize 2010 of the European Parliament
following a hunger strike for 135 days for the release of political
prisoners, was arrested admitted to the hospital in the city of Santa
Clara, 270 km east of Havana, his mother, Alicia Hernández.

"As I told another person who was with him, named Soto, was to come in
and (the agents) told him that no, there was formed something (a riot)
and stop" , said Hernandez. "One of the officers grabbed him, pinned him
and another gave him blows. I have in the National Police unit," he said.

For its part, the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and
National Reconciliation, Elizardo Sanchez, confirmed that Farinas was
arrested with other activists who came to the hospital to visit Alcides
Rivera, a dissident who has a hunger strike.

"Indeed, around four in the afternoon (stopped) to him and several
others in the city of Santa Clara" Sanchez said. "Until this moment is
still detained," he said.

Fariñas's mother reported that this is the first time your child is
beaten by police, although he has been arrested before. "He had never
physically abused," he said. Also reported that 18 other dissidents who
came on Monday Provincial Hospital "Arnaldo Milian Castro" with the
intention of interest in the striker Rivera, did not have access to the
facility and were arrested, but apparently some have been released today.

In September, Fariñas was detained one day when I tried one other
opponents of street protests in Santa Clara.

http://www.allvoices.com//contributed-news/10769635-18-cubans-arrested-on-a-visit-to-dissident-on-hunger-strike