Cuba Cracks Down On Dissidents With Stiff Prison Sentences

by Patricia Grogg

The Castro government decided last month to limit the movements of the staff of the U.S. Interests Section, a diplomatic office here, accusing its chief, James Cason, of "conspiratorial activities" and "fomenting subversion" on this socialist-run island.

Cason was the target March 6 of President Fidel Castro's personal scorn. In a speech the president called the U.S. diplomat a "dandy with diplomatic immunity" and the office he directs "an incubator for counterrevolutionaries."

"Cuba can do just fine without such an office... a command center for the most blatant subversive actions against our country," charged the 76-year-old Castro.

Elizardo Sanchez, president of the opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said that the detainees would "presumably" be tried under Law 88, which the island's dissident movement refers to as the "big bite" law. Sanchez's group is not recognized but is tolerated by the government,

It would be the first time that this 1999 legislation would be applied. It imposes prison sentences of up to 20 years for anyone found guilty of supplying the U.S. government with information that could be used in its "economic war" or subversion against Cuba.

Cuba's state-run television broadcast on two consecutive days a news show in which a panel of experts accused Cason of "unabashed and repeated provocations."

Washington maintains Cuba on its list of nations that support terrorism, and is seeking ways to justify more aggressive policies, running counter to public opinion in the United States, which prefers rapprochement.

The individuals tried over the past week were rounded up and imprisoned in March on charges of working with Jams Cason, the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, to "destabilize" the Cuban government.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a group that is not officially recognized but was tolerated by the authorities, said in a communique that the sentences handed down Monday for more than 30 defendants ranged from 10 to 20 years' imprisonment.

According to the Commission, most of the trials -- which began Thursday in courtrooms in Havana and a dozen cities around the island -- have already concluded.

Havana's crackdown on the island's opposition movement coincided with the beginning of the annual sessions in Geneva of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which could issue a resolution condemning Cuba, as it has regularly over the past decade.

The longest prison sentence announced so far was 25 years, for Hector Palacios, of the opposition movement Todos Unidos (All United). State prosecutors had asked a life sentence.

Independent journalist Raul Rivero received the 20-year sentence that prosecutors had requested during his trial held Friday.

The same prison term was ordered for Martha Beatriz Roque, an economist and former political prisoner. She also faced a potential life sentence.

As did Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes, of the Liberal Democratic Party. After he read a retraction about his opposition activities during the trial, he was sentenced to 18 years.

"The retraction has been confirmed, but we do not know what scope it might have," said Sanchez in a conversation with IPS. He described the proceedings against the dissidents as "extreme summary trials, likes those that take place under a state of siege or in war."

The state accused Rivero of -- among other things -- writing for "the French agency with subversive leanings, Reporters sans Frontieres" (RSF - Reporters without Borders).

In the trials, one finds "all the elements of the Stalinist proceedings: closed-door hearings, expedited justice, refusal of the right to defence, testimonies by infiltrated agents, files piled up for months, statements from neighbors, accusations based solely on crimes of opinion," according to RSF secretary-general Robert Menard.

Other dissidents were given prison sentences of 15, 18 or 20 years for crimes against state security and infractions as stipulated in Decree 88 for the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba.

This is the first time that the government has implemented that law, in force since 1999 as a counterweight to the U.S. Helms- Burton Act of 1996, which tightened the economic embargo that Washington has maintained against the socialist-run island for four decades.

The Cuban decree established sanctions for acts aimed at "supporting, facilitating or collaborating with the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade or the economic war of the United States against Cuba."

Elsewhere in Cuban law, Article 91 of the Penal Code permits the death penalty for anyone who, "in the interest of a foreign state, carries out an act with the aim of harming the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its territory."

Havana said Cason was a spy who met often at his home with the dissidents and supplied them with radios and fax machines.

During the trials Thursday and Friday, a half-dozen people were identified as Cuban government agents. Manuel David Orrio and NŽstor Baguer, for example, had been thought to be dissidents by some of the media covering the proceedings.

S‡nchez said they were "mere informants", that they had been "very careless and we were already on the alert, though they did cause damage." The activist added that some agents are still "out there" but that they have for the most part been identified.

Every year since 1990, except 1998, the UN Commission has approved resolutions censuring Cuba for an alleged lack of respect for human rights. The 2002 resolution was the first to be authored by Latin American countries, and it was among the least severe.

But the Cuban government insists that it will not accept even being mentioned by the Commission and repeatedly accuses Washington of pressuring the members of the UN body, using the human rights question for political ends.

According to Havana, the U.S. government is the true author of all motions proposed against the island during the Commission's annual sessions, and that it is attempting to justify the trade embargo and other "aggressions".

Uruguay, Costa Rica and Peru are currently promoting in Geneva a resolution on Cuba that has been described as "soft" in diplomatic circles. The text urges the Castro government to receive Christine Chanet, personal representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and to collaborate with her efforts.

Chanet's mandate, as defined by the Commission in 2002, is to assess the human rights situation in Cuba.

Diplomats on the island are saying that the severe penalties handed the dissidents will push the member countries of the UN Commission on Human Rights to vote in favor of the critical resolution on the table in Geneva, or even to seek one with harsher wording.

Inside the dissident movement, the crackdown is considered proof that "the Cuban government does not care about Geneva, or about the Cotonou Accord," a cooperation pact between the European Union and the former European colonies of Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific.

"That agreement includes a democratic clause that commits all signatory countries to respect fundamental freedoms," pointed out a European diplomat.

But activist Sanchez noted that there are those "who don't listen to anyone." He considers all of the defendants to be "prisoners of conscience", and said if he were to be arrested he would abstain from the right to a defence.

In response to Monday's rulings, RSF chief Menard repeated his appeal to the European Union to halt consideration of a Cuban petition for incorporation into the Cotonou Accord, presented in January.

Another Cuban activist, Oswaldo Paya, the leading advocate of the Varela Project demanding political pluralism and other institutional changes on the island, says it is "monstrous" to apply such harsh penalties against people who merely have been expressing their opinions.

Pay‡ and others in the opposition movement charge that the authorities did not give the defendants and their families the time or the facilities necessary to prepare a proper legal defence.

Nevertheless, Sanchez ruled out the possibility that the prisoners have been subjected to physical torture, based on the past experiences of the dissident movement.

"The prison conditions are severe and there are intense interrogations, psychological pressure, but not mistreatment of that kind," he told IPS.