FREEDOM 4 CUBA - CUBA LIBRE!

2006-06-06T22:25:00.000-05:00

As of June 1, for every dollar you send to a relative in Cuba, they will only receive 77 cents. Castro keeps on getting richer while the poor keep getting more poor.

Read more: http://www.therealcuba.com/

2006-06-06T22:22:00.000-05:00

Notice where the cops are from - The Price Control Office - WTF !!

Streets vendors arrested

CAMAGUEY, Cuba - May 31 (Fernando Tabares / www.cubanet.org) - Police and inspectors of the Price control office carried out a raid around the municipal bus station and arrested 23 street vendors in the area.

The vendors said police arrived suddenly and rounded them up. They were all taken to the first police unit and fined 500 pesos each. They also said they lost their merchandise and were issued writs of warning.

The next day many of the vendors were back at their post. One of them said: "What can we do. It's either this or we starve."

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-06-06T22:20:00.000-05:00

Deaf-mute calls accusations harassment

CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba - June 1 (Luis Esteban Espinosa, Jóvenes sin Censura / www.cubanet.og) - Authorities here have accused Yoandy Quintana twice recently of theft and promise to try him soon.

Quintana, a 22-year-old black deaf-mute, claims the government is singling him out for harassment because he founded and is the president of the Independent Association of the Deaf.

In the latest incident, Quintana is accused of stealing a pressure cooker. He was held for 9 days before being released on bail. Quintana said police roughed him up when they arrested him, ordering him to apologize for stealing the pot.

Before that, said Quintana, he was held for seven days, accused of stealing his own bicycle. The bicycle was eventually returned to him, he said.

During the last six months, he said, authorities have imposed fines totalling more than 3,000 pesos, about a year's salary at the average wage.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-06-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

This one is too funny to pass up!

Dissident dog leads police in chase

CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba - June 1 (Luis Esteban Espinosa, Jóvenes sin Censura / www.cubanet.og) - Police and other government types starred in a Keystone Cops scene in the town of Ceballos last week when they chased through the city's streets behind a dog on whose sides someone had painted anti-government slogans.

The dog, in whose coat could be clearly read "Down with Communism" and "Down with Castro," was a stray that displayed quite a turn of speed, making that much harder the job of the forces of law and order.

The signs on the dog were just two of an avalanche of such anti-government graffiti seen in Ceballos since approximately May 20, say residents. The graffiti is more usually painted on walls in public places.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-06-06T22:14:00.000-05:00

Urologists in short supply in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba - June 1 (Jaime Leygonier / www.cubanet.org) - Six hospitals serving the most densely populated areas of the capital have only 10 urologists among them. These hospitals serve roughly half the population of the city of two million, in addition to patients from Havana province.

At a recent Communist Party meeting, a Public Health official proposed to create a joint urology service for the six hospitals and produced a list of 40 such specialists to integrate the service. A hospital director read through the list, crossing off the dead and those who have left the country, and was left with the 10 now available.

The situation in other hospitals is not any better. In the formerly prestigious Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, the waiting list for surgery stretches up to a year and there are reports of botched operations.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-06-06T07:55:00.000-05:00

Click on the link below to read about the other two countries.

U.S. Says Belize, Cuba, Venezuela Not Fighting Human Trafficking

CUBA
In Cuba, the report said, women and children are trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced child labor, adding that the nature and extent of trafficking in the country is hard to gauge due to the closed nature of the Cuban government and a lack of nongovernmental reporting.

However, the report said, Cuba is a major destination for sex tourism, which largely caters to European, Canadian and Latin American tourists.

Cuba's "thriving sex trade," the report said, involves large numbers of minors. The report said there is "anecdotal evidence" that state-run hotel workers, employees of travel companies, taxicab drivers, bar and restaurant workers and law enforcement personnel are complicit in the commercial sexual exploitation of these children.

Source: U.S. Department of State - http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=June&x=200606051529441xeneerg0.8676874&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html

2006-06-06T07:26:00.000-05:00

Hopefully somebody will get some sense knocked in to them and take this book off the shelves. I am pretty sure if it would have been a book about Germany during the Hitler days and it wasn't accurate, we would have had every German demanding the samething we want - the book taken off the shelves.

Kids' book on Cuba stays on shelves for now

A controversial children's book about Cuba should stay in school libraries, an advisory committee recommended Monday, almost certainly setting up a showdown at the Miami-Dade School Board.

The 16-member review panel debated for more than seven hours over two sessions, highlighting omissions and possible inaccuracies in the book Vamos a Cuba and its English-language counterpart, A Visit To Cuba.

Ultimately, only one of those members -- child psychologist Lydia Usategui -- voted to remove the book, which opponents believe is an unreasonably sunny portrait of life under Fidel Castro.

The majority of the panel -- which included educators, administrators and community members -- agreed the book was lacking in many areas, but found it sufficient to meet the needs of its kindergarten-to-second-grade audience.

''I don't think this book romanticizes modern Cuba at all,'' said John Doyle, a panel member and the district's director of social science curriculum, citing passages about child labor and a picture of a young boy working in an agricultural field.

But Juan Amador, the parent who filed the original appeal, immediately indicated he would bring his case to the full School Board.

One of the board members showed how explosive the debate will be for his colleagues. ''They will have a choice to either define themselves on the side of truth and with the Cuban community or on the side of lies and against the Cuban community,'' said board member Frank Bolaños, who is expected to resign this summer to run for the state Senate.

The committee's decision was solely a recommendation to Superintendent Rudy Crew, who now has five working days to issue a decision. He told The Miami Herald he will almost certainly follow the recommendation and keep the book.

Crew has repeatedly hinted he would reject calls to remove the book and tried to orchestrate a compromise, such as requiring parental consent to check out the book.

Those actions prompted the committee's 17th member, state Rep. David Rivera, to resign from the committee moments before Monday's vote.

''I don't feel the process has been lent credibility,'' said Rivera, one of two community members Crew appointed. ``I think it's been prejudged, predetermined and undermined.''

He later called the process ''a joke,'' saying the vast majority of the panel's members are district employees and ultimately report to Crew. The panel's composition is dictated by a long-standing School Board rule, but it leaves the superintendent some discretion.

''Let's disabuse ourselves that people who work for me don't have their own independent mind,'' Crew said. ``They do.''

Nearly 50 copies of the book can be found in school libraries, almost entirely in elementary schools. If Crew does keep the book, the final appeal is to the School Board, which could vote as soon as June 14.

The book's picture of Cuba, largely echoed in books about other countries from the same series, has come under fire for both incorrect statements and misleading context.

Indeed, Crew suggested pasting a warning inside the book's cover, saying some of the information was ``incorrect or incomplete enough to be inaccurate.''

But Garcia said district rules do not automatically eject incorrect books. ''The First Amendment protects false speech,'' he said.

Other passages were attacked for being misleading, despite being literally accurate. Morro Castle, for example, is described as a 400-year-old fort built to protect the island from pirates.
But it makes no mention of the political prisoners who Rivera said have been jailed and executed there over the last four decades.

''I don't think anyone would say this was adequate in depicting the life of Cuba,'' Rivera said.
Other committee members made little attempt to directly rebut those arguments, saying books for such young children are necessarily broad, positive and incomplete.

''Brutal truths do exist in Cuba as well as other countries,'' said Emily Balcells, a math teacher at Howard Doolin Middle. ``But how much of that do we really want to expose our children to?''

Source: Miami Herald

2006-06-04T08:36:00.000-05:00

Eye surgery hopes dashed Patients suffer complications after Cuba

LESS THAN a year after the 'Miracle Operation' programme, which allows Jamaicans with serious eye problems to visit Cuba free of charge to receive treatment from that nation's top ophthalmologists, several patients are now suffering from serious complications.

According to Dr. Albert Lue, head of the ophthalmology department at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), several patients who have received eye surgery in Cuba are experiencing poor visual activity.

"The main complication that is causing this problem is the cornea," Dr. Lue said. "The front of the eye gets very cloudy and this is usually because of poor surgical techniques."
He said that in a survey of 60 patients who recently returned to Jamaica, three persons are now visually impaired, while 14 are suffering serious corneal damage.

George Foster, a 70-year-old participant in the 'Miracle Operation', told The Gleaner that, prior to the surgery to remove his cataract, he was only able to see from his left eye.

"Since I come back, I can see from the right eye but I can't see from the left," the retired mason said.

RISKS INVOLVED

He said that, since his return in February, he has visited the KPH more than six times and there has still been no improvement in his once 'good left eye'. He claimed he was not aware of the risks that were involved in the surgery at the time.

"I was (so) glad to get it dealt with that, even if they had told me of the risks, I would have still gone," he, however, added.

When contacted, Eva Lewis Fuller, director of cooperation at the Ministry of Health, acknowledged that she had been informed of the concerns by local ophthalmologists and that the Health Ministry was investigating the matter.

"We expect that there will be a certain level of complications as there are in surgical interventions," Mrs. Lewis Fuller said. "What we are trying to find out is whether this proportion that Dr. Lue is concerned about, is above the expected level."

POSITIVE FEEDBACK

In response to Mr. Foster's claim, she argued that all patients who entered the programme signed a consent form outlining the risks involved with surgery.

She noted that the Health Ministry has received positive feedback on surgeries administered.

Mrs. Lewis Fuller said the number of patients reported with complications amount to less than three per cent of the 1,854 patients who were treated in Cuba. She remarked that the Heath Ministry, along with its Cuban counterparts, will be examining a larger sample of patients to obtain a more accurate assessment of the situation.

Meanwhile, The Gleaner/ Power 106 News Centre was informed that the Scientific Research Council (SRC) has been conducting tests on the medications used by the patients as laboratory technicians are concerned about the components of them.

However, Dr. Audia Barnett, executive director of the SRC, said she was not able to comment on the matter at this time.

Source: Jamaica Gleaner

2006-06-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

U.S., Cuba accuse each other of harboring terrorists

(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) HAVANA _ The United States has designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, placing it alongside such nations as Iran, Syria and North Korea.

One reason for this distinction is 56-year-old Charlie Hill, an Illinois native who loves NBA basketball, homemade cornbread, AM talk radio and The New Yorker magazine. But 35 years ago, as a member of a black separatist group, Hill allegedly killed a New Mexico state trooper, hijacked an airliner and fled to Cuba, where President Fidel Castro has given refuge to Hill and other fugitives from American justice.

U.S. authorities have been trying to get their hands on Hill since."I'm a revolutionary in exile," said Hill, who grew up in the farming community of Olney. "I'm always going to be an American.

But I'd rather be here in Cuba, free. I don't intend to be in nobody's jail."There are many issues dividing Cuba and the United States, but few have been as explosive in recent years as the charge that each nation is harboring the other's terrorists.Castro demands that U.S. authorities extradite Luis Posada Carriles, a militant Cuban exile accused of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 aboard. Posada Carriles remains in U.S. custody after an immigration judge ruled that he cannot be deported to Cuba or Venezuela, where the downed plane originated, because he could be tortured there.

Cuba also has asked the United States to return three Cuban-Americans allegedly implicated in the airline bombing and a separate plot to kill Castro, according to the U.S. State Department's 2005 Country Reports on Terrorism.

U.S. authorities in turn demand that Castro deport Hill and dozens of other fugitives who are suspected to be living as ordinary civilians in Cuba. But the claim is moot."There are fugitives in Cuba, but I can't say definitively how many," said James Schield, the U.S. Marshals Service's chief of international investigations. "Even if we knew, the lack of an extradition treaty means we can't get them out of there."Schield said he believes most of the fugitives are Cuban citizens who committed crimes in the United States and fled to avoid prosecution.

But Hill is one of a handful of American holdovers from the 1960s and 1970s, an era when hijacking planes to Cuba was a common escape route for radicals seeking refuge in a sympathetic country.Others arrived here clandestinely by boat, including Black Panther leader Huey Newton, who spent only a short time in Cuba in 1977 before returning to the U.S., where he was subsequently shot and killed by a drug dealer.

Some of the fugitives who returned to the U.S. ended up in prison.Richard Dixon, a self-described revolutionary, spent four years in Cuba after hijacking a plane there. He sneaked back into the United States and later killed a Michigan police officer. He is serving a life sentence."

Even though the Cubans were good to us, it was not our home," said Dixon, 65, in a telephone interview from the Kinross Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, Mich. "You just get homesick."But Hill said he decided to remain because he's certain that returning home would mean a life sentence. New Mexico officials agree."Even if we couldn't get the death penalty we'd love to try (Hill) and make him pay for the crime that he committed," said John Denko, secretary of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety.

"He's a murderer Born into a working-class family, Hill said he always had enough food and clothing growing up in Olney. But there were few blacks in the community, and he said he faced constant racism in the forms of slurs and other mistreatment. "I was always getting into fights and hassles," he recalled.Hill left Olney when he was 12. Over the next decade he fought in Vietnam, discovered radical politics and joined the Republic of New Afrika, a fringe group that had taken up arms to establish a separate nation for African-Americans."At the time, that seemed so feasible to me," he explained. "What can you say?"

On the night of Nov. 8, 1971, he was driving a Ford packed with explosives and guns across the country. New Mexico state trooper Robert Rosenbloom stopped the car just west of Albuquerque and began a search. Seconds later, Rosenbloom was shot in the throat. Hill won't say whether he or one of his accomplices, Ralph Goodwin and Michael Finney, pulled the trigger.

But he insists Rosenbloom was killed in self-defense."I'm not glad that someone was killed, but it's just basically this: If it hadn't been him, it would have been us," Hill said.Several weeks later the three men hijacked a TWA jet to Cuba. Goodwin drowned in the 1970s at a beach outside Havana. Finney, who worked as a radio broadcaster in Cuba, succumbed to throat cancer last year.Hill lives on a quiet Havana street in a dingy, one-bedroom flat with a disconnected telephone. "It was cut off several years ago because I ain't got the money, man," he said.

Cuban authorities describe militants like Hill as political activists deserving of asylum because they faced persecution in the United States. Last year, Castro spoke out in support of Joanne Chesimard, a black nationalist who fled to Cuba after escaping from a U.S. prison in 1979 while serving a life sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper.Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, denies the charges. U.S. authorities are offering a $1 million reward for her capture.

"They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie," Castro said. Despite Castro's protection, Chesimard keeps a low profile in Cuba, fearing bounty hunters may try to snatch her. But Hill says he is not afraid because he doesn't have a price on his head."I don't lose no sleep over it," said Hill.

"It was in the `80s that I realized I was never going to leave Cuba unless the Cuban government changed in a radical way."Hill arrived in Cuba as an atheist and is now a babalawo, or priest, in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. On many afternoons, you can find him hanging out at a neighbor's house, sipping bootleg rum and chatting in Spanish.

Hill was imprisoned twice for financial fraud and marijuana possession and battled alcoholism. Friends in the United States send him several hundred dollars every few months; Hill does not have a steady job other than acting as a guide and translator for tourists.

He has a 21-year-old daughter and a grandchild in Cuba but he can't shake his longing for the United States. A second daughter, who lives in Detroit, refuses to have anything to do with him. His parents died while he was a fugitive, and his son, whom he never met, was shot to death three years ago in Alaska.

On a nightstand next to his bed sits a 15-year-old Panasonic boom box that Hill uses to follow news and sports on AM stations broadcasting from across the Florida Straits."You know, I hear about Tim Duncan and LeBron James on the radio, but I don't know what they look like," said Hill, referring to two NBA stars. "They don't put the NBA on Cuban TV."

Source: www.tmcnet.com

2006-06-03T12:41:00.000-05:00

This is so ridiculous! The U.S. has caught Cuban spies here so many times. They have been tried in court in Miami. Why are these 5 any different? They posed a national security threat to this country.

Heroes at home, villains in U.S.
Cubans jailed in the U.S. as spies are hailed in Havana as men of courage

HAVANA - European tourists here send home postcards with stamps bearing the images of five faces, known simply as los muchachos (the young men) or los cinco (the five). The faces, usually surrounded by billowing Cuban flags, stare out, larger than life, from factory walls, apartment buildings, billboards.

The five are heroes in Cuba, but villains to exiles in the United States, where they are serving long prison terms for espionage-related convictions in 2001.

Their case, once cheekily cast in the Miami news media as a "spy-vs.-spy," Cold War-era throwback, illuminates the resilience of the complicated, decades-long standoff entangling Cuba, the U.S. government and Cuban exile groups based in Florida. It is now also raising nettlesome questions about the nuances of terrorism and international espionage.

American officials tend to paint Cuban agents as infiltrators bent on undermining U.S. national security. But the Cuban government asserts they are men of courage, sent to the United States to ferret out terrorism plots by Cuban exile groups waging war against President Fidel Castro.

Since the Cuban Five were convicted, the reach of Havana's information-gathering machine -- described by a former CIA Cuba analyst, Brian Latell, as "among the four or five best anywhere in the world" -- has become even more apparent.

In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst on Cuban affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, was convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Cubans; the year before, a high-ranking U.S. immigration official in Miami was convicted of disclosing classified information to Cuba. In January, a longtime professor at Florida International University and his wife, a mental health counselor at the college, pleaded not guilty to charges that they acted as spies for Castro.

But none of those cases has generated as much debate as that of the Cuban Five. There has been a groundswell of support for the five acknowledged agents among some American liberal groups and celebrities, including Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple," actor Danny Glover and author Noam Chomsky. A San Francisco group maintains a Web site called "National Committee to Free the Cuban Five." The Detroit City Council even passed a resolution in March calling for their release, saying the agents were attempting to prevent terrorism against Cuba.

The calls for their release gained momentum last August when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial, because of a "perfect storm" of bias in the Cuban exile bastion of Miami. The decision is now being reviewed by the full court.

In a recent interview, Ricardo Alarcon -- president of Cuba's National Assembly and the third-most-powerful political figure on the island after Castro and his brother, Raul -- described the work of secret agents as the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself. He called Cuba an object of terrorism, a nation under threat of violence.

Alarcon said hundreds of Cuban citizens have been killed in terrorist attacks since Castro came to power in 1959 and recalled banners saying "Iraq now, Cuba later" at demonstrations in Miami before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Asked whether Cuba would continue to send agents to the United States, Alarcon shifted from Spanish to English and said emphatically: "Yes, with a capital Y."

The wasp networkJosé Basulto, founder of an anti-Castro group in Miami, remembers a young man named Ruben Campa hanging around the airport where Basulto kept his planes in the mid-1990s. The planes were being used to save Cuban refugees stranded in the ocean between Florida and Cuba, and to drop anti-Castro leaflets in Havana, a tactic that infuriated the Cuban government.

Campa was quick to make friends and "eager to jump on the bandwagon," Basulto recalled, and soon he was flying missions for the group, Brothers to the Rescue.

After the spies were arrested in September 1998, Basulto said he learned that Ruben Campa was an alias borrowed from a dead Texas boy and that his recruit's real name was Rene Gonzalez. Gonzalez and nine others were arrested and accused of running "La Red Avispa" -- the Wasp Network -- which prosecutors said was spying on U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups.

Indictments were eventually handed up against four others, bringing the total to 14 and making the prosecution one of the largest multiple-defendant spying cases in U.S. history. Also, three months after the initial arrests, three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations were expelled for alleged involvement with the Miami spy network.

Five of those accused pleaded guilty. Four others have remained fugitives, but Gonzalez and the others in the Cuban Five -- Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez (no relation to Rene Gonzalez) -- have fought the charges.

The years before the arrests had been particularly tense.

In 1997, there was a series of terrorist bombings in Havana hotels. One Italian tourist was killed. The Cuban government suspected Miami exile groups of being involved in the attacks in an attempt to undermine Cuba's burgeoning tourist industry. At the time, the Cuban government saw Basulto, a CIA-trained operative, as a threat. In 1961, he had fired a cannon from a boat off Havana and hit a hotel.

Alarcon said that in the summer of 1998, Cuban intelligence officials delivered a packet of documents outlining their concerns to FBI agents at a meeting in Havana. Not long afterward, the Wasp Network arrests were announced in Miami. Alarcon was apoplectic.

"They shot the messenger," Alarcon recalled thinking at the time, arguing that the U.S. had double-crossed Cuba.

Guy Lewis, a former U.S. attorney who oversaw the Cuban Five prosecution, said in an interview that one of the agents worked as a mechanic at Naval Air Station Key West and another counted planes from his apartment near MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where overseas military operations were coordinated.

"It's clear," Lewis said, "that Cuba's intelligence service maintains a contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents."Trial in Miami

While the Cuban Five awaited trial, Miami's exiles were in an uproar about Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old boy found off Florida's coast after the boat that carried him from Cuba capsized, killing his mother and 10 other refugees.

Seven months after Gonzalez was returned to his father in Cuba, jury selection began in Miami for the Cuban Five trial over the objections of defense attorneys who argued that a fair trial would be impossible so soon after the Gonzalez case had inflamed a city full of anti-Castro exiles.

Jurors listened to testimony for six months about encrypted messages sent to Cuba and code names. The defense argued that the accused should be freed because they collected no classified data and did not get into off-limits areas of military bases. Prosecutors countered that it was their failure to register as foreign agents and their intent to collect sensitive information that warranted convictions.

The jury -- which included no Cuban Americans -- convicted all five. Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison on a murder conspiracy charge for tipping off Rene Gonzalez and another Cuban spy not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue on the day the Cuban military shot down two of the group's planes in 1996, killing four of its members.

The state-run daily in Havana, Granma, responded with a front-page editorial headlined: "A Heroic Behavior in the Entrails of the Monster."'Hypocrites'

One recent afternoon, in a neighborhood behind the chipped and faded Jose Marti sports complex in central Havana, Antonio Lagé stepped over children playing beneath an apartment bulletin board that, like so many in Havana, carries a photo of the Cuban Five. "Hypocrites, that's what Bush and the Americans are -- hypocrites," he said. "They talk about fighting terrorism, but they keep these heroes in prison for trying to stop the terrorists in Miami."

Leonard Weinglass, a renowned U.S. defense lawyer, has taken up Hernandez's appeal after a career that includes representing members of the Chicago Seven antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968, and former Black Panther and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Weinglass persuaded the appeals court panel that the accused spies could not get a fair trial in Miami. Now his strategy is to concede that there was a technical violation of the law but argue that the actions of his client were necessary to protect lives.

"If they are under attack, does a country have the right to send agents to another country to get information?" Weinglass said, while sipping a mojito on the patio of the storied Hotel Nacional de Cuba. "That is a major intelligence question."

Weinglass and the wives and mothers of several imprisoned agents picked up more allies during a speech to a California legal group in Havana, among them 16-year Democratic congressman Esteban E. Torres.

"It's a real miscarriage of justice," Torres said. "It tells us something about our government and the judiciary and the intelligence service: Anything that they can do to get Fidel, they'll do."
Though Castro has never been connected to the case, U.S. intelligence experts say they believe the Cuban leader personally oversees high-priority spying missions.

"And he's good," said Latell, author of the book "After Fidel." "He's really, really good."
Alarcon said more agents would be sent to the United States, even though Cuba experts contend the threat from exiles -- whether perceived or real -- is diminishing.

Alarcon points out that John D. Negroponte, President Bush's director of national intelligence, recently said the United States had more than 100,000 intelligence personnel.

Cuba does not have that many intelligence personnel, Alarcon said, but it has more agents than the five celebrated officers now in prison. The real number, he said, "is somewhere in between."

Source: MSNBC

2006-06-03T12:36:00.000-05:00

Forbidden dreams

Rafael Ferro Salas

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - May (www.cubanet.org) - Dionisio Herrera Rodríguez is 55 years old. He's worked as a bus driver for a quarter of a century. Dionisio had a dream which they shattered.

He knew that new buses had come to this province. He works as a bus driver for public transportation and in his entire career, he's had no traffic accidents. Enough merits to deserve one of the new coaches that arrived. At least he thought that and began preparing his dream.
The buses were delivered to the drivers but they didn't include Dionisio in the distribution, and then the nightly dream became a constant nightmare.

"It was an injustice," he told me. "I deserved one of those coaches, the very workers were sure of it. I've always had a perfect attitude in my occupation. I had a right to dream that I would drive one of the new buses, but they shattered my dream overnight."

He pauses and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a handerkerchief he takes out of his pocket. The afternoon progresses and the sun shines into the living room of the house. Outside cars pass by indifferently, the people, too. The old driver continues speaking:

"When the distribution of the equipment was over I went to the administration of my urban transportation company. They nearly refused to see me. I think they were embarassed to explain the reasons to me. Then the subdirector told me to go into the office and there he explained the reasons they understood to be correct for not giving me a new bus."

Another pause and he puts away the handkerchief, although he keeps sweating. Now he lights a cigarette and smokes nervously. He blows out the smoke looking at the ceiling of the house and says to me:

"You're probably going to laugh at what I'm going to say, reporter, but the first reason those in the administration gave me to justify not giving me the coach was that I'm not a member of the Communist Party. What do you think of that?" (That's the reality of Cuba. If you don't belong to their group, why should you get anything. That's being going on for many years.)

I smile and nod my head in assent, as if I already knew that. In Cuba it's normal for you to be denied a job or any kind of opportunity to improve your life if you're not a member of the Communist Party or other government organizations. Now I'm beginning to understand the cause of the nightmare Dionisio is living. He throws the cigarette butt out the window and after exhaling the smoke from his lungs, he keeps talking.

"The second reason they gave me was that I am the father of an opponent of the Cuban government. My son is named Ornel Herrera Padrón..."

Eliosbel Garriga Cabrera, a correspondent of Abdala Press who is with me, interrrupts him to tell me that Ornel belongs to the Movement for Racial Integration over which he presides in the province.

"It's like I say, reporter; overnight they end a man's only dream in his life. What they did to me hurt my son a great deal, but I told him it wasn't his fault. I'm not going to allow my boy to change his way of thinking for any reason on this earth. I'm prepared to keep swallowing bitter mouthfuls and putting up with injustices, but my son will continue to think as he believes."

Eliosbel and I said our goodbyes and went out into the street. The afternoon kept progressing. As we crossed the street corner we saw one of the recently arrived buses pass by. We looked at each other without talking. We looked back to the other side of the street where Dionisio's house was and saw him in the doorway.

The bus passed in front of his house and he didn't want to look at it. He entered the house lowering his head, as if looking for something that they had suddenly taken away from him. Then I was able to realize all the sadness that a man with shattered dreams bears.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-06-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

Isn't the Cuban government so nice? BULLSHIT!! They are offering free eye surgery to all of Latin America, but not their own people. If they keep up half of Latin America will be blind. Look out for the next post on the people complaining about the surgery.

More than 2000 Jamaicans Benefited from Cuba´s Free Surgery Program

Havana, June 2 (ACN) More than 2,000 Jamaicans have been benefited from the Cuban eye surgery program known as Miracle operation since the initiative began nine months ago.

Jamaica Health Minister Horace Dalley said the free-of-charge Cuban program offered Jamaicans surgery and post operative services and that the initiative will keep on benefiting more patients, Jamaica radio reported on Friday.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s ambassador to Jamaica Gisela García noted that the Cuban program has done eye surgery on more than 230,000 patients in the region and that Cuba will be pursuing plans to set up a state of the art eye-care facility in Jamaica.

The Miracle Operation was born as an initiative to offer free eye treatment and surgery to Latin American and Caribbean poor people who have been suffering from curable eye diseases, but who can not afford such treatment in their own countries.

Source: Cuban News Agency

2006-06-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

This is crap! This communist is going to be the guest speaker at a journalist convention? You have to be kidding me. Tody is not April Fools Day, right? The word "guest speaker" bothers me more. That means he was asked to speak at this convention. How can you ask a government official from a commnunist country who oppress their journalist from their freedom of speech and prohibit the use of the internet. This is bullshit! What a hypocrite!

Cuba's National Assembly president to speak via satellite in Florida

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, will be the guest speaker at the kickoff for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' convention this month in Fort Lauderdale, organizers said Thursday.

Alarcon, a controversial figure for South Florida's predominantly anti-Castro Cuban-American community, will appear via satellite from Havana during the convention's opening plenary session on June 14. Cuban-born Mirta Ojito, a New York Times contributor and Columbia University journalism professor, will interview him and audience members will submit questions in writing.

"In South Florida, anything that has to do with Cuba is going to be controversial, and we know that," said NAHJ Executive Director Ivan Roman. "As journalists, we don't shy away from controversy or controversial figures."

More than 2,000 journalists from the United States and abroad are expected to attend the 24th annual convention, which will be June 14-17 at the Broward County Convention Center. Former Vice President Al Gore, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., have been guest speakers at past conventions. President Bush also attended when he was governor of Texas.

A panel about immigration reform will feature Emilio Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and CNN television personality Lou Dobbs.

The conversation format of the Alarcon session has been used in past conventions, Roman said.
In Havana, Alarcon advisor Miguel Alvarez said Thursday that officials have not determined what Alarcon would discuss at the conference. He downplayed the significance of a discussion with journalists in the United States. "We don't have any agenda," Alvarez said.

Alarcon, one of the most powerful men in Cuba's communist government, has occasionally given interviews to the U.S. media. In 2003, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, he said that Cuban-Americans in Miami, along with Gov. Jeb Bush, were pushing for a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

The decision to invite Alarcon was expected to draw criticism from some in South Florida's Cuban-American community, but Cuban American National Foundation Executive Director Alfredo Mesa said he welcomed Alarcon's participation.

Mesa said he wished Alarcon would attend in person to experience firsthand what it was like to have his views challenged. Mesa said journalists should ask Alarcon questions about the Cuban government's restrictions on free speech and a free press, and its jailing of journalists.

"I think it's a great opportunity to ask Ricardo Alarcon why he participates in a forum where everyone else has to play by the rules of free speech and freedom of the press and once the forum is over his government is unwilling to offer the people of Cuba that same opportunity," he said.

Cuban activist Ninoska Perez Castellon said she hopes journalists challenge Alarcon when he gives untruthful answers.

"I hope the journalists there have the integrity to ask him the questions that need to be asked," she said. "Every time we see Alarcon interviewed . . . he gives a ridiculous answer and they just sit there and take it."

Roman said NAHJ is not taking a position on any Cuban issues by inviting Alarcon. He said the interview format means the journalists will be directing the session to a large degree. "It's like watching an interview on CNN on television," he said.

NAHJ was founded in 1984 to encourage Hispanic journalists to pursue opportunities in the news media and to foster fair coverage of Hispanic communities. It is one of four minority journalism associations in the United States.

Source: Ledger-Enquirer

2006-06-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

Man's choice: abandon wife or house

HAVANA, Cuba - May 29 (Roberto Santana Rodríguez / www.cubanet.org) - Juan Carlos Linares has run afoul of Cuba's bureaucracy, and as a result has been fined for cohabiting with his wife. Linares, who owns a house in Old Havana, said he cannot have his wife move in with him because housing authorities do not allow new residents to move into the historic district.

The wife, then, lives in a house in the Diez de Octubre municipality which, incidentally, she has been trying to buy for the last three years. That is to say, she has been processing paperwork for the purchase of the house for the last three years. The problem, Linares said, is that if he registers as a resident in Diez de Octubre, he would lose the property in Old Havana.

So he lives with his wife in her house, but since he is not registered as a resident in the district, was fined last October 450 pesos, which by now have doubled to 900 since he hasn't paid. And he won't pay, he said, even though he could be sent to jail for up to a year if he doesn't.

Linares said authorities have suggested to him that he either separate, at least temporarily, from his wife, that he visit her at night, or that he try not to be seen by any neighbors who could denounce his presence in the district.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-05-31T13:09:00.000-05:00

Law bans travel to `terrorist states'

A new state law will crack down on educational trips to Cuba and the use of state money to travel to any of the other four states designated as `terrorist.'

TALLAHASSEE - Colleges and universities in Florida now are banned from using state money to travel to such countries as Cuba under a law Gov. Jeb Bush signed Tuesday.

The Travel to Terrorist States Act also prohibits a state-paid school from spending any money -- public or private -- on any aspect of organizing a trip to any of the five nations listed by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terror.

Miami Republican Rep. David Rivera, who has sponsored a number of Cuba-crackdown bills, said the law was designed to stop his constituents' tax money from underwriting Fidel Castro's regime.

Castro ''took a lot of people's land and freedom, and a lot of Cuban Americans feel there's an abuse of the travel laws,'' Rivera said. ``We don't think any legitimate education work can be done in a totalitarian state.''

Though the bill sailed unanimously out of the Legislature, some academics opposed it, saying it ultimately will lead to closed minds, as well as closed borders. Florida International University Professor Lisandro Perez said the law reflects ''all-around demagoguery'' and would be challenged in court.

''The public opinion battle is over,'' he said. 'The `I'll see you in court' round has just begun.''
Rivera said the idea for the law was inspired by the arrests earlier this year of FIU Professor Carlos Alvarez and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, an FIU counselor, on charges of being Cuban government agents. Carlos Alvarez had traveled to Cuba several times.

FIU Professor Uva de Aragon said the United States should be encouraging research on Cuba, not preventing it. For example, she said, if the United States had more information on Iraq beforehand, it could have avoided many mistakes.

''I don't think it's a wise policy,'' she said. ``It's important for the United States to have people who study Cuba in order for them to be informed of what happens in the country.''

De Aragon, associate director of FIU's Cuban Research Institute, said she does not see a way around the law, since its scope is wide.

The travel ban takes advantage of President Bush's 2004 decision to tighten travel restrictions to Cuba. Bush required that the U.S. Treasury Department grant a travel license to an institution of higher learning only if it held courses in Cuba that lasted at least 10 weeks.

Previously, trips were shorter and therefore less expensive.

Now, with the state law, a state college or university professor would have to use private money donated to him to underwrite the trips -- a virtual impossibility. State money, including salaries, cannot be used ''to implement, organize, direct, coordinate or administer, or to support the implementation, organization, direction, coordination or administration of'' such a trip.

Such private institutions as the University of Miami could still organize Cuba trips if they don't directly use state money for the travel or the planning. But Rivera said he may consider legislation next year that would prohibit them from receiving any state money at all if any of their departments sponsor trips to the five states considered to be terrorist.

Source: Miami Herald

2006-05-31T13:01:00.000-05:00

Reporter jailed in Cuba after covering government evictions

New York, May 30, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the detention of independent Cuban journalist Armando Betancourt who was arrested a week ago while covering the evictions of dozens of families from their homes in the central city of Camagüey, sources told CPJ.

On May 23, authorities forcefully evicted families allegedly occupying homes illegally, according to local sources. Betancourt, a reporter for the news agency Nueva Prensa Cubana in Camagüey, was arrested along with several people who were protesting the evictions, a relative told CPJ. The journalist did not participate in the protests, according to several sources.

At the time of the arrest, Betancourt identified himself as a journalist, sources told CPJ. The journalist handed over his notes before he was pushed into a truck and taken into custody, they saidThe journalist is being held at a local police station on the outskirts of Camagüey, CPJ sources said.

Authorities confirmed the detention to a family member on May 24, but relatives have not been allowed to visit him, a relative said.

Police told Betancourt’s family that the journalist would be charged with aggravated public disturbance and could be sentenced to prison. “We are outraged by the arrest of our colleague who was arbitrarily detained solely for doing his job,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “We call on Cuban authorities to immediately release Betancourt and the other 24 journalists who are currently imprisoned.”

Source: http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/americas/cuba30may06na.html

2006-05-30T17:18:00.000-05:00

Give me a break! Fix the hospitals in Cuba before you donate 20 to another country. I had a family member die in Cuba because the hospital did not have the proper supplies for her surgery. You have to take your own pillows and sheets when you stay at a hospital in Cuba. This is pathetic!

Cuba-Donated Hospitals in Bolivia

La Paz, May 30 (Prensa Latina)
President Evo Morales is due to open Tuesday in Escoma, on the border with Peru, the first of 20 top-technology hospitals donated by Cuba to Bolivia, the governmental headquarters reported.

Armando Garrido, coordinator of the Cuban medical brigade in Bolivia, stated that the Aymara Hospital is provided with a medicinal gas system, labs with gasometry and fixed and portable ray-x equipment.

The center, like the other 19, will have one intensive therapy room with four beds, as well as services of obstetrics, neonatology, digestive endoscopy and a fully-equipped operation room.

Qualified Cuban staff and paramedics will work in the hospital and the donation also includes maintenance of medical equipment, medicine and materials, said Garrido.

Cuba's ambassador to Bolivia Rafael Daussa stated the 20 hospitals will be working before the end of June.

Source: Bolivian Website

2006-05-30T13:34:00.000-05:00

Cuba has vowed to be a force to be reckoned with in the digital era.

Thousands of Cubans are being trained in a new school for computer technology on the outskirts of Havana. Free computer clubs have been set up across the country. Even the smallest rural schools are being provided with their own terminals.

But at the same time the government is working hard to prevent its citizens from surfing the net without restraint. Shops in Havana might appear to sell high-quality computers, but actually making a purchase is impossible for Cubans without special approval, which is rarely granted.

Similar restrictions are in place for anyone who might want to open up an account with the state internet service provider. Exceptions include senior government officials, academic researchers, and foreigners.

The authorities say these regulations are in place in order to ensure the internet in Cuba is used for "social and collective use."

'Prioritising'
Although all Cuban media is rigorously state controlled, the government rejects accusations that it is censoring the net.

It concedes that some sites are blocked, but say these are "terrorist, xenophobic, or pornographic". Websites based in the US which publish articles by dissidents from within Cuba are generally inaccessible.

The government says that what it is doing is "prioritising" the internet, for use by sectors such as education and health. Essential, it says, given Cuba's limited resources, and limited bandwidth.

The bandwidth problem is blamed on the United States. As a result of the US trade embargo, Cuba cannot link up to the web via a direct fibre optic line. Instead it has to use more expensive satellite links.

Thousands of Cubans get around their governments restrictions and access the internet via the black market. User IDs and passwords are sold by state employees whose jobs give them legal access. Some log on via home made computers built from smuggled parts.

A legal alternative is to go to one of the cyber cafes that are being set up across the country. But these have another barrier - cost. Half an hour surfing the web costs around $3. That might be comparable to the price in other parts of the world, but in Cuba, where the average salary is $15 a month, it is substantial.

Source: BBC News

2006-05-26T07:54:00.000-05:00

Six arrested on charges of illegal exit from the country

CAMAGUEY, Cuba - May 24 - (Fernando Tabares / www.cubanet.org)
Police, border guards, and State Security officers in Las Tunas and Granma provinces frustrated an attempt to leave the country without authorization and arrested five men and a woman. The would be migrants, all members of the Tamayo family, attempted to sail on a homemade vessel made from eight 55-gallon drums held together by angle irons.

They said they had been intercepted on the road on their way to launch their craft. Two of the men were fined 3,000 pesos each, and authorities confiscated two trucks.

All those arrested had attempted to leave before, one of them on four occasions.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-05-26T07:51:00.000-05:00

Mexico returned 57 who sought asylum

HAVANA, Cuba - May 24 - (Amarilis Cortina Rey, Cuba-Verdad / www.cubanet.org)
Mexican immigration authorities returned 57 Cubans last week who had arrived by sea in recent months. The immigrants, coming from all parts of Cuba, had arrived in Mexico in small groups and had been confined in the recently created prison for undocumented migrants in Chiapas state.

Amaury Hernández, 33, one of the returned rafters, said that after arriving in Mexico he had learned of a new law that provides for 90 days detention for illegal immigrants and for their release thereafter. "We were always told we would be freed," said Hernández, "but two days before it was time, other Cubans who said they were there for political problems started fighting, the fight got out of control, and the authorities decided to return all of us."

Hernández's wife, who had remained behind in Cuba, said no sooner had she learned her husband had arrived in Mexico, she received a visit from a State Security officer who called himself Pedro and who told her in a threatening tone of voice: "Tell Amaury that we will see each other again soon." Hernández said he and his companions had sailed from the south coast of Cuba February 21.

Source: www.cubanet.org

2006-05-25T13:24:00.000-05:00

This AP article is so far to the left. They mention that there are "allegations" of torture in the hospital he was a director of. Tell that to the hundreds who were tortured!

Eduardo Bernabe Ordaz

Ordaz was a close friend and collaborator of Fidel Castro and was named by him director for life of Cuba's psychiatric hospital known as Mazorra. Many Cuban dissidents were sent to Mazorra to be tortured and several of them received electroshocks while lying on bare floors that were wet from their own urine.

Dr. Armando M. Lago and Charles J. Brown wrote a book in 1991 titled "The politics of psychiatry in revolutionary Cuba" describing many of the abuses that occurred at Mazorra while Ordaz was director. "In the former Soviet Union, with a population of three hundred million, there were 300 well documented cases of psychiatric abuse against political dissidents (1 per million). However, Cuba's eleven million inhabitants, with 371 cases is a shocking contrast (1 per 30,000)," said Dr. Lagos, one of the authors
of the book.

One of those torturers who used to work at Mazorra, Eriberto Mederos, later came to Miami in 1984 and became a US citizen in 1993. Mederos was identified by one of his victims while working as a nurse at a local hospital and was arrested, brought to trial and convicted of crimes against humanity.

Among those who testified against Mederos was Belkis Ferro, who was only 15 years old when he tortured her with electroshock treatments and insulin shots. Belkis was deemed a “rebellious teenager” and was punished for denouncing Castro’s oppressive regime at school.

Source: therealcuba.com

2006-05-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

Castro converts dollars

May 25, 2006. 01:00 AM

This article by Oakland Ross is an excellent introduction to the economics of Cuba. However, he seems to have overlooked Fidel Castro's most innovative and startling attempt to overcome his cash problem, the "convertible peso."

Basically, the convertible peso is a tax on the millions of dollars of remittances by Cubans in exile, to their families back home. Not content with stealing the money through vastly inflated prices in the consumer stores that were run by the government and only accepted dollars, Castro now immediately confiscates the remittances as they come into Cuba and then issues "Monopoly money" — convertible pesos, levying a 10 per cent tax on the dollars as they pass through his hands.

In effect, it is a forced loan by ordinary Cubans to their government — at negative interest. There was even a conversion period where Cuba soaked up all the dollars already in circulation in Cuba.

Outsiders might wonder at this sudden need by the Cuban rulers for all the useful cash in the country, whether they have an eye on the increasing political instability and are looking to pad foreign bank accounts in advance for their own sudden exile.

There's little question that within days after Castro's exit from the scene, the convertible peso won't be convertible any longer. Where all those U.S. dollars will have gone at that moment in time, no one knows.

It's unbelieveable how none of this ever makes it to the mainstream!

Source: www. thestar.com

2006-05-25T07:27:00.000-05:00

Would-be rafters could go to prison

HAVANA, Cuba - May 19 (Amarilis C. Rey, Cuba-Verdad / www.cubanet.org) - Several would-be rafters who were aprehended trying to leave Cuba could be condemned to from three to five years in prison, said a penal instructor at the Melena prison south of Havana.

Francisco Rolando Rivero, presently being held at Melena, said penal instructor Nildo López informed him he would be tried for attempting to leave the country ilegally.

Rivero was aprehended in April with several companions as they were trying to leave the island by their own means. He had been fined after a previous attempt failed.

Sources: www.cubanet.org

2006-05-25T07:24:00.000-05:00

When a friend has gone

Rafael Ferro Salas, Abdala Press PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - May (www.cubanet.org) - I answered the telephone call with joy. René Cruz was calling from California. He's been more than a father for me in the distance, and that was the reason for my rejoicing as I heard his voice at the other end of the line.

But when he gave me the bad news, my happiness disappeared. René told me that black Peñalver had died. In moments like that, you realize how briefly life passes. Black Peñalver led a life completely devoted to the cause of freedom for Cuba. He suffered prison sentences under the Castro regime and then went into forced exile. From there he continued to fly the flag for his country. Cuba pained him in his chest of an old fighter.

René gave me the news and I couldn't help but be saddened in the solitude of the interior exile we Cubans are also suffering on this side of the ocean. Peñalver has finally left us, but he stays with us as an example to follow.

I would have liked to accompany the brothers in Miami who gave him his final goodbye. To be able to cry on René's shoulder, and take out all my lamentation by talking with Tobías or Ignacio Castro; but the pain in the distance multiplies when friends are missing. Death treats those who dream brutally and bites with more pain.

I finished talking with my father René, and wasn't even left with time to write all I would have liked. Between the pain and the helplessness, the words almost don't come out. Peñalver is like a voice that keeps its renewal constant on the crest of a wave, like the tides of this our Caribbean. He can't truly die, we're not yet ready to let him.

Source: Cubanet.org

2006-05-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

Mob excoriates independent journalist

HAVANA, Cuba - May 22 (Ernesto Roque Cintero, UPECI / www.cubanet.org) - A mob congregated in front of independent journalist José Antonio Fornaris' home May 18 and staged an "act of repudiation" against him.

The government maintains these mobs are spontaneous manifestations of the popular will and calls the events "acts of revolutionary affirmation." Dissidents have long claimed that the mobs respond to and are organized by the government's security apparatus. In fact, the mob that congregated in front of Fornaris' home was backed up by a car loaded with loudspeakers, not the sort of thing the average Cuban has at his ready disposal.

The crowd of about 70 strong chanted hurrahs to the revolution, and called Fornaris a mercenary, and a salaried lackey of the empire, referring to the U.S.

Fornaris called the whole thing "terrorism sponsored by the State."

Source: Cubanet.org

2006-05-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

Gov. Bush ready to sign bill barring professors, students from Cuba travel

TALLAHASSEE · Gov. Jeb Bush indicated Tuesday he will sign a bill that would forbid professors and students from visiting Cuba and other nations accused of supporting terrorism.Bush's backing of the legislation, sponsored by state Rep. David Rivera, a Miami Republican who represents a portion of Broward County, would make Florida one of the most restrictive states for travel by scholars.

LocalLinks
The bill bans faculty and students at public universities and community colleges from using ``state or non-state funds'' to travel to any country deemed a sponsor of terrorists. Five countries would be considered off-limits: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. The bill does not specify penalties for violators. The proposal, which easily cleared both chambers of the Florida Legislature earlier this month, has been sharply criticized by academics as an infringement on their rights that would impede important research, especially in Cuba.

These critics said it would impede advancement in a wide variety of studies, including agriculture and public health. Damian Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, warned that the proposal will undermine efforts to recruit scholars who study in Florida and abroad. Wayne S. Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., said the legislation would block potentially valuable research for Florida, and that there is little political justification for such a ban. Bush downplayed the criticism, saying he thinks public and private money should not "go to countries that are our enemies."

He also said he is skeptical that much legitimate research is conducted during travel to those countries. Rivera has said the recent case of a Florida International University professor being indicted on espionage charges involving travel to Cuba, all supposedly paid for by private funds, demonstrates the importance of the travel ban.

Source: Sun-Sentinel

2006-05-23T13:11:00.000-05:00

Click on this link to read a report released on Cuba's human rights by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 28, 2006. U.S. Department of State.

http://www.cubanet.org/ref/dis/011906_e.htm

Source: Cubanet.org

2006-05-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

Eusebio Peñalver (1936-2006)
The World's Longest Serving Black Political Prisoner in the 20th Century - 28 Years (CUBA)
(Not Nelson Mandela - 25 years)

2006-05-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

Ex political prisoner says harassment continues in Cuba
The Associated Press

MIAMI -- Cuban American activists and politicians on Friday condemned alleged threats against a Cuban dissident and former political prisoner who helped organize an anti-government congress on the communist island last year.Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello said she was told Wednesday that she would not be allowed to leave her house in Havana on May 20, Cuban Independence day.

Last Independence Day, Roque helped organize an unprecedented assembly of about 200 members of country's opposition movement. She was imprisoned in 2003 and released the following year for medical reasons. She suffers from diabetes.In recent weeks she has complained of harassment, including an attack on April 25, when she reported that she was punched by a man outside her home.In a letter Roque wrote to a Cuban lawyer, she said a group of people she did not know who gathered outside her home told her she would no longer be able to receive packages.Roque has accused the government of hiring those who are harassing her.``The manner in which the government wants me to live my life is unbearable...'' she wrote in the letter.

Sylvia G. Iriondo, of the Florida-based group, Mothers Against Repression for Cuba, said she was disturbed by the latest reports.``They have brought people who aren't her neighbors to insult her and humiliate her,'' she said. ``This has been going on for a while now.On Friday, U.S.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-FL, condemned Roque's treatment, noting that she had been ordered to stay in her home the same week that the United Nations voted to include Cuba on its new Human Rights Council.``I ask all members of the diplomatic corps in Cuba, and the members of the international press in Havana to visit Martha Beatriz and to maintain a permanent presence outside her home,'' Diaz-Balart said.

Source: Sun-Sentinel

2006-05-20T13:33:00.000-05:00

WHAT THE PICTURE SAYS IS WHO CHE GUEVARA
REALLY WAS. NOT THIS REVOLUTIONARY HERO
EVERYONE THINKS HE WAS. HE KILLED THOUSANDS OF
CUBANS VIA FIRING SQUADS WITHOUT THEIR DUE PROCESS!

2006-05-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

Repression in the palace of justice

Rafael Ferro Salas, Abdala Press

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - May (www.cubanet.org) - "It didn't suffice for the authorities to bring him to trial and sentence him, they also took it upon themselves to stop us opponents from being there, if only just to give him moral support and solidarity," Eliosbel Garriga Cabrera tells me while he looks at the street. He's telling me of what happened just a few days ago to him and a group of opponents of the Cuban government.

Eliosbel told me the incident occurred during the public hearing carried out for Fernando Martínez Calzadilla, who is also an opponent. Fernando was tried and sentenced to four years in prison.

"The authorities got it good and ready for Fernando. They knew he's an opponent and took it upon themselves to show he was devoting himself to making illegal deals in the military committee where he worked. They implicated him in a deed of selling medical certificates for sick leave from the Compulsory Military Service. It's a big lie, they even went as far as finding false witnesses in order to try him. Fernando's only crime is being an opponent of the Cuban government, nothing more," Eliosbel pointed out.

He also tells me the police authorities' greatest concern the day of the trial was the presence of the group of opponents at the entrance to the Palace of Justice in Pinar del Río. Eliosbel says that from the first moment there was a whiff in the air of the repression to come.

"The police cars began to arrive; groups of people dressed in civilian clothes came by the streets, but we could tell they were coming to the park where we were waiting for the trial to begin. In less than an hour we were surrounded by all these people. Then two uniformed men arrived and told us we had to leave the place, that they weren't going to be allow us to enter the courtroom."
With Eliosbel were Asnel Herrera Padrón, Yoel Martínez Cruz, Alexander Ortega Martínez and Manuel Rodríguez Chirolde.

"Finally we had to leave. We were very few in the face all those people. They most important thing is that our brother Fernando knew that we'd been there to be in solidarity with him. I think that helped him not to feel all alone at the trial. We also know that some day all these abuses are going to end in Cuba. It's not a crime in any part of the world to attend a civilian trial.
That's only seen here in this country," Eliosbel affirmed.

Before we said goodbye I showed him what I'd written down of his statements. I did it without using a tape recorder and in the same place where a few days earlier it didn't suffice for the authorities to bring an opponent to trial and sentence him to four years in prison; they also took it upon themselves to prevent his brothers in cause from going and giving him joint support.

Source: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/may06/19e4.htm

2006-05-19T22:46:00.000-05:00

Repression on the increase in Eastern Cuba

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, May 11 (Manuel Salinas Espinosa, APLO / www.cubanet.org) - Repressive activities by the government in the province of Santiago de Cuba showed a marked increase in April, according to reports by its most frequent targets, dissidents and political opponents.

In the city of Santiago de Cuba itself, dissidents Juan Rodríguez, president of the Brotherhood Republican Party, and Mirtha Pérez, vice-president of the Elena Mederos women's organization, say they were arrested and reported numerous others who were detained, searched and had papers confiscated as they walked the streets.

In San Luis municipality, between the 13th and 17th of April, 550 youths were taken in and booked for showing "pre-delinquent conditions," a peculiarity of the Cuban legal system that means roughly a predisposition to delinquency, at least in the eyes of the authorities. At least two dissidents, Henry Estiu and Guillermo Rivero, complained of receiving beatings. Two others, Ramón Roque and Roberto González, say they were fined 300 and 330 pesos.

In nearby Palma Soriano, 40 youths were taken in April 21 and issued "writs of warning," a step that makes subsequent arrests more likely. They reported they were labeled "social trash" because they are unemployed and because some of them have previous records.

Dissidents in Palma Soriano also reported an increase in the frequency of "repudiation events" in which government-directed mobs intimidate opponents by insults and physical violence.

The events were directed by the area coordinator for the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Bárbaro Hernández, who proclaimed that Committee members were specifically authorized to beat up counter revolutionaries and advocates of the Varela project. Hernández issued his fatwa during the same event in which a man who has served two sentences in jail, one for armed robbery and the other for growing and possession of marihuana, was awarded a public commendation for cooperating with authorities.

Source: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/may06/19e2.htm

2006-02-27T23:22:00.000-05:00

My Wife and I on Christmas Day 2005