Ending several years of relative tolerance for Cuba’s critical voices, Fidel Castro showed American diplomats and the dissidents they courted that he can only stand so much.
Increasingly irritated by what he characterized as rude and undiplomatic behavior by the top American diplomat here, as well as his dealings with government opponents, Castro chose the eve of the start of the war on Iraq to launch an offensive of his own.
By Friday, four days later, Cuban state agents were beginning to ease their campaign to root out growing opposition after rounding up at least 72 dissidents.
The crackdown marked an end to the relative tolerance Cuban officials showed in recent years as independent journalists filed their dispatches to Miami without government intervention, dissidents held news conferences and activists successfully collected the signatures of more than 11 000 people favouring
democratic reforms.
But on Monday, the government here accused dissidents of conspiring with US Interests Section Chief James Cason and other American diplomats. On Tuesday, it announced it was going after the ”traitors” it accused of being on Cason’s payroll — something the dissidents deny.
The detainees included more than a dozen independent journalists, owners of lending libraries, leaders of opposition political parties and pro-democracy activists who gathered signatures for a reform effort known as the Varela Project.
The crackdown alarmed international rights and press advocates, including former President Jimmy Carter, who called on Cuban authorities to respect human rights and ”refrain from detaining or harassing citizens who are expressing their views peacefully.”
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders accused the government of taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the US-led war in Iraq to carry out the roundup.
”Human rights in Cuba can therefore be viewed as one of the first cases of collateral damage in the second Gulf war,” said Robert Menard, the group’s secretary general.
On Friday the non-governmental Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation reported 72 dissidents had been detained. It was still trying to confirm reports of additional detentions around the country.
”The only crime committed by these prisoners is the promotion of ideas that are forbidden in Cuba,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of the non-governmental Human Rights Watch.
The leadership of the Inter-American Press Association, currently meeting in San Salvador, El Salvador, expressed concerns about the arrest of contributors to De Cuba, a new monthly magazine with articles by independent reporters.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors sent a letter to Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque urging the release of those detained.
Meanwhile, some of the island’s best-known critics remained free, including veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, Varela Project organiser Oswaldo Paya and Vladimiro Roca, son of the late Cuban Communist Party founder Blas Roca.
Paya and his colleagues have collected more than 11 000 signatures from Cubans asking Castro’s government for a referendum on new laws guaranteeing civil rights such as free expression and private business ownership.
The Varela Project initiative was later shelved by the nation’s rubber-stamp parliament.
The independent journalists also grew bolder in recent months, launching a new general interest magazine in a nation where virtually all media is state-controlled.
But American diplomats also grew more active, offering Internet access to journalists at the US Interests Section here, inviting dissidents to receptions and giving them radios, pamphlets and other material the government considered subversive.
Cason, the mission’s new chief, began meeting publicly with the opposition and criticising Castro’s government to international journalists here.
Such assistance often does Cuban opponents more harm than good by giving the communist government an excuse to accuse them of collaborating with the enemy, said Manuel Cuesta Morrua of the opposition party Socialist Democratic Current.
”What could happen is that this could be used to close all the political spaces that the opposition has opened” in recent years, Cuesta said. – Sapa-AP