Cuba: united opposition launches a new political platform

Still divided, the Cuban opposition presented to the press on Wednesday a new political platform called “The Way of the People”, presented by some as a project of “democratic transition” and by others as simply a “common position” .

More than fourty opposition leaders and former political prisoners of various currents and trends have endorsed this document proposes a “national dialogue”, “new laws”, a “referendum”, and remains open to new members.

Developed by Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and Sakharov Prize 2002 of the European Parliament, the document proposes to “establish a genuine national dialogue and to initiate an inclusive process of change.”

Among the signatories are the best-known opponents: Guillermo Fariñas, Sakharov Prize 2010 and led dozens of hunger strikes, Laura Pollan, leader of the Ladies in White, a group of wives and relatives of political prisoners-, liberal economist Martha Beatriz Roque, the Social Democrat Manuel Cuesta Morua or Elizardo Sanchez, the leader of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights, tolerated by the authorities.

Former political prisoners as Felix Navarro, Angel Moya, Guido Sigler and José Daniel Ferrer also among the signatories of the platform.

“The document was drafted by the signatories, and I am sure it is viable and necessary because the message is for all the people of Cuba,” he told AFP Oswaldo Paya.

In a “basic proposal”, the document calls for new legal provisions guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, association, worship, internal and external migration, and the right of citizens to run for public office.

Opponents also offer “a referendum for the people to decide sovereignly changes” constitutional and legal and paves the way for “citizen participation on this journey of change.”

Similarly, the signatories want the organization to “a national dialogue and free elections for all public office and for a Constituent Assembly.”

“More than a political project, I think it is mainly to express the will to establish a common position in specific circumstances,” he told AFP Manuel Cuesta Morua.

For Elizardo Sanchez, the document “provides a set of ideas that open a field for reflection, but it is not a proposal for a transition.” “This is a positive contribution to think the time of transition when it comes,” he added.

In half a century of communist rule in Cuba, opponents, considered by authorities as “mercenaries” in the pay of the United States have developed various projects and proposals for transition, all gone unheeded.

The best known, the “Varela Project”, named after a 19th century priest-independence, also developed and supported by Oswaldo Paya, was as a petition for a referendum on popular initiative. Presented to Parliament in 2002, the project has been buried by the assembly that wrote into the constitution the character “irrevocable” of socialism in Cuba.

The Cuban authorities, under the presidency of Raul Castro has launched in the spring a series of economic reforms designed to prevent the bankruptcy of a system modeled on the Soviet Union of the seventies, do not listen to proposals from dissidents and highlight the changes are also aimed at strengthening the system.

by Sandeep

Source: PISQA 

The whole document (in Spanish)

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From a Cuban youth movement, to journalism, to jail

I joined the political civilist youth movement in 1991. Curiously, what I remember most from that period is how my apprehensions led me to disguise myself with a hat and glasses when traveling from my town of Artemisa to Havana to meet with other activists. These feelings of fear, defenselessness, and even blame, are common to those who live in Cuba, stifled by oppression and numbed by endless totalitarian propaganda.

Three years later, in 1994, I joined the independent press when I covered for Radio Martí the Artemisa arrest of opposition members, among them the local hero of days past, Domingo René García Collazo, ex-commander of the Rebel Army, whose rank was given to him in 1959 by the then-venerable leader, Fidel Castro.

This first report was followed by others and, around 1995, a group of us activists founded the freedom desk of the Cuban Independent Press Bureau, under my direction. Afterward, we created other desks that promoted media, human rights, and union activities in the region. The state security presence in our lives swelled to the point that in the early hours of February 24, 1996, state security-equipped paramilitary groups visited my house along with those of other journalists, human rights groups, and unions to intimidate us using terrorist language.

From this date forward, the majority of the city's activists worked together to coordinate press activities with those of the trade unionism and human rights movements. In this context, I took on the task of creating the country's first school for the teaching of these rights. Educating myself from literature provided by the Spanish Embassy and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, I created a manual on which the curriculum was based and founded the Felix Varela Program for Human Rights Education. I gave classes until I was arrested in 2003 and I published (in 1999 and 2001) various reports on the subject in the magazine, Vitral de la Iglesia Catolica of Pinar del Rio.

State Security responded to the expansion of my civilist activities, particularly those related to education and the press, with more arbitrary detentions, searches, confiscations, warnings, threats, and, eventually, imprisonments. To suffocate freedom of information and of the press becomes a question of life or death for dictatorships. Accordingly, the regime used Orwelian artifices to falsify the past and distort the present, which is a crucial to the manipulation of information and the creation of propaganda. For this reason, Cuba is the only country in the Western hemisphere where foreign newspapers are not available and also why Fidel Castro has called journalists "a unit of the Revolution." That is how the despot states it. He knows that repression alone is not enough to conquer the people; instead he must rely on apologetic, incessant, crazy-making, and chauvinist propaganda that acts as a spiritual sleeping pill and is worth more than his army of police officers.

But the creative force of the freedom instinct and the idea of democracy are contagious and won't be contained. This force always overcomes obstacles in its way and, for more than 20 years, Castro has not been alone on the Cuban political stage. A contingent of men and women decided to stand up to him in the realm of the word, the mind, and the spirit, in support of a State of Rights for Cuba. And in spite of the enormous disadvantages and repression, we arrived with much more than before as of March 2003, when, faced with the push of the powerful discourse on human rights, the Varela Project [which advocated for democratic reforms], the force of the trade unionism, and the fearlessness of the independent press, Castro was angry, got worked up, and committed a serious mistake: the Cuban Black Spring and its extrajudicial summary trials, without warrants or defense, that yielded savage sentences of up to 28 years imprisonment.

And his mistake was so massive that from it, armed with nothing but gladiolas, our magnificent Ladies in White emerged. Castro was then forced to face our wives, who, backed by a formidable international solidarity campaign, dealt the tyrant his most costly and deathly political defeat: he bowed, for the first time, to mounting pressure from the people themselves, from the internal opposition, not from the exterior; and although we had to go into exile, he had to release us. This fact constitutes a unique case in a half a century of communism in Cuba, and becomes the supreme example that can fertilize the social and spiritual womb of our nation.

Faced with the liberating fertility of this paradigm and the social and economic failure of the regime, Castro, looking to reduce internal pressure, found himself forced to "concede" to the people some of the economic rights that for more than 50 years he violated.

In the first days of our imprisonment we were held in State Security general barracks. There, in cells intended for four prisoners, it was so narrow and overcrowded that there was a mere half a square meter per person. These intensely claustrophobic and oppressive quarters, in which the lights were permanently turned on, constituted a psychic torment that was applied to the 36 days prior to being interrogated before the judge.

Under these tortuous conditions and deprived of pencil, paper, and a lawyer, it was impossible for me to prepare my defense before the tribunal, where the very principles of independence and judge impartiality are lacking anyway.

That is where I more fully understood the terms "defenselessness" and "abuse of power" in that both were employed to sentence me to an unjust and brutal 26 years in jail. And paradoxically, on page eight of my sentence, I'm described as a "person of good and respectful relations with the rest of the citizens in the social order and lacking criminal antecedents," an obligatory and cynical acknowledgement that contradicts the brutal sanction which included the torturous "extra" year spent in a minute, damp, windowless punishment cell filled with rats and other creatures, and given horrible nourishment, imposed on someone who was only fulfilling civic duties and exercising his inalienable rights.

I don't know what made me deserving of so much hatred. And I'm unable to express here what I felt in those cells, those tombs. I can, however, and want to unmask those who abuse power, lie, and offend my dignity by accusing me of being a conspirator and mercenary.

After a torturous period in the punishment cells, they integrated me with the general criminal population and together we shared in the risks, the injustice, and the miserable physical conditions of the Cuban prison system.

Despite all this, I should acknowledge that existing within these repressive forces is a growing number of men and women that silently support us and reject the policies of the regime. They, too, can contribute to democratic transformations and the national reconciliation of our people.

And today in exile, when I recall my seven and a half years in prison, writing you with the new perspective of a future in freedom feels like a chimera. From this future, my main objective is to stay faithful to Christian values, to my honor and to my own law: to fight always as the only dignified attitude before life. My objectives, also very beloved are:

• To work for a free press outlet where I can continue on my path as a civilist in support of democratic ideas in Cuba and elsewhere.
• To complete the book of essays I began in prison.

Finally, I'd like to pay my respects to the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who discovered how to die as an act of rebellion against oppression, and to the heroism of Guillermo Fariñas: protagonists, along with the Ladies in White, of the unpublished and forceful victory over Castro.

By Alfredo Felipe Fuentes

(Translated by Karen Phillips)

This entry is part of an ongoing series of first-person stories by Cuban journalists who were imprisoned in a massive roundup of dissidents that has become known as the Black Spring of 2003. All of the reporters and editors were convicted in one-day trials, accused of acting against the "integrity and sovereignty of the state" or of collaborating with foreign media for the purpose of "destabilizing the country."

Source: CPJ

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A Transformational Year For Cuba Policy

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, currently in prison, is one of the faces of the pro-democracy movement in Cuba.

Since Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006 and transferred power to his brother Raul, members of Congress have been weighing possible options in U.S. policy toward Cuba, partially by raising the fundamental question: “is there a viable pro-democracy movement in Cuba?”

The uncertainty is not surprising. For years much of the foreign policy establishment in New York and Washington, and advocates of “normalizing” relations with Cuba, have argued there are no viable alternatives to Cuba’s totalitarian dictatorship. The only answer is to “throw in the towel,” unilaterally lift U.S. sanctions and engage the Castros. Somehow this engagement is supposed to alter their ruthless behavior.

That position had been music to the Castros’ ears. But on February 23, 2010, it was permanently debunked. That tragic morning, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a forty-two year old afro-Cuban plumber and pro-democracy activist, died after an eighty-five day hunger strike. He was protesting the abuses of the Castro regime, his unjust imprisonment and denial of medical care.

Literally overnight, the international community's focus dramatically shifted. All of a sudden, there was undoubtedly a concrete pro-democracy movement in Cuba, noted for its courage and resilience. Since then, there is hardly a news story about Cuba that does not mention the opposition movement. While qualifiers such as “small,” “fractional,” and “divided” are frequently used by foreign news bureaus in Havana as they describe the pro-democracy movement—likely to avoid being booted from the island by the Castro regime—foreign reports no longer ignore the fact that a movement exists.

These accounts highlight a highly diverse group, challenging the Cuban state in a multitude of ways. There are the quixotic efforts of the wives, sisters, and daughters of Cuba's political prisoners, known as the Ladies in White, who dress in white and parade through public plazas. New regional bases of popular support are being carved out by leaders such as Jorge Luis Perez Garcia “Antunez” in the central province of Matanzas, by Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother and siblings in the eastern province of Holguin, and by the Rodriguez Lobaina brothers in the Castros’ home province of Santiago de Cuba. These follow the historic trend of Cuba’s most prevalent revolutionary movements—against Spanish colonialism in the nineteenth century and against the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s—both of which originated in the eastern provinces and expanded westward to Havana. And then there is the stinging critique of the island's ever-growing blogger movement, led by Generation Y's Yoani Sanchez.

Cuba’s pro-democracy movement is becoming an increasingly difficult force to ignore. And for better or worse, everyone knows it.

The Castro regime knows it.

It is no coincidence that Fidel and Raul have spent the better part of 2010 doing back-flips to divert attention from the opposition. They have brought Fidel "back from the dead"—as he himself now boasts—for an ongoing series of speeches and interviews in which he has neurotically predicted nuclear holocaust and admitted the failings of Cuba’s socialist model (though he later recanted). The Castros have extended land-leases for foreigners to build sailing marinas and golf courses—for the use of foreigners only, of course. And most importantly, they began a crisis management campaign to clean up their image by announcing the release of dozens of political prisoners to Spain, although they will never be allowed to return to Cuba. Throughout the world, the Castro regime is now seen as making concessions in order to draw attention away from the pro-democracy movement.

The Catholic Church knows it.

At the peak of a summer standoff led by the Ladies in White and a hunger strike by a former political prisoner, Guillermo Farinas, the Catholic Church quickly saw an opportunity to become relevant, after decades of religious oppression and institutional silence. Catholic leaders volunteered themselves to intercede with the Castro regime to negotiate the release of political prisoners. What remains to be seen is whether the Church's intervention strengthened or weakened the pro-democracy movement by downplaying their role in the negotiations. Regardless, it represented an acknowledgment of the movement’s existence—and the potential power to be derived from it—by the Church.

The Spanish government knows it.

Just as the Catholic Church moved to intercede, the Spanish government weighed in as well. But unlike the Church, it was not motivated by its waning influence. Instead, it intervened as part of its ongoing effort to protect billions in investments on the island. Nothing is worse for business than instability and unpredictability. Again, this is a nod to the power of the opposition to disrupt business as usual.

Now finally, the U.S. Congress also appears to recognize it.

Instead of asking: is there a viable pro-democracy movement, members of Congress are asking: how can the United States support it?

In a July 14 letter to the U.S. Congress, some 500 pro-democracy leaders in Cuba explained how the United States might help, or at least avoid setting the movement back:

“At a moment such as this, to be benevolent with the dictatorship would mean solidarity with the oppressors of the Cuban nation. [We] believe that the freedom of Cuba will not arrive by means of the pocket-book or the lips of libidinous tourists, who are aseptic to the pain of the Cuban family. Rather, it will come through the efforts of those who, from within and abroad, fight for democratic change in Cuba.”

Plainly stated, the message of these pro-democracy leaders is simple: we are here, we are strong, and there is no reason to bail out the Castro regime.

by: Mauricio Claver-Carone

From: Yale Journal of International Affairs

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Czech MEP meets dissidents in Cuba

Last week, twenty members of the Ladies in White were heckled for several hours by government supporters, who kept them encircled in the area. Surrounding streets were blocked off, and two ambulances and several police cars were stationed nearby.

The atmosphere in Cuba is like a pressure cooker that can explode at any time, Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas told Czech MEP Edvard Kozusnik, who met him briefly after his release from prison last week, Kozusnik said in a report he sent to CTK last Sunday.

Last year, Kozusnik successfully nominated Farinas for the Sakharov Human Rights Prize.

The public opinion in Cuba is changing as the public increasingly connects economic problems with the existing regime, Farinas said.

Nowadays people speak about it publicly, which was absolutely unthinkable three years ago, he added.

Kozusnik came to Cuba to support the local opposition in its effort to change the Communist regime.

Earlier this week, Farinas was imprisoned for 36 hours, Cuban dissidents have said.

Another Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya has warned that repressive forces are ready to take any steps in order to keep current Cuban Communist leaders in power.

Paya said Cuban opposition was preparing projects for the transformation of society in the direction of democratic free elections.

Kozusnik said Paya and others had collected the signatures of 40,000 Cubans for the support of the planned changes.

Kozusnik said the campaign was similar to the Czechoslovak Several Sentences petition, launched a few months before the Communist regime's fall in 1989.

Kozusnik gave the dissidents a symbolical chain of keys as a recollection of those that calmly rang the end of the Communist rule.

"I believe that Cubans will soon ring the end of the rule of arrogant despots, dysfunctional economy, demagoguery and hateful propaganda," Kozusnik said.

From the Czech experience:

Seeking Freedom Is a Learning Process

He has a degree in history, which he got only after the revolution of course.

In communist times he was only allowed to undertake a mechanical apprenticeship.

In literature he found a way to pass on principles of humanity and criticize injustice.

He belonged to the crowd of the youngest generation of Czech dissidents.

We are talking about Czech writer Petr Placák, alias Petr Zmrzlík.

[Jáchym Topol, Writer and Journalist]:

"Before 1989 Petr belonged to the active ones, to the activists, to those who fought. I think, that what he was doing or what we were doing, was built on Charter 77."

Placák issued two samizdat books.

As one of the closely watched dissidents, he was forced to write books under the pseudonym Petr Zmrzlík.

He became an inconvenience for the regime not only as a writer, but as an instigator of many activities against the totalitarian regime as well.

In 1988 he founded an organization "České děti" which issued leaflets and articles directed against the totalitarian regime.

[Jáchym Topol, Writer and Journalist]:

“I was one of the first members of the organization 'České děti.' And I can say that the thoughts and ideas coming from Petr’s head fell on fertile ground.”

As an editor-in-chief of the magazine “Babylon," Petr Placák is now guiding today’s young authors to learn the real values in society.

[Stanislav Skoda, Editor, Babylon Magazine]:

"We try to publish texts we write ourselves, they are about violations of freedom in the world, in Cuba, for example. I specialize mainly in Latin America as well as in China, in Burma and we’re just trying to find and point to the iniquities that are happening in a small town in the north of Czech Republic as well as in Beijing."

Placák first experienced the limiting of freedom in his childhood.

He was four years old when his native city Prague was occupied by the Red Army troops.

[Petr Placak, Writer]:

"Through the adults I understood that what was happening was horrible. And then it was increasing continuously. I mean the distance against the regime was more and more clear. And it still is actually getting clearer because when you read about it, you get more information. So it is a process that is still developing."

Petr Placák believes that people develop their opinions all their lives.

[Petr Placák, Writer]:

"When one is growing up, he is growing up in a way that he defines himself from his environment. Then of course, he is processing it further on but I think this is the fundamental of it when he is growing up."

Sources:  NTD News and Prague Dialy Monitor

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Cuban dissident who staged hunger strike detained

Guillermo Farinas.

Guillermo Farinas, a Cuban dissident who gained international renown after staging a long hunger strike last year, was detained Wednesday while trying to block the eviction of a woman from a home in the central city of Santa Clara, his mother said.

Farinas and other opposition leaders were taken into custody as they tried to prevent authorities from carrying out the eviction orders, his mother Alicia Hernandez told The Associated Press. The woman was apparently living in the home without proper authorization.

"He was arrested by the police, along with a group of people," Hernandez said.

An independent Cuban human rights leader, Elizardo Sanchez, said more than 12 people were detained in the roundup.

Opposition figures are frequently detained by authorities, often to be released within hours or a few days.

Hernandez said she had not been able to speak to her son by phone, but had sent him a coat and some medicine through a relative. She said she had no idea when he or the others would be released.

There was no immediate reaction or confirmation from the Cuban government. Authorities rarely comment on the dissidents, except to say that they consider all to be common criminals and mercenaries paid by Washington to make trouble.

Farinas, 49, staged a 134-day hunger strike last year to draw attention to the plight of activists, social critics and opposition leaders in Cuban jails. He was awarded the European Parliament's annual human rights prize, but Cuban authorities refused to grant him permission to travel to Strasbourg, France, to receive the award.

Farinas has held more than 20 hunger strikes in the past 15 years, and has been jailed repeatedly for dissident activities on charges including disrespecting authority, public disorder and assault against a suspected undercover government informant.

Cuba is in the midst of releasing many of the 52 jailed dissidents whose cause Farinas championed, following a deal with the Roman Catholic Church. Just 11 remain behind bars, and church officials say they are optimistic the government will soon make good on a promise to release them.

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ

From: Northern Star

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The prison that calls itself a country

Number of prisons per province in Cuba. In total, about 550.

In December, when the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Cuban independent journalist and longtime protester of the Castros' repression of thought, Guillermo Farinas, the Cuban dictatorship, as is done by the rulers of China, barred him from leaving the country to accept the award.

In his acceptance speech by video, Farinas, characteristically forthright, said: "In the minds of Cuba's current rulers, we Cuban citizens are just like the slaves from whom I am descended, kidnapped in Africa and brought to the Americas by force. For me or any other ordinary citizen to be able to travel abroad, I need a Carta de Libertad, that is a Freedom Card, just as the slaves did, only today it is called a Carta Blanca, a White Card."

His reference to the "white" card should also be a reminder of the long-imbedded racial discrimination against black Cubans by the Castro Revolution. In December 2009, I reported on the "Statement of Conscience by African-Americans" the month before by 60 prominent black Americans, including Cornel West, condemning the partnership of Jim Crow with the Cuban regime.

I have seen no further mention of that long-delayed protest from the actual signers of the declaration of conscience, and from hardly anyone else. Is this a self-imposed gag rule? I welcome any information about this strange silence, including from the Congressional Black Caucus.

Guillermo Farinas would have welcomed, I expect, some support from those prominent black Americans, and others of us. He thanked the European Parliament "for not abandoning the Cuban people in these more than 50 years of the struggle for democracy."

But he has been abandoned – despite his hunger strikes against the imprisonment of independent Cuban librarians, among other dissenters – by the American Library Association, which has yet to demand the release of these, among the other Castros' prisoners of conscience.

As Farinas delivered his acceptance speech, an empty chair draped in a Cuban flag was placed on the European Parliament stage.

Amnesty International has not abandoned him or any of the other Cubans treated like ungrateful slaves. Last summer, it called world attention to the harassment of Reina Luisa Tamayo, "who takes to the streets each Sunday with a small group of relatives to honor her son Orlando Zapta Tamayo who died Feb. 23 after refusing food and water for months."

Imprisoned since 2003 for "disrespecting authority," among other charges, Tamayo "became the first Cuban opposition leader in nearly 40 years to die after a hunger strike – an incident decried by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and European leaders" (Associated Press, Aug. 17, 2010, and foxnews.com).

Reina Luisa Tamayo told Amnesty "that pro-government mobs surrounded her house in the eastern Cuban city of Banes on Sunday and prevented her, her family and friends from marching and attending Roman Catholic Mass. She said Cuban security forces kept other women who planned to march from leaving their homes."

Previously, a typical Castro regime warning was delivered to this besieged mother, as reported by Amnesty International: "On Aug. 8, a mob blocked (Tamayo's) path and beat relatives and friends who were marching – while police nearby failed to act. She said six loudspeakers has been installed near her house, used to shout insults against her and the Ladies in White, a Havana support group for wives and mother of political prisoners."

Has Secretary of State Clinton informed President Obama of the ruthless subjugation of liberty-starved Cubans that led to Guillermo Farinas receiving the Sakharov Prize? Does he care that in 2005 this human-rights prize was awarded to the Ladies in White in Cuba and – dig this – in 2002 to dissenter Oswaldo Paya?

A leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and several times nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Paya founded the still-continuing Varela Project aimed at establishing by referendum such scandalous heresies as freedom of press and religion and free elections. The only time I met the still-idolized-by-many Che Guevara (at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations), he professed to understand no English and was accompanied by a translator. As I asked him if he could conceive there ever being free elections in Cuba. Guevara, not waiting for the translator, broke into derisive laughter.

Last year, the Latin American Democratic Bridge Network awarded its first Prize for Democratic Openness to the doggedly surviving Varela Project (catholicnewsagency.com, May 20, 2010, reported again on CNA, Jan. 12, 2011). Because such freedom warriors as Oswaldo Paya do not give up, resistance is rising in Castroland.

The most accurate reports on Cuba come from Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal. On Dec. 27, she told those of us who care: "A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 28, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch.

"What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of 'freedom,' 'down with Fidel' and 'down with socialism.'" These seeds may yet bring revolutionary liberty to Cubans. O'Grady provides more of the context:

Michael Moore notwithstanding, she writes that "Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. ... The government tries to put the lid on through repression. But in private, among Cubans there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro."

On Nov. 28, 2007, Laura Bush held a video conference with members of the independent library movement with whom she expressed solidarity (Friends of Cuban Libraries). Your turn, Michelle Obama. President Obama has eased travel restrictions to – and the sending of money to Cubans – with restrictions, while calling for the return of freedom to Cubans. What will happen to any of these American travelers if they demand to see any prisoners of conscience?

Nat Hentoff

From: WorldNetDaily


Trapped in Castro's gulag and lived to tell about it – check out Armando Valladares' story of 20 years under dictator's thumb: "Against All Hope"

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Cuban dissident grounded for EU 'free thought' prize ceremony

Bust of Andrei Sakharov, Washington DC

The Cuban authorities have confirmed that Guillermo Fariñas, who was awarded the EU's 'free thought' prize in October, would not be allowed to leave the country to receive the award in person at a ceremony in the European Parliament tomorrow afternoon. 

Cuban dissident Fariñas was unveiled as the winner of the European Parliament's 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the EU assembly's president, Jerzy Buzek, on 21 October.

"Regrettably, Mr. Fariñas is experiencing problems leaving the country, even though I made a personal appeal in a letter to the president of Cuba, Mr. Raul Castro. If Guillermo Fariñas were to leave in the next few hours, he could still be here in time to receive his prize," said Buzek yesterday evening.

But those hopes were dashed later that night after the Cuban authorities refused to grant Fariñas permission to leave the island, meaning that the accolade will instead by awarded to an empty chair.

Back in October, Buzek was optimistic that the Cuban dissident would be allowed to make the trip. "I hope to hand over the award to him in person, here in Strasbourg, in December, which would be a tremendous moment for the European Parliament and for all Cuban prisoners of conscience," he said then.

Possible impact on EU-Cuba relations

It remains unclear whether the Castro regime's decision not to allow Fariñas will impact upon EU-Cuba relations. "We expect that Lady Ashton will take due note of these problems and that she will take this into account in future relations with Cuba," said President Buzek yesterday.

He was echoed by French MEP Joseph Daul, chairman of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), in urging Ashton to take into account Cuba's decision not to let him travel in any future evaluation of the EU's relations with the island.

"The European Parliament and the EU should join forces with those who are fighting for freedom in Cuba rather than follow the script provided by the La Habana regime," Daul said.

"The absence of Guillermo Fariñas from the ceremony of the 2010 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought this Wednesday in Strasbourg means that nothing has changed in Cuba," added Daul, whose EPP group was instrumental in convincing the Parliament to award Fariñas the prize.

In February Fariñas – a supporter of non-violent protest and vocal critic of the Castro regime – started his 23rd hunger strike, calling for the liberation of 26 political prisoners who were ill after many years in detention. He ended his 135-day fast on 8 July after the Catholic Church had intervened to secure the liberation of 52 political dissidents.

Fariñas has spent over 11 years in prison over the course of his life and is the founder of the 'Cubanacan Press', an independent press agency which informed the world of the destiny of political prisoners in Cuba until the authorities shut it down.

'Fundamental freedoms' denied

"The fact that Guillermo Fariñas has not received the necessary permission to travel out of the island and come to Strasbourg to receive the award proves that the Castro brothers' dictatorship continues to deny fundamental freedoms," EPP chair Daul said yesterday.

The Sakharov Prize, consisting of a certificate and a cheque for €50,000, will be awarded in absentia at a ceremony in Strasbourg at 1pm tomorrow afternoon. MEPs will symbolically leave empty the chair on which Fariñas was due to sit before delivering his acceptance speech.

Guillermo Fariñas

Tomorrow will not be the first time the prize has been awarded in absentia. In 2008, Chinese dissident Hu Jia was given the accolade but was unable to receive it as he was in jail in China. In his absence, his wife spoke to MEPs during their plenary session in Strasbourg via video link from Beijing, where she was being held under house arrest.

Positions

"The combat of Guillermo Fariñas is and will be an example for all people who fight for freedoms and democracy and the fact that he will not be allowed to come to Strasbourg shows that the European Parliament made the right choice, as the Sakharov Prize has been created to honour exceptional people like Andrei Sakharov who have suffered in the fight against intolerance, fanaticism and dictatorship," said French MEP Joseph Daul, chair of the centre-right European People's Party, upon hearing the news.

A group of EPP MEPs backing Fariñas' nomination said his "struggle has been, and still is, a shining example for all defenders of freedom and democracy," while Spanish EPP member José Ignacio Salafranca described Fariñas as "the epitome of someone defending peaceful resistance".

Next Steps 

15 Dec.: Guillermo Fariñas to be officially awarded Sakharov Prize in Strasbourg.

From: EurActiv

To read:

Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov

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Cuban dissident wins Sakharov prize

Guillermo farinas during his 135-day hunger strike earlier this year

The European parliament has awarded its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas, parliamentary sources told AFP.

"The Sakharov winner is Guillermo Farinas," a source said on condition of anonymity.

The 48-year-old journalist and psychologist has often used hunger strikes, putting his own health at risk, as a means of protest to achieve greater freedoms in the Communist island of Cuba.

Farinas is the third Cuban to receive the prize, after Oswaldo Paya in 2002 and the Ladies in White group of women whose husbands are jailed in Cuba, which received the award in 2005.

European parliament president Jerzy Buzek will officially announce Farinas as the winner of the Sakharov Prize later on Thursday. The award will be presented to the winner on December 15.

The 22nd Sakharov Prize, named after late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, comes with a cash award of E50,000 ($A70,932).

Ethiopian opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa and Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence had also been on the shortlist for this year's award.

The decision to give this year's award to Farinas came four days before European Union foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss the 27-nation bloc's relations with Cuba.

Spain's Socialist government wants the EU to normalise relations with Cuba, a position opposed by the Czech Republic and Slovakia, former communist bloc countries.

The EU's "common position" at present is to insist that Cuba make progress on human rights and democracy before ties are normalised.

Farinas held a 135-day hunger strike earlier this year that left him near death but compelled the Cuban government to agree to release 52 political prisoners.

Another fast between 1995 and 1997 brought attention to his allegations of corruption at the hospital where he worked.

He also carried out a six-month hunger strike in 2006, but that time he failed to force the government to allow freer access to the Internet.

From: World News Australia

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Cuban hunger striker Fariñas leaves hospital

Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, whose long hunger strike helped pressure the Cuban government into releasing political prisoners, left the hospital, not fully recovered, but ready to resume his life of opposition. Three weeks after ending his 135-day fast, Fariñas said in a telphone interview he felt "diminished" and still cannot walk well.
He stopped eating and drinking on Feb. 24 and ended the strike on July 8, a day after the government pledged to release 52 jailed dissidents in a deal with the Catholic Church.
His hunger strike added to international criticism of the Cuban government that followed the Feb. 23 death of imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the harassment of the opposition group "Ladies in White" during protest marches.
The 48-year-old psychologist and writer collapsed on March 11 and from then on received nutrients and liquids intravenously in a hospital in his hometown of Santa Clara, 168 miles (270 km) east of Havana.
Fariñas, speaking from Santa Clara, told reporters he is eating "small quantities" of food and remains under treatment for a blood clot in his neck that doctors had described as life-threatening.
He said he would spend his first week out of the hospital giving interviews to the international press, then resume his work of editing and writing for a dissident blog.
So far, 20 of the promised 52 prisoners have been released in a process the church said could take four months.
Fariñas said he is prepared to re-launch his hunger strike if the prisoners are not all freed by Nov. 7.
"We're going to wait until the 7th of November to see if the government honours the word it gave to the Catholic Church and to national and international public opinion," he said.
Fariñas had conducted 22 previous hunger strikes, including a seven-month strike seeking improved Internet access.
Cuban officials consider dissidents to be US-backed mercenaries working to subvert the island's communist-led government.

From: Buenos Aires Herald 

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