Why we're not seeing a "Cuban Autumn"

A dissident signs the letter "L" for the Spanish word "libertad" or freedom as he is detained by police during a procession celebrating Cuba's patron saint in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Sept. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano).

Dissidents took heart at the successes of the Arab Spring, but pro-democracy protests aren't gaining traction.

The uprisings that have rocked the Middle East this year appear to be inspiring a new wave of protests on this island.

But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a "Cuban Autumn."

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and "Freedom!" until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government's move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba's one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

Now activists are once more testing Raul Castro's tolerance for public protest -- and whether the tactics used by tweeting insurgents in the Middle East could spread anti-government sentiment here.

So far: not so much.

One disadvantage often cited by Cuban activists is that they operate at a significant technology deficit. The island is one of the least-connected countries in the world, and though many young people have mobile phones, most lack access to Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites because of internet restrictions and scarce bandwidth.

Anti-Castro activists on the island are also viewed suspiciously or with outright hostility by many Cubans, even those who have lost faith in Cuba's socialist model. State media broadcasts frequently show them meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials, depicting them as "counterrevolutionaries," "mercenaries" and "opportunists" who are out to make a buck or get political asylum abroad.

Many others here remain committed to Cuba's system and its revolutionary ideals, even as the free health care, education and other benefits the government provides continue to diminish.

But dissidents also say Cuban authorities are escalating their attacks to intimidate others from joining their pro-democracy efforts. In August, police violence against peaceful protesters reached its highest level in recent years, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, an anti-Castro group that the tracks political arrests and detentions. Nearly twice as many activists have been detained so far this year compared to the same period in 2010, the group said, including 130 short-term detentions over the weekend.

The Cuban government has challenged those charges, accusing the group of padding its lists with fake names.

Castro opponents do not claim the Cuban government stoops to the type of methods that have been used by regimes in the Arab world, where activists are raped, tortured and murdered, and where protests are commonly met by volleys of police gunfire.

But state-security officials can plainly be seen coordinating counter-protests by government loyalists, who often surround dissidents and shout epithets at them for hours on end, sometimes accosting them physically. Security agents typically stand between the two sides to keep things from getting too rough.

When Cubans protest in public spontaneously, as some of the recent videos show, police quickly swoop in to arrest the demonstrators and haul them away, though the activists are often released several hours later.

Cuba's Catholic church, which played a central role in securing the release of more than 100 jailed activists over the past year, issued a carefully worded statement last week that condemned violence against "defenseless" people.

But Church spokesman Orlando Marquez also said in the statement that the Cuban government told the church "no one at the national level" had ordered attacks on protesters.

Cuban state television has aired footage of the protests, claiming the incidents were part of a "media campaign" against the island. It called the demonstrations acts of "public disorder" that were organized by U.S.-supported "mercenaries" and planned in coordination with American officials.

"The goal is to create a climate of tension that will justify aggressions against Cuba," the report said.

While Cuba's economy continues to struggle, there has not been the kind of broader unrest on the island that sparked street protests during the post-Soviet crisis of the 1990s.

Raul Castro has eased state control over the economy since taking over for his older brother in 2006, allowing for new private businesses and pending reforms that would permit Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in half a century.

Castro has also encouraged Cubans to vent their frustrations -- within limits -- through established channels like workplace forums and neighborhood meetings. Criticizing state institutions and government bureaucracy is no longer taboo, but organized opposition and public protests -- like the recent demonstrations -- remain out of bounds.

Since most of the dissidents freed over the past year opted to leave Cuba for Spain as part of an arrangement with the Madrid government, the latest rounds of protests may also be an effort by activists to remain visible, particularly to supporters abroad.

Cuba's most famous online anti-government activist, Yoani Sanchez, sends out cascades of tweets from her mobile phone, including information about protests. Her blog, Generation Y, is no longer blocked on the island by the government, but many young Cubans who manage to get online aren't necessarily inclined to use their precious bytes on political sites.

A high-speed undersea data link to Venezuela completed this summer with much fanfare is supposed to come online in the next few months, increasing Cuba's bandwidth by a factor of 3,000. Its debut has been repeatedly delayed, adding to perceptions that Cuban authorities are wary of its power, even though they have already announced it will not be used to deliver private internet access to Cuban homes.

U.S. officials appear to view communication technology as the key to sparking political change on the island. In a leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable that recently surfaced, the top American official in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, urged the lifting of restrictions on software downloads in Cuba, where Microsoft and other American companies have blocked access to comply with anti-terrorism statutes. Such restrictions, Farrar argued, work "directly against U.S. goals to advance people-to-people interaction."

Bringing more technology, wrote Farrar at the time, could "help facilitate Iran-style democratic ferment in Cuba."

By Nick Miroff

Source: GlobalPost

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Cuba: Microcredit Knocks on Door...Softly

'Until about a year and a half ago, you practically couldn't talk about this issue, but now the situation is different,' a European diplomat told IPS. He preferred not to be identified, to avoid undermining progress on the issue, which has its own particular complexities in the case of Cuba. 'The idea of microcredit went from being almost sacrilege to something interesting,' he noted.

Juan Diego Ruiz, general coordinator of Spanish cooperation in Cuba, said the word microcredit is not part of the Cuban vocabulary, and actually might not be the most correct term in this case.

'Today what's being talked about more is credit policy, credit for the productive sector, and it's an issue that is being discussed both on the street and in offices,' he told IPS.

One of the entities feeling out the situation on the ground is the Italian National Committee for Microcredit. It has organised a couple of visits to Cuba, evidence that the subject of microfinance is drawing attention little by little in the context of development projects and an opening to the private sector, where international cooperation could play an important role.

This type of loan was created in the 1970s as a financing alternative for low-income people in need of capital to set up small businesses. Unlike traditional credit, no collateral is required, the amount is usually relatively small, and payments are weekly or biweekly.

These differences lead to micro-financing institutions being described as entities with high administrative costs covered by the high interest rates generated by their portfolio of clients, composed of a large number of small, short-term loans, without guarantees, concentrated in a specific geographic area.

Credit exists in Cuba in the form of Cuban pesos and focused on consumption, such as the individual purchase of domestic goods, and agricultural cooperatives.But the strategy launched by the sixth congress of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) to modernise the economic system anticipates expanding and diversifying possibilities in terms of bank loans.

The 313-point programme charting the country's economic and social guidelines for the coming years specifies that credit policy will be essentially oriented towards providing necessary support for activities that stimulate national production and generate hard currency income or replace imports, as well as activities that promote development.

Meanwhile, since March, banking and credit policies have been in place for individuals, such as loans for farmers to buy equipment and supplies in retail stores with the goal of boosting national food production.

Also, loans may be granted to people authorised to engage in self- employment, to finance their working capital and investments via the purchase of assets, supplies and equipment, and to allow these self- employed workers to sell products and services to state entities through contracts.

It is precisely in these emerging sectors, which have developed from the distribution of idle state land to thousands of farmers and the expansion of trades and activities in which self-employment is allowed, where microcredit could have the greatest impact, at least initially.

However, the legal framework that will regulate the new policies on credit in general has yet to be defined.

In these new forms of non-state activities, small-scale loans could facilitate access to machinery, tools, supplies and equipment, and increase the individual's ability to contract services or labour, which would stimulate the economy.

It is in the area of self-employment 'where microcredit fits best, with a focus on individuals,' Tomas Marco, head of agricultural development in Cuba for the Spanish Technical Office for Cooperation, commented to IPS. 'What's opening up is a possibility; it's not even a certainty. Nobody knows if loans in hard currency for self-employed people will be permitted.'

Cuba's dual currency system, in which the Cuban peso is the national currency and the convertible peso (CUC) replaced the U.S. dollar as hard currency in all transactions in 2004, is another challenge to overcome in making credit more widely available. However, no short-term changes to the system are on the horizon.

'Another major obstacle is purchasing power,' Marco said. 'You might give a hard currency loan to a UBPC (Basic Unit of Cooperative Production in agriculture), but the cooperatives cannot directly buy in hard currency. We have to wait until regulations are created for the (new economic and political) guidelines, and see how these aspects are regulated.'

Rodolfo Hernandez, an official with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), said microcredit could benefit Cuba 'fundamentally' in the low and medium-income sectors, with a certain amount of priority given to women and young people.

'It would be important for loans to be granted in both currencies, for shops and other locales to be created that sell at the municipal and sub-municipal levels, and for the credits to carry a payable interest rate that would make the process sustainable and that would make loans accessible to people in low and medium-income segments of the population,' the expert said.

In his opinion, funds should be channelled through the Bank of Credit and Development or local banks created for that purpose, and by associations of cooperatives - whose partners are other cooperatives - that have enough income to take on the commitment. For his part, Ruiz did not rule out that in the context of international cooperation, non-commercial but reimbursable credit instruments could operate. 'The opportunity and the will are there. In recent months, our headquarters (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation) has made several visits, and has reported on credit experiences that could have work here,' he commented.

By Grogg, Patricia 

Source: IPS

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Cuba: Another Historiography Is Possible

The Presidential Palace, built between 1913-1920. From 1965, the Museum of the Revolution. 

Last Friday, I was talking with a young Honduran historian who was referring to Cuba’s Republican stage (1902-1959). She simplified that period by comparing it to how she sees Panama today: a paradise for gambling and sex but with a government that is failing to provide its citizens a dignified life.

No matter how much revolutionary historiography has attempted to satanize Republican Cuba (attaching it with prefixes like “neo” or “pseudo to the noun “Republic”), it takes an effort to think this way by anyone who values logic and knows something about the history of Cuba.

At least it takes some effort on my part, because for me the Cuban republic was not merely an American backyard for gambling and prostitution. There were also institutions here that for their seriousness and quality earned an esteemed place in the memory of our senior citizens.

These were such that I’ve yet to meet an elderly elementary school teacher who doesn’t speak of their career without concluding with the sentence: “Us, yes, we are true teachers!” in an obvious critique of educators created by the revolutionary government.

That republic of “players and prostitutes” also gave humanity numbers of people of international stature, such as the world champion of chess (Jose Raul Capablanca) and of boxing (“Kid Chocolate”). And I have to say that if Cuba still cannot point to a Nobel Prize winner from that time, it was simply because the sponsors and organizers of that award considered it undue to grant such a distinguished medal to a Latin American.

It’s worth clarifying that despite the fact that the Swedish academy never granted Dr. Carlos J. Finlay the award, it did indeed nominate him for it on at least six occasions. This was an award that he clearly deserved because of his discovery of the Aedes aegypti mosquito as being the transmitting agent of yellow fever, thus saving hundreds of thousands of lives, which in an ironic twist of destiny also facilitated the completion of the Panama Canal.

Another republic quite removed from the casinos and brothels was the one that grouped itself around Cuban intellectuality. Here at least three true erudite circles existed: the liberal, the Catholic and the socialist one, each led by a caliber of intellectuals at the continental level – people such as Jorge Mañach, Jose Lezama Lima and Juan Marinello, each also with their own identity and way of thinking about Cuba.

From their respective political positions, and throughout the entire period of the republic, these cultivated circles that knew how to maintain intense, respectful and enriching dialogues on the issues that affected the nation, a matter that has been excessively downplayed in today’s Cuban academic and cultural panorama.

That republic, which my Honduran friend automatically compared to the worst part of Panama, she also defined as “of little importance” also had one of the most important architecture schools on the continent. This was where architects like Nicolas Quintana (who died recently in Miami), Havana resident Mario Coyula and many others designed and built in barely a half a decade (1953-1958) two of the most emblematic neighborhoods in Havana and in Cuba: Vedado and Miramar.

It goes without saying that this Cuba, so “ill-favored” and full of thugs (according to national historiography), had the first Latin American Olympic champion: fencer Ramon Fonts (1904).

It’s also worth remembering the important role that Cuba would play in the technological development of the region. The first Latin American airborne journey was carried out by a Cuban, Agustin Parla. The 1913 flight lasted almost three hours as that pilot traveled between Cayo Hueso (U.S.A.) and the town of the Mariel, west of Havana.

Even rights such as divorce — so trying and difficult to understand for sexist Ibero-Americans at the beginning of the 20th century — was accepted in our country as early as 1918.

In terms of other women’s rights, the first feminist movement in Ibero-America appeared at the end of the 1930’s in Cuba, thirty-six years ahead of the movement in Spain, for example.

Other important facts that my friend should know is that in 1937 Cuba decreed, for the first time in Ibero-America, laws for the eight-hour work day, the minimum wage and university autonomy.

In 1940 a constitution was adopted which was the first one in Ibero-America that approved the right of women to vote, equal rights for different sexes and races, and women’s right to work.

In 1951 the Riviera Hotel became the first in the world to have central air conditioning.

In terms of our agrarian culture, my friend should also know that in 1954 Cuba succeeded in producing one head of cattle for each resident, with the Cuban population back then numbering around six million people.

It would also be worthwhile to recognize that in 1956 the UN recognized Cuba as the number two country in Latin America in terms of its literacy index, with its illiterate population consisting of only 23.6 percent – well above Spain’s illiterate population of 60 percent.

In 1957 Cuba was recognized by the UN as the leading Ibero-America country in terms of its number of doctors per capita (1 for every 957 residents).

In 1958 Cuba ranked as the second country of the world in the percentage of households with color television and it was the third in the world to establish a color TV station.

In 1958 Cuba was the Ibero-American country with the most automobiles (160,000, or one for each 38 residents).

I also feel it my duty to tell my friend that in 1959, Havana led the world by being the city with the most movie theaters (358), even surpassing cities like New York and Paris.

In conclusion, I would like to let my friend know that I don’t have anything personal against our fine Panamanian sisters and brothers, nor do I believe that she does. Still, I would like to know if she still thinks the same after this brief review of the data on the Cuban Republic.

Alfredo Fernandez Rodriguez

Source: Havana Times 

Related: Clouds in my Cuban coffee 

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Cuba frees another political prisoner

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Cuba has freed another political prisoner, leaving only six still behind bars from a group of 52 that President Raúl Castro has promised to release, the Catholic Church said.

The latest was Iván Hernández Carrillo, who had been jailed since a 2003 government crackdown on opponents and was serving a 25-year sentence.

Castro has said he wants to clear all political prisoners from Cuban jails in an apparent attempt to end one of Cuba's thorniest international issues as it moves into a new era of economic reform.

In a deal brokered by the Church, Castro agreed in July to free the 52, those remaining in jail after 75 were arrested in the 2003 crackdown, which drew wide condemnation of the communist-led government.

Hernández, 39, told reporters from his family's home in Colón, 135 miles (220 km) southeast of Havana, that he was "very happy to be in my house, sharing freedom with my family and friends."

He vowed to resume his work as an independent journalist, which led to his imprisonment in 2003, and fight "for freedom of expression, for respect for human rights."

Castro wanted the freed dissidents to go to Spain, which agreed to take them, and most have. But the last prisoners, including Hernández, have refused to go and will be allowed to stay in Cuba.

Cuba views dissidents as mercenaries who work for the United States.

It is not clear how many more political prisoners Cuba has, but it has been releasing most of those who jailed for committing crimes either while trying to flee Cuba or during activities against the government.

The Church said in a separate announcement that six other prisoners not included in the group of 52 would be freed soon and sent to Spain.

Source: Buenos Aires Herald

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11 Cuban dissidents spend 8th Christmas in prison

HAVANA - It was another lonely Christmas for the wives of 11 imprisoned dissidents slated to be freed under a deal between the Cuban government and the island's Roman Catholic Church, as the holiday came and went with no sign they'd be released anytime soon.

"Christmas is a family holiday, and for eight Christmases, there's been an empty seat at the table. We hope that next year, that won't the case," said Laura Pollan, a leader of the Ladies in White, a group made up of the wives and mothers of the dissidents.

Still, Pollan added, "There's been no sign that any of them are going to be released soon."

She spoke to reporters as about 30 women took part in the group's traditional after-Mass Sunday march.

Under an informal deal announced in July by Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, 52 activists and social commentators detained in a 2003 crackdown were supposed to be freed, probably by early November. Forty-one have been released, and all but one was sent to Spain.

The 11 still behind bars have said they want to remain in Cuba, a demand some observers see as a possible stumbling block to their release.

"It's clear that the way the government has proceeded is to get the prisoners to agree to leave the country," said Phil Peters, a Cuba specialist at the Lexington Institute near Washington. "Now they're down to the people who don't want to go, so that makes it much more difficult."

Peters said he wasn't particularly worried they had not been freed by Christmas.

"There isn't anything special about the date, except for that the prisoner release has been discussed by the Catholic Church and obviously Christmas is an important date for Catholics," Peters said in a telephone interview. "The government never gave a specific date, so maybe they had a longer period in mind" than the three- to four-month period mentioned by Ortega.

"It's going slowly, but then again, lots of things go slowly in Cuba," Peters said. He added the release of the 11 will be a "very important step" because it would bring the number of political prisoners in Cuba "down to a very low number, or nearly zero."

That was little comfort for the Ladies in White at Christmas time.

"It's a difficult time for us," Bertha Soler told the AP. "It's a sacred time for families and we're still far from ours."

The government alleges all the dissidents are paid by Washington to undermine the political system and says many of them were sentenced for crimes including treason.

Last Thursday, the Church announced that two prisoners not on the list of 52 would be freed and sent to Spain shortly.

JENNY BARCHFIELD

From: Metro

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Raúl the pragmatist

Am I in charge now?

Shortly after he took charge of Cuba from his ailing brother, Fidel, in 2006, Raúl Castro declared that his country’s moribund communist economy needed to change. But his failure to make anything more than marginal adjustments disappointed hopes that he would follow Chinese and Vietnamese communist leaders in combining capitalist economics and growing social freedom with continued party control.

Now, at last, Mr Castro is showing signs of boldness. Over the past few weeks he has launched some potentially far-reaching changes. By April 1, 500,000 Cubans will be laid off from their state jobs and encouraged to make their own living in small businesses. Over the next two or three years, another 800,000 are likely to join them. Eventually up to two Cubans in five will no longer work for the state.

This week Mr Castro convened a much-postponed Congress of the Communist Party for late April: its job will be to bless the new economic model. Meanwhile, the government has released more than 50 political prisoners. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is Cuban communism finally on the way out?

Any answer must be hedged about with caveats. The economists advising Mr Castro are barred from talking of “reform”. In its guidelines for the party congress, the leadership declares that “only socialism [ie, communism] is capable of overcoming our difficulties and preserving the gains of the revolution” and that in the new economy “planning will be paramount, not the market.” No Cuban official has matched Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of “market socialism”, let alone his (perhaps apocryphal) injunction that “to get rich is glorious”. The welcome release of prisoners seems merely to have been a move to deflect outside criticism after the death of one of them in a hunger strike, rather than a first step in dismantling the island’s police state. Indeed the army is playing a bigger role in the economy and in government.

Yet Raúl’s reforms go much further than Fidel’s reluctant acceptance of foreign investment and limited self-employment after the collapse of the Soviet Union, partially reversed on the appearance of a new benefactor, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. For the first time since the 1960s Cubans will be able to employ other Cubans (even though the constitution bans such “exploitation”). Many of the rules under which these new businesses will operate are still being drawn up. But it seems that Cubans will now be able to get loans and rent and buy property. Other changes are likely to follow. Mr Castro talks of gradually eliminating the free food rations that Cubans get, and moving towards targeted social assistance (as elsewhere in Latin America). The corollary is that wages will have to go up — and increasingly they will be set in the market.

In all this Mr Castro is bowing to reality. He has been withering in his criticism of the featherbedding that has bankrupted the state. He has also refused to blame the American economic embargo for problems which he rightly says are self-inflicted. His pragmatism has finally won out against his brother’s doctrinaire Utopianism.

Apart from the economy, the other big task facing Mr Castro, who is 79 (and Fidel 84), is to start handing over power to a younger generation. That may come after the party congress next year. In the meantime, his new boldness represents an opportunity for those who hope that Cuba will eventually join the rest of Latin America in accepting democracy and the market economy, for once the market’s green shoots appear they tend to flourish.

How to help kill communism

Outsiders should take their lead from the common position that Europe adopted in 1996, which allows it to help in “the progressive and irreversible opening of the Cuban economy” while predicating closer friendship on moves towards democracy. Offering training and credit — as Brazil has done — to Cuba’s incipient private sector would be a good move. Rewarding Cuba for releasing prisoners who should never have been locked up in the first place — as Miguel Moratinos, Spain’s recently sacked foreign minister, wanted — would not.

America’s embargo remains as futile and counter-productive as ever. Although Barack Obama has commendably reversed George W. Bush’s restrictions on visits and remittances by Cuban-Americans, Republican control of Congress will make it even less likely that the embargo will be dismantled. That’s a great shame. The embargo has allowed the Castros to pose as proud Cuban nationalists standing up to a bullying hegemon and thus helped them cling to power. If change is at last under way it is despite the embargo, not because of it.

From: Indian Express

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Spanish tourism stagnating

A popular tourist street on the Habana Vieja - "Old Havana".

Tourism from Spain, one of Cuba’s main source markets, is stagnating or declining this year, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero told Spanish travel agents during the opening of a conference in Santiago de Cuba.

He said he expected Spanish tourism to rise again “sooner or later.” The number of Spanish visitors peaked in 2005, at 194,000.

The current stagnation follows a financial crisis and recession that hit Spain harder than other European nations, and U.S. takeovers of two key Spanish tourism companies, and the bankruptcy of another. The purchase of Orizonia Corporación — one of the biggest foreign tourism providers in Cuba and owner of the Iberojet tour operator and Iberworld charter airline — by Washington-based private equity firm Carlyle Group took the company out of the picture in 2006, costing Cuba some 46,000 Spanish visitors per year.

The takeover of Spain’s Pullmantur Cruises by Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises, also in 2006, caused a 22,000-passenger drop in Cuban cruise tourism. Finally, the ceasing of operations by Air Comet and the bankruptcy of its owner, Madrid-based Grupo Marsans, in December last year caused another 20,000-visitor drop in Cuba.

New, smaller Spanish players, such as Gemini Cruises, have picked up the ball, Marrero said.

From: Cuba Standard

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Cuba frees 17th journalist jailed in Black Spring

New York, October 12, 2010 -- Cuban journalist Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, left, was freed from prison on Friday and exiled to Spain as part of a July agreement between the Havana government and the Catholic Church. Seventeen journalists jailed in the 2003 Black Spring crackdown have now been freed and exiled as part of the agreement. "I feel as if I was born again, trying to get used to cell phones, personal computers and emails, all things that were barely known in Cuba before I was jailed," Fuentes told CPJ in a telephone interview.

Fuentes said that he never wanted to leave Cuba, but seven years of incarceration made it too hard to stay. "It was a difficult decision, but even more difficult was to turn down the offer and remain in jail," he explained.

Fuentes, a freelance reporter originally based in the city of Artemisa, began serving a 26-year prison term in March 2003. He arrived in Madrid shortly after noon on Friday, accompanied by ten members of his family.

In July, the Catholic Church brokered an agreement with Cuban authorities to release 52 political prisoners who were arrested seven years ago, during a massive government crackdown on political dissent and independent journalism. Spanish government officials also participated in the talks.

All 17 of the reporters released so far have been immediately flown to Spain. (One has since relocated to Chile.)

Three journalists arrested in the 2003 crackdown remain in jail, along with another journalist imprisoned at a later time, CPJ research shows. The first three--including CPJ awardee Héctor Maseda--have already expressed their desire to stay in Cuba upon release, the reporters' families told CPJ.

A story published in September by the Madrid-based daily El País quoted Spanish officials as saying that imprisoned reporters who want to stay in Cuba upon release will be freed through a parole program. The Cuban government has not confirmed the existence of such a program.

Below is a capsule report on Fuentes' case from CPJ's annual census of jailed journalists, conducted in December 2009.

Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, freelance
Imprisoned: March 19, 2003

Fuentes, an economist by training, began working for the Cuban independent press in 1991. On March 19, 2003, he was arrested after a raid on his home in the city of Artemisa. The next month, the freelance reporter was convicted of violating Article 91 of the Cuban penal code, which imposes harsh penalties for acting against "the independence or the territorial integrity of the state." A judge in western Havana province handed him a 26-year prison sentence.

The 60-year-old journalist was being held at the maximum-security Guanajay Prison, his wife, Loyda Valdés González, told CPJ. Valdés González, who is allowed to visit her husband only once every 45 days, said conditions at Guanajay were better than those at other prisons where he had been held. Due to his severe back problems, the reporter did not share a cell with other prisoners. Valdés González said her husband suffered from chronic gastritis that caused him to lose significant amounts of weight.

Valdés González told CPJ that in December 2007, her husband presented an appeal to Cuba's Supreme Tribunal Court. Because Cuban authorities denied Fuentes access to a lawyer, he did so without benefit of counsel. After two years, the court had still not responded to him, Valdés González told CPJ.

From: CPJ

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Cuba: The repression has to stop

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Five Cuban dissidents reject proposed exile

Havana, July 14 (DPA) Five of 52 dissidents that Cuba has agreed to release from prison and send into exile, have refused to go to Spain in line with the deal.

As the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco, a group of wives and mothers of dissidents) said Wednesday, the five have informed Havana’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega of their decision.

Several released political prisoners have arrived in Spain since Tuesday and were to decide whether to stay there or go elsewhere, under an agreement between Cuban and Spanish authorities brokered by the Roman Catholic Church.

According to the Ladies in White, Pablo Arguelles Moran, Eduardo Diaz Fleitas, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique, Regis Iglesias Ramirez and Felix Navarro Rodriguez have refused to leave the communist island.

Cuba agreed last week to release 52 political prisoners after talks mediated by Spain and the Catholic Church. Spain is expected to receive up to 20 of the dissidents.

If any of the exiled prisoners wanted to return to Cuba, they would need special permission from the Cuban government.

From: CalcuttaTube

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