Castro sics dogs on flower-carrying women

Among the bravest and most persistent protesters against dictatorial regimes have been, for years, the Ladies in White of Cuba. With Fidel presumably sidelined, his brother Raul carries on the brutish family tradition of crushing dissent, as seen in his attacks against this non-violent group.

Ladies in White members are comprised of relatives of caged political prisoners, as well as unyielding Cuban human-rights activists. For an ongoing account of what they have to endure while much of the world – including America – now largely ignores the victims of this ruthless "Revolution," read the account below:

On Aug. 7, 20 Ladies in White bearing flowers (never weapons) began their march on the streets of the city of Santiago de Cuba after leaving its cathedral.

Government-organized mobs battered the women and pushed them into buses headed for an unknown destination. More of these hoodlums, also assembled by the Ministry of the Interior, also beat up Ladies in White that day in the city of Palmarito del Cauto. ("Activists With Fractures Are Hospitalized After Brutal Attack," Aug. 7, netforcuba.org).

For their "disloyalty" to the Castro regime, six Ladies in White and other human-rights dissidents were hospitalized. And dig this if you have been led to believe that Cuba's rulers have been "humanized" in recent years:

"By orders of the political police, doctors refused to provide these wounded activists with a medical certificate, which they need in order to accuse Cuban authorities of the violence perpetrated against them." (Raul seems to be becoming more meticulous in denying charges of cruelty.)

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: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag

One of the few U.S. newspapers still covering the Stalinist beat in Cuba is the Miami Herald ("Cuban dissidents say cops again beat women," miamiherald.com, Aug. 16). These violently enforced gag rules "marked the fourth weekend in a row that authorities have used physical force and even violence to break up the women's attempt to establish their right to protest in eastern Cuba."

And this is how utterly insistent on squashing dissent the Castro administration remains after all these bloody decades, as reported by the Miami Herald:

"Police also detained another seven Ladies in White supporters before they could get to the cathedral (in Santiago), including three who tried to sneak out of their homes around 2 a.m. in hopes of evading the security forces," said Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, a recently freed political prisoner. "One of the women fainted when confronted with a police guard dog."

Is Raul Castro, shown enlisting combative dogs, becoming insecure?

Another rare U.S. news source staying on the Castro brothers' revolutionary crusade against free speech is the Wall Street Journal ("On Cuba's Capital Steps," Aug. 27). The week before, there were four Cubans "who took to the steps of the Capitol in Havana ... chanting 'liberty' for 40 minutes" – until dragged into patrol cars by uniformed Castro state security thugs.

One of them, Sara Marta Fonseca – a member of Cuba's Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights – in a telephone interview with Diario de Cuba, a Spain-based online newspaper, said she was pleased with the results of her arrest "because she heard the crowd crying 'abuser, leave them alone, they are peaceful and they are telling the truth.'"

Fonseca explained: "I am very happy because in spite of being beaten and dragged, we could see that the people were ready to join us."

However, she does admit: "Realistically, we do not have the strength and the power to defeat the dictatorship. The strength and the power are to be found in the unity of the people. In this we put all our faith, in that this people will cross the barrier of fear and join the opposition to reclaim freedom."

These Cuban forces of freedom, however, will continue to get no support from, gosh, the American Library Association (ALA), despite its mantra "The Freedom to Read." The ALA resolutely will not condemn the Castros' attacks on Cuban independent librarians.

Because I've long reported on this shame of the ALA, the world's largest organization of librarians – by contrast with library associations in other countries rebuking Cuba – I've been scorned by Eliades Costa, the director of the Cuban National Library, where biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. are banned.

Said Costa: "What does Mr. Hentoff know of the real Cuba?"

My public answer (The Friends of Cuban Libraries, "Defenders of Intellectual Freedom," Aug. 28, 2011): "I know that if I were a Cuban, I'd be in prison."

I also damn well know that I'm right about the ALA's silence on Castro courts ordering the burning of books seized from arrested Cuban independent librarians – and that these raids continue. From Friends of Cuban Libraries late-breaking news section, on April 9: "Jose Ramon Rivera, the director of an independent library in Pinar del Rio Province, complains that a State Security major named Rafael and two police agents entered his house at #655 Garmendia St. and, without showing a warrant, took away four boxes of books."

Now hear this: On April 30, in New York, ALA activist Rhonda Neugebauer, when asked why in 20 years of visits to Cuba she hasn't been able to find any censorship of books, said: "The question does not deserve an answer."

Fortunately, Americans still find public libraries essential. Next time you're in one, ask the librarian to insist that the American Library Association help Cubans gain their right of freedom to read by speaking the truth about the Castros!

And why has so much of our online, print and electronic media let the ALA get away with this naked hypocrisy? I can only imagine that the smiling Castro brothers approve of the august ALA's silence.

by Nat Hentoff

Source: WND

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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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Churches Help Cubans through Economic Transition

Evangelical church in Havana, Cuba.

The aging revolutionaries who have controlled Cuba for the past 50 years, haven't trained younger leaders to take their place.

That became evident at the long-awaited Communist Party Congress in April, when 79-year old Raul Castro was named the party's first secretary, and the number two spot went to an 80-year-old.

A feeble Fidel Castro, 84, made a surprise appearance. This was the first time in the Congress' history that he wasn't included on the powerful central committee.

That post went to his brother Raul, who admitted that Cuba has a succession problem. Raul Castro made a surprise recommendation of term limits for politicians -- including himself.

"We have reached the conclusion that it is recommendable to limit to a maximum of two five-year consecutive terms all the state's fundamental political positions," he said.

But that's not the only problem that keeps Cuba among the poorest nations in the Americas.

The government employs eight out of every 10 Cuban workers, a dead weight the economy can't sustain.

Raul Castro knows the country has to shed its Communist baggage, but as the new party leader he made a pledge to the faithful.

"To defend, preserve, and continue to perfect socialism and never allow the return of the capitalist regime," he said.

"Cuba right now is in a state of great confusion between shifting from purely a Socialist Communist system to a quasi market system," said Teo Babun, leader of the Miami-based charity Echo Cuba.

"Not quite at the acceleration of China or Vietnam, and not knowing where they're going," Babun said. "But being very cautious not to let this whole thing get out of hand for them."

Last year, Raul promised to reduce the bloated government payroll by laying off half a million workers.

While the the massive government layoffs haven't happened, the uncertainty has left many Cubans on edge. Now, many evangelical churches are helping their members create their own jobs.

"What the more aggressive churches have been doing is allowing the individual members of the churches to partner with organizations outside of Cuba that will help them start small businesses and therefore become tithers, for example, to the churches and supporters of the social programs that the churches are running," Babun explained.

With the help of Echo Cuba, Cuban evangelicals have started more than 1,200 small businesses.

"We select Cubans within the churches that are entrepreneurial. We help them write a business plan, guide them in the process of how to start their business, and then bring them a 'business in a box,'" Babun said.

"Everything that they need to start a business is basically purchased outside of Cuba and brought to Cuba so that they can get things going," he said.

But the budding entrepreneurs first have to forget what the Communist government has taught them for the past 50 years.

"The Socialist model of Cuba, starting in 1959, [has] one head, everything coming down," Babun continued.

"They really don't understand how to meet together, how to create collaboration with each other, how to make decisions in a meeting format," he said. "All those things that we take for granted, they don't understand it."

If churches are to help members survive Cuba's economic crisis, they must learn the basics of a free market economy.

Once Christians start their own businesses, Babun said other freedoms may follow.

"The freedom to be able to operate not only in the marketplace, but also in their place of worship," he said. "Freely, without any kind of restriction from any form of government."

Stan Jeter

Source: CBN News

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In spite of release of dissidents, Cuba continues "to stifle freedom of expression"

The Cuban authorities are continuing to stifle freedom of expression on the island in spite of the much-publicized recent wave of releases of prominent dissidents, Amnesty International warned ahead of the eighth anniversary of a crackdown on activists.

Hundreds of pro-democracy activists have suffered harassment, intimidation and arbitrary arrest in recent weeks as the Cuban government employs new tactics to stamp out dissent.

Of 75 activists arrested in a crackdown around 18 March 2003, (‘Black Spring’) only three remain in jail after 50 releases since last June, with most of the freed activists currently exiled in Spain. Amnesty International has called for the remaining prisoners to be released immediately and unconditionally.

“The release of those detained in the 2003 crackdown is a hugely positive step but it tells only one side of the story facing Cuban human rights activists,” said Gerardo Ducos, Cuba researcher at Amnesty International.

“Those living on the island are still being targeted for their work, especially through short-term detentions, while repressive laws give the Cuban authorities a free rein to punish anyone who criticizes them.”

”Meanwhile, three of the prisoners detained eight years ago still languish in prison and must be freed immediately.“

In one recent crackdown the authorities detained over one hundred people in one day in a pre-emptive strike designed to stop activists marking the death of activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died following a prolonged hunger strike while in detention.

On 23 February, the one-year anniversary of Tamayo's death, according to the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, the authorities placed over 50 people under house arrest before freeing them hours later.

Activist Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, was recently named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International after being detained without trial for over three months.

The president of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy was arrested after organizing an activists' meeting inside his own home.

”Cubans are still at the mercy of draconian laws that class activism as a crime and anyone who dares to criticize the authorities is at risk of detention,“ said Gerardo Ducos.

”In addition to releasing long-term prisoners of conscience, to properly realize freedom of expression the Cuban government also has to change its laws.”

Seventy-five people were jailed in a massive crackdown against the dissident movement around 18 March 2003 for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

Most of them were charged with crimes including “acts against the independence of the state” because they allegedly received funds and/or materials from US-based NGOs financed by the US government.

They were sentenced to between six and 28 years in prison after speedy and unfair trials for engaging in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba. These activities included publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile to Cuba.
From: MercoPress

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Iconoclastic Young Filmmakers Look at Real Issues in Cuba

Lighting up dark areas of Cuban society with youthful vigour, Muestra Joven (the Young Cinema Exhibition), a local independent film event, reached its 10th anniversary characterised by experimentation and subjects that are both complex and invisible in the national media.

"The exhibition has earned a place for itself, against all the odds," Danae Diéguez, a member of the organising committee since 2006, told IPS about the festival that took place Feb. 22-27.

The sharp criticism expressed in the films has clashed more than once with the authorities, as seen for instance in the attempt to censor the documentary "Revolution", by Mayckell Pedrero, about the underground Cuban hip hop duo Los Aldeanos. The film was awarded several prizes in 2010.

Filmmaker Carlos Y. Rodríguez said one of the virtues of the festival is that it creates "a space for works that deal with controversial real-life problems."

Rodríguez, who is from Santiago de Cuba, 861 kilometres east of Havana, told IPS that this goal has been achieved "prudently, by educating filmmakers and also, to a lesser extent, society."

The festival, launched in 2000, was called the New Directors' Exhibition until this year, when it was renamed Muestra Joven (Young Cinema Exhibition).

Cuba's film institute, ICAIC, coordinates the event, but according to Diéguez it upholds the "open mentality" that is a hallmark of the new generation of Cuban filmmakers.

Thanks to the growing availability of video cameras, democratisation of technology in the country had already progressed by the start of the new century.

Works by those who picked up a camera and recorded films purely for pleasure were collected in the late 1980s and early 1990s and exhibited by the Asociación Hermanos Saíz, a non-governmental cultural organisation for young artists, paving the way for ICAIC's initiative.

The aim of the ICAIC exhibitions was to "bring together, attract and identify the group of people who make alternative movies, outside the bounds of the film industry, with different approaches to production, media, and to some extent style," Diéguez said.

Films presented at the festival attained new qualitative heights with the advent of digital technology, which expanded the potential for filming and editing. The costs of a production of this type are paid by the filmmakers and any personal supporters they may have who can contribute funding.

"Independence is both material and mental," said Diéguez.

Prostitution, violence against women, drug addiction, small farmers forced to abandon their land because of lack of resources, shortcomings in the public education system, the superficiality of Cuban institutions, and poverty are some of the topics addressed by the films each year.

Film expert Enrique Colina says the young people who gather at the exhibition have a passion for the burning issues of Cuba's day-to-day reality, which arises from the absence of critical and social journalism in this Caribbean island nation where the mass media have been in state hands since the mid-1960s.

Social criticism plays a leading role in the festival films. "It has allowed people to express all those things that have damaged them deep down, including intense and hard-hitting social issues," Ariagna Fajardo, who works for Televisión Serrana, a community video and TV project in the east of the country, told IPS.

This 27-year-old creative artist has been singled out for distinctions at the festival, in 2010 for "¿A dónde vamos?" (Where Are We Going?) about rural migration, and this year for "Papalotes" (Kites), which deals with the inertia that has overtaken people in Cuba.

This year there were 69 competition entries, and the main categories were fiction, documentary, animation and original score.

"Memorias del desarrollo" (Memories of Development) by Miguel Coyula won the fiction and original score prizes. It is the first movie to be filmed and exhibited in both the United States and Cuba since the U.S. embargo was imposed in 1962. The film was made possible by its independent, not-for-profit status.

The film takes up the story of Sergio, the leading character in "Memorias del subdesarrollo" (Memories of Underdevelopment), an iconic film by the late Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

Fajardo said the exhibition helps get local stories onto the screens in cinemas in the capital, some of which later resonate with audiences in other countries. But in spite of the attractiveness, strength and topicality of many films, "perhaps they will not generate dialogue beyond Havana's movie houses," she lamented.

However, experts say the main distribution circuit for these films is as alternative as the exhibition itself.

USB flash drives that plug into computers are used for person-to-person circulation, often on the black market, of films like "De leones, buzos y tanqueros" (2008), about people who scavenge recyclable materials on the streets and in garbage dumps, to survive.

On the so-called "USB market", pirated local or international films, television serials or shows recorded on compact disks, DVDs or external storage devices are informally rented or sold.

It is also a Cuban custom to swap or give away all kinds of digital-format audiovisual products, for entertainment or information purposes.

Amateur films compete on equal terms with those by professional directors at the exhibition, which in its first 10 years has launched now-recognised filmmakers like Lester Hamlet and Pavel Giroud, and has helped drive the current boom in independent films in Cuba.

Since 2009, a selection of the films presented at the Havana exhibition has subsequently toured all the country's provinces. "But they cannot get to regions that are remote from the provincial capitals. That population is left out, and does not find out what's going on," Fajardo stressed.

On several occasions, Magali Cavus, a researcher at the University of Lyon in France, has taken Cuban Young Cinema works and alternative films to France. "The films help people to see Cuba not just in black-and-white, but in many more shades," she told IPS.

By Ivet González

From: IPS

Trailer for the documentary "Revolution", screened in 2010 at Muestra Joven

Revolution
Mayckell Pedrero Mariol / Norway / 2010 / 50 min.
This film, by Cuban director Mayckell Pedrero Mariol, is currently one of the most controversial works on the "island of freedom". It had only one public screening in Havana. Just to be on the safe side, journalists and bloggers were not allowed to attend. The protagonists of this documentary are members of the hip-hop group Los Aldeanos, whose lyrics faithfully describe the true reality of Cuban life. For Aldo and El B rap is a war, the Cuban leader is Pinocchio, and free speech is one of the most basic human rights. With their incisive and politically incorrect hip-hop, they have gained considerable popularity among young Cubans. Even though their records are self-released, they are constantly winning music awards. Besides interviews with the group's members and footage of their concerts, this formally inventive film - riotously edited in the style of a music video with a large dose of hip-hop - also presents black-and-white glimpses of everyday life on the streets of Havana, where Los Aldeanos are trying to light the way towards better times.

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Cuba intensifies campaign against dissidents

The Ladies in White surrounded by the "spontaneous" mob.

Cuba stepped up its campaign against the island's small dissident community on Sunday, with pro-government demonstrators screaming insults at the "Ladies in White" opposition group a day after state-television aired a program denouncing them as agents of Washington.

About 100 pro-government demonstrators surrounded the Ladies as they marched in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, shouting slogans like "Down with the Worms!" and "This Street Belongs to Fidel!" as well as some sexually offensive slogans.

The Ladies, mostly middle-aged wives and mothers of political prisoners jailed in a 2003 sweep against intellectuals and opposition figures, wore sweat shirts bearing the image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a political prisoner who died last year after an 83-day hunger strike.

They stood in the middle of the street and refused to move, until security agents moved in and loaded them onto government buses. It was not clear where they were taken, though in the past the dissidents are usually brought back to their homes.

The ugliness, known as an "Act of Repudiation," is an oft-repeated spectacle in Cuba. The government contends the screaming crowd turns out spontaneously to denounce the opposition, though little is done to conceal coordination with state security agents who are also on the scene.

In past demonstrations, state agents have waved for supporters to come forward once it became clear the Ladies would not heed warnings to halt their march.

The women began their march outside a church in the leafy Miramar section of town at midday, as they have done every Sunday since 2003. The demonstration went off quietly, but when the Ladies showed up later in the day in Vedado, the crowds were waiting.

The incident came a day after Cuban television broadcast a program about the Ladies it said showed they were interested in getting money from the United States. Cuba maintains the relationship shows them to be mercenaries and common criminals.

The program, which included taped phone conversations and grainy images of opposition figures meeting with U.S. officials, also revealed that a man thought to be allied with the dissidents, Carlos Serpa, was really a state security agent.

Serpa even allowed himself to be filmed calling in a false report of mistreatment to the U.S. government backed Radio Marti in Miami, then showed how the false report went out on the air a short time later. The program said it was an example of how disinformation is spread.

Cuba is in the midst of releasing the last of the dissidents arrested in 2003, with just five remaining in jail. While most accepted exile in Spain, those released more recently have refused to go and been allowed to return to their homes. Many have vowed to continue fighting for political change, a direct challenge to a government ruled since 1959 by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro.

Tension has been particularly high in the past week because Wednesday was the anniversary of Zapata's death. Dissidents and a human rights official say some 46 opposition figures were detained in the days surrounding the anniversary, though were quickly released. The Ladies in White did not march on the anniversary, but a pro-government crowd showed up outside the home of one of the group's leaders nonetheless, shouting and throwing eggs at 17 women who were gathered inside.

By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA and PAUL HAVEN
From: Chron

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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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