Three years after the harshest crackdown on dissent in decades, human-rights conditions in Cuba have deteriorated as authorities intensify a campaign to disrupt and intimidate the island’s small opposition movement, according to dissidents, diplomats and political analysts.
Elizardo Sanchez, an opposition activist who heads the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said the number of political prisoners in Cuba increased from 306 in early 2005 to 333 in early 2006.
Sanchez said that about 100 pro-government crowd actions, known in Cuba as “acts of repudiation,” and other attacks have occurred against opposition figures since July 2005.
“The situation with civil and political rights has worsened in the past three years,” said Sanchez. “And what’s most worrying for us is that it seems the situation is going to get even worse.”
Last week, a U.S. State Department report and UN expert Christine Chanet each criticized the human-rights situation in Cuba. Chanet also said tightened U.S. sanctions have created “extreme tension” between the two nations “which is far from conducive to the development of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.”
Throwing out insults, eggs
One of the activists targeted by pro-government groups is Noelia Pedraza, who was participating in a vigil in September for political prisoners when, she said, an angry crowd cut the lights to her apartment, shouted insults and threw rocks and eggs.
“Down with the worm!” a leader of the pro-government rally bellowed through a loudspeaker at Pedraza, using the derisive term used by Cuban officialdom for dissidents.
Since then, Pedraza, a leader of a small opposition group in this city 165 miles east of Havana, said she has been detained by police and assaulted by pro-government demonstrators while distributing human-rights material in a park.
Today, the 38-year-old mother of three is recovering her strength after ending a lengthy hunger strike last week during which she demanded that Cuba end its attacks against opposition activists.
“I am in this fight because of the injustices–because I want change,” Pedraza said recently.
But diplomats and experts say it is unlikely Cuban President Fidel Castro will ease the pressure on opposition activists as the 79-year-old leader tries to boost revolutionary fever and tighten control to ensure the government’s survival after his death.
Cuban officials defend the island’s human-rights record by saying they provide universal education, health care and other services. They portray the acts of repudiation as spontaneous outpourings of support for a system they describe as the world’s most democratic and fair.
The attacks intensified after a speech by Castro last July in which he denounced opposition activists as U.S. government lackeys and praised supporters who two weeks earlier disrupted a dissident protest in Havana.
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“The people, angrier than before over such shameless acts of treason, intervened with patriotic fervor and didn’t allow a single mercenary to move,” Castro said. “This is what will happen however many times as necessary when traitors and mercenaries go a millimeter beyond the point that our revolutionary people … are prepared to permit.”
But Sanchez and other activists say Cuban state security agents direct the pro-government attacks, which often occur in front of the homes or meeting places of dissidents, and participants include police dressed in civilian clothes.
Sanchez said the aim of the attacks is to “increase the political repression” without significantly increasing the number of political prisoners.
“Why don’t they want to increase the number of political prisoners?” he asked. “Because outside, in other countries, there has been a lot of criticism.”
Opposition movement gutted
Cuba came under intense pressure from the United States, Europe and international human-rights groups three years ago after imprisoning 75 opposition activists in the largest sweep in decades. Fifteen of the prisoners were later released for medical reasons.
The sweep gutted Cuba’s tiny opposition movement that, nonetheless, manages to survive even though it has been further weakened by emigration, personal and ideological differences, and infiltration by state security agents.
While prominent internationally, Cuba’s dissidents are virtually unknown on the island, where the state-controlled media rarely mention their names except to denounce them as agents of the U.S. government out to topple Castro’s one-party government.
Many Cubans say they know little about “The Ladies in White,” a group of wives, mothers and daughters of political prisoners who march silently each Sunday through an upscale Havana neighborhood.
Hardly noticed is Santa Clara dissident Guillermo Farinas, a hunger striker who is in the hospital where he is being fed intravenously. He is demanding Cuba lift strict controls on Internet access for island residents.
“Spiritually, I feel stronger than the government,” Farinas, 43, said from his hospital bed two weeks ago. “We have to avoid a civil war. The way to fight the government is peacefully.”
Farinas’ heath has deteriorated in recent days, with opposition activists saying he is now in grave danger.
Some experts say Castro is freer to act against the opposition because the government’s position has been strengthened by alliances with Venezuela and China and the resurgence of the left across Latin America.
But Hans De Salas, a researcher at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the dissident crackdown is part of a larger plan to “ensure the continuity of the regime after Fidel Castro’s lifetime.”
In recent months, Castro has attacked widespread black-market activities and corruption, while holding pro-government rallies and taking other measures aimed at recapturing disaffected Cubans and discouraging would-be reformers in the government.
“Fidel Castro is seeking to radicalize Cuban society,” De Salas said.
Castro supporters seem determined to defend the island’s socialist system.
“I am a communist and a revolutionary,” Maria Tomas, a 43-year-old state worker, declared proudly as she stood in the doorway of her apartment in the Havana neighborhood of Vedado.
In the past four months, Tomas has participated in three acts of repudiation against Dolia Leal, a neighbor and dissident whose husband, Nelson Aguiar, is one of the opposition activists imprisoned in 2003.
`Depressed and scared’
Leal said Tomas joined a crowd outside her apartment shouting “mercenary” and “traitor.” The group warned Leal to stop marching on Sundays with “The Ladies in White” and, in late January, prevented dissidents from gathering at her apartment.
“I am very depressed and scared,” said Leal, 61. “I am afraid they will attack me physically. They told me they are going to take drastic actions if I continue.”
Tomas denied the pro-government crowd was aggressive or threatened Leal but said she would not be allowed to pursue her opposition activities.
“The people repudiate and reject whatever act that is against our revolutionary principles,” she said. “We are going to continue doing what we have to do.”
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