The U.S. Is Busy Elsewhere, So Castro Fills His Jails

Americas / By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL OPINION Friday, March 28, 2003

The terror came after dark. The targets were clear. The strikes were precise. Opponents were silenced.

I refer not to an al Qaeda foray, but to Fidel Castro’s latest assault on the battered Cuban population. In the same week that the allied coalition moved against Saddam Hussein, Fidel’s goons swept the island arresting over 85 non-violent dissidents, searching their homes in the wee hours of the morning, seizing books and medicine. Suspects were charged with "crimes" that carry up to 20-year sentences.

It is unlikely that the events coincided accidentally. In a statement of protest, the secretary general of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, said, "Cuban authorities are clearly taking advantage of the war in Iraq to crack down while the world looks elsewhere."

There is indeed every reason to believe that the wily Fidel carefully calculated that the right moment to slap down Cuba’s democrats was while the world’s most important human-rights advocates were at war with the Iraqi dictatorship. The allied coalition is also at odds with a number of ankle biters, some whom happen to have seats on the United Nations Security Council.

Libya now chairs the UN Human Rights Commission. Canada and France are busy teaming up with such moral icons as Vietnam and Syria to try to take George Bush down a notch or two. When I phoned a Chilean official in the U.S. to get that country’s statement condeming Fidel’s crackdown, I learned there was no statement. Mexico’s foreign office in Washington said it had no statement either.

Castro has demonstrated how clearly world despots understand which countries have moral clarity on human-rights issues. If those countries are otherwise engaged-and particularly if they are under fire from many sources for their assertive liberation policies—he can get a pass. As Mr. Menard wrote: "Human rights in other countries could also soon suffer the same fate."

The details of the regime sweep were graphically detailed by a number of Cuban journalists who managed to get their story out. Author Laura Silber compiled some of those reports in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

Among the Cuban journalists quoted was Claudia Márquez Linares: " There was not a spot in the house they did not search. They confiscated 150 books, archives of the Liberal Democratic Party, a video camera, 36 diskettes, a laptop and a printer… my husband was transferred to the state security headquarters in Villa Marista."

According to Ms. Silber, other journalists told of the confiscation of a newborn’s medicine. Cuban Rodolfo Damián reported that "It took the proportion of a program" with "rapid response teams" invading whole blocks where "suspects" lived.

The crackdown was primarily directed at the Varela Project, a grassroots democracy effort led by Oswaldo Payá and Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement. Last year Mr. Payá circulated a petition calling for a referendum on electoral reform, free speech, private enterprise and amnesty for peaceful political prisoners. More than 11,000 Cubans signed it. No small feat considering that opposition to the Cuban government carries great risk, including the possibility of physical harm. Economic security is also endangered because Fidel is the only employer on the island.

Mr. Payá presented the petition to the Cuban National Assembly last May, shortly before Jimmy Carter arrived as Castro’s guest. In between smiling poses with the dictator, Mr. Carter endorsed the Varela Project and the petition. Not surprisingly, as soon as the roving former president left the island to spread cheer elsewhere, Castro stuck the petition in a drawer and went back to fear tactics as usual. Since the crackdown, Mr. Carter has signaled that he may have been overly optimistic about Fidel’s potential for rehabilitation. He condemned the roundup last week and said, "I’ve been disappointed that the National Assembly did not accept the Varela petition and act on that petition, one way or another.

Cuban democrats continued to chip away at Castro’s one-man rule, however, Mr. Payá says that half of the arrested in the sweep were coordinators of the Varela Project in the provinces. Mr. Payá has so far escaped arrest, perhaps because of his high profile as a human-rights advocate.

Mart Laar, the former prime minister of Estonia and an authority on communist repression in Eastern Europe, said this week that "Castro is afraid that the growing strength of the nonviolent pro-democracy movement could begin to fragment his regime. Castro has shown weakness and not strength with these arrests."

Those detained included Marta Beatriz Roque, René Gómes and Félix Bonne. The three leaders of the Cuban opposition were conducting a peaceful fast protesting the detention of Afro-Cuban physician and human-rights advocate Oscar Elías Biscet when state security came after them. Raúl Rivero perhaps Cuba’s most important independent journalist and poet was also arrested. They were thrown in the dungeons with already-jailed human-rights lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, who is blind and reportedly held in inhumane conditions.

The U.S. State Department has issued a statement calling the assault "the most egregious act of political repression in Cuba in the last decade." According to Directorio, a Miami-based Cuban advocacy group, 50 Mexican congressmen, the Christian Democratic Organization of the Americas, some legislators from Argentina and Uruguay and even France have condemned de crackdown. On Wednesday the European Union joined the list.

"In no way will the project be stopped," Mr. Payá told the New York Times in an interview this week. "There had been a flowering in Cuba of a peaceful movement for rights and reconciliation to defeat this culture of fear. Cuba’s spring is the Varela Project, which has been sustained by thousands and which will grow."

In recent years Castro had begun to respond to international pressure. That pressure is what gave some breathing room for a time to these brave Cuban democrats and what helped them stand up to the regime. But now that Fidel has reverted to type, they need help again, not just from the U.S. but also from Latin American leaders like Chile’s Socialist President Ricardo Lagos and Mexico’s Vicente Fox. The Cuban democracy movement is a tailor-made cause for human-rights advocates. If they are courageous enough to stand up and be counted.

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