Cuba

CUBA Even as Cuba continues on a path to broaden contacts with fareign investars and lure tourists, its repressive machinery still is bent on silencing the voices or the typewriters of those who would transmit information or express an opinion. A recent survey of 600 polítical prisoners being held in Cuban jails indicated that 43 per cent had been sentenced far the crime of "divulging enemy propaganda." In the survey, the National Commission for Human Rights andNational Reconciliation indicated that just 20 per cent of those jailed were charged with sabotage or rebellion. That repart has been received by Amnesty International and Arnericas Watch, as well as by the Ofíice of the Rapporteur on Cuba of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Chronology: March 9 - The Cuban government failed to issue a passport to Néstar Baguer, president of the Association of Independent Cuban Journalists, so that he could travel to Mexico to participate in the Hemispheric Conference on Free Expression. March 29 - Dissident Rodolfo González is tried on charges oí "disseminating enemy propaganda." April 19 - The Ministry of Communications suspended the licenses of dozens of short wave ham radio operators who have been in contact with friends and relatives in the United States and have served as a bridge for information. April 28 - Five journalísts of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the American public television and radio network, were assaulted while on their way to an interview with a leading dissident. The assailants, whom the journalists identified as polícemen, took an estimated $50,000 in carnera and electronic equipment as well as the automobile of one the journalísts, a Cuba-based stringer. The dissident whom the PBS team was going to interview is Elizardo Sánchez, recipient oí the lAPA-Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Award in 1991. May 12 - Cuban poet María Elena Cruz Varela, who had been sentenced to three years in jail for signing a letter to Fidel Castro asking far democratic reíorms, was permitted to travel to the United States. In Washington, D.C., she received the Liberty Prize, awarded by Liberal Internationa!. In 1992, back in Cuba, she was dragged down the steps of her apartment building by a pro-government mob, which pulled her by the hair. On the street she was made to eat a copy of the letter she had written as well as some of her poems. Later she was sentenced to jail on charges of "disseminating enemy propaganda." In Washington, she said her country is going through "a monstrous situation." May 15 - Journalist Alexis Castañeda Pérez was sentenced to serve a five-year jail sentence, imposed in 1993, for "disseminating enemy propaganda." A report by the Cuban Human Rights Movement indicated that Castañeda is not allowed to receive medical treatment for an asthma condition. The Movement also saldthat dissident graphics designer Juan Pérez Izquierdo had been fired from the government agency Publicitur. "He was interviewed at work by two security officers who then gave him a letter saying he did not have the ideological qualifications to hold a job in a government agency," according to the CMHR. May 20 - Yndamiro Restano Díaz, vice president of the Association of Independent Journalists of Cuba, spent the second anniversary of his imprisonment behind bars. He is serving a 10-year sentence in a maximum security jail in Guantánamo. A journalist and poet, he was sentenced by a Popular Tribunal in Havana for publishing works "inciting to civil disobedience and actions against the socialist society." Earlier this year a UN Human Rights Commission declared that Restrano Diaz' arrest and detention are illegal and in violation of international law. August 2 - Sports journalist Luis Hernández Iglesias, of the Havana newspaper Trabajadores, defected from the Cuban delegation at a baseball tournament in Tennessee. August 8 - The Inter American Press Association requests Presidents Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro reciprocally to lift the restrictions that prevent news offices of each of their countries from operating in the other. August 19 - The IAPA calls on Fidel Castro to grant dissident Norberto Fuentes a departure visa so he can go into exile. He had been on hunger strike, protesting not being able to leave his country to accept speaking engagements in universities in the United States. August 22 - The Cuban National Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation releases a survey which states that 43 per cent of all political prisoners in Cuba are serving time on charges of "disseminating enemy propaganda." August 25 - After his 22 days of hunger strike, the government grants Norberto Fuentes his visa after Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez intercedes. The following Cuban intellectuals are serving prison sentences directly related to their intellectual and writing work: • Luis Grave de Peralta, a researcher at the National Seismology Center of the Academy of Sciences, charged with "rebellion." • Adriano González Marichal, vice president of the Cuban Movement for Solidarity and Peace. He was arrested in 1992 and has been beaten repeatedly in jail. He was sentenced to 10 years for "disseminating enemy propaganda." • Rubier Rodríguez Leyva, head of the Department of Agrometeorology at the Academy of Sciences, who has published physics books in Cuba and abroad. He was convicted by a People's Court of "rebellion," accused of spreading enemy propaganda in computer discs and of attempting to spread virus es to government computer systems. • Arquímedes Ruiz Clombié, head of the Department of Induced Rain and Weather Forecast of the Academy of Sciences. Professor and physicist at Oriente University. Arrested on charges of crimes against state security. Convicted of "rebellion." Accused of belonging to a non-violent group called New Revolutionary Generation. • Armando de Jesús Medel Martín, a correspondent for Prensa Latina in Guyana, was charged with espionage. • Cecilio Ismael Zambra Hubert, a poet and member of the Cuban Christian Democratic Party, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "spreading enemy propaganda" and "rebellion." • Roberto Alvarez San Martín, television and radio script writer, iserving 10 years in prison on charges of "rebellion."