"Administration officials said they were preparing a variety of options for the president, and no final decisions have been made," said an article in the April 17 New York Times, where the threatened measures were first reported. "The harshest sanctions involve restricting or eliminating the transfer of cash payments, called remittances, to friends and relatives on the island.... Also being considered is a move to limit the number of Americans who travel to Cuba by ending direct charter flights between the countries. Thousands of travelers--mostly Cuban-Americans visiting family--board charter flights each month from Miami, New York, and other cities."

U.S. president George Bush is likely to make a public statement soon about these measures, the Times article said. The same information was reported shortly afterward by the Associated Press and other big-business media.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission, meeting in Geneva, passed a U.S.-promoted resolution April 17 calling on the Cuban government to allow a UN "monitor" to visit the island to investigate and report on Havana’s handling of human rights. The document--presented by the governments of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay, and cosponsored by Washington--was similar to a resolution adopted last year. It was approved by 24 votes in favor, 20 against, and 9 abstentions. At the same time, in a 31–15 vote the commission rejected a U.S.-orchestrated amendment expressing "deep concern" about the "recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the political opposition," and demanding that Cuba release them immediately. The defeated amendment was proposed by the government of Costa Rica.

During an April 17 press conference, Cuban foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque called the failure of the amendment a victory for Cuba.

He also criticized an April 14 statement by European Union foreign ministers who condemned the recent arrests and trials, and warned that Havana’s actions could hurt its economic relations with the EU. Cuba’s largest trade and investment ties are with countries in the European Union. The Cuban foreign minister said Havana is now considering withdrawal of a request it made in January to join the Cotonou Agreement, an EU-sponsored trade accord with its former colonies.

At the same time, Pérez Roque said his government will not allow a visit by a UN "human rights monitor." The Cuban government criticized the four Latin American sponsors of the resolution making this request. A Cuban official described these four governments as "repugnant lackeys" of Washington at the UN commission meeting in Geneva, according to the Associated Press. On April 18, the government of Peru issued a formal protest against this remark and recalled its ambassador to Cuba for consultation.  
 
Arrests and trials of 75
In the last half of March, Cuban authorities arrested 75 opponents of the Cuban Revolution in Havana and other cities. At an April 9 press conference, Pérez Roque said the first 32 were arrested March 18 after having been involved in three meetings between December and March with U.S. diplomatic personnel at the U.S. Interests Section offices in Havana or at the residence of James Cason, chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission there.

The two governments have not had diplomatic relations since Washington broke them off in January 1961 in response to the victory of the 1959 revolution that brought down the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista through a popular insurrection and established a government defending the interests of Cuban workers and farmers, not the property interests of local capitalists and landlords or the U.S. ruling families. Each government’s diplomatic personnel operates out of an Interests Section, hosted formally by a third country’s embassy.

Pérez Roque stated that Cuban authorities indicted the 75 on criminal charges brought by government prosecutors for violations of the Cuban Penal Code and Law 88, known as the Act for the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba.

Cuba’s National Assembly adopted this law in 1999 to counter efforts by Washington to implement the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as Helms-Burton law after its initial congressional sponsors.

Both houses of the U.S. Congress approved the Helms-Burton act March 5–6, 1996, with large bipartisan majorities, and former president William Clinton signed it into law a week later. It codified all executive orders pertinent to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and required that U.S. sanctions remain in place until a "transitional government" approved by Washington is established in Cuba. Its passage registered a significant escalation of Washington’s economic war on the Cuban people at the time, and a simultaneous trade offensive by the U.S. rulers against their imperialist allies, especially in Europe and Canada, who have growing investments in Cuba.

Pérez Roque said the prosecution charged those arrested with violations of Article 91 of the Cuban Penal Code, which states that whoever "executes an action in the interest of a foreign state with the purpose of harming the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its territory shall incur a sentence of 10 to 20 years of denial of liberty or death."

Prosecutors also cited violations of three articles of Law 88, Pérez Roque said. The first of these articles stipulates prison terms for whoever "seeks information to be used in the application of the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade, and the economic war on our people, aimed at disrupting internal order, destabilizing the country and liquidating the socialist state and the independence of Cuba." The other articles provide for charges against any individual who "gathers, reproduces, [or] disseminates subversive material from the government of the United States of America, its agencies, representative bodies, officials or any foreign entity to support the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act," or who "collaborates by any means with foreign radio or television stations, newspapers, magazines or any such media" to aid Washington in reaching the objectives of the "Liberty" act.

Pérez Roque did not detail the charges against each of the 75 individuals. The text of his April 9 press conference, which has been published in tabloid format and widely circulated in Cuba, is the main official explanation provided by the Cuban government so far on these cases. Rogelio Polanco, editor of Juventud Rebelde, the daily newspaper of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba, in an April 21 telephone interview from Havana told the Militant that the Cuban courts have not made public up to this point the exact charges on which the accused were convicted. He confirmed that charges varied for each of the 75.

Twenty-nine trials were conducted April 3–7, during which the 75 were convicted and sentenced from 6 to 28 years in jail.

At the April 9 press conference, Pérez Roque said "the oral hearings were open to the public," and that "nearly 3,000 people in all attended the proceedings," mostly family members of the accused and witnesses. The courts did not open the trials to the press, Pérez Roque stated. Answering charges in the big-business media that the trials violated the basic rights of the accused, Pérez Roque stated that all defendants and their attorneys had access to the charges against them prior to the trials; all had the right to legal counsel, and that 44 of the defense attorneys were appointed by their families; all have a right to appeal their convictions up to the country’s Supreme Court; and none have been subjected to solitary confinement or physical or other coercion.

The Cuban foreign minister described some of the evidence presented to the courts, on which the convictions were based.  
 
Some of the evidence made public
The evidence included receipts and bills used to show that at least five of the defendants named by Pérez Roque had received funds from U.S. diplomats or officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ranging from $30 to Iván Hernández Carrillo to more than $7,000 to Oscar Espinoza Chepe.

One of the defendants, Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés, a member of a group called Todos Unidos (All United), reportedly testified, "We know that the resources we receive for our work come from funds approved by the government of that country. I recall an occasion, a meeting with an official from USAID, in his office, when he had come to verify if the resources from the office had reached us. At that time a number of alternative channels were being studied for getting these resources to us... because it would mean obviously demonstrating that we were supported by the Interests Section, something we denied. Some proposed that the money be sent through representatives abroad, so as not to give evidence of the direct link between the U.S. government and the opposition." Valdés said that Vicky Huddleston, former chief of the U.S. Interests Section, took part in that meeting. A videotape of this testimony was shown to reporters at the April 9 press conference in Havana.

USAID is one of the institutions described in the Helms-Burton law as responsible for channeling financial and other material aid to antigovernment "human rights" activists and others in Cuba. According to the Associated Press, it has paid some $20 million to U.S.-based groups working to overthrow the Cuban government.

Testimony against the defendants also came from a number of Cuban state security agents who had infiltrated the counterrevolutionary groups working with U.S. government officials. Several of these agents reportedly had gained enough trust from U.S. diplomatic personnel that they had received open passes to enter the U.S. Interests Section in Havana and could use the computers and other equipment of the diplomatic personnel whenever they wished. Videotaped testimony from these agents was presented to journalists at the April 9 press conference. Néstor Baguer, one of the undercover agents, told the court that he had become head of the so-called Cuban Independent Press Association. Another agent, Odilia Collazo, had become president of the Human Rights Party in Cuba. Collazo said that she and other members of this antigovernment group received assignments from officials of the U.S. Interests Section. These included sending reports to the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations on alleged human rights violations in Cuba.

Referring to these undercover operations, Pérez Roque told reporters that James Cason and his superiors in Washington should know "that we have only revealed a small part of what we know."

Among the U.S. groups that channeled funds to some of the defendants is the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, a U.S.-government financed organization whose aim is to "persuade foreign investors not to invest in Cuba," Pérez Roque stated.

Other evidence presented in the trials that substantiated the charges, according to Pérez Roque, was proof that a number of the defendants distributed a magazine called Revista de Cuba, which, he said, was printed at facilities of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Others among the accused, Pérez Roque stated, distributed another magazine, El Disidente, published in Puerto Rico with USAID funds, sent to Cuba via the diplomatic pouch of the U.S. Interests Section, and passed around widely by U.S. diplomats.

Pérez Roque also said that a number of the defendants regularly provided information to Cubanet and other U.S.-funded media outlets that could be used by Washington to implement provisions of the Helms-Burton law. According to Cuban officials, Cubanet is an Internet publication that receives some $2 million per year through USAID and backs Washington’s policies toward Cuba.  
 
Cason’s acts fit history of aggression
"The U.S. Interests Section’s diplomatic pouch is increasingly being used to bring in funds and other materials to groups in Cuba created and funded by the U.S. government to carry out counterrevolutionary acts," Pérez Roque said.

He accused James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests section since last July, of engaging in increasingly provocative actions. "The U.S. Interests Section has been instructed to establish there what is practically the headquarters of internal subversion in Cuba," the foreign minister said. "The head of this section has the highest profile of anyone in its 25 years of functioning, in open violation of the laws governing diplomatic conduct, openly interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs, with a tone and demeanor totally inappropriate for a diplomat." This course is consistent with "the obsession of the U.S. governments to fabricate an opposition in Cuba," he stated.

These recent actions, the foreign minister noted, build on the U.S. government’s unrelenting economic war, support for paramilitary forces operating from U.S. territory, assassination attempts against Cuban government leaders, and efforts to isolate Cuba diplomatically and politically for more than four decades. The people of Cuba and the government of Cuba "are currently waging a hard struggle for their right to self-determination, for their right to independence," he said.  
 
Washington’s campaign
Washington used the arrests and convictions to escalate its anti-Cuba campaign. U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell said April 15 that these sentences show Havana is "stifling dissent," adding that these actions "should be an outrage to every leader in this hemisphere, every leader in this world."

Immediately after the sentences of the 75 were announced, U.S. State Department spokesman Phillip Recker stated, "The United States calls on the international community to join with us in condemning this crackdown and to demand the release of these Cuban prisoners of conscience."

Responding to this statement, Roque told the press April 9, "Mr. Recker should know that the international community is... horrified by the more than 600 prisoners still locked up at the Guantánamo Naval Base, in a legal limbo, who are not treated like human beings, and will be tried in secret U.S. military courts. He could include that the accused have had no access to a lawyer or to the evidence against them that has been declared secret information."

"Some governments and international figures have expressed public concern about these trials," said Carlos Fernández de Cossio, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, in a letter published in the Toronto Globe and Mail, responding to an editorial in the April 8 issue of the daily, titled, "Locked up in Cuba with Castro’s key."

"In contrast, they express public silence in regard to the most powerful nation on Earth," Fernández de Cossio stated. "No action similar to the abuses of Afghans, Arabs and citizens from different countries detained in Guantánamo base has taken place in Cuba. No secret military trial like the ones established in the United States has been or can be carried out in Cuba."

The Cuban ambassador to Canada said that "the 75 Cuban individuals and their attorneys have had full access to the information used against them by the prosecution, in contrast with the five Cubans condemned to abusive sentences in the U.S. who are still waiting to read over 50 percent of the documentation used to incriminate them because it was declared secret."

He was referring to five Cuban revolutionaries convicted in a federal court in Miami in 2001 of various charges, including failing to register as agents of a foreign power, conspiracy to commit espionage for Havana and, in one case, conspiracy to commit murder. These five Cuban patriots were given sentences ranging from 15 years to a double-life term in prison. From February 28 through the end of March they were thrown into solitary confinement by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, following an order by the U.S. attorney general alleging that their contact with many people through visits and mail presented a potential threat to Washington’s "national security." Their visitation rights were revoked and their reading and writing material were taken away. Gerardo Hernández, one of the five, was confined into "The Box"--a hole within the "hole"--a cell where he could only take three steps and the lights were on 24 hours a day. Prison guards took his clothes away and gave him only underpants and a shirt to wear.

The five were let out of the hole April 2, as Washington prepared to ratchet up its campaign against Cuba over the arrests of the 75. To this day, however, their visitation rights are restricted to family members, Cuban consular officials, and defense attorneys.

In the phone interview, Rogelio Polanco, editor of Juventud Rebelde, said that the arrests and trials of the 75 have been deliberately lumped together by the big-business media with the recent executions of three men who hijacked a ferry in Havana "to create confusion and give the false impression that ‘dissidents’ are given the death penalty in Cuba."  
 
A spate of hijackings
"This is a different case," Polanco said. "These people committed an act of piracy."

Polanco was referring to the April 2 attempt by 10 Cubans who hijacked a ferry at knife- and gunpoint in the Havana harbor in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Florida. The hijackers took the ferry 30 miles off the Cuban coast, where the vessel ran out of fuel. They demanded a new boat, threatening to begin throwing some of the 34 passengers and crew overboard if their demand was not met. The Cuban Border Guard notified the U.S. Coast Guard, which stated that it was not prepared to take action. Cuban coast guard vessels stayed near the ferry and finally convinced the hijackers to return to Havana for refueling. In the port, Cuban security agents stormed the ferry and arrested the hijackers after passengers starting jumping into the water.

The 10 individuals were charged under the Law Against Terrorism, passed in December 2001, with having "committed grave acts of terrorism." They were tried and convicted April 8. Three of them were given the death penalty and, after Cuba’s Supreme Court and Council of State upheld the sentences, they were executed three days later. Another four men among this group were given life in prison, while three women were handed one- to five-year terms.

This was the latest in a string of such incidents. "In the last seven months," Pérez Roque stated April 9, "there have been seven hijackings of Cuban air and sea crafts, encouraged by... the indiscriminate application of the Cuban Adjustment Act, by the practice of receiving people who use terrorism and violence to get there."

Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act encourages people to leave Cuba for the United States by providing virtually automatic asylum to any Cuban who lands on Florida’s shores regardless of any crimes they may have committed to get there.

Washington has refused to take action to discourage these incidents. According to Cuban government officials, those who carried out four of these hijackings last year "still walk the streets of Miami." Two hijackings of planes took place on March 19 and March 31, with the perpetrators landing in Florida, and then the ferry was hijacked two days later

The evening of April 2, James Cason took the unusual step of issuing a statement broadcast on Cuban television warning Cubans that Washington would not provide immunity to future hijackers. "Such acts are extremely serious violations of international law and of U.S. law," Cason said in his message, according to the April 3 Miami Herald. His statement was read by an announcer in Spanish in the regular nightly TV broadcast. "Any individual of any nationality, including Cuban, who hijacks an aircraft or vessel to the United States will be prosecuted with the full force of the U.S. legal system. The individual convicted of such offenses can expect to serve lengthy sentences in federal penitentiaries. Once convicted of such an offense the individual, including a Cuban, would be rendered permanently ineligible for lawful permanent residence in the U.S."

On April 10, a U.S. federal judge released on bail the perpetrators of the two plane hijackings in March, according to the Mexican news agency Notimex. The same day, Cuban authorities foiled an attempt at another plane hijacking at the Isle of Youth airport. Pointing to these events, an April 11 editorial in the Cuban daily Granma said they constitute "further evidence of the absolute truthfulness of the Cuban accusations" that Washington is encouraging hijackings by refusing to prosecute the perpetrators.

Cuban government officials have pointed to previous such incidents over the last decade, including a string of hijackings in 1994, when a police officer and a navy lieutenant were killed in armed attacks by would-be hijackers.

Speaking to reporters April 17, Pérez Roque said that using the death penalty against three of the ferry hijackers was an "exceptional measure" to deal with a crisis in the making provoked by Washington’s conduct, which includes disregarding the immigration agreements between the two governments.

In an accord signed by both governments in 1994, Washington agreed to grant 20,000 visas annually to Cubans applying to emigrate to the United States. Even though requests have exceeded this number every year, the U.S. government has fallen short of its quota by substantial margins. In 2002, the U.S. Interests Section issued 18,000 such visas, Pérez Roque said. In the first five months of this year, which for immigration purposes begins October 1, Washington issued 505 visas, he stated. This compares to 11,000 visas in the year 2000, 8,300 in 2001, and just over 7,000 last year during the same five-month period. "We are dealing with a deliberate plan to make those who want to emigrate lose hope, so that they have no alternative but illegal immigration," he stated.  
 
Debate on the Cuban measures
In the wake of Washington’s stepped-up propaganda campaign against Cuba, liberal critics of U.S. foreign policy have joined the big-business chorus of denunciations of Havana. Democratic congressman Charles Rangel, one of the leaders of the congressional Cuba Working Group that advocates a "dialogue" between the U.S. and Cuban governments and an end to the travel restrictions on U.S. citizens, told the New York Times, "This about ends that discussion."

"They know how to support their enemies and get rid of their friends," he fumed.

Other forces that have spoken out against Washington’s Cuba policies have echoed the big-business propaganda. Supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America, for example, have organized an Internet sign-on letter that in the name of "the democratic left" states, "In solidarity with the people of Cuba, we condemn the Cuban state’s current repression of independent thinkers and writers, human rights activists, and democrats." The statement declares that the Cuban government is "just one more dictatorship." Among the signers are prominent social democrats Stanley Aronowitz, Bogdan Denitch, and Leo Casey.

José Saramago, a Nobel literature laureate and member of the Portuguese Communist Party, publicly broke with the Cuban government in a statement published in the Madrid daily El País April 14. "This is as far as I go," he wrote. "Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions."

Polemicizing with Saramago, prominent Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti said now is not the time to "remove oneself completely from support to Cuba."

In an interview published in the Uruguayan newspaper La República, Benedetti stated his opposition to the death penalty and criticized the executions in Cuba, but directed most of his fire at Washington for its war on Iraq and the high number of executions in the United States. Referring to the Uruguayan government’s servile role at the UN Human Rights Commission, he said, "For rulers who have supported the U.S. in its murderous invasion of Iraq to now beat their democratic chests, outraged about Cuba executing three hijackers, is nauseating hypocrisy."

In Havana, 27 well-known writers and artists signed an open letter titled "Message from Havana to friends who are far away." They take issue with "friends who may have been led astray" by joining the condemnations of the recent trials and sentences. To defend itself against attacks by the U.S. government, they stated, "Cuba has been forced to adopt forceful measures that it naturally did not want to adopt." The letter is signed, among others, by Miguel Barnet, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Senel Paz, Silvio Rodríguez, Humberto Solás, and Carlos Martí.

Another prominent Cuban writer, César López, joined the debate in an interview with El País. "You can be against the death penalty. I am. You can question the appropriateness of the sentences that were legally issued," he said. "I question them."

But, he emphasized, "to forget the reality, the danger, the constant attack against Cuba and its people manifested during all these years and exacerbated in the last few weeks, does not seem completely honest." Events in the world demand not a condemnation of Cuba, he concluded, but "clear actions against the war and the danger enveloping all of us, including Cuba."

"This is not an issue of human rights, liberty or freedom of expression," said Cuba’s ambassador to Canada in his letter to the Globe and Mail. "The government that has supported some of the most brutal regimes in the 20th century," he continued, "that carries out a criminal war for economic and geopolitical ambitions, that possesses the greatest arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons cannot and should not be allowed to assume that Cuba’s integrity and sovereignty are for sale."

Chris Hoeppner in Miami and ‘Militant’ staff writer Martín Koppel contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Defend the Cuban Revolution!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home