ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2003
©2003 Associated PressURL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/04/10/international1832EDT0828.DTL
(04-10) 20:08 PDT HAVANA (AP) --
Cuba on Thursday sentenced the last of 75 dissidents convicted after one-day trials of collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the communist government.
Governments and human rights groups around the world have condemned the speedy crackdown, which began with a massive roundup of opponents on March 18. The subsequent trials resulted in sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years.
The United States has repeatedly denied the government allegations and criticized the prosecutions. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday called for the release of the dissidents.
"Nearly 80 representatives of a growing and truly independent civil society have been arrested, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in summary, secret trials," Powell said in a statement. "Their only crime was seeking basic human rights and freedoms."
Cuba also has faced criticism for the speed of the prosecutions with opponents saying they were carried out when the world's attention was focused on the Iraq war. But Cuba has denied the charges, saying the arrests came before the start of the fighting.
"There has never been anything similar to this in the history of Cuba," said Elizardo Sanchez, whose Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation has monitored the arrests and trials.
"This is not the end of the peaceful opposition," said pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya, who escaped the crackdown.
The four sentences announced Thursday included a 25-year term for dissident physician Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.
The defendants were accused of receiving money from U.S. government and working with Washington to undermine the socialist regime.
Tensions between Havana and Washington have increased since U.S. Interests Section Chief James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, began assuming a higher profile in his support of the opposition.
Cason denies accusations that the U.S. Interests Section had dissidents on the payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in other countries.
Cuban opposition leaders on Thursday urged a further international censure of President Fidel Castro's government.
"We call on all democratic governments and organizations of the world -- that have not done so already -- so to openly reject this wave of repression," read a letter signed by five leaders of the local opposition.
"We direct this call in particular to our brother countries in Latin America, which up to now have not spoken out in this needed censure of the only totalitarian regime" in the region.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque has defended the quick trials and heavy sentences, saying increased hostility from Washington forced Cuba to protect itself from a U.S.-backed opposition trying to topple the government.
"There has been an obsession by the governments of the United States to fabricate an opposition in Cuba, to create a fifth column," Perez Roque said Wednesday.
Perez Roque also read from a letter written by President Bush to Biscet, congratulating the doctor -- who was sentenced Thursday -- for winning the Democracy's People Award from the International Republican Institute in February.
"I find this letter very strange," Perez Roque said, adding that Bush had never written a letter to well-known government doctors and researchers who have developed vaccines against illnesses such as meningitis.
The foreign minister said the dissidents were not charged with criticizing the government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats.
Perez Roque presented letters and detailed lists of payments he said proved the defendants were getting money from the U.S. government.
For instance, Perez Roque said that in the home of independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, investigators found evidence that over one year he received $7,154 -- a huge sum in a country where an average government salary is $25 a month. A wad of $13,000 in cash allegedly was found stashed in the lining of a jacket.
Espinosa Chepe, who wrote about the Cuban economy for Web sites in Miami, was sentenced to 20 years.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has given more than $20 million since 1997 to non-governmental groups in the United States to support Cuban's opposition movement and promote democracy, human rights and free enterprise on the communist island.
©2003 Associated Press
Mum's the Word
Hollywood celebs may not quite be pro-Saddam, but there's one tyrant they love.BY ANDREW BREITBART
Friday, April 11, 2003 12:01 a.m.
Thousands of jubilant Iraqis, ready for a brand-new beat, dance in the street to celebrate the toppling of a brutal dictator whose tyranny has lasted 24 years but not 24 hours more. Preoccupied with the dramatic image of a noose around Saddam's neck as he is dragged to the ground in Baghdad's al-Fardous square (a 20-foot metal statue of Saddam, that is), the world largely overlooks the news of another dictator, Cuba's Fidel Castro, so far besting the Iraqi tyrant's run by 20 years and counting.This week Castro continued his crackdown on dissidents with the speedy conviction of at least 74 nonviolent government opponents in nonpublic kangaroo-court proceedings. Rounded up last month, the jailed independent journalists and pro-democracy activists, including reporter-photographer Omar Rodriguez Saludes, writer Raul Rivero and magazine editor Ricardo Gonzalez, received sentences of up to 27 years each.
The U.S. State Department called the actions "the most egregious act of political repression in Cuba in the last decade." Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa said that Castro's draconian crackdown was the "natural progression of a dictatorship that has been oppressing human rights for years." The House passed a condemning resolution, 414-0, and Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and International PEN, among others, joined the chorus of condemnation.
Not, though, the Castro Faithful--the media moguls, celebrity journalists, filmmakers and Hollywood glitterati who continue to break bread with the Cuban dictator and idolize him as "one hell of a guy," in Ted Turner's words. No, they were silent. And given protest-happy Hollywood's long love affair with the unelected "President" Fidel--"one of the most mysterious leaders in the world," cooed Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20" in October, as she puffed up his "personal magnetism" and supposed social triumphs--it's unlikely that there will be any expression of disapproval from these quarters soon.
As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote this week, Castro can rely on "the unswerving naïveté and obtuseness of the American left, which consistently has managed to overlook what a goon he is." The list of those willing to keep Castro's good company, and remain silent when his actions revert to type, includes rich and famous celebrities who troop to Havana to pay their respects to the rich and famous dictator.
Perhaps they don't know any better, as they return with Cuban cigars and fawning praise: "It was an experience of a lifetime" (Kevin Costner); "he is a genius" (Jack Nicholson); a "source of inspiration to the world" (Naomi Campbell). But people who should know better make the pilgrimage too. Director Steven Spielberg, founder of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and winner of an Academy Award for illuminating the horrors of the Holocaust, described his meeting with Castro in November as "the eight most important hours of my life." Never forget, indeed.
This week, as reported in Newsweek International's Global Buzz column, a pack of New York media VIPs, each willing to pony up $6,500 for travel costs, are set to jet to Cuba with Yoko Ono to meet with the Bearded One, just as his crackdown hits overdrive. Slate's blogger Mickey Kaus shrewdly comments: "It's especially ironic that press and publishing executives are paying an enormous premium to meet with a man who is busy jailing journalists and writers for being journalists and writers."
Yoko and Co.'s trek is not the first such jaunt to the land of the Buena Vista Social Club. Remember the February 2001 excursion of CBS President and CEO Les Moonves and his fellow travelers, MTV Networks Chairman Tom "Rock the Vote" Freston, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and other well-heeled media executives? Their four-day trip to Cuba, which naturally included a private dinner with Fidel, became the subject of a New York Post article and of quips from CBS employee David Letterman: "On the one hand, you have the ruthless dictator surrounded by sniveling 'yes' men, and then on the other hand, of course, you have Fidel Castro."
What were they thinking? And what are their thoughts now that the totalitarian communist dictator they so politely respected is acting so strikingly dictatorial? Requests to Ms. Walters, Mr. Carter and Mr. Turner for an explanation were left unresponded to, while Mr. Moonves's and Mr. Freston's offices went on record not to go on the record. Andy Spahn, a Spielberg rep at Dreamworks, said that the director was in pre-production and could not be reached for comment. Mr. Spahn went on to say, though, that the recent crackdown had been "provoked" by James Cason, a U.S. diplomat in Havana, who is reported to have met with Cuban dissidents in their homes in February.
Talk about "shock and awe"! It is indeed shocking to note the ease with which the Castro Faithful shy away from protesting his actions or correcting their sycophantic statements--or, in Mr. Spahn's case, put forward a blame-the-victim theory. Shocking too are the products of fawning tribute that continue to materialize, such as Estela Bravo's adoring documentary "Fidel" and the documentary "Comandante," directed by Oliver Stone and Fidel Castro himself, who was given the power to stop filming at will.
The Stone film, set to be broadcast on HBO in May, will supposedly show the human side of Castro, a man who is "one of the Earth's wisest people," as Mr. Stone said at a press conference in February. In "Comandante," we are told, Castro finally reveals his true views about shaving, his love of recent films such as "Titanic" and "Gladiator" (just don't ask how he got a hold of copies of the films under the U.S. economic embargo), and his great appreciation for Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren. Shocking indeed. Given the harshness of the recent dissident crackdown, the release date of the film seems awkward at best. If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny.
Why is this thug still the darling of the media elite? Why is it so unwilling to protest his dictatorial moves? As Marxist ideologue Groucho would say, a child of five would understand this; send someone to fetch a child of five.
Perhaps Castro represents a wish-fulfillment fantasy. A romantic, intellectual revolutionary achieves iconic status, absolute power, great wealth and a 40-year-plus reign--quite an appealing vision to ambitious people in industries with high career mortality rates. But who knows? The Faithful aren't talking.
Mr. Breitbart, with journalist Mark Ebner, is the author of the forthcoming "Hollywood, Interrupted" (Wiley).
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