Time is Ticking for Releases

November 01, 2010

From AP:

Cuba faces Nov. 7 deadline for freeing remaining 13 dissidents who balk at going into exile

Angel Moya has told relatives he will never stop fighting for political change in Cuba, and hopes to be a thorn in the government's side if he is released from jail. Hector Maseda's wife says he will leave prison only if his freedom is unconditional.

After releasing many of Cuba's best-known prisoners of conscience, the communist government has a week left to make good on a promise to clear Cuban jails of 52 activists, opposition leaders and social critics. Those that remain, however — including Moya and Maseda — may be the toughest releases yet for a government that describes dissidents as subversive U.S. agents bent on toppling the socialist system.

All of those released so far — including 39 dissidents arrested in a 2003 crackdown and eight others arrested separately — have agreed to go into exile in Spain along with their families.

But the last 13 prisoners from the 2003 crackdown seem bent on remaining in Cuba, a direct challenge to a government that would much prefer they take their views elsewhere.

"We want to stay in our homeland," Moya's wife, Bertha Soler, told The Associated Press. "The second he gets out of prison, he will continue his fight for democracy."

Moya, a 46-year-old construction worker who turned to dissent in the 1990s, is serving a 20-year sentence for treason and other charges. Soler is a leader of the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, which is comprised of the wives and mothers of prisoners of conscience.

Laura Pollan, another Damas leader, says she met with her jailed husband, Hector Maseda, on Oct. 17 and he told her that "he will not let anybody throw him out of his country."

She said her husband, who is 67 and also serving a 20-year term, would refuse to leave prison unless he is freed without any conditions.

"We won't accept parole," she said. "We want a pardon."

Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to release the prisoners after a July 7 meeting with Havana's Roman Catholic cardinal, Jaime Ortega, and then Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. Their talks were held a few months after jailed dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo died following a long hunger strike.

At the time, the church said all 52 dissidents still in prison from the 2003 crackdown would be freed "within three to four months from this moment."

The church said the prisoners would be allowed to leave Cuba, but did not say exile was a requirement for release. Since then, family members of the prisoners say they have been contacted by church officials including Ortega himself and asked if they were willing to go to Spain. Those who said no remain jailed.

Cuba has won praise from European leaders for the deal, and even a grudging acknowledgment from Washington that it is moving in the right direction, though not quickly enough.

Now, the government has a tough decision to make before Nov. 7: Go back on its word and lose the international goodwill it has earned, or let the releases go forward and risk giving voice to a more vocal opposition while the country is in the midst of widespread layoffs and difficult economic changes.

While the church's announcement in July didn't expressly set Nov. 7 as the date for the government's promise to be completed, Catholic officials have said privately that they consider it to be the deadline. Dissidents express a similar view.

Guillermo Farinas, a dissident who won Europe's Sakharov human rights prize in October after staging his own 134-day hunger strike in support of the prisoners, told the AP last week that he will stop eating again Nov. 8 if the remaining dissidents are not in their homes.

The Damas de Blanco have also vowed increased activity if the government backs away from its promise.