Cuban opposer Oswaldo Payá, Coordinator of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación and leader of the Varela Project, denounced today [Thursday, 6/17/10] from Havana that the process of negotiation between the Catholic hierarchy in the island and the Cuban government is excluding the dissidents and said that the Church should act as a “facilitator” of the dialogue amongst all the parts.

In a communiqué released today [Thursday, 6/17/10], Payá also accused the Spanish government of having “accepted the rules of the Cuban government” in its role as interlocutor between the European Union and Cuba, and particularly that the “highest representatives of the Spanish government do not engage in dialogue with the peaceful Cuban dissidence.”

“We believe that Cubans should not be relegated to spectators of this or any other negotiation or dialogue, but must be ready to be protagonists of their liberation,” says the 2002 winner of the Sarajov Award, granted by the European Parliament, after pointing that “nobody must pretend to be a political actor from the Church, because that turns the church into a political entity” instead of a “facilitator of the dialogue.”

Aranguren denies the exclusion

The Bishop of the Cuban province of Holguín, Emilio Aranguren, denied that the Catholic Church has an intention to exclude, although he mentioned that he wasn’t aware of the text written by Payá, reported EFE.

“I don’t think that in any moment the Cuban bishops have that sense of exclusion,” said, at a press conference in Havana, Aranguren, who is also a member of the Permanent Committee of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Cuba.

Aranguren referred to this matter when answering questions from journalists at a press conference in Havana celebrating the X Social Week of Church in Cuba, which was inaugurated yesterday [Wednesday, 6/16/10] by the Vatican Secretary of Foreign Relations, Dominique Mamberti.

Mamberti will not meet with dissidents

The Foreign Secretary of the Vatican, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, will not meet with Cuban dissidents or with the relatives of political prisoner during his official visit to the island, which will go on until Sunday, reported Europa Press (in Spanish).

The Ladies in White, and organization formed by wives and relatives of prisoners of conscience, were also left aside of the meetings scheduled by the Archbishop, in spite of the fact that these women consider themselves practicing Catholic and have managed to continue their traditional peaceful walks in Havana thanks to the support of the clergy.

Both the hierarchy of Cuban Catholic church and the authorities in the island have insisted in unlinking the visit of Mamberti with the dialogue initiated a month ago with the outcome, for the moment, of a “license” for the conditional release of an extremely ill Ariel Sigler Amaya, and the transfer to jails closer to their homes of 12 political prisoners.

Radio Martí informs [in Spanish] that according to  the wife of political prisoner Egberto Escobedo Morales, he has been transferred to a hospital in the Cuban capital, La Habana. His health has deteriorated due to his hunger strike.

Escobedo has conducted a two month and two day long hunger strike in solidarity with Guillermo Fariñas, and as a show of support for those Cubans who refused to participate in the regime's electoral farse in April of this year.

He's been serving a twenty year sentence since 1995.

The following op-ed appeared yesterday 16 June 2010 on the Argentinian newspaper La Nación.  This is our translation:

Despite the hypocritical condescension of some, the truth is that the communist regime in Cuba is totalitarian, and has generated a social environment in which there is no respect whatsoever for human rights nor individual and political freedoms. The people of Cuba seem also condemned to live in misery, and in all sorts of privations.

Once in a while, a harsh reminder reveals to us the immense cruelty of the regime that has kept Cubans hostage, and transformed the island in a vast prison from which they can get out only if the government allows them; where, furthermore, one cannot think different without committing the crime of having an opinion, punished with prison in Cuban jails, possibly the most inhumane in the world.

This is the shocking message of the recent release of Ariel Sigler, one of the gravely ill Cuban political prisoners. He [is now a] paraplegic due to a neurological disease, wheel chair ridden, with serious problems with his stomach, esophagus and throat, and less than sixty percent of [how much he] weight[ed] when he was arrested.

The health of Ariel Sigler, or more accurately what is left of Ariel Sigler, seems [totally] destroyed. [At] Barely 47 years of age, the president of Movimiento Independiente Opción Alternativa [Alternative Option Independent Movement] looks like a decaying old man. This is how he returned to his family’s house after seven years of imprisonment for thinking differently [from the regime]. He was condemned to twenty years. Despite all that, when he arrived, he promised to continue fighting for freedom. His health may be defeated, but not his courage.

The inhumane treatment he received is in plain sight for all to see, even those who refuse to see. It is possible that the efforts of valiant Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who personally knows what imprisonment is, would have contributed to his [almost too late] release. Perhaps, it is possible that the transfer of other political prisoners with precarious health closer to their relatives will materialize soon.

Sigler, let us remember, belonged to the Group of 75, those imprisoned during Cuba’s Black Spring of 2003. He was kept in several prisons in [the Cuban provinces of] Ciego de Ávila, Villa Clara y Cienfuegos, all far from his place of residence in [the province of] Matanzas. This shows the cruelty of the regime with the dissidents.

In another corner of the island, in this case in a hospital 400 km from La Habana, another inmate, Guillermo Fariñas*, has been on hunger strike for four months. As it happened with courageous dissident Orlando Zapata, Fariñas may die as a result of his voluntary fast. The horror of what happens in Cuba is shocking, and because of that it cannot and should not be silenced.

by Yoani Sánchez for The Huffington Post

The Catholic Church in Cuba seems determined to play a new social role in the face of the inevitable changes that lie ahead for the island. Senior church leaders finally condemned the "repudiation rallies" targeting the Ladies in White, and expressed support for their demands to release of political prisoners. In an unusual gesture, the cardinal himself met with them and offered assurances that he had obtained a commitment from the authorities to end the repressive actions against their peaceful group. In a show of further support, he celebrated mass at Santa Rita's, where the wives, mothers and daughters of the political prisoners, and the women who support them, pray every Sunday, before marching from the church to demand freedom.

As in the other Latin American countries once colonized by Spain, the Catholic church on the island carries enormous weight with the movement for civic engagement. Its influence exceeds that of the syncretic cults with African elements, and the increasingly energetic and numerous Protestant denominations that have come to Cuba, almost all of them from the United States. Relations between the church hierarchy and the revolutionary government have gone through different stages since January 1959. By the sixties the conflicts had already become very sharp, particularly due to atheism being a part of the official ideology, as well as the confiscation of the religious colleges. Entering a church came to be seen as a counterrevolutionary act, and those aspiring to Communist Party membership knew they could not even baptize their children. For more than twenty years Christmas celebrations were forbidden and many churches were left without priests.

In the late eighties, relations began to thaw, after the publication of the book "Fidel and Religion" by the Brazilian priest, Frei Betto, and contacts with the liberation theologians. Ultimately, in 1991, in an unexpected turn of events, the Fourth Communist Party Congress agreed to accept people with religious beliefs into the Party. In 1998, John Paul II visited Cuba and expressed himself clearly: "Let Cuba open itself to the world, and let the world open itself to Cuba." As a result of this historic visit, the church regained a part of its social role.

In the more than 50 years of the current government, representatives of the church have assumed different positions to confront the authoritarian abuses of the government. Some demand, with more or less restraint, that the authorities respect all human rights; others request, offering something more than their cheeks, that they be given small concessions in exchange for their unlimited obedience. At the heart of the Catholic church - among priests and laity - confrontational and complacent positions coexist.

Now, in mid-June, the church is celebrating its Tenth Catholic Social Week and Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's Foreign Minister, is in Cuba to attend. Given the fragile situation of the country, hopefully he will make critical pronouncements which the government may find difficult to assimilate. Two years from now Cubans will commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival on the island of the image of Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity; the Pope himself is expected to visit. Although his visit certainly won't have the same impact as the coming of his predecessor, his presence will unleash many hopes. Few are waiting for the appearance of the Virgin to put Cuban affairs to rights. It is hoped that flesh-and-blood human beings, driven by faith or by the interests of the nation, will try to reach an agreement that will pull the country out of the stagnation in which it is mired. The Catholic Church understands that it cannot remain indifferent in the face of these exigencies.

By PAUL HAVEN (AP)

HAVANA — Cuba and a top Vatican official expressed optimism Wednesday that landmark negotiations between the church and Raul Castro's government will continue and indicated they could produce more breakthroughs on the treatment of dissidents and political prisoners.

The comments by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, and his Cuban counterpart were the latest signal that a month-old dialogue that has already led to the release of an ailing prisoner of conscience and the transfer of 12 others to jails closer to their homes is gaining strength.

"The dialogue that is happening now makes us happy, and I hope that it will be strengthened through my visit," Mamberti said at a joint news conference with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. "I think it is important ... to see the fruits" of such talks.

Rodriguez applauded the role the Church has been playing on the island, and said all signs point to more dialogue.

"We have held fluid and profoundly productive talks," he said. "We appreciate the constructive role of the Church in these matters and we think that all conditions exist ... for these fruitful exchanges to continue."

Neither spoke of any concrete steps that would see the release of more of Cuba's 180 political prisoners. Mamberti said he had no plans to meet with dissidents, though he did not rule it out.

At least five Cuban political prisoners are refusing food in a spontaneous trend triggered by the February death of a dissident.

BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com

Egberto Angel Escobedo completed his 17th year in a Cuban prison last Friday, and his 56th day of a hunger strike.

He's at a penitentiary called ``Red Ceramic'' [Cerámica Roja, a former ceramics factory] in Camagüey, where the military keeps him in isolation to prevent other inmates from spreading word of his failing health.

Escobedo is one of at least five cases of political prisoners -- down from seven -- who are refusing food, in what experts say is an extraordinary surge of inmates at different Cuban lockups fighting over different causes. Protesting everything from medical care to prison uniforms, they are using an age-old technique that over the years has met with mixed results.

``I don't recall at least in the last decade seeing so many people in jail on a hunger strike,'' said former political prisoner Ricardo Bofill, who served two stints totaling 15 years. ``There is a political context that contributes to all this. They perceive that this is the moment to pressure the government, that there is momentum.''

Some protesters, like prisoner Diosdado González, quickly have their demands met. His wife's sympathy hunger strike lasted just a day. A dozen other prisoners over the decades, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo four months ago, died.

Experts say the current strikes, likely fueled by Zapata's death, were uncoordinated, spontaneous and far from unprecedented.

From the fight for independence against the Spanish to the battle against the dictators who came before the Castros, Cuban activists have refused food in a quest to have a spotlight shone on their causes.

In the late 1960s, entire prisons would go on collective hunger strikes to protest conditions. Before 1959, intense media coverage turned hunger strikers into overnight national cause célèbres, said former prisoner José Albertini, who wrote the 2007 Spanish-language book, Cuba and Castroism: Hunger Strikes in Political Prisons.

Albertini's great-grandmother died in the late 1800s while imprisoned for struggling for Cuba's independence. She refused to eat or to feed two of her children, and all three died.

``The hunger striker is political and largely does this for press attention to their cause,'' Albertini said. ``In the 1960s and '70s, they did it out of dignity, because they knew nobody would listen.''

And while journalists are shut out of Cuba's prisons, the proliferation of cellphones and the Internet have helped spread information about hunger strikes that in the past the Cuban government could have kept secret.

``The international community around the world should be up to date on the political prisoners and Cuban citizens who oppose'' the Castro regime, Escobedo said in a message distributed by the Democratic Directorate human rights organization. ``I will continue carrying out Orlando Zapata Tamayo's call to resistance, which cannot be extinguished.''

This communiqué appeared originally in Spanish on our sister blog on Monday 14 June 2010.

The government of Raúl Castro has released one of his approximately two hundred political prisoners, and has transferred other twelve to prisons closer to their places of residence. This is the tangible result of the dialog between the regime and the Catholic Church a month after it was announced.

If the releases were to continue at the same rate, they would take one and a half decades. This prospect is unacceptable, not only to us, but also to the great majority of the internal opposition, the Cuban diaspora and democratic nations. We can support any process that would result in the improvement of the conditions in which the political prisoners are kept, and “extra-penal licenses” [paroled release] for a few, but we will not allow these developments to replace or undermine the efforts toward the immediate and unconditional release of all of them.

This week is going to be decisive to determine the scope of Raúl Castro’s will to release more political prisoners. It is up to him to send an unequivocal sign of his intentions. Without substantial advance in the releases, and without a clear chart for their immediate future, our only choice will be to double the efforts of the #OZT I Accuse the Cuban government Campaign.

Our campaign has received more that 49,000 signatures claiming the immediate release of all political prisoners and respect for human rights in Cuba. Almost 2,000 of these signatures come from the island. Hundreds of others come from public figures that have offered their national and international reputations to back our cause. This is not the end of our efforts for the release of all Cuban political prisoners, but only the basis on which to continue fighting for it.

Next week we will announce the date and further details of the first delivery of the signatures.

The Canadian Press reports that Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s independent torture investigator, "is deeply disappointed by Cuba's decision to block him from visiting the country for the first time."

[...]the Cuban government informed him it was unable to accommodate his visit before the end of his term on Oct. 30.

Nowak said Wednesday that he had received a "clear invitation" from the government earlier this year and had hoped to investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment in the communist country.

The U.N.-appointed human rights expert has made several fruitless attempts to visit the island since 2005.

Cuban Ambassador in Geneva Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez declined to comment, saying he was awaiting instructions on the matter from Havana.

Only after his death after more than 80 days on hunger strike, did Orlando Zapata Tamayo become a widely known name. His blood is on the hands of the Castro dictatorship, but maybe his life would have been spared if more of the world had aware of his struggle, and acted on his behalf, before he succumbed Feb. 23 to his protest and the malignant neglect of his captors.

Let us make sure that Zapata's fellow prisoner Egberto Escobedo Morales gets the attention he needs and deserves as he carries out his own hunger strike -- now more than 50 days long -- demanding that the dictatorship respect his human rights and that of all Cubans.

According to Radio Marti, Escobedo is currently in very poor health in the infirmary at the Cerámica Roja prison in Camagüey. The vitamins and other nutrients he is receiving via IV are not making a difference, and fellow political prisoner Jorge Alberto Liriano Linares said Escobedo is at risk of dying if he is not transferred to a hospital.

Despite his poor condition, former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" told Radio Marti that Escobedo is maintaining his position against the dictatorship. He is refusing to wear the uniform of a common prisoner and to participate in any of the prison's efforts to "re-educate" him.

After more than 50 days on hunger strike, Escobedo still is not one of Cuba's better-known prisoners. He already had been jail for some eight years at the time of the "black spring" crackdown of 2003; he is not part of the "Group of 75."

That is why it is vital that word of his protest be proclaimed over and over again, so that Escobedo -- and his captors -- know that he is not forgotten. In doing so, we hopefully can save his life.

Artist Geandy Pavón projected the image of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata onto Carnegie Hall during a concert by Silvio Rodriguez. The singer, a privileged member of Cuba’s ruling elite, has served its dictatorship and spread its propaganda for decades.

In Greek mythology, “nemesis” represents divine justice ─a persecutory memory. Zapata, an Afro Cuban plumber and peaceful activist, died last February of a hunger strike. His death is emblematic of the extensive human rights abuses of Cuban totalitarianism.

The artist projects the face of the victim on the façade of buildings hosting his “killers” -Cuban regime representatives- using light as an analogy of truth, reason, and justice. He has staged his performance in New York, Barcelona and Washington.

Recently, Silvio Rodríguez has been calling for “evolution” in Cuba. He should instead sing for FREEDOM.

See Cuba Archive for information on political deaths and disappearances in Cuba. And sign the petition for the release of Cuba’s political prisoners.

Thirty seven dissidents were arrested in Havana between Thursday and Friday as part of a raid from the Cuban political police to avoid the celebration of two important meetings, declared opposition leader Héctor Palacios.

On Thursday, the police tried to prevent the meeting of the Committee for the Transition and arrested 14 people; while on Friday there was a similar raid against the meeting for the annual assembly of the Unidad Liberal de la República de Cuba (ULRC) [Liberal Unity of the Cuban Republic] that was to take place in the house of
opposition member Héctor Palacios. 23 dissidents were arrested.

Those arrested on Friday, the political police has taken them to different police stations throughout Havana, according to the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional [Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation]. The whereabouts of some of the arrested is unknown.

The meeting of the ULRC took place with the attendance of 18 dissidents who managed to enter Palacios’ house before dawn.

Gisela Delgado, member of the Ladies in White, denounced the arrests of several dissidents in Holguín and Guantánamo, who were prevented from traveling to the capitol of the country.

The spokesperson for Guillermo Fariñas, Lisset Zamora, is still under arrest, along with other colleagues from the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, confirmed Palacios to DIARIO DE CUBA (Cuba Daily).

'Fariñas cannot wait five weeks'

Héctor Palacios, president of Unidad Liberal de la República de Cuba told Diario de Cuba that Guillermo Fariñas, in hunger and thirst strike since 101 days, “cannot wait five weeks, because he will not be able to sustain it.”

“At the rate the negotiation between the Catholic Church and the government is going, I believe that Fariñas will die. We must raise our voices so that that doesn’t happen,” said Palacios.

Also, he confirmed that opposition member Félix Bonne, who attended the meetings on Thursday and Friday, reiterated his disposition to go on a hunger strike if Fariñas dies.

Unidad Liberal analized the situation of Fariñas’ health, the subject of political prisoners and the solidarity with the Ladies in White and Ladies in Support [of the Ladies in White]. About the latter the say that “solidarity cannot be limited” and encourage them to continue their peaceful walks.

This new repressive act comes in the middle of an uncertain negotiation between the regime and the Catholic Church to “improve” the conditions of the political prisoners.

(Source: Diario de Cuba).