Cuban dissidents seek participation in meeting
Saturday, May 22, 2004
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): The dissident Cuban
Democratic Project has asked President Fidel Castro's communist government to
allow it to take part in a meeting between Cuban authorities and Cuban
expatriates that opened here Friday. The
group said in a statement it was a good chance to reach out seeking better
relations "without unfair or arbitrary exclusions" but there was no immediate
reply from the government. It also suggested
the government create an outreach office to facilitate communication with
peaceful opposition organizations. So far,
the only dissident thought likely to be allowed to take part is Cambio Cubano
(Cuban Change) leader Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a former political prisoner who
moved back to Cuba from Miami in 2003 though without official authorization. A
moderate, he is the only dissident to have met personally with Castro.
Those groups that have violently opposed the communist government have not
taken part in these meetings, the last of which was held almost a decade ago,
in 1995. About 1.5 million Cubans and their
children live in more than 100 countries worldwide, according to Cuban
government figures. Some 1.3 million people
of Cuban origin and descent live in the United States. The population of Cuba
is just over 11 million. Remittances sent by
Cubans abroad to their relatives on the island are a pillar of the Cuban
economy, worth some 1.2 billion dollars a year.
Earlier this month US President George W. Bush endorsed measures to tighten
the US embargo against Cuba by restricting Cuban-Americans' cash remittances
to relatives on the island and limiting family visits between the United
States and Cuba to one every three years.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said earlier this week that Cubans
who want to visit the island -- the only one-party communist regime in the
Americas -- no longer will have to get a visa to do so, but should have a
valid Cuban passport. Perez Roque said the
Cuban policy of requiring Cubans who live in Cuba to seek government
permission to travel abroad was not under review.
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