Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Cuban dissidents say repression increasing as summit nears

Friday, June 30, 2006

by: Marc Frank

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): The Cuban government has stepped up arrests and harassment of critics as it prepares to host the Nonaligned Movement Summit in September, a human rights organization on the island charged on Thursday.

"They are preparing the conditions and we are expecting a real wave of repression before the summit," said Aida Valdes, president of the National Coordinating Committee of Current and Former Political Prisoners, at a Havana news conference.

More than 60 heads of state and top officials from many other developing countries are expected in Havana September 15th and 16th for the event, the most important hosted by Cuba in years.

Valdes, who has been imprisoned five times for a total of 10 years, said her organization called Thursday's news conference in response to growing pressure on dissidents.

"Trials for public endangerment are increasing and they are transferring prisoners from Havana to make space for new ones," Valdes charged.

Critics say the government has been organizing supporters to surround, scream at and sometimes hit them when they leave their homes and that government agents often threaten them with arrest.

Valdes said this sort of mob action aimed at dissidents and their families was on the rise, and more and more people were being held without charge.

According to the illegal, but tolerated, human rights organization, there are 347 political prisoners in Cuba.

The number of dissidents imprisoned for public endangerment was 25 during the first half of the year, compared with nine during the same period in 2005, the organization said, while 17 people were jailed without charge compared with none in 2005.

President Fidel Castro's government rarely comments on political prisoners, whom it considers counter-revolutionaries imprisoned for being on the U.S. payroll.

There are dozens of small dissident groups scattered across the Communist-run Caribbean island, each with a handful of members.

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