Cuba Says Bush Post-Castro Plan Just a Dream - Payment to Mafia for 2000 vote

HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba on Monday rejected renewed pressure from Washington to undertake democratic reforms and said President Bush was "dreaming" of a post-Castro transition.

A Cuban Foreign Ministry statement said steps announced by Bush to hasten political change on the island were aimed at securing the votes of the Cuban exile community in Florida, the pivotal state in his controversial 2000 election.

"This is how the White House repays this Mafia for the scandalous fraud and tricks of the 2000 presidential elections," said the statement published in Granma, the ruling Communist Party daily.

Bush said on Friday his administration would toughen enforcement of a ban on travel to Cuba by going after Americans who visit the island without special permits.

He also promised to increase the number of visas granted to Cubans who want to "seek freedom" and emigrate to the United States, as demanded by anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who oppose the return of rafters leaving the island.

The exile community was upset earlier this year by the Bush administration's decision to return to Cuba a group of people who hijacked a Cuban surveying boat and were intercepted in the Florida Straits by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Bush also said he would set up a commission, to be headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Cuban-born Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, to plan for Cuba's transition from one-party rule to democracy.

"The transition dreamed of by Bush and his acolytes of the Miami Mafia will never happen in Cuba," the ministry statement said. It denounced Bush for planning to overthrow the socialist society built by Castro, in power since a 1959 revolution.

Cuba criticized Bush's plans to increase "illegal" anti-Castro radio and television broadcasts to the Caribbean island by using satellites and military aircraft to overcome jamming by the Cuban government.

Havana also criticized Bush for denying travel licenses to U.S. academic groups wanting to visit Cuba and opposing efforts by American business lobbies to lift the U.S. economic sanctions enforced four decades ago.

Cuba has spent over $500 million in the last two years on purchases of U.S. agricultural products from some 35 states, winning increasing support for the repeal of the sanctions.

Opposition in the United States to the trade embargo lost steam earlier this after Castro launched the worst crackdown on dissidents in decades that led to the jailing of 75 opponents for prison terms of up to 28 years.

Florida is home to many Cuban-Americans who advocate a tougher approach toward the Cuban leader. Cuban-American support helped Bush win a disputed but crucial victory in Florida in 2000. The state could again prove key in the 2004 election.

Arrested Cuban Dissidents Feel Betrayed by CNN***he oppositionists staged a bold protest against that regime, greatly encouraged by the apparent willingness of CNN to broadcast the event to the world. The oppositionists are desperate for their activities, and their very existence, to be known. They are certainly unafraid to challenge the regime; but they would naturally like some reward for their courage. There is no doubt that CNN filmed the protest; a network spokeswoman confirms as much. But, for reasons unknown, the network chose not to air the film, or to report on the matter at all. There was, however, a report from Cuba on CNN that day: It was about the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuban society, where "he is a typical, happy-go-lucky schoolboy."

Many of the Cubans who participated in the November 23 protest were later rounded up at a religious gathering. They were beaten and jailed. Gonzalez Bridon, the trade-union leader, is among those in prison. His wife has told supporters in the U.S. that she does not hold CNN responsible for the arrests; she does, however, believe the network behaved unethically and misleadingly. Many of the oppositionists are incensed at CNN, feeling betrayed. They maintain that CNN promised them it would air a story. The network's spokeswoman, however, says that it is CNN policy never to make such a promise. The oppositionists are in a very dark mood, suspecting the worst about CNN. They complain that the network is consistently pro-regime, and they note, too, that CNN honcho Ted Turner is a friend and admirer of the island's dictator. ***

Industry -Editor and Publisher Cuba: No Social Club for Journalists [Full Text] CHICAGO -- Nostalgia for the Cuba of hot music borne on tropical trade winds was much in the news recently with the deaths of Compay Segundo, who became an international star at age 89 thanks to the hit film Buena Vista Social Club and its soundtrack album, and salsa legend Celia Cruz. But the island's increasingly agitated dictator, Fidel Castro, has been unable to bask in those warm feelings because a tenacious campaign by press freedom groups based in the U.S., Europe and Latin America keeps reminding the world of his mass imprisonment of independent journalists.

In raids March 18, Cuban secret police arrested 28 journalists who practiced their craft in defiance of the draconian "Law 88" and other anti-press statutes. Castro may have calculated that world public opinion would be too distracted by the impending Iraq war to care. Instead, furious protests only increased after the journalists were tried in secret and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 27 years.

More recently, the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA) convened a meeting of Latin-American diplomats to urge them to increase pressure for the journalists' release. Havana-bound tourists in Paris received postcards titled, "Cuba: The World's Biggest Prison for Journalists" from Reporters Without Borders. The protest is working. The traditionally friendly European Union, for instance, imposed sanctions that so angered Castro he turned a celebration of the Cuban revolution's 50th anniversary into a rally against Europe.

Castro may have felt the deepest cut, however, from a recent action taken by the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "Castro doesn't care what the U.S. says, he doesn't care what the EU says, but he does care what Latin American journalists think. And what we have done is send a Latin American journalist with a good reputation whose reporting is indisputable," said Carlos Lauria, CPJ's program coordinator for the Americas.

That journalist, Gustavo Gorriti of Peru, is known throughout Latin America for his independence. In the early 1990s when former President Alberto Fujimori imposed his "self-coup" in Peru, Gorriti was one of the first people imprisoned. In exile in Panama, his reporting for the daily La Prensa so unnerved the president there that Gorriti was ordered deported.

Gorriti has quietly visited the families of several of the imprisoned Cuban journalists, including the wife of Raul Rivero, an IAPA board member who was sentenced to 20 years. The prisoners are held in dank prisons far from their homes, fed poorly and are allowed visitors only once every three months. Gorriti found jailers are neglecting prisoners whose health has deteriorated, gravely so in the case of Oscar Espinosa Chepe.

Cuba's independent journalists are not much better off outside prison, Gorriti wrote: "While Castro boasts that no forced disappearances, no physical torture are inflicted on repressed opponents, the intense, widespread harassment, pressure, and jail conditions exerted on those opponents undoubtedly amount to psychological torture."

--Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerlad@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P. [End]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.