''They said it wasn't the books, but who we were going to give them to,'' Cason told a group of international reporters. He said the mission has been able to bring in similar books in the past.
''We have seen them in the bookstores and the [government] libraries here,'' Cason said. ``But we cannot give them out because the Cuban government claims we will be giving them out for subversive purposes.'' The $68,770.41 shipment remains in the control of Cuban customs officials, Cason said. American officials said they would happily pay duties on the books, but were told that was not an option.
Cason showed a waybill for the shipment, which listed Spanish translations of books including Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson, journalism textbooks, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, comedian Groucho Marx's Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, and speeches by King. Cason, who arrived in Havana five months ago, denied the Cuban government's charges that the American mission provides***
Cubans harass U.S. envoys passing out Mark Twain novels - economics 101 textbooks *** Cuban agents have increased harassment of U.S. diplomats in recent months in a campaign that includes house break-ins, vandalism and crude acts of intimidation, the State Department says in a memo warning U.S. foreign service officers of tough times if they are posted to the island. Similar acts of harassment are being reported by organizers of Project Varela, a recent petition drive calling for free speech and free elections in the single-party communist state, according to news reports from the island. The memo obtained by The Washington Times lists three pages of "officially sanctioned provocation," including the "leaving of not so subtle messages behind, (including unwelcome calling cards like urine or feces)."***
US book shipment seized in Cuba ''It's fear of losing political control,'' said Cason, who arrived in Havana five months ago. ''That's how Groucho Marx . . . can suddenly become a subversive.'' Cason showed a waybill for the shipment, which listed Spanish translations of books including ''Who Moved by Cheese,'' by Spencer Johnson, journalism textbooks, Steinbeck's ''Grapes of Wrath,'' and speeches by the late civil rights leader King.
Carson made a high-profile appearance earlier this week, and even spoke with the foreign media, during a meeting of opposition groups at the home of well-known dissident Marta Beatriz Roque. Senior US officials said later that American diplomats regularly visit with Cuban dissidents at their homes. Cason in particular has made a point of getting to know the dissidents. Dissidents are given free Internet access at the American mission, but Cason denied the Cuban government's charges that the mission provides financial support to dissidents. ''We don't give out cash,'' he said. ''. . . What we do here is logistics.''***
March 21, 2003 - Cuban crackdown riles dissidents, U.S.*** The U.S. government and Cuban dissidents reacted with anger yesterday as the government of Fidel Castro arrested more opponents and threatened to try those in custody for treason. Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's best-known dissident and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, said the arrests were timed to coincide with the war on Iraq so that the world would not take notice. Mr. Paya, whose international stature was protecting him from arrest, had organized the Varela Project petition requesting a Cuban referendum on democratic reform.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, called the opposition roundup "the most intense repression in recent years." The U.S. State Department called the 3-day-old crackdown the worst since the "purges" of 1996. At least a dozen of those rounded up were independent journalists, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. An official government statement accused the dissidents of "being directly linked to the conspiratorial activities" led by the U.S. mission.
One of Cuba's best-known dissidents, Martha Beatriz Roque, was arrested yesterday, bringing the number of opposition figures picked up in the past three days to at least 75. The State Department said Wednesday that those arrested either had met with the U.S. Interests Section chief, James Cason, or were organizers of Mr. Paya's Varela Project. ***
April 3, 2003 - Castro Seeks Life Sentences for Dissidents - Trial Today - Where's Jimmy Carter? *** The Cuban government has provided no information about the trials and it was unknown if international journalists would be granted access. Authorities here have accused those arrested of being traitors and mercenaries for the U.S. government. Cuban Parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon said Monday that authorities had sufficient evidence to try the dissidents, adding that most nations had laws "to defend their sovereignty." The crackdown began when Cuban officials criticized the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, for his active support of the island's opposition.
Accusations that the detainees engaged in treason and are mercenaries "only show the repressive nature of the Castro regime and its fear of any sign of opposition to its ironclad rule," Roberto Zimmerman, spokesman for the U.S. State Department's Latin America bureau, said in Washington on Wednesday. The Cubans "are being tried for exercising their rights of freedom of expression and association," said Zimmerman.
The roundup followed several years of relative government tolerance for dissidents. During that time, the opposition grew stronger, more organized and more daring. Those arrested included independent journalists, directors of non-governmental libraries, members of opposition political parties and volunteers for the Varela Project, a pro-democracy petition drive.***
Thought Crimes: Cuban Dissidents Reel Under 'Wave of Repression'Washington Post ^ | April 6, 2003 | Kevin Sullivan*** Paya and Sanchez said Castro is worried that the dissident community has grown from a few people to thousands willing to sign pro-democracy petitions. "Nothing they have done has been enough to paralyze this movement, and that's why they are scared," Paya said. Paya said he has gone daily to the courtroom where the trials are being held, but security forces have shouted obscenities at him and forced him to leave. Sanchez said he has tried to send observers to the trials but that security police stopped them before they could get within 100 yards of the building.
The extent of Castro's security network came into view Friday, when two reporters who spent years working alongside the country's best-known independent journalist, Raul Rivero, admitted at his trial that they were actually government agents. And in another trial, the secretary of dissident economist Marta Beatriz Roque also acknowledged spying for Castro.***
With such stunning courtroom revelations, Fidel Castro's government pressed ahead Friday the prosecution of 80 dissidents accused of working with U.S. diplomats to undermine Cuba's leadership. The well-known independent journalist Raul Rivero was among those being tried Friday in a second day of court proceedings aimed at crushing a small, but growing, opposition movement.
Rivero was being tried alongside Ricardo Gonzalez, the editor of De Cuba, a new general interest magazine publishing the works of Cuban journalists working outside state-controlled media. Prosecutors were seeking 20 years for Rivero and life for Gonzalez after being charged with working with a foreign power to undermine the government. Gonzalez is one of at least a dozen defendants who could face a life sentence. The trials are expected to end early next week with sentences issued days later. ***
April 20, 2003 - Cuba - communist intellectuals ask for end to criticism *** HAVANA -A group of world-renowned Cuban intellectuals released a letter to their colleagues around the world Saturday, asking them to stop criticizing harsh measures recently employed here. Titled Message from Havana to our friends in faraway places, the letter was published Saturday in the Communist Party daily Granma. Signed by 27 of Cuba's best-known cultural figures, the letter describes the ''surprise and pain'' felt when liberal intellectuals around the world criticized Cuba for its crackdown on dissidents and the executions of three ferry hijackers.***
Castro Spy Declares Opposition Is Disabled *** HAVANA - An undercover Cuban agent credited with giving some of the most damaging courtroom evidence against dissidents said the island's opposition movement has been shattered. "The opposition is finished, it has ended, it will never lift its head again," Aleida de las Mercedes Godinez told The Associated Press. "The opposition will never flourish again - never!"
……… Godinez provided a rare glimpse inside Castro's intelligence network and demonstrated just how deeply loyal his agents were. She said she never felt any remorse or sorrow for her work even though she worked with some dissidents for years. "Marta Beatriz was an objective of my mission," she said. "I could never be friends with a counterrevolutionary." Godinez said Roque, also a leading member of the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society, handled as much as $5,000 every month from various groups in the United States that were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The USAID Cuba program has given more than $20 million to U.S. groups working with the opposition on the communist-run island since 1996 to bring about a peaceful transition to democracy. Godinez, a former math teacher, said she received about $700 a month from U.S. organizations as head of the National Independent Workers Union of Cuba.
…………………Other agents were just as loyal as her. Dr. Pedro Luis Veliz Martinez, a 39-year-old internist and a member of a long-trusted communist family, told the AP in a separate interview Monday that he was first approached by an Interior Ministry official while doing late-night hospital rounds in 1996. "I never had any doubts," Veliz said. "I am a revolutionary. I am Marxist-Leninist. I believe in communism." After gaining the confidence of government opponents in the Liberal Party - and the organizations in Miami that support them, Veliz founded the Independent Medical College, a professional organization for dissident physicians, in 1999. ***
Facts on Castro's Oppression: terrifying realites of life inside totalitarian regime. -FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | By Lorne W. Craner [Testimony before the House International Relations Committee in Washington, D.C., given on April 16, 2003.] ****Many of these prisoners of conscience faced charges of collaboration with diplomats at the United States Interest Section in Havana. They were called traitors for their courage in speaking to official Americans such as Jim Cason. Like his predecessors, as chief of the Interest Section, Jim does in fact talk to independent Cuban citizens: an activity hardly worthy of comment, much less alarm, in a free and democratic society but a direct threat to the iron control of information under a dictatorial regime.
Like American and other diplomats around the world, Jim and his colleagues work to promote peaceful and democratic changes, provide information about our country, and encourage and strengthen fundamental -- and internationally acknowledged -- freedoms. Only Cuba, and a diminishing number of its totalitarian counterparts, could tremble at the "threat" of library books and free access to the Internet, and call them subversion. In Cuba, a reporter's office files, including envelopes of newspaper clippings, become evidence of treason.***
Castro cannot quash all dissent - books not bombs put them in prison *** Owning ''books contrary to the socioeconomic process,'' an old computer and a video camera, and ''acting on behalf of a foreign power,'' were some of the charges the prosecution put forward during the 18-hour trial of independent journalists Maseda and Oscar Espinosa Chepe and the dissidents Héctor Palacios, Marcelo López and Marcelo Cano.
They were all sentenced to more than 15 years for not agreeing with the official or party line.
The blow that the government has struck against the peaceful opposition within the island (no home search turned up bombs or guns) shows that the dissidents were doing a good job.
To accuse them of ''subverting the established order'' demonstrates how feeble the administration's hold on power really is. Ideas cannot be smothered, even if those at the top think that they have eliminated all opposition.***