Dissident activist 'Antunez' (credit: Directorio)
Democracy and human rights groups are urging the Congressional Black Caucus, which yesterday met with Fidel Castro, to press Cuba’s communist authorities on the welfare of the island’s political prisoners and democracy activists, including Afro-Cuban prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and civil rights activist Jorge Luis Perez Garcia, aka “Antunez.”
The World Movement for Democracy is organizing a signature campaign to support Cuba’s democratic opposition at a time of ferment in civil society. The Cuban Democratic Directorate and the National Endowment for Democracy have issued a joint letter expressing solidarity with human rights activist and political dissident Jorge Luis García Pérez, better known as Antúnez, and fellow activists who have been threatened by police and State Security Officers.
As the new U.S. administration reviews policy towards the communist state, some 17 Cuban dissidents – including as Antúnez – have released a letter (pdf) asking President Obama to consider a “multilateral international strategy that obliges the Castro regime to open itself to its own people, releasing political prisoners, restoring the civil rights of the Cuban people, and organizing free elections under international supervision.”
Independent trade union leader and exiled dissident Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos recently called for the United States to end travel restrictions to Cuba. “We believe that the lifting of travel restrictions will bring about an exchange between the Cuban people and the American people that will redound to the benefit of our people,” said Alvarez, addressing an event sponsored by Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. Alvarez was arrested in 2003, sentenced to 25 years in prison, but released after five years into exile in Spain.
Other observers are demanding a loosening of repression in Cuba in exchange for a lifting of the travel ban and other trade restrictions.
Curiously, the views of Cuba’s beleaguered democrats and civil society activists have barely featured in debates about U.S. or European policy towards the communist state. Leading European Union politicians were recently berated for failing to meet with independent groups during a recent delegation to the island, violating EU policy that dialogue with Cuba should include the democratic opposition and civil society.
It has fallen to governments and pro-democracy NGOs in the former communists states of central Europe to take the lead on solidarity with Cuba’s democratic opposition. Petr Kolar, the Czech ambassador to the United States, explains why:
Why are we — Central European countries, no superpowers, members of the European Union, located so far away from this Caribbean island — so involved in this ”Cuban issue”? Well, it is simple: We have been there.
The answer lies not in geography, but in history. The Czechs, as well as other nations and peoples of Central and Eastern Europe lived through an era of totalitarian communist regime, where democracy, freedom and human rights were concepts of which you could only quietly dream, while living a nightmare.
- Read the World Movement for Democracy letter here and provide your signature endorsing it by emailing your name and country to info@directorio.org by Wednesday, April 15, 2009. And take time to forward to fellow human rights and democracy activists.
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