Posted on Wednesday, 07.25.12
US, Amnesty critical of Cuban dissident detentions
By PETER ORSI
Associated Press
HAVANA -- Cuba was criticized by the U.S. government and Amnesty
International on Wednesday over the brief detention of dozens of
dissidents after they attended a prominent opposition leader's funeral.
A few hundred people had gathered at a Havana church the previous day to
pay respects to Oswaldo Paya, who died Sunday in a car crash, when a
scrum broke out outside between dissidents yelling "freedom!" and state
security agents.
Police herded more than 40 people onto buses, according to noted
dissident hunger-striker Guillermo Farinas. They were taken to police
stations and released within hours.
Cuba, which considers members of the island's small dissident community
to be "counterrevolutionaries" bent on undermining the government, has
cleared its prisons of internationally recognized prisoners of
conscience in recent years. Dissidents say authorities have since turned
to brief detentions such as those seen Tuesday.
The short-term arrests "aim to produce physical and psychological wear
and tear among the opposition," said Farinas, who like Paya is a past
winner of the European Union's Sakharov human rights prize.
Dissidents accused police of rough treatment, but there were no reports
of any serious injuries.
The White House said in a Wednesday statement that the detentions
"provide a stark demonstration of the climate of repression in Cuba."
"We look forward to the day when the Cuban people can live in the free
society Oswaldo Paya worked so hard to bring about throughout his
lifetime," it read.
Human rights group Amnesty International also criticized the arrests.
"Tuesday's events follow the pattern of short-term detentions and
imprisonments we've seen the Cuban authorities carry out time and again
as a form of intimidation against dissidents and human rights
activists," said Gerardo Ducos, Amnesty's Cuba researcher.
There was no word of the detentions in Cuban state media, which rarely
mention dissidents except to accuse them of being paid stooges of the
U.S. government. Island newspapers have reported Paya's death, but
without mentioning his opposition activities.
A rental car carrying Paya, another Cuban dissident, and two Europeans
crashed Sunday in the eastern province of Granma, killing Paya and the
other Cuban.
State media said the accident happened when the driver of the vehicle
lost control and hit a tree.
A member of the Spanish conservative ruling party's youth wing was
apparently behind the wheel. Both he and a Swede belonging to a
political youth organization suffered minor injuries. They made
statements to police and were being assisted by officials from their
respective embassies, but have not spoken to the news media.
There have been some conflicting accounts of the crash including
speculation it could have been intentional, and dissidents demanded a
transparent investigation.
"We will clear up and seek justice for the violent death of my father,"
daughter Rosa Maria Paya said Tuesday at the church.
Paya, 60, was a leading government opponent who in the late 1990s and
early 2000s headed up the Varela Project, which gathered thousands of
signatures calling for political and economic change.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/25/2911959/us-amnesty-critical-of-cuban-dissident.html#storylink=misearch
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