Cuban dissidents offered political asylum

The Czech Republic has offered asylum to 10 Cuban dissidents and their families.

In early July, the Spanish Foreign Ministry and the Catholic Church negotiated the release of 52 of 75 prisoners who were sentenced to 28 years in prison during a 2003 government crackdown on dissent. So far, 26 have been released, and six more are expected to be in the coming days, said Matteo de Bellis, a campaigner for Amnesty International's Americas program.

The final 20 are slated for release within the next few months.

Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Jiří Beneš said it is still unknown if any of the dissidents will accept the offer, which was made after consulting with the Interior Ministry at the end of July.

"We are awaiting the response from the Cuban side," Beneš said. "The Czech Republic's long-term policy is to address the human rights issues in Cuba."

De Bellis said the first batch of prisoners was released to Spain, where almost all have stayed, but they may be granted residence visas in other countries. However, Amnesty International and the Foreign Affairs Ministry have expressed concern that the dissidents are not being given the option to remain in Cuba, which constitutes a "violation of their right to freedom of movement," de Bellis said.

"It's absolutely necessary that all the political prisoners be released, and at the same time it is equally important that they could have made the free choice of whether to stay in Cuba or make use of one of the offers to live abroad and start a new life abroad," Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said.

This is the first time the Czech Republic has made an asylum offer to Cuban dissidents.

The government crackdown that led to the dissidents' imprisonment, called "Black Spring," was a massive internment of journalists, librarians, human rights activists and democracy activists who were accused of acting as agents of the United States by Fidel Castro's regime in 2003. Negotiations for the release of the prisoners, which have taken place under the rule of Fidel's brother Raul Castro, followed a four-month hunger strike by journalist Guillermo Farinas, de Bellis said.

"They have been imprisoned solely for acts relating to their criticism of the one-party state," de Bellis said. "The definition of several crimes in Cuban legislation is so vague that it allows them to be used to curb dissent by a judiciary that is neither independent nor impartial."

Amnesty has termed the dissidents "prisoners of conscience," meaning they were imprisoned for peaceful exercise of their human rights, de Bellis said.

The European Union initially set sanctions against Cuba after the 2003 crackdown, but allowed them to lapse in 2008. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos is touting the more conciliatory approach taken by Spain toward Cuba, citing the release of prisoners, and has called on other EU countries to soften their stance on Cuba. However, as reported by The Prague Post, Schwarzenberg rejected such calls earlier this month. Schwarzenberg was expelled from Cuba in 2005 for attending a pro-democracy conference organized by dissidents.

De Bellis said there are a number of prisoners of conscience still not part of the release plan, including Héctor Fernando Maseda Gutiérrez, arrested in 2003 for publishing articles that contained "misleading" information about Cuba and for being linked to media outlets in Miami.

Gutiérrez writes from prison, and in 2008 he was awarded the International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Cat Contiguglia can be reached at
ccontiguglia@praguepost.com