CUBA
Secret trials in Cuba are criticized
Two Cuban dissidents went before secret trials this month as one of the
island's longest-serving political prisoners was released.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
A Cuban dissident was sentenced to 12 years in prison in the second
secret trial in less than a week, while a third government opponent was
freed after completing a 17-year sentence.
Lawyer Rolando Jiménez Posada's 12-year sentence came as one of the
island's longest-serving political prisoners, Jorge Luís García Pérez,
known as Antúnez, was released after serving a sentence marked by hunger
strikes, allegations of beatings and a bold escape.
Last week, independent journalist Oscar Sánchez Madan was sentenced to
four years in prison, after being arrested, tried and convicted all in
the same day -- and also without a defense lawyer present.
''Those kinds of things only happen with an order from up top,'' said
Manuel Vázquez Portal, a former political prisoner who now lives in
South Florida. ``What I think is that after Fidel Castro's apparent
recovery [from intestinal surgery] the government feels reborn and is
taking measures in the name of that recovery.
''There's quite a contrast in having two secret trials in one week,
which show a tightening of political repressiveness, and this good news
about Antúnez,'' said Elizardo Sánchez, who heads the illegal but
tolerated Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
''This is a step back to the early days of the revolution, when there
were summary trials and executions,'' Sánchez said in a phone interview
from Havana.
Jiménez, 36, is a lawyer who ran the Human Rights Center on the Isle of
Youth. After hanging a sign outside his home in the town of Nueva Gerona
that quoted Jose Martí daring people to think independently, he was
arrested in the spring of 2003 and held without trial for four years.
HANDLING OF TRIAL
Sánchez said Monday he just learned that Jiménez was tried April 6 on
charges of ''disrespecting'' leader Fidel Castro, revealing state
secrets and illegally printing and writing anti-government posters and
graffiti.
The family was not notified of his trial date, and when Jiménez
protested the lack of defense counsel, he was tossed out of the
courtroom and not allowed to represent himself, Sánchez added.
''We're not just talking about a closed-door trial; we're talking about
a secret trial,'' he said. ``In my 20 years doing this kind of work, I
can tell you I have seen very, very few secret trials. I have been tried
twice, and both times I had my family and a lawyer -- a lawyer who works
for the state and could do nothing, but there he was, representing me.''
Vázquez said he believes secret trials have been taking place all along,
and that it's just now that human rights groups are learning of them.
'They're trying to say: `Not only are we not going to release political
prisoners, but we're going to put a few more in jail, and there's
nothing you can do about it.' ''
Antúnez, 42, a former sugar cane cutter jailed for speaking in favor of
reforms at a public plaza, served his 17-year sentence, plus another 37
days. He was released Sunday.
Antúnez's public act of defiance got him a six-year prison sentence. Two
years later, he broke out of prison to see his terminally ill mother
before she died. His brief escape cost him another 11 years in prison.
His mother died while he was in prison.
Antúnez's time behind bars was marked by failing health, allegations of
beatings by state security agents and a series of hunger strikes to
protest prison conditions. In 2000, human rights activists reported that
he'd grown so frail that he was down to 100 pounds.
`AIR OF FREEDOM'
''The path has been hard, but already the air of freedom is barely
visible on the horizon,'' Antúnez said in a statement released by the
Cuban Democratic Directorate, an anti-Castro exile organization. ``I am
more committed to the struggle, I am more committed to the cause for
which I was sent to prison. My body, soul and heart will always be at
the service of Cuba and my people.''
``Nothing or nobody will make us waver.''
While jailed, he founded a political prisoner movement named after Luis
Boitel, a dissident who died in 1972 of a hunger strike he began when he
wasn't released after serving his sentence. Antúnez also penned a
jailhouse memoir, Boitel Lives, published in Argentina.
''He's very brave,'' said Janisset Rivero, executive director of the
Democratic Directorate. ``I spoke to him yesterday. The first thing he
said was: `There are a lot of people suffering in prison, and we have to
get them out.'''
There are 280 political prisoners currently being held in Cuba,
according to Sánchez's commission.
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