IPS-English CUBA: Officials Demand Explanations from US on Dissident Funds
 
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 18:57:22 -0700

 
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 22   (IPS)  - The Cuban government demanded that the
United States provide explanations for what it described as ”obscure
ties” between U.S. diplomatic personnel in Havana, ”terrorist” groups
in Miami and members of dissident organisations, in a case that has
further heated up relations between the two countries.



”We demand that they face up to this,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez 
Roque in a news briefing Thursday, after three different TV programmes
were aired between Monday and Wednesday exhibiting the results of
an investigation that allegedly showed that U.S. diplomats ferried
money to dissident groups in Cuba.

Although he described the incidents as ”extremely serious,” Pérez
Roque did not indicate whether the government planned to close down
the Interests Sections opened in Havana and Washington in 1977 to
provide consular services and maintain a minimal channel of communication,
in the absence of diplomatic ties since 1961.

In the decades-long conflict between the two countries, the U.S.
embargo is the thorniest issue, costing Cuba some 89 billion dollars
in four and a half decades, according to Havana.

This is not the first time that Cuba has accused the U.S. Interests
Section (SINA) of serving as the ”chief headquarters” of dissident
groups.

However, the accusations this time have been stepped up a notch,
going beyond questions of ideology and into the terrain of national
security.

In Pérez Roque's view, the most serious aspect is the origin of the
funds that he said were carried in letters, on several occasions,
by SINA chief Michael Parmly and SINA official Robert Blau.

He said the funds were brought in at the request of Martha Beatriz
Roque, a dissident with radical views who heads the Assembly for the
Promotion of Civil Society.

The official reports referred to investigations by Cuban intelligence,
which intercepted emails, telephone calls and receipts signed by Roque
and other dissidents in Havana revealing that funds were sent from
the Legal Rescue Foundation based in Miami, Florida and headed by
Cuban-American citizen Santiago Álvarez.

Álvarez, who is currently in prison in the United States for weapons
possession and other offences, is a long-time anti-Castro activist
with a record of violent action against Cuba, and a key supporter
of Luis Posada Carriles, whose extradition from the United States
has been requested by Venezuela, which wants to try him for the 1976
bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed.

”It is money stained with blood, that comes from terrorists,” said Pérez Roque. 

However, the minister did not make it clear whether legal action
would be taken against the recipients of the funds. ”This is an ongoing
investigation of terrorism and its connection with subversives in
Cuba, and we must await the results,” he said.

Laura Pollán, of the Women in White movement, signed a receipt for
2,500 dollars to be distributed among 18 wives of imprisoned dissidents.
She told IPS that ”at no time” did they know that the funds ”had anything
to do with Santiago Álvarez.”

”Martha Beatriz brought it to us, and it was humanitarian aid from
the Legal Rescue Foundation,” she said.

”We didn't know that Álvarez was the main benefactor,” said Pollán,
who described the Women in White, so called because of the colour
they wear in their demonstrations, as ”peaceful women” who are merely
seeking the release of their husbands. 

Pollán's husband is one of 75 dissidents imprisoned in 2003 on charges
of conspiring with Washington.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a moderate dissident who is critical of U.S.
policy towards Cuba, told IPS by telephone that he had no doubt that
Álvarez is in favour of violent action, ”which has doomed any role
he could have played in this country to failure.”      

In the view of political scientist and researcher Rafael Hernández,
the investigation showed that ”dissident groups are not just ordinary
Cubans expressing a different point of view, who limit themselves
to using freedom of conscience and of expression and are peacefully
fighting for democracy and freedom, but are allies of a foreign power.”

That, he said, is the ”central message” that the government of Raúl
Castro is sending to the United States, the European Union, dissident
groups, and the Cuban exile community in Miami, which does not quite
know what to make of the recent opening up of debate in Cuba.

But he said the main target of the Cuban government's message would
be the U.S. administration, in case ”it is thinking that, with the
broadening of public debate and the changes introduced by Raúl, there
might be a new climate that they can turn to their own advantage,
including the use of these groups.” 

Hernández remarked that the media offensive is also directed at the
EU and other governments concerned about human rights in Cuba, which
consider the dissidents to be ”punished for crimes of conscience,”
in spite of their own embassies in Havana ”knowing perfectly well
who they are and what they're up to.”

Hernández, the editor of the cultural journal Temas, said that political
parties, whether legal or illegal, do not fit into a definition of
civil society in any part of the world, and the dissident groups that
operate in his country ”do not organically represent any social sector,
nor are they backed by a consensus.”

”Their support comes from abroad, and mainly from the United States,
other governments and the Cuban-American right. Now if we're talking
about a diversity of positions and political change, these are clearly
present in Cuba's own organisations and civil society institutions,”
he said.


*****
+ CUBA: Government Toughens Stance Against Dissidents (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42085)
+ CUBA: How Far Will the Changes Go? (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41380)
+ POLITICS-CUBA: Opposition Sets Course Due North (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36068)
+ Cuban Revolution - Chapter 2? More IPS News (http://ipsnews.net/new_focus/cuba/index.asp)


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