[ One woman’s story that is still repeated in a grim number of cases. ]
Havana (dpa) – The Villa Marista in Havana is Cuba’s most feared prison, for here the state’s security services conduct their interrogations.
For four months towards the end of 1997, Martha Beatriz Roque, 55, was locked up here for her political activities, spending the time in an overheated and windowless cell in which the light was on for 24 hours a day. The guards forced her to sleep on her back.
Afterwards she was moved to another prison where she was made to share a cell with four convicted women murderers. Roque, who had gained international recognition for her political activism was released early from prison on May 15, 2000.
The former university lecturer has not abandoned her struggle for freedom of expression and greater democracy, and continues to risk re-arrest for her activities, as all political activity outside the Communist Party is strictly banned in Cuba.
“Our group continues to exist, but the risk is extremely high,” Roque told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. In 1997 her activist group put forward counter-proposals ahead of the Communist Party conference and called for a boycott of local elections.
For this she received her three-year prison sentence, and one member of the group, Vladimiro Roca, is still in prison.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned the Havana government for its violation of the rights to free expression and association – most recently in April last year.
The European Union insists on the removal of so-called political crimes from the statute book before it will enter into a cooperation agreement of the kind that it has with other Latin American countries.
But the Castro government, in power since 1959, shows no sign of making concessions. On the contrary, repression is increasing, according to the dissidents.
According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation – an illegal organization – some 200 people were temporarily detained over 10 days at the beginning of December.
The commission’s chairman, Elizardo Sanchez, referred to one of the most severe waves of repression in recent years.
Nevertheless, the number of convicted political prisoners in the country’s jails is currently at a little more than 300 and at least a third lower than it was five years ago.
Dissidents believe the government’s security apparatus is now using the threat of frequent temporary detention to intimidate the opposition.
Another tactic is to force the person targeted into a car and to drop them off more than 100 kilometres from their home – an effective tactic in the light of Cuba’s appalling transport system.
Roque tells the story of a dissident who was banned from entering Havana for 10 years. Despite the continual intimidation and the damage to her health she incurred during her term of imprisonment, Roque intends to continue the fight for greater political rights.
“The day I stop taking risks is the day I cease to be a fighter for democracy,” she says.
