The most disappointing thing about Fidel Castro's illness — apart from the fact that he has yet to succumb — is that it has not been met with more active and more vocal resistance by the Cuban people against the Castro's regime.
A mass movement has not erupted, but that, as a new report indicates, does not mean all Cubans have remained compliant in the face of tyranny.
The Cuban Democratic Directorate is reporting that in 2005 there were more than 3,300 acts of civil disobedience on the island.
The Miami Herald reports:
"Repression generates rebellion,'' said Janisset Rivero, executive director of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a Miami exile organization that published the Steps to Freedom report, to be released Thursday at the University of Miami.The report's numbers underscore growing discontent with the quality of life in Cuba, and the government's inability to satisfy basic needs. And while the government's 2003 crackdown decapitated much of the dissident movement, each year the number of acts of civil resistance climbs, the report said.
Among the group's findings:
— The central province of Villa Clara appears to be a hotbed of political opposition, logging far more protests than any other province. Even though nearly all of the island's internationally known dissident activists live in Havana, only 11 percent of last year's civil disobedience took place there.— 25 hunger strikes were held by prisoners.
— The Ladies in White, the group of female relatives of the 75 political prisoners picked up in the 2003 sweep, held 182 different protests.
— The 3,322 acts logged in 2005 — including 2,613 vigils — represent an 85 percent increase over the 1,805 acts of civil disobedience in 2004.
"What we're seeing is a direct relation between the incapacity of the regime's administration - economically, politically, the errors they commit every day - and the discontent of the people,'' Rivero said. "People see no hope, but they are losing their fear.''
The end of the story describes how dissident lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva cut short an interview "when he said the pro-government mob throwing rocks at the home of another dissident where Gonzalez was using the phone had set the roof on fire. Reached later, he said a few pails of water put out the fire."
That "other dissident" was independent journalist Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia, 21, who complained to journalist Roberto Santana about what happened, according to a story at Payo Libre.
"I want to call on the international community to condemn these acts of repression of which I have been victim lately," said Rodríguez, who works for Youth Without Censorship. "I make the Cuban government and State Security in charge of my physical integrity, and that of my family, because no longer is it affecting only me, it is affecting my family, my younger sister, who is a girl, and to my mother who has an heart ailment. ... This is an attempt by State Security to try to intimidate him."
Rodríguez, no stranger to harrassment by Castroite mobs, said he would continue working as a journalist.
Read the whole Miami Herald story here.
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