One of Fidel Castro's more vicious acts in the past half-decade was the 2003 "black spring," in which his secret police arrested about 75 independent journalists, librarians, democracy and human rights activisits and other dissidents, and sentenced them to long prison terms.
In the year he has held power as temporary dictator, little brother Raúl Castro has brought his own style to the Cuban police state. Undoubtedly aware that he doesn't need the heat another similar roundup might bring, Raúl is using more subtle — but just as terrifying, I would imagine — means to try to intimidate the regime's opponents. (Of course, all bets are off when the decaying dictator finally dies. Presumably, the real Raúl will be revealed again, in the form of a brutal crackdown to show who's really in charge now.)
It has become a familiar pattern. A knock on the door — or maybe the cops just kick it in. A ride to a police station. Hours of interrogation. And warnings and threats that if you don't quit sending your stories overseas or hosting pro-democracy activities in your home, you could find yourself like the Group of 75: locked away in the gulag.
Last weekend, it happened to three government opponents, in the town of San Germán, in Holguín province — Cuban Liberal Party member José Antonio Triguero, and independent journalists Yosvani Anzardo Hernández and Luis Felipe Rojas Rosaba.
Rojas, a contributor to Encuentro el Red, reported that their interrogators used a "persuasive tone," to warn them to halt their "counter-revolutionary" activities. Otherwise, the consequences might be anything from being denied permission to leave the island to being declared an "enemy of the state" and sentenced to a long prison term.
As Rojas noted, the responsibility for such thuggish behavior lies at the top of the Cuban dictatorship.
"This harassament increases the level of violence since Raul Castro provisionally assumed power a year ago," Rojas said.
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