On Friday, two days after being honored by the National Endowment for Democracy with its Democracy Award, Cuban human rights activists Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" and his wife Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera were arrested at their home in Placetas and taken to State Security headquarters in Santa Clara, according to Radio Martí.
Activists in Placetas said police there were refusing to provide information about the Pérezes, except to say they had been transferred.
The timing might just be coincidence, after all the couple always is in trouble with the Castro dictatorship. The police have made it a habit of arresting, detaining and otherwise harassing Antúnez since April 2007 when he was released from prison after more than 17 years behind bars.
But coming in the wake of the NED ceremony, at which Antúnez spoke via telephone, and more importantly, a tepid congratulatory message from President Barack Obama, it might be best to connect the dots:
- The NED honors the couple and three other dissidents currently in jail.
- Obama declines a chance to welcome Antúnez's sister to the White House, and sends his congratulations only after the Washington Post asks if he has a comment.
- Two days later, Cuban police officers go to the couple's home and arrest them.
What's happens next? No one knows.
Will they be released after yet another fruitless attempt to get them to change their freedom-loving ways? No one knows.
Or its frustration at a breaking point, and embarassed at what Antúnez had to say at the NED ceremony, has the dictatorship finally decided to deal with its Antúnez problem once and for all by again locking him away in its gulag? No one knows.
If it's only a coincidence — the NED's award ceremony, Obama's no-show, the arrests — well, it again confirms what the world should already know about the Castro regime. Antúnez and his wife have committed their lives to telling that story.
But on the more likely chance that it is not a coincidence, the series of events illustrates why Obama's misstep last week was so disappointing, and so dangerous.
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