Cuba's Black Spring remembered

Posted on Thursday, 03.21.13

Cuba's Black Spring remembered
By The Miami Herald Editorial
HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

Ten years ago this week, Cuba cracked down on independent journalists,
librarians and other opposition leaders.

Many of the 75 Cubans locked up during Cuba's Black Spring belonged to
the Christian Liberation Movement, a group formed by Oswaldo Payá to
collect signatures for his Varela Project to open up communist Cuba..

The regime's show trials of those 75 brave Cubans tried to turn
free-thinkers into U.S. "mercenaries" — an attempt to scare Cubans from
sharing their viewpoints of a crumbling government unwilling to allow
political parties or free elections or freedom of speech.

Now 10 years later, Mr. Payá is dead, along with another opposition
leader, Harold Cepero, both killed in a crash last year in a car driven
by Angel Carromero, a Spaniard who was helping Mr. Payá uncover
human-rights violations. Mr. Carromero, now serving his Cuba-imposed
sentence for vehicular manslaughter in Spain, has spoken up now that
he's out of the island gulag. He says, as many already feared, that his
car was being followed by Cuban state security, which slammed his car
into a ditch. He also says he was drugged while in a Cuban prison so
that he would remain mum.

Sen. Bill Nelson wants the United Nations to investigate what happened
to Cuba's most well-known dissident. Surely, that's the least that can
be done to bring justice to Mr. Payá.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/21/3299302/cubas-black-spring-remembered.html#storylink=misearch