a trial Sunday, April 24, two years after he was detained by Cuba’s feared political police, his wife and dissident sources said. Rafael Millet Leyva, president of the Movimiento de Resistencia Civica "Martin Luther King", or "Martin Luther King Civic Resistance Movement" is "confined to cubicle 4 of Section A-4 of the maximum security prison "El Guayabo", in the Isle of Pines," dissidents said in a statement received by BosNewsLife News Center.
"In September of 2004, I filed a complaint at the General Prosecutor of the Republic because they keep him in jail without due process and his attorney Rose Mary has also looked into it. But the prosecutor’s office has not replied", said his wife Maria de los Angeles Cruz Batista in a statement released by Lux-Info-Press news agency.
WAVE OF REPRESSION
Rafael Millet Leyva, who is in his thirties, was arrested on March 24, 2003, during "a wave of repression" unleashed against opposition activists and Cuban independent journalists, human rights watchers say. The Political Police accused him of putting anti government slogans on buildings.
"The inhumane conditions my husband has been subjected to have not changed his convictions or his ideals"- his wife said. Human rights group Amnesty International has declared Rafael Millet Leyva "a prisoner of conscience" and urged President Fidel Castro to set him free.
News of his treatment comes after dissidents told BosNewsLife that police forces are "threatening members of the pro democracy movement throughout the [Communist] island." Sonia Barge of the dissident movement Plantados Hasta La Libertad en Cuba or "Until Freedom And Democracy in Cuba," which includes former political prisoners said that "several dissidents have been taken to police stations for questioning."
CUBAN RELATIONS
Others are allegedly threatened for by phone. "The police try to do it in the shadow as they know it could harm Cuba’s relations with the European Union", which recently offered to ease sanctions in exchange for more political freedom, she added.
In a statement from Havana to BosNewsLife News Center earlier this month, former prisoners of conscience Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello and Rene Gomez Manzano said their "telephones are interrupted, cutting all communication with members of the peaceful opposition movement in Cuba and with the international community."
The two dissidents recently established the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, a coalition of 343 groups including small political groupings, human rights activists and independent libraries. It is also the main organizer of a May 20 national gathering to "discuss all problems related to the promotion and development of Cuban civil society."
DOZENS DETAINED
Since last year at least 14 of the group of 75 have been freed on medical grounds as the government seeks to improve its international image and repair diplomatic relations with the EU. However Barge said the move was not sincere as many dissidents, including Christians, are still in prison, often in apparently harsh conditions.
The Cuban authorities have denied there are dissidents, and claim those detained are "mercenaries" from the United States to undermine the revolution. (With BosNewsLife Research, Stefan J. Bos and reports from Cuba and Miami)
