February 28, 1999
Web posted at: 10:32 p.m. EST (0332 GMT)

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- At least two dozen Cuban dissidents were being held on Sunday in a round-up of activists apparently intended to prevent trouble at the trial this week of four prominent government opponents, dissident sources said.

Various dissident groups put the number of detentions in Havana and surrounding areas since Friday at between 26 and 32, with many more said to have received visits and verbal warnings from state security officers.

All the dissidents held in what was believed to be one of the largest round-ups in recent years were members of small groups opposed to President Fidel Castro's communist government or reporters working outside state media without authorization.

"It's a shame this cannot be resolved in a civilized manner," said Gerardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. He said he had a list of 26 people who were confirmed detained.

Sanchez and other dissident sources said the detentions, assumed to be temporary until after the trial, were directed at those activists planning to attend the start of the proceedings -- scheduled for around 9.00 a.m. (1400 GMT) Monday at the Havana Tribunal in the Marianao district of the Cuban capital.

The four dissident leaders going on trial for sedition on Monday -- in what was likely to be the highest-profile dissident case in Cuba for years -- are Vladimiro Roca, Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano.

They were detained on July 16, 1997, after issuing an open critique of the Communist Party and urging reforms. Their imprisonment has been a focus of international pressure on Havana.

Another dissident source, Raul Rivero, said more than 30 people had been rounded up ahead of the trial.

"According to our list, they've detained 21 people from Havana, and 11 in Matanzas province who were thinking of coming into Havana for the trial," said Rivero, a dissident poet and journalist who heads the news agency Cuba Press, which works illegally outside the nation's state-controlled media.

Rivero said two Cuba Press reporters were among those held.

There was no confirmation of the round-up from the government, which generally does not comment on such matters beyond reiterating its view that it has the right to take action against "counter-revolutionary criminals" or potential offenders.

Trial believed to start Monday

The authorities have not publicly confirmed the date of the trial of the four although they have said it will be soon. Families and legal representatives of the detainees have said it will be on Monday.

"It's clear that they (the authorities) are not going to allow any shows of solidarity tomorrow around the trial," Sanchez said in a telephone interview.

Other sources, from the Marianao district where the trial is scheduled to be held, said Communist Party grass-roots organizations including Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) and Rapid Response Brigades were being "mobilized" to attend the courthouse and its environs.

Most major Western nations with embassies in Havana were planning to send representatives to the trial. Washington, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Cuba, was planning to send people from its interests' section in Havana.

The authorities were clearly determined to prevent a repetition of rowdy and heavily publicized protests outside several trials of lesser-known dissidents in Havana last year, diplomats and analysts said.

Those demonstrations, including anti-Castro chants and clashes between government opponents and sympathizers, were rare outbreaks of disorder in Cuba's closely controlled society.

Under Castro's one-party socialist system, in place since soon after his 1959 revolution, opposition political parties are outlawed.

There are scores of small, illegal opposition groups but they have no access to the media, cannot hold public meetings and do not threaten the Communist Party's dominance.

Havana denies it represses freedom of speech, or holds any prisoners of conscience, saying those government opponents in jail are there on legitimate charges.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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