Cuba's leading dissident slams Castro regime's human rights record

                   By DOUG BANDOW

                   HAVANA -- Inside Avenida 21, number 3014, a nondescript
                   house in a Havana suburb, lives dissident Elizardo Sanchez Santa
                   Cruz. Despite Cuba's greater engagement with the world over the
                   last decade, "political repression has been increasing," says
                   Sanchez.

                   There have recently been mass detentions after an invasion of the
                   Mexican embassy grounds by students hoping to get visas.
                   Independent journalists and human rights activists have been
                   beaten, detained and jailed.

                   "This has been the highest level of repression in the last 10 years,
                   maybe the last 20 years," Sanchez complains. Vicki Huddleston,
                   head of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba, opines: "For me, the
                   most worrisome thing is that the situation will be shoved
                   backwards."

                   This brutality has not prevented many Cubans from risking their
                   lives, freedom and property to fight for liberty. Sanchez is known
                   as the dean of human rights activists and heads the Cuban
                   Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

                   Of medium stature and with gray, receding hair, the 59-year-old
                   Sanchez doesn't look like someone to strike fear in the Cuban
                   government. But as Sanchez notes, while the regime took power in
                   1959 in a genuinely popular revolution against the corrupt Batista
                   dictatorship, "the base of support of the government has been
                   shrinking" ever since.

                   That would make any dictatorship nervous. Thus, he has spent
                   more than eight years in prison, been detained around 24 times
                   since breaking with the regime, and seen his home assaulted by
                   para-police thugs.

                   The policy of the Castro regime is simple, he explains: It violates
                   "all political, economic and civil rights." Although the government
                   has devoted much of its limited resources to education and health
                   care, they "form part of the official propaganda system."

                   There is some good news. During the 1990s there were some
                   1,000 political prisoners. Today there are "only" 220, but that is still
                   the highest in the Western hemisphere and "one of the highest in the
                   world in relative terms," says Sanchez.

                   While it was once "very dangerous" for human rights activists to
                   meet with the foreign press, he now does so regularly without
                   obvious retaliation. I know the regime "would like us to be dead,
                   but they know that the political cost would be too high."

                   There has been some improvement in religious freedom, especially
                   since the Pope's visit in 1998. The government doesn't interfere in
                   the internal affairs of the church but regulates any activity outside of
                   worship.

                   Sanchez started as a 16-year-old student activist and member of
                   the socialist youth organization. He later taught philosophy at the
                   University of Havana.

                   But by 1967, to him and several friends "it became very clear that it
                   had become a totalitarian government." Thus, he began "35 years
                   of resisting the regime."

                   Despite all that he has gone through, he remains hopeful. "Change
                   will happen in the short or medium term." No one knows when, but
                   the "transition could start this very night."

                   Even Cuban officials admit that the 75-year-old Castro won't live
                   forever, and then, Sanchez believes, there will be a "power
                   vacuum. And what happens next will be uncontrollable."

                   Some Cuba observers think the country may already have entered
                   its transition, which might give the nascent opposition an
                   opportunity to lead. "These human rights activists and independent
                   journalists, doctors, and economists are beginning to mean
                   something," explains Vicki Huddleston. They are "beginning to give
                   voice to this enormous frustration of the Cuban people."

                   Cuban officials dismiss the dissidents as being tools of America.
                   Some of them have a hard time imagining dissent. Ismael Gonzalez,
                   Vice Minister of Culture, notes that "art is by its nature belligerent."
                   But only "theoretically speaking," in his view, might that belligerence
                   be expressed as criticism of the government. "Fortunately, we
                   haven't seen that reality in many years."

                   Sanchez looks outside his own country for support, because only
                   international pressure keeps him and many of his colleagues out of
                   jail. However, he favors lifting America's embargo against Cuba.

                   Sanchez's argument is simple: "The sanction policy by the U.S.
                   government has allowed the Cuban government to have a good
                   alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba."
                   Moreover, contact with foreigners is likely to breed discontent.

                   What of his personal future? He has family in the U.S. and when he
                   traveled abroad in 1988 for the first time, "the government said that
                   it expected me not to come back." But he did.

                   He notes: "This is my country. The solution is not that Cubans
                   should just leave their country. I think we should stay here and
                   change things."

                   In the end, Cuba's future will be determined by men and women
                   like Sanchez. Americans can hope for reform in Cuba; only Cubans
                   can make reform happen. Vicki Huddleston emphasizes: "Decisions
                   for Cubans have to be made by Cubans. They are putting their lives
                   on the line."

                   Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the
                   author of "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a
                   Changed World."