Castro assailed for sentencing of dissidents

  BY ALFONSO CHARDY

    Profiles of some of those convicted

  Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly condemned Cuba on Thursday for a massive crackdown against dissidents and urged Cuban leader Fidel Castro to
  free scores of opponents arrested and sentenced to long prison terms in the ongoing dragnet.

  In a statement issued at the State Department in Washington, Powell said Castro must free the ''prisoners of conscience'' because ``their only crime was
  seeking basic human rights and freedoms.''

  Powell also said the United States will seek to denounce Cuba's ''abysmal human rights performance'' at the forthcoming meeting of the Human Rights
  Commission in Geneva.

  Powell is the highest administration official to directly criticize the Cuban government over the dissident crackdown, the most comprehensive roundup of
  opposition members in Cuba in decades.

  Cuban officials have justified the roundup, summary trials and stiff sentences, citing the need to protect national security. Cuban officials argue that the
  independent journalists, opposition party leaders and other opponents caught in the dragnet are bent on undermining the island's communist system in
  collaboration with American diplomats in Havana.

  SPEAKING OUT

  Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque has said that increased hostility from Washington forced Havana to protect itself against what he described as
  a U.S.-backed opposition.

  ''There has been an obsession by the government of the United States to fabricate an opposition in Cuba, to create a fifth column,'' Pérez Roque said
  Wednesday.

  In Miami, prominent Cuban Americans urged the U.S government to express even more support for Cuba's civil opposition, saying the crackdown showed
  the U.S. policy of endorsing Cuban dissent was hurting the Castro regime.

  ''This is an example that this administration's outreach in developing a civil society is having an effect in Cuba,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the
  Cuban American National Foundation.

  ``It should be a signal that we should not only continue the current policy but expand the current policy of supporting civil society and direct engagement
  with the Cuban people.''

  MORE SENTENCED

  Powell's statement was released as more heavy sentences were announced in Cuba against recently detained dissidents.

  Among the most prominent dissidents sentenced Thursday was Oscar Elias Biscet, a physician who received a 25-year term. Biscet has been in detention
  since December after his arrest during a protest in Matanzas province.

  In defense of his government's actions, Pérez Roque cited a letter that he said President Bush had written to Biscet congratulating him for winning an
  award from the International Republican Institute in February.

  POLITICAL REPRESSION

  In his statement, titled ''End the Repression in Cuba,'' Powell said dissidents were merely seeking freedom, calling the roundup and trials the most
  significant Cuban government attack on dissidents in years.

  ''In recent days, the Cuban government has undertaken the most significant act of political repression in decades,'' Powell wrote. ``Nearly 80
  representatives of a growing and truly independent civil society have been arrested, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in summary, secret
  trials. . . . We call on Castro to end this despicable repression and free these prisoners of conscience.''

  Veteran dissidents who remain free denounced the arrests and sentences, calling the situation unprecedented.

  ''There has never been anything similar to this in the history of Cuba,'' said longtime activist Elizardo Sánchez, whose Cuban Commission on Human Rights
  and National Reconciliation is monitoring the recent arrests and subsequent trials.

  Sánchez and four other dissident leaders signed a letter urging foreign governments to denounce the Castro regime.

  ''We call on all democratic governments and organizations of the world -- that have not done so already -- to openly reject this wave of repression,'' read
  the letter. ''We direct this call in particular to our brother countries in Latin America, which up to now have not spoken out in this needed censure of the
  only totalitarian regime'' in the region.

  Besides Sánchez, the other dissident leaders who signed the letter were Gustavo Arcos, Vladimiro Roca, René Gomez and Felix Bonne.

  This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.