Black Spring was the 2003 crackdown by the Cuban Government on Cuban dissidents. [1] [2] [3] [4] The government imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists on the basis that they were acting as agents of the United States by accepting funds from the US government and George W. Bush's administration at the time. [1] Amnesty International described the 75 Cubans as "prisoners of conscience". [5] The Cuban government stated at the time: "the 75 individuals arrested, tried and sentenced in March/April 2003... are demonstrably not independent thinkers, writers or human rights activists, but persons directly in the pay of the US government. [...] [T]hose who were arrested and tried were charged not with criticizing the [Cuban] government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats". [6]
Contents
The crackdown on dissidents began on 18 March, during the US invasion of Iraq, and lasted two days. [1] It received international condemnation from several countries, with critical statements coming from George W. Bush's administration, the European Union, the United Nations and various human rights groups. Responding to the crackdown, the European Union imposed sanctions on Cuba in 2003, which were then lifted in January 2008. [7] The European Union declared at the time that the arrests "constituted a breach of the most elementary human rights, especially as regards freedom of expression and political association". [8] Some criticized the dissidents, such as former CIA agent Philip Agee, who described them as "central to current US government efforts to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the work of the Revolution." [9] [10] US sociologist and scholar James Petras noted that "No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic citizens paid by, and working for a foreign power to act for its imperial interests, as 'dissidents'". [11] [12]
All of the dissidents were eventually released, most of whom were exiled to Spain starting in 2010. [13] [14]
