If the regime were to enforce this law even-handedly, it would have to apply it to the island's most egregious offender: Fidel Castro himself.

After all, it is he who continues to give the United States new reasons to impose sanctions on his government, to keep the trade embargo against Cuba firmly in place, to continue treating him like the cave-dweller he is.

But instead, as it always happens, the laws in Cuba are turned against the most vulnerable of society, those who take unmeasurable risks outside the official, neutralizing, lobotomizing grid of the so-called revolution.

This week, the defendant's bench holds four of the island's best-known dissident leaders, Vladimiro Roca, Marta Beatriz Roque, Rene Gomez Manzano and Felix Bonne, all charged with sedition. The four, jailed since July 1997, were put on trial in a closed courtroom Monday amid the largest crackdown against government opponents in three years.

In a full-scale sweep to thwart public demonstrations, Cuban police descended upon some 90 government opponents, detaining nearly half and keeping the others in virtual house arrest.

The Group of Four's great crime was to criticize the head of state. Such a law in this country would guarantee the arrests of just about every working journalist.

On June 27, 1997, the dissidents called a news conference at Roque's house and presented a critical manifesto titled La Patria es de Todos  (The Homeland Belongs to Us All). It was a direct slam against Castro's monopoly on power and the bogus authority of the Cuban Communist Party's fifth congress.

``The party,'' the dissidents declared, ``wants to maintain the status quo of totalitarianism, an obsolete system that traps us in economic and social stagnation.''

The party line, said the Four, ``leaves no room for a lawful society or an independent and impartial system of justice.''

In fact, they concluded, ``the government's philosophy is not to serve the population, but to be its dictator. The state is not at the service of the citizen.''

Castro proved their point by arresting them. His message to the world that day in July resounded as a mere echo of his standard, four-decade-old diatribe:

No, the homeland does not belong to all. It belongs only to me.

And so the dissidents stand accused of everything, including the kitchen sink: lying about the economy, attempting to scare away foreign investors, receiving help from the U.S. government, conspiring with terrorists.

The most ludicrous charge is this: attempting to disrupt elections. Again, an offense mastered by Castro.

Roca faces a six-year prison term. The others face five-year sentences. Castro -- as if he cares -- faces intensified scrutiny by international human-rights observers, the foreign press and even the friendly government of Spain, which on Tuesday warned that its king and queen will cancel their planned trip to Cuba if the ``atmosphere of repression'' continues.

But Castro wears his diplomatic snubs like a backward Nike cap. He thrives on snubs. By moving against his critics, he has proven once again that he is the foremost supporter of the embargo against his government. In fact, I dare say, he'd welcome a full-scale blockade.

Isolation does not scare Castro. It only gives him a bigger sandbox in which to play bully. His regime's repressive display of recent days proves that Castro's swagger is threatened by just one thing: peaceful change and its brave, eloquent prophets.