Dissidents say some 85 people have been arrested in the past four weeks, most for only hours or days in ``harassment'' detentions but several facing threats of up to 20-year prison terms.
``We have seen significant and grave abuses in recent days against nonviolent political dissidents who simply differ from official thinking,'' said Jose Manuel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas.
On Monday three police officers took Raul Rivero, an acclaimed poet who runs the Cuba Press agency, to the headquarters of the Interior Ministry's State Security police in a former seminary known as Villa Marista, his wife said.
Rivero has been briefly detained in neighborhood police offices many times in the past, but Villa Marista usually means more serious trouble, with intense interrogations and often trials and prison terms.
Rivero was the latest in a long string of government opponents, human rights and student activists, and independent journalists caught in a security sweep apparently tied in part to the eight bombings reported since April.
Police searching dissidents' homes in recent days seemed to focus more on probing containers, which might hold explosives, than their usual targets of printed materials, dissident journalist Monike de Motas has reported.
Several detained opponents were interrogated about the bombings and threatened with charges of sabotage and terrorism, though Cuban officials have not confirmed the two arrests reported in connection with the blasts.
Havana residents say the government also appears worried by the bleakness that pervades the Cuban capital these days, created by the sense that the economy is stagnant and all hopes for political reforms are dead.
The arrests ``are the government's way of saying to us, `don't try anything,' '' said one Havana resident who asked to remain anonymous.
Vivanco, whose Washington-based human rights group has been denied entry to Cuba since mid-1995, said he believes the latest crackdown is just part of traditional government attempts to silence political criticism.
``Our perception is that for a long time the human rights situation in Cuba has faced an absolute immobility. Really, there is no progress,'' he said.
But Vivanco added that the government seems particularly worried this summer, perhaps because the hot weather usually brings with it frayed tempers, perhaps because of upcoming elections and a Communist Party summit.
Harsh roundup
Among those now held at Villa Marista are the top dissidents -- Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano -- who organized a new umbrella dissident group after the crackdown on Concilio.
The four, who recently issued a scathing attack on President Fidel Castro's policies, have been told they may be charged with ``counterrevolutionary'' crimes that could send them to prison for 20 years, relatives say.
``These actions are taken simply because the regime of Fidel Castro is not ready to do anything more than tolerate the most minimal dissidence and allow the smallest spaces for critics,'' Vivanco said.
Among the worst hit by the latest wave of arrests are the so-called independent journalists who are not allowed to work in Cuba's state-monopoly media but send reports aboard in defiance of government pressures.
Nine have been detained since June 23, according to Joel Simon, Cuba watcher for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which monitors attacks on the media abroad.
``There seems very little tolerance for the independent press right now,'' Simon said. ``With the arrests of the political dissidents, the journalists are now the most vocal part of the opposition.''
Sentenced to 18 months
Five were picked up and released by police within hours in what the CPJ considers harassment tactics -- Rivero was detained briefly two weeks ago -- and two went into exile under ``strong government pressures.''
``After a while the government makes it clear that all your options are closed, that you cannot do the work you want to do,'' said Olance Nogueras, who flew to Miami last week with another well known journalist, Lazaro Lazo.
The CPJ has reported 80 attacks on independent journalists since 1992, including 48 cases of harassment, 14 longer-term imprisonments, two beatings and two expulsions into exile.
``I wish I knew why the government is arresting all these people in recent weeks,'' Simon said. ``On a lot of these things it's almost impossible to know why and how the Cubans act the way they do.''
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald