This New York Sun editorial suggests Fidel Castro's Cuba - a failed experiment in socialism and the cult of personality if ever there was one - may be on its last legs.

Freedom is on the march in Cuba, and Fidel Castro seems nervous. Over the past month, he has intensified his crackdown on political dissenters, making arrests at a pace unseen since the last wave of repression in 2003. Now Rene Gomez Manzano, a dissident leader arrested in his bed on July 22, is starting a hunger strike to protest his unjust imprisonment

...The most recent repression traces back to a May 20 gathering at Havana at which at least 150 dissidents demanded democracy and the release of political prisoners. Mr. Gomez Manzano was one of the organizers. After this unusually strong showing, Mr. Castro apparently felt compelled to send in his paramilitary to suppress a small annual opposition commemoration on July 13. A wave of arrests followed just more than a week later.

Since July 22, 50 opponents of the regime have been arrested, of whom 15 remain in jail, including Mr. Gomez Manzano. Seventy-five dissidents were arrested in 2003; 61 of them are still behind bars. The government has launched a campaign of intimidation against other leaders. For example, a crowd of pro-government thugs recently surrounded the house of Vladimiro Roca for several hours, hurling invective at him as they tried to block an anti-government meeting.

Mr. Castro has managed to weather many storms during his 46-year reign, but there's hope that this time might be different. "I think we are at the tipping point," a senior program manager at Freedom House, Xavier Utset, told the Sun. The dissident movement is gaining ground, Mr. Utset said. The movement is developing into a full-blown civil society that is less afraid of the government, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Stephen Johnson, said.

Meanwhile, as starry-eyed leftists from Ashland, Oregon return from Cuba with blindered praise for socialism and neighborhood health care under the maximum dictator, up to 31 more Cubans die escaping the island on a smuggler's boat. Of course, commercial air service for Cubans- who typically each pay smugglers $10,000 for a chance to sneak into the U.S., is still, uh, in the works.

Q: What kind of place won't let people leave?
A: The same kind of place where the government confiscates property upon which dissidents recently gathered.

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at August 23, 2005 09:53 AM