Black Spring (Cuba)

Black Spring refers to the 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents. The government imprisoned 75 dissidents, that included 29 journalists, as well as librarians, human rights activists, and democracy activists, on the basis that they were acting as agents of the United States by accepting aid from the US government. Although Amnesty International adopted 75 Cubans as prisoners of conscience, according to Cuba "the 75 individuals arrested, tried and sentenced in March/April 2003 ... who were jailed are demonstrably not independent thinkers, writers or human rights activists, but persons directly in the pay of the US government ... those who were arrested and tried were charged not with criticizing the government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S diplomats."

The crackdown on grassroots activists began on March 18 and lasted two days, coordinated with the US invasion of Iraq for minimum publicity.

Responding to human rights violations, the European Union imposed sanctions on the Castro regime in 2003, that were lifted on January 2008. The European Union declared that the arrests "constituted a breach of the most elementary human rights, especially as regards freedom of expression and political association".

All of the dissidents were eventually released, most of whom were exiled to Spain starting in 2010.

Manuel Vázquez Portal received the International Press Freedom Award in 2003.Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez received the same prize in 2008, while locked up in a maximum-security prison.

List of 75 jailed dissidents and their prison sentences:

The wives of imprisoned activists, led by Laura Pollán, formed a movement called Ladies in White. The movement received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.

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