New group holds silent march on Princeton University campus.
By: David Campbell
More than two dozen Princeton University students held a silent march on campus Friday to protest what they said was a crackdown on dissent in Cuba two years ago in which more than 75 people were reportedly detained as political prisoners.
The march was staged by a newly formed student group called Cuban American Undergraduate Student Association. According to group co-founder Kenneth A. Sinkovitz, a Princeton sophomore, CAUSA received official recognition by the university and permission for its march just days before the protest occurred.
Mr. Sinkovitz estimated that the 10 or so expected marchers were joined by about 20 more as the silent procession made its way from the Frist Campus Center through campus to the front doors of Firestone Library.
CAUSA co-founder Chris Gueits, also a Princeton sophomore, said the group’s decision to end its march outside the front doors of Firestone was symbolic of the absence of a free flow of information in Cuba and restrictions against free expression.
"In countries like Cuba, this would land you in jail," Mr. Gueits said in front of the sculpture outside the library. "There’s a vacuum of information over there, and these people feel alone."
While the march was on in shows of solidarity and protest, marchers flew the Cuban flag and covered their mouths with tape several members recorded the event with handheld recorders. Mr. Gueits said copies of the tapes would be forwarded to compatriots in Cuba as a show of support.
The march was held within a week of the second anniversary of an alleged crackdown on dissent by Cuban President Fidel Castro on March 18, 2003. President Castro ordered the arrest of more than 75 journalists, labor union organizers, civic leaders, librarians and human rights activists, according to organizers.
The protest at Princeton University was one of several reportedly held on college campuses across the nation. There was a simultaneous march on the University of Pennsylvania campus, and memorial events were held at Harvard, Georgetown, Boston College, University of Florida, Florida State, Cornell, Columbia and elsewhere, organizers said.
Mr. Sinkovitz gave a brief speech outside Frist Campus Center before the protesters sealed their mouths with duct tape and headed off across the campus.
In it, he said the protest was intended to pay tribute to the "75 Cuban political prisoners arbitrarily incarcerated two years ago." Of the detainees, he said, "These courageous, peaceful human rights advocates only serve as a backdrop for an issue that transcends race, ethnicity and political persuasion."
The Princeton sophomore said the Cuban people live under oppressive conditions with little or no access to objective and unbiased books and literature, access to information he said Americans take for granted. He called the Cuban detainees "prisoners of conscience.
"They have been stripped of their fundamental rights to have opinions and ideas different from those of the mandated order," he said. "The press is strictly censored in countries like Cuba. The rights to assemble in public by their own right and speak freely are also stripped. For these reasons, our march has been tacitly laced with symbolism."
Mr. Sinkovitz indicated that the protest march itself, the library and the carrying of books and newspapers, and the gesture by marchers of removing the tape from over their mouths at the end of the march were all symbolic of the freedoms enjoyed here but not in Cuba.
"Our marching in public by our own right and bearing newspapers and books are indicative of our freedoms of individual expression and action, and the tape over our mouths emulates the unheard voices of those oppressed peoples of the world," he continued.
"Unlike them, however, we will freely take off these strips of tape after this procession of solidarity at no risk of penalization or incarceration," Mr. Sinkovitz said.
"For those oppressed peoples of the world, removing the tape from their mouths and making their beliefs and rights known to their respective society will assuredly result in persecution and incarceration," he said.
One person on Friday was there to protest the protesters. He declined to give his name, but said he was a postdoctoral student at Princeton and a socialist. He distributed leaflets protesting the alleged arrest by U.S. authorities of five pro-Castro Cubans.
He called the march Friday a "phony protest" against communism in Cuba, and said of the marchers, "They’re not interested in human rights." If they were, he said, they would protest the U.S. detention and interrogation facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.