Over the past two weeks, scores of Cuban dissidents - human rights activists, independent journalists, poets and labor leaders - have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and trial. In most cases, the government is seeking sentences from fifteen to thirty years in prison, and even in a few cases, life imprisonment.

They are accused of acts "against the independence or territorial integrity of the State," of having ties with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, of receiving funds from the government of the United States or exile groups in this country. While we are not in a position to judge individual cases, those arrested all seem to fit the general category of human rights and democracy advocates, which only authoritarian regimes have reason to fear.

On March 23, the Cuban Bishops' Justice and Peace Commission issued a statement deploring their government's use of "inappropriate methods to disqualify and arrest people for the fact that they think and behave in ways different from the official ideology." They recognize that the State needs to direct itself to the real problems in the society, of corruption, drug abuse and other social ills, but must not confuse the way it handles criminal behavior with the way it deals with political dissidents. What is needed, in the latter case, they say, is a genuine public debate of ideas, a real national dialogue.

We hope that the Cuban authorities will recognize the error of these mistaken acts and release these non-violent dissident prisoners. And, as we have done repeatedly, we again call on our government to end the counter-productive embargo against Cuba. When U.S. citizens can trade with and travel to Cuba, freed of the present restrictions, the open exchange of ideas and inter-personal contact between our two peoples will help create a climate that promotes the kind of debate and advocacy for which today's dissidents are being punished.

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