Vladimiro Roca - The Group of Four

The Group of Four

In August 1996, he linked up with three other Cuban professionals who favored change, economist Marta Beatriz Roque, engineer Félix Bonne Carcassés and attorney René Gómez Manzano to form the Working Group for Internal Dissidence. They then published a paper titled "The Homeland Belongs to All," which discussed Cuba's human rights situation and called for political and economic reforms. They also called for a boycott of elections in Cuba's one-party system and for investors to avoid Cuba, giving several news conferences to discuss their concerns. A The Los Angeles Times columnist described Roca and Bonne's criticism carrying extra weight as "the only known black dissidents in Cuba", stating that "Given Castro's claim that the revolution has ended racial discrimination, he can ill afford to let well-educated blacks challenge him, even as gently as the four defendants had done."

Roca and the other members of the group were arrested on 16 July 1997. The four were detained for nineteenth months and then tried for sedition in March 1999 in a one-day trial closed to foreign press. Roca was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. The defendants became known as the "Group of Four". The US, EU, Canada, and the Vatican all called for his release. Amnesty International declared the four prisoners of conscience, "detained solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association", and called for their immediate release.

Roque, Bonne and Gómez were released in May 2000, but Roca was held for an additional two years. The Human Rights Committee of the US National Academy of Sciences speculated that he was "singled out for particularly severe treatment because he had been a member of the Cuban Communist Party and his father had been one of its founding members".

Roca entered prison an atheist, but was baptised Roman Catholic on 24 September 1999. He credited his new faith with helping him endure imprisonment. He was released from prison on 6 May 2002, 70 days before his five-year-sentence would have expired. CNN described the early release as "apparently a conciliatory gesture" by Castro ahead of a visit by former US president Jimmy Carter. Roca told reporters, "I plan to continue working like I was before being arrested ... to continue the struggle because I believe I will see a change in Cuba before too long." Roca met with Carter a week after his release.