Marta Beatriz Roque

Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello (born 16 May 1945) is a Cuban political dissident. She is an economist by training and the founder and director of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists. Agence France-Presse described her in 2007 as Cuba's "leading woman dissident".

The Group of Four In 1997, Roque, Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano 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.

The four were detained without trial for nineteen months. The four were then tried for sedition in March 1999 in a one-day trial closed to foreign press. The US, EU, Canada, and the Vatican all called for her release. and was released in May 2002.

Later activism In March 2003, she and other dissidents lobbied the EU not to sign a trade agreement with Cuba until its human rights record improved. She also began a hunger strike calling for the release of political prisoners.

She was arrested the same month along with 74 other dissidents in what some have called the "Black Spring" crackdown. On 3 April 2003, Roque was brought to trial and convicted in a one-day trial. PEN International reported that she and the other defendants were given insufficient time to prepare a case. and Roque's sister Isabel was invited to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. to discuss the case.

Reports stated that Roque lost while imprisoned from vomiting and diarrhea and was hospitalized in July 2003. On 22 July 2004,

In 2005, Roque founded the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba (Asamblea para Promover la Sociedad Civil en Cuba), serving as the organization's director. Varela Project organizer Oswaldo Payá feuded with Roque over the group's formation, accusing her of collaborating with security forces to justify a further crackdown. Wayne Smith, a former chief of the US Interests Section in Havana, criticized her group as seeming "virtually to operate out of the U.S. Interests Section", arguing that this weakened her credibility with Cubans.

She was detained again on 27 September 2007 when she was forced onto a bus during a rally at Cuba's Justice Ministry building. Police reportedly informed her that they were protecting her from "the wrath of the people".

In 2012, she participated in a hunger strike in support of human rights in Cuba. The official Cuban media denied her participation by showing a video in which she accepted food from a neighbor. The Government used the video to demonstrate the dissidents' lack of credibility on the Island.

She maintains a profound difference with dissident Rosa María Paya Acevedo, daughter of former dissident Oswaldo Paya, accusing her of making a profit with her father's memory and carrying out activism abroad, thus protected from the repressions of the Cuban Government.

Prizes She is a recipient of the 2002 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award of the New York Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the Canadian, English, and Finnish PEN.