Rene Gomez Manzano

René de Jesús Gómez Manzano (born 19 December 1943 in Havana) is a Cuban dissident known for his essay "The Homeland Belongs to All", which he co-wrote with Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca, and Felix Bonne, as well as his repeated imprisonment by the Cuban government. Amnesty International has named him to be a prisoner of conscience three times.

Background Gomez Manzano was born in Havana, Cuba. At the age of eleven, he was sent by his parents to study in the Appalachian Mountains region of the U.S. After completing his secondary education, Manzano enrolled in the University of Havana to study law. However, his studies in Cuba were cut short due to the Cuban Revolution. He then earned a scholarship to Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University, where he studied International Law and graduated with a law degree in 1966. As a result of his travels, he is fluent in Spanish, Russian, English, and French. He is a Roman Catholic and an avid chess player. He became a cofounder of Corriente Agramontista in 1990, an organization of lawyers willing to file suit against the state to force it to fulfill its own laws.

For several years, Gomez Manzano was married to fellow dissident and independent journalist Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito until she decided to leave Cuba with her daughter and seek exile in the United States in 2012.

‘The Group of Four’ In 1997, Gomez Manzano, Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca, and Felix Bonne founded the Internal Dissidence Working Group. 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. in a one-day trial closed to the foreign press. Gomez Manzano was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. The defendants became known as the "Group of Four". The United States, Canada, the European Union and the Vatican all called for his release.

Gomez Manzano was released early without explanation on 24 May 2000, having served just under three years in prison.

Later activism Gomez Manzano was critical of fellow dissident Oswaldo Payá's Varela Project, in which Payá presented the National Assembly of People's Power (NAPP) with 25,000 signatures in an attempt to force a constitutional referendum. Gomez Manzano stated that appeals to the NAPP were useless as long as it was dominated by the Communist Party.

In July 2005, Gomez Manzano was arrested while leaving his home, allegedly to join a protest at the French Embassy with Marta Beatriz Roque's Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba. He was detained without charge for eighteen months, during which time he later stated that he undertook two hunger strikes.

He was released on 9 February 2007. Having been banned from practicing law, he stated that he relied on aid from "compatriots in exile". He told reporters that he nonetheless intended to remain in Cuba and continue his activism, stating, "Change will come sooner than later".

Awards and Distinctions In 1997, the American Bar Association awarded him its International Human Rights Award, but Gomez Manzano was unable to travel to receive it due to his detention. In 1999, Gómez Manzano, along with his co-authors Roque, Roca and Bonne, were awarded the Grand Prize for Press Freedom by the Inter-American Press Association for the publication of "The Homeland Belongs to All." In 2007, an international jury of various bar associations awarded him the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize for lawyers, the presentation of which he was again prevented from attending.