In a bitter criticism of the executions carried out last week in Cuba, José Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer considered Fidel Castro's best friend among European intellectuals, broke with the regime Monday.
''This is as far as I go,'' Saramago wrote in a short but powerful essay printed in Spain's leading newspaper, El País, as the European Union, various countries and organizations around the world continued to offer public repudiations.
Killing three men by firing squad at dawn Friday for trying to spirit a ferry boat is unacceptable -- especially since the would-be hijackers didn't hurt anybody, wrote Saramago, a communist.
``Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions.''
Meanwhile, groups ranging from France's Socialist party to the foreign ministers of the EU condemned the killings -- part of a dissident crackdown that began in March as the war unfolded in Iraq.
Leaders of the EU, which opened a Havana mission earlier this year, alluded to rejecting Cuba's petition to join the Cotonou Agreement, a trade accord that offers economic help to more than 70 developing nations.
The recent arrests signal a further deterioration of the human rights situation and ''will affect Cuba's relations with the European Union, and the perspective of increased cooperation between both groups,'' the statement read.
Cuba, which withdrew an application two years ago over concerns about its human rights record, reapplied to join the trade accord in January.
The executions, the first for a terrorism offense in Cuba in more than a decade, could also give momentum for a condemnation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, a measure that could be heard in Geneva as early as Wednesday. A group of nations led by Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua had planned on again asking the commission to send a special representative to the island to report on violations -- something Cuba rejected last year.
But the executions could give steam to an even stronger measure -- an outright condemnation of Cuba. Some Latin American countries, however, have been wavering.
On Monday, Mexico issued a statement condemning Friday's killings but staying mum on the U.N. resolution. Chile's foreign minister said the South American country was willing to consider a rebuke.
Yet even if the EU keeps Cuba out of the trade agreement, and the U.N. resolution is approved, neither will have an effect on the life of average Cubans, said Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami. Castro expected international outcries before rounding up members of the fledgling opposition movement, he said. That wasn't enough to sway him from his goal, Suchlicki said.
''He's more interested in cleaning out dissidents, so that he can leave a legacy for his brother. If he was worried about Cubans eating more, he wouldn't have done this,'' Suchlicki said.
Friday's executions capped weeks of tension on the island of 11 million that included a flurry of attempted hijackings, dozens of arrests and stiff jail sentences for dissidents. Last week, 75 dissidents were sentenced with terms up to 28 years. They were accused of collaborating with, or taking money from, U.S. officials.
The measures were necessary, the Cuban government has claimed, to protect Cuban national security. The United States has no right to criticize Cuba, Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón said Monday, since it violated the rights of detainees after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The United States is losing an ''opportunity to stay quiet,'' Alarcón said, because more than a year later many are still detained without charges.
This report was supplemented by Herald wire services.
