By Andrew Cawthorne
02:22 p.m Dec 10, 1998 Eastern
HAVANA, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Cuban authorities rounded up some dissidents and blocked a planned opposition rally called on Thursday to protest Fidel Castro's rule and mark an international rights' anniversary, dissident sources and witnesses said.
Hundreds of young communists, from the youth wing of Cuba's ruling Communist Party, and other Castro supporters, upstaged the scheduled protest in Havana's Butari Park with a noisy pro- government rally of their own.
Various opposition members planning to attend the protest were detained beforehand, and plain-clothes security officers guarded the park while barriers blocked off nearby roads, the witnesses and dissident sources told Reuters.
A scuffle broke out when some foreign journalists tried to interview several people, who had identified themselves as dissidents, within the several hundred-strong crowd of almost entirely pro-Castro supporters.
It was a rare public fracas in Cuba's normally orderly capital.
Dozens of government supporters surrounded the journalists, chanting ``Long live Fidel!,'' ``Long live the Revolution!'' Two of the men who had said they were dissidents were dragged away by security officials, one shouting slogans in favour of human rights and political prisoners.
Some foreign reporters were roughly jostled in the melee, including Reuters TV cameraman Alfredo Tedeschi, who said he was hit and shoved, and had his microphone stolen.
Thursday was the 50th anniversary of the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Dissidents said at least half a dozen opposition figures and independent journalists, who work illegally outside state-run media, had been rounded up in recent days to prevent them from taking part in public activities to mark the day.
One of those said to be detained was Oscar Elias Biscet, head of the tiny and little-known Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, who was organising the planned opposition rally.
Another dissident, Jose Orlando Gonzalez Bridon, who heads the also small Confederation of Democratic Cuban Workers, told Reuters by telephone that security agents prevented him from leaving his house early on Thursday. He was with five other members of his group, all of whom planned to attend the rally.
Opposition activist Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, who heads the Movement of Cuban Youth For Democracy, was still in detention on Thursday where he has been for four days since announcing a planned hunger-strike opposite Cuba's foreign ministry, the sources said. He was protesting authorities' alleged refusal to let him leave for international rights celebrations in Paris.
Under Castro's one-party socialist system, in place since shortly after his 1959 revolution, opposition political parties are outlawed and criticism of the state is a potential criminal offence.
Scores of small, illegal opposition groups do exist, but they have no access to local media, cannot hold public meetings and do not threaten the Communist Party's dominance.
Havana denies it represses freedom of speech, or holds any prisoners of conscience, saying those government opponents in jail are there on legitimate charges including ``counter- revolutionary'' activities.
Family members of Cuba's four best-known jailed dissidents, still awaiting trial after 18 months of detention, met with foreign correspondents in Havana on Thursday to call for their immediate fair trial or release.
``If they (the Cuban authorities) respect the articles of human rights, the four should be free. They have committed no crime, they should not be in prison,'' said Magalys Roca, wife of one of the jailed dissidents, Vladimiro Roca.
He and the other three -- Martha Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano -- were arrested on July 16, 1997, after issuing a document criticising Cuba's political system and calling for democratic changes.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez, asked at a weekly news briefing about Thursday's events at Butari Park, replied by saying he did not have specific details but ``those who upset public order must face the consequences.''
He defended Cuba's rights' situation, saying: ``We believe that in Cuba, we have guaranteed the full enjoyment for all our people of the fundamental rights and liberties, and this has been thanks to the revolution...No-one is in prison for having a different opinion.''
An article in the Communist Party daily Granma also defended Cuba's position. It noted Cuba's social rights achievements such as free health care for all, and criticised the United States -- Castro's most vocal critic -- for both supporting ``supposed human rights' defenders'' in Cuba, and maintaining a 36-year economic embargo which it said violated Cubans' human rights ``massively and systematically.''
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited