This is how much the Cuban government cares about children: buying toys to give to Cuban children at Christmas is punishable by jailing. That ``crime'' is what prompted a six-month sentence for Victor Rolando Arroyo, an independent journalist in Cuba's Pinar del Rio province whose courage in questioning the regime renders him its enemy.

Worse, Mr. Arroyo is not an exception. His imprisonment comes amid the Cuban state's latest vicious campaign against independent actors in Cuba, a campaign that has gone largely unnoticed.

It is no accident that repression has intensified in the three months since the Ibero-American Summit in Havana, when world media gave voice to Cuba's courageous dissidents. Cuba's police state has since fanned media frenzy over little Elian Gonzalez to create a convenient diversion for its repression.

Hardly a day goes by when students or workers aren't prodded into taking to the streets wearing state-distributed T-shirts bearing Elian's likeness and carrying banners or signs conveniently written in both English and Spanish for waiting TV cameras. And while journalists worldwide have focused on the custody battle, Cuba's security goons have been busily arresting critics of the regime.
ARRESTS CONTINUE

Detained just last week were Osvaldo Payo, a respected member of the International Christian Democratic movement, and Hector Palacios, former political prisoner and founder of an independent political party, and his wife, Gisela Delgado, a human-rights activist.

Other prominent dissidents held without charges since last month are democratic activists Maritza Lugos and Oscar Elias Bisset, a physician who advocates against abortion and for peaceful civil disobedience in the face of the regime's systematic human-rights abuses. According to Elizardo Sanchez, another of Cuba's leading dissidents, there have been some 30 long-term arrests and 270 one- or two-day detentions since this crackdown began. This begs the question of how much Fidel Castro really cares about the children of these people -- children separated from their parents because the parents had the audacity to express unacceptable opinions.

The extent to which Cuba's regime will go to harass and silence dissenters knows no limit. Consider the case against Mr. Arroyo. With money sent by benefactors in the United States, he bought toys to give to kids for Three Kings Day, Jan. 6, the traditional day in Cuba for Christmas gift giving. He already had given away about half when state security burst into his home, found some 140 toys, and charged him with ``hoarding.'' Now he's locked in a cell for six months.

Of course that charge was phony. Amnesty International correctly asserts that the punishment is retribution for his work as an independent journalist -- that is, someone who reports on events in Cuba to an audience abroad because the state denies him the right to communicate with Cubans. He is, according to Amnesty International, now regarded as another Cuban prisoner of conscience whose hopes for relief depend on bringing outside attention to his plight.

Without that attention and the international pressure that follows, the Cuban regime has free license to quash the dissidents struggling for fundamental freedoms in Cuba.

The media, focused on the custody battle for Elian Gonzalez, has abandoned the besieged dissidents of Cuba when they need attention the most.