Black Spring was the 2003 crackdown by the Cuban Government on Cuban dissidents.^[1][2][3][4] The government imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists on the basis that they were acting as agents of the United States by accepting funds from the US government and George W. Bush's administration at the time.^[1] Amnesty International described the 75 Cubans as "prisoners of conscience".^[5] The Cuban government stated at the time: "the 75 individuals arrested, tried and sentenced in March/April 2003... are demonstrably not independent thinkers, writers or human rights activists, but persons directly in the pay of the US government. [...] [T]hose who were arrested and tried were charged not with criticizing the [Cuban] government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats".^[6]

The crackdown on dissidents began on 18 March, during the US invasion of Iraq, and lasted two days.^[1] It received international condemnation from several countries, with critical statements coming from George W. Bush's administration, the European Union, the United Nations and various human rights groups. Responding to the crackdown, the European Union imposed sanctions on Cuba in 2003, which were then lifted in January 2008.^[7] The European Union declared at the time that the arrests "constituted a breach of the most elementary human rights, especially as regards freedom of expression and political association".^[8] Some criticized the dissidents, such as former CIA agent Philip Agee, who described them as "central to current US government efforts to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the work of the Revolution."^[9][10] US sociologist and scholar James Petras noted that "No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic citizens paid by, and working for a foreign power to act for its imperial interests, as 'dissidents'".^[11][12]

All of the dissidents were eventually released, most of whom were exiled to Spain starting in 2010.^[13][14]

Manuel Vázquez Portal received the International Press Freedom Award in 2003.^[15] Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez received the same prize in 2008, while locked up in a maximum-security prison.^[16]

List of 75 jailed dissidents and their prison sentences:^[5]

The wives of imprisoned activists, led by Laura Pollán, formed a movement called Ladies in White. The movement received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.^[17]

• Cuban dissidents

• Cuba's Long Black Spring - A report by the committee to Protect Journalists
• Interviews (video) with imprisoned dissidents who were released to Spain
• Spring Nightmare - Manuel Vázquez Portal, an imprisoned Cuban writer, poet, and journalist, describes the prison conditions.