CUBA: Cuba has branded the country's best-known dissidents as US agents, using taped phone conversations, secret videos and guilt by association during a broadcast to portray them as traitors.
Longtime activists Osvaldo Paya, Martha Beatriz Roque and women relatives of already-imprisoned government opponents (known as "the Ladies in White") bore the brunt of a 90-minute state-run television programme on Wednesday, during which journalists used what appeared to be intelligence service materials in an attempt to discredit them.
"They are a mix of parasites, habitual vagabonds, chameleons and ruffians, lacking charisma and mass support, that serve as an instrument of the empire," programme moderator Randy Alonso said of the dissidents.
The programme features local journalists and officials presenting the government's positions on various topics.
"This could be setting the stage for more imprisonments and repression but, at the same time, Cubans learned who we are," Ms Roque said in a telephone interview.
Cuba's small opposition movement is rarely mentioned by the official - and only - media in the country and is regularly branded as in the hire of the United States.
Wednesday's broadcast was unusually virulent and followed a Tuesday broadcast that accused US mission chief Michael Parmly of using the dissidents to carry out the Bush administration's goal of ousting President Fidel Castro.
The US and Cuba, bitter foes since Castro led a revolution to power in 1959, do not have diplomatic relations but maintain lower-level "interests sections" in each other's capitals.
Mr Parmly succeeded James Cason - now US ambassador to Paraguay - whose support for dissidents was given as the reason for the imprisonment of 75 dissidents two years ago on charges of working with Washington to overthrow the government.
"Look, if this costs the government a Yankee invasion, it's all the same to me," Ms Roque was heard saying in an apparently taped phone conversation on the programme, after which video was shown of her purchasing goods in exclusive shops.
Ms Roque, who leads the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society, was portrayed as strongly supporting President Bush and receiving money from Cuban exiles in the US, whom the show branded "Miami terrorists".
Mr Paya, whose Varela Project petition drive garnered thousands of signatures for a referendum on communist rule a few years ago, was branded "an impudent conspirator" as photos were shown of him meeting people linked to the US Agency for International Development.
"This man has participated in clandestine activities promoted by Parmly and the interests section," said journalist Arlene Rodriguez, charging that Mr Paya was paid to help train future Cuban leaders.