US report slams Cuba, Chavez

Posted on Thu, Mar. 09, 2006

HUMAN RIGHTS
U.S. report slams Cuba, Chávez
Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti were among the nations singled out for human
rights abuses in the State Department's annual report.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

The State Department's annual human rights report Wednesday skewered
Cuba and Venezuela for cracking down on dissidents, and it admonished
Colombia and Haiti's interim government for allowing abusers to go free.

Documenting in exhaustive detail human rights issues in 196 countries,
not including the United States, the report's introduction focused
largely on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa.

But Cuba, the increasingly autocratic rule of President Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela and impunity of military and illegal paramilitary fighters in
Colombia made the list of some of the world's worst examples of human
rights abuses.

CUBA'S REGIME

''In Cuba, the regime continued to control all aspects of life through
the Communist Party and state-controlled mass organizations,'' the
report said. ``The regime suppressed calls for democratic reform, such
as the Varela Project, which proposed a national referendum.

``Authorities arrested, detained, fined and threatened Varela activists
and the government held at least 333 political prisoners and detainees.''

Venezuela came under attack for politicizing the judicial branch and
cracking down on press freedom, including ''legal harassment and
physical intimidation'' of journalists.

``The government use the judicial system selectively against the
political opposition, and implementation of a 2004 media law threatened
to limit press freedom.''

The State Department also pointed out the difficulties that many
countries in the Americas are having sustaining democracy, including
Ecuador, where the legislature last year removed democratically elected
President Lucio Gutierrez.

Haiti's U.S.-backed interim government, which took over when President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country during an armed revolt, was
criticized for its inability to reform the police and judicial systems.

The State Department noted that police raided a soccer match in
Port-au-Prince in August looking for gang members and shot and killed
six young men. Other groups said more people were killed, hacked to
death by gang members working with the officers. Fifteen officers have
been arrested for involvement in the massacre.

TWO SET FREE

U.S. officials also criticized the Haitian justice system for releasing
two alleged human rights abusers of years past -- former Port-au-Prince
police chief Jackson Joanis, held in the killing of The Rev. Jean-Marie
Vincent; and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who was convicted in absentia for a
massacre in the northern port city of Gonaives in 1994.

``The release of Chamblain and Joanis . . . called into question the
[interim government's] commitment to respect rule of law and to
strengthen democratic institutions in the country.''

The State Department report does not look at the United States' own
practices, which have come under increasing criticism in the past two
years for alleged abuses against terrorism suspects abroad and a legal
moves seen as aiming to stifle the press, including the jailing last
year of then New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/14052974.htm