Wednesday, January 10, 2007
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Respect for human rights has not improved in
Cuba under interim leader Raul Castro, though the number of Cubans
jailed for political reasons has fallen to 283, the country's main
rights watchdog said on Tuesday.
Cuba remains the Western hemispheric nation with the most political
prisoners in proportion to its population, the Cuban Commission for
Human Rights and National Reconciliation said in its year-end report.
The group, illegal but tolerated by Cuba's communist government, expects
the civil liberties situation, from freedom of association and
information to the right to travel and self-employment, to remain
unchanged or deteriorate further because no reforms are in sight.
"The provisional team designated by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro has
done nothing to improve fundamental rights," said the commission, led by
veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez. "Cuba's government continues
to violate each and every civil, political and economic right," it said.
Castro, 80, was forced to hand over the reins of government to this
brother Raul, 75, after emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in
late July. He has not appeared in public since. Castro's one-party state
has long faced international criticism for suppressing dissent and
locking up critics.
Barring a "political miracle" short-term prospects for human rights are
negative and there is little internal pressure on the ruling bureaucracy
to change its policies, the commission's report said.
"Due to the oppressive and repressive nature of the totalitarian regime
and its enormous capability for social control, we cannot see any
factors or components that are able to exert effective pressure on the
government from inside Cuban society to begin a process of modernising
reforms," it said.
Cuba freed dissident sociologist Hector Palacios in December because he
was very sick. The state appears to be resorting to intimidation rather
than prison to silence its opponents, including hostile protests outside
the homes of dissidents, the commission said.
It is also handing out shorter jail sentences compared to the prison
terms of up to 28 years given to 75 dissidents arrested in a political
crackdown in March 2003, of which only 16 have been freed, on medical
grounds, the report said.
Selective releases during 2006 reduced by 50 the number of political
detainees in Cuba's 200 jails and work camps where living conditions are
"inhumane and degrading," it said.
The International Red Cross, which has been denied access to Cuban
prisons since 1989, recently said it would urge Havana to resume the visits.
The rights commission called on the international community to press
Cuba's government, in power since a 1959 revolution, to begin reforms.
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