Report Says Castro Brother Retains Tactics of Repression

Report Says Castro Brother Retains Tactics of Repression
By REUTERS
Published: November 18, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Raúl Castro has kept the system his brother Fidel
used to repress critics in Cuba, Human Rights Watch said in a report
released Wednesday, with tactics that include imprisoning people on the
charge of being "dangerous" and refusing to free scores of people who
were imprisoned years ago.

President Obama has said he wants to reconsider the United States' ties
with Cuba, and Congress is considering lifting a ban on travel to the
Communist-run island 90 miles from Florida.

Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raúl in July
2006 and formally stepped aside as president last year because of illness.

The younger Mr. Castro has relied in particular on a Cuban law that
permits the state to imprison people even before they commit crimes,
Human Rights Watch said.

The group documented more than 40 cases under Raúl Castro in which Cuba
imprisoned people for "dangerousness" because they sought to do things
like staging marches or organizing independent labor unions.

In addition, 53 prisoners who were sentenced in a 2003 crackdown on
dissidents under Fidel Castro remain in jail, according to the report.

This has created a climate of fear among Cuban dissidents, and prison
conditions are inhumane, said Human Rights Watch, whose researchers
traveled to the island for two weeks during the summer to research the
report. "Dissidents who try to express their views are often beaten,
arbitrarily arrested and subjected to public acts of repudiation," the
report said.

The independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights estimated this year
that Cuba had 200 political prisoners. It says the government now favors
brief detentions over long sentences because they intimidate without
hurting Cuba's image abroad.

In Congress, a major Democrat said the report showed the need to lift
the United States' travel ban on Cuba. That would be "the best
anti-Castro-policy," said Representative Howard L. Berman of California,
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Americans visiting Cuba would be ambassadors of democratic values, and
might undermine the Castro government, he said.

But Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, who was
born in Havana, said it was important to retain the travel ban.
Americans flooding to Cuba could mean "billions of dollars for the
regime," he said.

Report Says Castro Brother Retains Tactics of Repression - NYTimes.com
(19 November 2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/world/americas/19cuba.html