Politics as usual on Cuba and human rights

Posted on Saturday, 11.23.13

Politics as usual on Cuba and human rights
OJITO JUANITA CEBALLOS
BY MIRTA OJITO
MAO35@COLUMBIA.EDU

Geneva -- A lot has changed since the first time I walked the halls of
the United Nations building in this Swiss city in February 1988.

A lot, however, has remained the same.

I first traveled to Geneva more than 25 years ago to report on the
efforts of then-U.S. Ambassador Armando Valladares to pass a resolution
to investigate human rights violations in Cuba.

It was not an easy sell for the Cuban-born ambassador. The very first
time the resolution was put to a vote, the only country in Latin America
that supported the initiative of the United States was Costa Rica.

Other countries eventually came on board, some more tentatively than
others. The resolution passed, and investigators went to Cuba, and wrote
a thorough report that laid out the truth: that the government of Cuba
did in fact violate the human rights of its citizens.

That's one of the things that has not changed.

In its yearly report this year, Human Rights Watch had this to say:
"Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually
all forms of political dissent. The government of Raúl Castro continues
to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings,
public acts of repudiation, travel restrictions, and forced exile."

Yet, 12 days ago, after a secret ballot vote at the UN General Assembly
in New York, Cuba won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, which means
Cuba gets to be a human rights watchdog.

The council has 47 members. Seats on the council are allotted by region
and all the members of the General Assembly, 193, can vote. Mexico was
the other country in the Latin America and Caribbean group to win a
seat. Uruguay, which was a contender, lost to both.

There were a few wire stories about the vote, and then the world moved
on. That's something else that has not changed. When it comes to Cuba,
the world is still not listening, as the documentary Nobody Listened
reminded us in the late 1980s.

"The truth is nobody cares about Cuba at all," said Valladares, now 76,
and dedicated, mostly, to his art in Miami.

What has changed is the way the Cuban government is handling dissent
nowadays.

Contrary to the way things were in the first 30 years or so of the Cuban
revolution — can a revolution be so old and still be called a
revolution? — control is exerted now in more ingenious and effective ways.

Political prisoners no longer linger in prison for decades, as
Valladares did for 22 years. Now dissidents are routinely stopped,
detained, harassed, maybe even beaten, and returned home — or even
allowed to travel abroad within hours.

Dissident Guillermo Fariñas, for example, sported a Band-Aid on his
scalp to cover a cut he sustained during a beating the Sunday before he
traveled to Miami to meet with President Obama, El Nuevo Herald
reported. Martha Beatriz Roque was detained overnight and released last
week.

The number of political prisoners has also been dramatically reduced —
at one point there were more than 14,000; now, some estimates put the
number as low as 87.

Of course, in such a capricious regime as Cuba's, it's hard to discern
if the young man who gets caught with marijuana in his pocket was
arrested as a drug user or as a political dissenter who also happens to
like weed.

The other element that has changed is that the world can now see,
sometimes even in real time, the many ways in which the government
violates the rights of its citizens.

"Nobody has to go investigate; it's all out there for all to see,"
Valladares said.

And yet, Cuba continues to be talked about as a beacon of progressive
thinking and hopeful left-wing politics by dewy-eyed people who, in
essence, see Cuba through the prism of their dislike for U.S. leadership
in the world.

How a country votes on Cuba — at the UN and other bodies — directly
correlates with how that country's leader feels about the United States.

And why is that? To vote with the Cuban government allows certain
countries to assert their independence from the United States, even if,
or especially if, their economy is dependent on aid from Washington's
deep pockets, Valladares said.

But why must everything Cuban be put to the how-much-do-I
hate-the-US-this-year test? Why can't people dislike the United States
and still be critical of a country that, essentially, has had the same
rulers for 54 years?

I long for the day when, except for family ties, Cuba and the United
States will be two distinct and separate, unconnected countries. Only
then will the world clearly see the damage the Castro brothers have
exerted on that devastated island.

Source: "Geneva: Politics as usual on Cuba and human rights - Mirta
Ojito - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/23/3772384/politics-as-usual-on-cuba-and.html#storylink=misearch