By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Mar 13 1997 (IPS)

The report on Cuba presented to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Thursday, said dissidents were still being harassed but that the amount of condemnations was reducing and the economic deterioration appeared to have stopped.

The author of the document, the Swedish special reporter Carl- Johan Groth, based his account on complaints by Cuban citizens and organisations abroad as the government in Havana refused to authorise him a visit to the country.

Groth said action against Cuban dissident groups amounted to “intense” harassment by the State security agents.

The Cuban authorities’ methods of dismembering the opposition include threats, intimidating visits to activists’ homes and sanctions for supposed economic crimes although political activities are really to blame.

However, he said, the number of trials and sentences, along with their length, has fallen considerably compared with previous years.

The change could be for a variety of reasons, said the report, including the attention given the issue by some international bodies and the critical dialogue between Cuba and various other countries and regional groups, especially in Europe and Latin America.

In any case, said Groth, the work carried out by people and groups dedicated to meeting and disseminating information on human rights violations is absolutely essential.

Those who work within the country deserve the recognition and protection of the international community, he said as “being a dissident in Cuba today is equally as difficult and risky as it was in past years.”

In Cuba’s diplomatic mission to the international organisms in Geneva Thursday, IPS was told there were no officials available to comment on the report.

The document, which will be debated in the present period of sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Commission due to end on April 18, also mentioned the US Helms-Burton law to toughen the embargo on Cuba.

The Helms-Burton and Torricelli laws – the latter of which places specific measures and timescales on the lifting of the embargo – basically mean the Unites Stated has appointed itself responsible for imposing the rules to change the current Cuban system change to a more pluralist model.

The Helms Burton Law was sanctioned following the shooting-down of two US-registered civilian aircraft in Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, 1996, and the report writer was harshly critical of the Cuban airforce action on this occasion.

He classed the downing of the planes and the deaths of four crew members as “a premeditated fact, constituting a violation of the right to life of four people.”

His report suggested the Cuban government could be interested in provoking incidents which will generate new obstacles in the difficult relations with the United States.

Similarly, he felt it legitimate to ask why Washington had not taken effective measures to prevent the flights made by these small aircraft from being continued “in such a way that a tragic outcome was predictable.”

Groth said “one possible reason is the existence of groups in Miami whose relevance depends on maintaining the policy of confrontation between the two countries.”

The report went on to state “the free fall of the Cuban economy appears to have come to a halt.”

He also called attention to the fact the Cuban regime was still politically intact despite having abruptly lost a third of its national product.

He interpreted this phenomenon to mean the regime had a far greater level of credibility and reserves of loyalty amongst broad swathes of the population than many observers had believed.

The report stressed the economic measures adopted by the Cuban government in order to get the country out of a deep crisis “are in some way contributing to reduce its severity.”

Groth had received lists of people serving prison terms for political crimes from groups within Cuba, including some 1,173 names.

But while the number of people tried for political crimes in the last year appears to have fallen, all the other forms of harassment have continued along their established lines, he said.

Some non governmental sources said around 150 people serving time for political offences were freed in 1996.

The report referred to numerous individual cases of people who had been arrested, tried and sentenced.

The lists include many independent journalists, like Rafael Solano, director of the Habana Press agency, and Roxana Valdivia, president of the Patria agency.

Groth said that “the groups which have most continued being victims of repressive measures include journalists who try to carry out their work on the margins of the official press and those who have created various news agencies with strictly professional criteria free of political affiliations.”

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