RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissident Demonstration Blocked by Castro Supporters

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Dec 10 1998 (IPS) - An attempt by dissident groups to call a demonstration in favour of human rights in Havana Thursday was blocked by crowds of pro-government youths who filled the park where the meeting was due to take place.

The illegal Lawton Foundation for Human Rights called supporters to Butari park to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.

Eyewitnesses reported the area was occupied early in the morning by between 200 and 300 young people meeting there as part of the 7th Congress of the Union of Communist Youth which closed here Thursday.

Sources added that a man shouting pro-human rights slogans was “thrown to the ground and dragged into a nearby street” before being taken into police custody.

Asked about this, foreign ministry spokesman, Alejandro Gonzalez, said he was unaware of the case, although he stressed “people are not in prison in Cuba for thinking differently” but for breaking the law.

In his usual Thursday meeting with foreign press, Gonzalez confirmed for Cuba the declaration of human rights reflects the most progressive thought of its time.

He added the island supports the idea of a reconsideration process, complementing this declaration with the due importance of the right to development – a task it is working on with other countries.

“In Cuba the enjoyment of all the basic freedoms and rights has been guaranteed and this has been thanks to the Revolution,” he stressed.

The official spokesman also said he did not know when Vladimiro Roca, Rene Gomez Manzano, Martha Beatriz Roque and Felix Bonne of the opposition internal dissidence Work Group will be brought to trial.

These four have been under arrest since July 1997, after publicising a document known as “La patria es de todos” (the country belongs to everyone), voicing strong criticism of the government and Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

Relatives of the group, led by Magaly de Armas, Roca’s wife, used the 50th anniversary to call a press conference where she called for the “immediate and unconditional freedom” of the four on the basis that they never broke the law.

The families also demanded freedom “for all political prisoners,” a group the, also illegal, Cuban Commission of Human Rights and Reconciliation claim numbers around 300.

A press release in English faxed from Miami to the accredited foreign press in Havana states defenders of liberties on the island are submitted to arbitrary arrests, tough interrogations and violent treatment by the state security department.

The list of those arrested includes Oscar Biscet and Rolando Yyobre, who are being held at an “unknown” location, as well as Milagros Cruz (a blind woman allegedly interned in a psychiatric hospital), Migdalia Rosado and Nestor Rodriguez.

According to information from the United States, the anti- Castro Democracy Movement dispatched a vessel toward the island to “support dissidents planning to demonstrate” Thursday in Cuba.

On an official level, the holiday was commemorated by various earlier activities, and production of a stamp in honour of the date was to be suspended in the afternoon.

Cuba’s parliament issued a declaration stating the “human rights issue has become an instrument for geopolitical manipulation” to legalise the “abitrary law of a group of countries” over the rest of the community.

“The Cuban revolution considers the importance of all the human rights vital in the battle to save humanity in this global era,” stated the newspaper Granma, the official PCC newspaper.

For the Catholic Church in Cuba, meanwhile, “few countries of the world wholly respect human rights.”

In a lengthy article, Cardinal Jaime Ortega called for Cuba also to ask itself what it is doing “for the integral rights of the human being.”

“An individual who does not have his social rights guaranteed is not treated worthily as a person,” said the Cuban Catholic leader.

But in the next paragraph he warns “nor is a person who does not have their personal rights to moral and physical integrity, to personal, civil and political freedoms.”

“The very nature of human beings and their relations demands respect for the rights inherent to their person, both social and personal,” stated Ortega.

Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who ended a short visit to Cuba Thursday, also criticised the prioritising of social over individual rights.

This segmented vision of the issue is “with all respect, an error. We cannot talk of social rights if we do not also talk of the rights of persons,” he said in a press conference.

Law also said “profound dialogue” of the issue must be scheduled between the Catholic Church and the Fidel Castro government.