RIGHTS-CUBA: Broad Reaction Against Executions of Hijackers

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 15 2003 (IPS) - Last week’s execution of three men who orchestrated the hijacking of a passenger ferry in a frustrated attempt to defect to the United States has been widely criticised in Cuba, although the death penalty itself was not called into question.

”It’s one thing when you’re talking about a murderer or someone who rapes a young girl, and another when you’re talking about a hijacking of a boat, in which violence and death threats were used, a show of violence was made, but in the end no one was killed,” one 39-year-old Cuban woman, an engineer, told IPS.

”The climate here is tense,” said a resident of one of the poorest areas of Old Havana, where family members of two of the three executed hijackers live.

In that neighbourhood as well as the Havana district known as 10 de Octubre, which is home to the mother of the third man, there have been small demonstrations of support for the families of the three executed men, according to reports that were not confirmed by local authorities.

The situation also became tense during a mass given Sunday in the Havana cemetery chapel, said witnesses.

Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad at dawn last Friday, after ”a summary trial provided for by articles 479 and 480 of the penal procedures code,” stated a communique issued by the government after the execution.

”People here aren’t afraid of anything, only death,” said a 54-year-old Cuban man. ”If you want to put an end to certain things, that is the only way.” But in this case, he added, ”a life sentence would have been sufficient.”

Capital punishment is applicable in Cuba to more than 100 different offences, including crimes against national security, hostile acts against a foreign state, genocide, hijacking, mercenary activities, murder, rape or corruption of minors, and armed robbery.

The official communique said the three men were ”the ringleaders, the most active and brutal” of the group of people who commandeered a ferry carrying dozens of passengers in the Havana bay, and ordered it to sail to the United States on Apr. 2.

The rest of the group was given jail terms, the lightest of which went to the three women involved.

The incident came shortly after the hijackings of two passenger planes, also by Cubans wishing to defect to the United States, and on the heels of the trials of more than 70 political dissidents, who were sentenced to up to 28 years in prison.

”No one has the right to endanger the lives of other people, but no one should decide to inflict death on other people as a remedy for their criminal actions,” said Cuba’s Catholic bishops’ conference.

”Violence is not eliminated with violence. It is necessary to eradicate the causes of violence, and that is not accomplished by applying the death penalty,” added the statement released by the bishops’ conference on Apr. 11, after the executions were reported.

The bishops also expressed their concern over ”the succession of violent events” in the country and ”the long sentences handed down to a number of political opponents.”

Although it has become easier to find people opposed to capital punishment in Cuba, the death penalty has generally been seen by the population as the only effective punishment for certain crimes.

The controversy tends to focus more on specific cases or the application of the death penalty when politically-motivated offences are involved, rather than criticism of capital punishment, which is generally regarded as a merited penalty for criminals like murderers or rapists.

The coordinator of the Moderate Opposition Round-Table on Reflection, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, pointed Tuesday to what he saw as a growth of support for abolition of the death penalty in Cuba. ”The popular reaction has been one of rejection of these executions,” he said.

The activist said that over 90 percent of the 35,000 Cubans from all walks of life who were surveyed with respect to their views on a draft charter on the ”basic rights and duties” of Cubans, drawn up by the Round-Table, expressed reservations about the death penalty.

”Even those who said they were in favour of it said it should only be applied in cases of crimes that endangered the life of another citizen or involved the rape of minors,” added a text signed by Cuesta Morúa, which was made available to IPS.

Analysts said the motivation of the hijackers – the desire to emigrate to the United States – was a strong factor fuelling the widespread view that the death penalty was too harsh a punishment in this case.

Studies carried out in the late 1990s estimated that between 490,000 and 800,000 of Cuba’s 11 million people would leave the country if they could, including many who do not meet requirements for a U.S. visa.

In the mid-1990s, Cuba and the United States signed two migration accords aimed at ensuring orderly, legal and safe emigration to the United States.

In the agreements, Washington promised to grant a minimum number of entry visas to Cubans and to repatriate illegal emigrants intercepted at sea, while Havana pledged not to take reprisals against those who were returned.

However, the United States continues to offer automatic political asylum to any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. soil.

The socialist government of Fidel Castro sees the Cuban Adjustment Act, a U.S. law in effect since 1965 that grants legal residency status to Cuban immigrants, as the main cause of illegal emigration and hijacking attempts by people wishing to defect.

Many Cubans brave the hazardous journey across the Florida Straits on precarious watercraft every year.

The recent hijackings have come at a time when the economic crisis that has had Cuba in its grip since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the east European socialist bloc in the late 1980s has taken a turn for the worse.

The incidents also coincided with a crackdown by the government of Fidel Castro on the trafficking and consumption of drugs, corruption, and unauthorised free enterprise and black market activities.

The Lay Diocese Council of Pinar del Rio, 140 kms from Havana, said in a statement last Friday that there was a ”qualitatively new” situation in the country today, and expressed concern for the future.

According to the document, ”there is evidence of growing discontent and confusion” among the Cuban populace, fuelled by the difficulties in making a living – described as ”critical conditions for survival” – and the official curb on various forms of private initiative.

Observers say authorities failed to reckon on the strong backlash that would be generated by the executions, which were aimed at sending out a warning to deter similar actions.

Nor was the reaction expected by Elizardo Sánchez, the head of an illegal opposition group, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), who told IPS last Friday that ”if you carried out a survey, the majority of people would probably agree” with the sentences that were handed down.

”The government has made us familiar with the death penalty,” Sánchez lamented, after noting that capital punishment was abolished by Cuba’s 1949 constitution, but reinstated after the 1959 triumph of the revolution.

The executions of the three hijackers put an end to a de facto moratorium of the death penalty in effect since 2000, which had been recognised as a positive development by dissident groups like the CCDHRN and by the international community.

Among the beneficiaries of the suspension of the application of the death penalty were Salvadoran nationals Raúl Ernesto Cruz and Otto René Rodríguez, who were found guilty of staging a 1997 series of bomb attacks on hotels and other tourism infrastructure in Cuba, in which an Italian businessman was killed.