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RIGHTS-CUBA: Harsh Penalties for Dissidents, Likely Backlash from UN Commission

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 7 2003 (IPS) - Cuban courts began handing down stiff prison sentences Monday for 75 dissidents on trial, with the immediate political costs for the Fidel Castro government likely to be renewed censure by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Cuban courts began handing down stiff prison sentences Monday for 75 dissidents on trial, with the immediate political costs for the Fidel Castro government likely to be renewed censure by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

The individuals subjected to trial in the past week were rounded up and imprisoned in March on charges of conspiring with the staff of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to “destabilise” the Castro government.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a group that is not officially recognised but is tolerated by the authorities, said in a communiqué that the sentences handed down Monday for more than 30 defendants ranged from 10 to 20 years imprisonment.

According to the Commission, headed by long-time activist Elizardo Sánchez, most of the trials – which began Thursday in courtrooms in Havana and a dozen cities around the island – have already concluded.

The longest prison sentence announced so far was 25 years, for Héctor Palacios, of the opposition movement Todos Unidos (All United), who faced one of the 11 legal petitions for a life sentence made by state prosecutors.

Independent journalist Raúl Rivero received the 20-year sentence that prosecutors had requested during the trial held Friday in the capital.

The same prison term was ordered for Martha Beatriz Roque, an economist and former political prisoner. She also faced a potential life sentence.

As did Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés, of the Liberal Democratic Party. After he read a retraction about his opposition activities during the trial he was sentenced to 18 years.

“The retraction has been confirmed, but we do not know what scope it might have,” said Sánchez in a conversation with IPS. He described the proceedings against the dissidents as “extreme summary trials, likes those that take place under a state of siege or in war.”

The state accused Rivero of – among other things – writing for “the French agency with subversive leanings, Reporters sans Frontières” (RSF – Reporters without Borders).

In the trials, one finds “all the elements of the Stalinist proceedings: closed-door hearings, expeditive justice, refusal of the right to defence, testimonies by infiltrated agents, files piled up for months, statements from neighbours, accusations based solely on crimes of opinion,” according to RSF secretary-general Robert Menard.

Other dissidents were given prison sentences of 15, 18 or 20 years for crimes against state security and infractions as stipulated in Decree 88 for the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba.

This is the first time that the government has implemented that law, in force since 1999 as a counterweight to the U.S. Helms- Burton Act of 1996, which tightened the embargo that Washington has maintained against the socialist-run island for four decades.

The Cuban decree established sanctions for acts aimed at “supporting, facilitating or collaborating with the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade or the economic war of the United States against Cuba.”

Elsewhere in Cuban law, Article 91 of the Penal Code permits the death penalty for anyone who, “in the interest of a foreign state, carries out an act with the aim of harming the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its territory.”

During the trials Thursday and Friday, a half-dozen people who said they were independent journalists or dissidents were identified as Cuban government agents. Manuel David Orrio and Néstor Baguer, for example, had been counted by some of the media covering the proceedings as dissidents.

Sánchez said they were “mere informants”, that they had been “very careless and we were already on the alert, though they did cause damage.” The activist added that some agents are still “out there” but that they have for the most part been identified.

Havana’s crackdown on the island’s opposition movement coincided with the beginning of the annual sessions in Geneva of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which could issue a resolution condemning Cuba, as it has regularly over the past decade.

Every year since 1990, except 1998, the UN Commission has approved resolutions censuring Cuba for the lack of respect for human rights. The 2002 resolution was the first to be authored by Latin American countries, and it was among the least severe.

But the Cuban government insists that it will not accept even being mentioned by the Commission and repeatedly accuses Washington of pressuring the members of the UN body, using the human rights question for political ends.

According to Havana, the U.S. government is the true author of all motions proposed against the island during the Commission’s annual sessions, and that it is attempting to justify the trade embargo and other “aggressions”.

Uruguay, Costa Rica and Peru are currently promoting in Geneva a resolution on Cuba that has been described as “soft” in diplomatic circles. The text urges the Castro government to receive Christine Chanet, personal representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and to collaborate with her efforts.

Chanet’s mandate, as defined by the Commission in 2002, is to assess the human rights situation in Cuba.

Diplomats on the island are saying that the severe penalties handed the dissidents will push the member countries of the UN Commission on Human Rights to vote in favour of the critical resolution on the table in Geneva, or even to seek one with harsher wording.

Inside the dissident movement, the crackdown is considered proof that “the Cuban government does not care about Geneva, or about the Cotonou Accord,” a cooperation pact between the European Union and the former European colonies of Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific.

“That agreement includes a democratic clause that commits all signatory countries to respect fundamental freedoms,” pointed out a European diplomat.

But activist Sánchez noted that there are those “who don’t listen to anyone.” He considers all of the defendants to be “prisoners of conscience”, and said if he were to be arrested he would abstain from the right to a defence.

In response to Monday’s rulings, RSF chief Menard repeated his appeal to the European Union to halt consideration of a Cuban petition for incorporation into the Cotonou Accord, presented in January.

Another Cuban activist, Oswaldo Payá, the leading advocate of the Varela Project demanding political pluralism and other institutional changes on the island, says it is “monstrous” to apply such harsh penalties against people who merely have been expressing their opinions.

Payá and others in the opposition movement charge that the authorities did not give the defendants and their families the time or the facilities necessary to prepare a proper legal defence.

Nevertheless, Sánchez ruled out the possibility that the prisoners have been subjected to physical torture, based on the past experiences of the dissident movement.

“The prison conditions are severe and there are intense interrogations, psychological pressure, but not mistreatment of that kind,” he told IPS.