Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CUBA: Dissidents Launch Petition Drive Against Death Penalty

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Mar 9 2004 (IPS) - Moderate dissidents in Cuba began to collect signatures Tuesday demanding a moratorium on the death penalty, which is applicable to around 100 offences in this Caribbean island nation.

The campaign was launched by the Pro Rights Dialogue Coalition, which carried out a kind of nationwide survey last year on a proposed ”national charter on fundamental rights and duties.”

Of the 35,209 Cuban citizens surveyed last year in this country of 11.2 million, 30,727 or 87 percent said they were opposed to capital punishment – a result ”that encouraged us to call for an ongoing debate on this far-reaching question,” opposition activist Leonardo Calvo told the press Tuesday.

A group of Cuban dissidents and human rights activists signed, in the presence of journalists, a petition calling for a moratorium on executions, which will be delivered to the National Assembly (parliament).

The dissidents said the petition is a ”previous and necessary step” towards the abolition of capital punishment, which Cuba expanded in 1999 to cases of drug trafficking with aggravating factors, violent theft, and ”corruption of minors”.

The call for a moratorium invokes article 63 of the constitution, according to which ”all citizens have the right to address complaints and petitions to the authorities and to receive the relevant attention or responses within an adequate timeframe.”

Calvo, the head of the coalition that is made up of several dissident groups, said debates ”on the right to life and on the death penalty” will be held in every province over the next few months.

The debates will culminate in an October forum in Havana to which organisations, personalities and institutions interested in ”expanding the global map of societies and states that have abolished capital punishment” will be invited to participate, he said.

”We believe it is necessary to build the awareness and sensibility of Cubans,” said Calvo, who added that another of the coalition’s aims is to expand the debate on human rights in Cuba.

Some dissident groups have criticised the ”politicisation” of the deliberations in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which is the frequent scenario of clashes between Cuba and the United States.

Asked by IPS about the impact that the campaign against the death penalty could have on the U.N. Commission’s upcoming period of sessions, to run Mar. 15 to Apr. 23 in Geneva, Calvo said that another objective is ”to bring the debate on human rights to Cuba.”

Cubans should gain ”a voice, presence and protagonism” in discussions on basic freedoms, as ”an essential condition for progress on this issue. That is our aim,” the activist added.

The signature collection drive began around a month before the first anniversary of the Apr. 11 execution of three men accused of hijacking a passenger ferry in an attempt to defect to the United States.

Cuban authorities considered the hijacking part of a U.S.-backed provocation aimed solely at ”creating conditions and pretexts for attacking Cuba.”

The executions by firing squad brought to an end a de facto moratorium on the application of the death penalty in Cuba that dated back to 2000.

To the international outcry over the executions were added howls of outrage against the severe sentences handed down about the same time to 75 dissidents accused of conspiring with personnel from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to ”destabilise” the socialist government of President Fidel Castro.

Such developments ”further weakened the fabric of our social cohesion,” and ”deteriorated the climate of trust and confidence in Cuba and among Cubans,” said Calvo.

In November 2000, Castro reported that a group of legal experts was studying ”alternatives” to the death penalty. ”We have other ideas that will permit us one day, by our own decision, to abolish capital punishment,” the president said at the time.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a global moratorium on executions in December 2000.