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RIGHTS-CUBA: Fewer Political Prisoners, But Little Progress

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 9 2007 (IPS) - The number of people in prison for political reasons in Cuba fell last year, but only by an insignificant margin, and there is no sign of a change in official policy since the “temporary” withdrawal from public life of President Fidel Castro due to illness last July, dissident sources said.

“In 2006, the situation with respect to civil, political and economic rights in Cuba remained negative,” said a communiqué on Tuesday from the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), a dissident organisation that first applied to the Cuban authorities for legal registration in 1987.

“The provisional government team designated by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro (who temporarily handed over power to his brother, General Raúl Castro, on Jul. 31, 2006) has done nothing to improve the situation in regard to these basic rights,” the text added.

The statement, signed by dissidents Elizardo Sánchez and Carlos J. Menéndez, adds that “the paralysis” of the island is due to the fact that all policies established by President Castro, in terms of both domestic and foreign policy, “are still being carried out to the letter.”

The Cuban government does not recognise the legitimacy of this sort of report, nor of organisations like the CCDHRN which, according to official sources, have no real influence in the country and only exist because they are promoted and financed by the U.S. government.

On the subject of human rights, the Cuban foreign office emphasises the island’s social achievements and the high levels of education, healthcare and employment enjoyed by its 11.2 million people.

The government attributes the circumscription of other rights to the country’s need to defend itself from a hostile foreign government (the U.S. administration) that promotes internal insubordination and publicly declares its support for a change of government in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the CCDHRN claims that the rights to freedom of association, conscience, the press, movement of persons, information, assembly, expression and peaceful demonstration, as well as the right to work freely outside “exploitative government tutelage” and to organise trade unions and political parties, are violated in this country.

Nevertheless, the “partial list of people punished for political or socio-political reasons,” published by the CCDHRN every six months, whose cases are documented with relatives acting as sources, shortened from 333 documented cases at the end of 2005, to 283 on Dec. 31, 2006.

The communiqué said that this fact might reflect “the government’s intention” to reduce “the total number of political prisoners, by passing fewer prison sentences and granting some selective early releases.” This was attributed to a change in the “political strategy of repression.”

“This is medium-profile political repression. On the one hand, long prison sentences and new prosecutions are being avoided, and on the other, we are seeing an upsurge in strong-arm tactics with a lot of arrests, intimidation, acts of repudiation (attacks by groups of government supporters) and police warnings,” Sánchez told IPS. Barring a “political miracle in the shape of modernisation in the judicial, economic, political and cultural spheres,” the situation in terms of civil, political and economic rights “may get even worse in the short to medium term.”

“The instinctive reaction of these regimes against any expression of discontent is a clampdown,” the activist said.

Only 78 of the people on the CCDHRN’s list are considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, and 12 of these have been granted conditional release. The CCDHRN has asked the London-based rights watchdog to accept another 20 people as prisoners of conscience.

The CCDHRN’s list includes 45 people serving sentences for terrorism charges, 40 for hijacking (usually related to attempts to leave the country), two cases of hijacking and murder, 32 for being considered a threat to state security, and 42 for acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the state.

Thirty people were sentenced for violating the Law for the Protection of Cuba’s National Independence and Economy, Cuba’s response to the U.S. Helms-Burton Act which toughened the embargo against the island in 1996.

There is also a group of 75 dissidents and independent journalists, sentenced in the spring of 2003, of whom 16 have been granted conditional release on health grounds. The most recent release was that of sociologist Héctor Palacios, on Dec. 6.

“I’m not planning to leave (go into exile), and if they had made that a condition, I wouldn’t be here,” Palacios said in his first statements to the press.

Palacios acknowledged that he had received excellent medical care, but at the same time said that his serious health problems were due to the conditions in which he was held.

One person still on the CCDHRN’s list, who was apparently released on Dec. 12, is Guatemalan Jazid Fernández, sentenced to 10 years in jail for terrorism. Fernández was freed after serving eight years and nine months in prison, the Guatemalan consul in Cuba, Sara Solís, confirmed at a news briefing Monday.

“The reports we received from the authorities in the prisons where he served his sentence mentioned his good behaviour. His 10-year sentence, handed down in December 2001, was reduced, as was duly documented, and he was sent home to Guatemala,” the diplomat told Siglo XXI, a Guatemalan newspaper.

The National Coordination of Political Prisoners and Former Political Prisoners (CNPP) announced figures that differ from those of the CCDHRN in late 2006.

According to the CNPP report, there were 339 political prisoners at that time, 77 fewer than in 2005. Nine out of the total are serving life sentences, over 70 were sentenced to more than 20 years, 112 were considered prisoners of conscience and there was a “significant increase” in the number of women political prisoners.

“At the beginning of 2006 there were three women prisoners, but at the end of the year there were 28, 27 of whom were in jail and one on conditional release,” said Aida Valdés, the head of the CNPP.

In contrast to the CCDHRN’s analysis, the spokesman for the moderate Arco Progresista coalition, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, told IPS that subtle changes are occurring in the country and that dissident groups have been subjected to less harassment in recent months.

According to Cuesta Morúa, dissident meetings behind closed doors have been held without difficulty, some people detained without trial have been freed, and brief sentences have been handed down in cases for which formerly the defendant would have been imprisoned for years.

The limit is probably the streets, he said, because the government cannot tolerate public demonstrations that might trigger “a chain reaction and get out of hand.” In any case, “the strong-arm approach is coming to an end,” and the government is trying to “take the heat off to bring down the pressure.”

The CCDHRN communiqué said the group sees no “factors or parts of the system capable of exerting effective pressure from within society to persuade the Cuban government to initiate a process of modernising reforms.”