RIGHTS-CUBA: Few Advances, Besides Release of Prisoners

•  havana
• Friday, January 28, 2011
• Inter Press Service

'Despite the release of several dozen political prisoners in the second half of 2010, a positive development,' the situation of 'civil, political, economic and cultural rights is still negative,' says a new report by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN).

Like other dissident groups, the CCDHRN is not legally recognised but is tolerated by the government, which sees all opposition organisations as mercenaries in the pay of Washington. The government thus tends to ignore such accusations like the ones voiced by the CCDHRN, which it considers to be part of the hostile U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The report issued by the CCDHRN, which is headed by Elizardo Sánchez, includes a 'documented' list of 105 people in prison or facing charges for political reasons. The figure is much lower than the 201 names listed in January 2010, or the 167 included in the group's June 2010 report.

The significant reduction was due 'fundamentally to the release, directly from prison to exile in Spain, of 56 prisoners, including 41 who were adopted as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty international, in the second half of 2010. The individuals who opted for exile were accompanied abroad by a total of 323 family members,' the report says.

The CCDHRN's list of names includes 28 people handed stiff sentences, including life in prison, for terrorism, and 14 for hijacking -- in cases involving smuggling people out of the country -- accompanied in some cases by murder.

It also includes the last 11 of a group of 75 prisoners who the government promised to release, 23 of whom had already been freed. The Catholic Church helped broker a deal in which the government of Raúl Castro agreed to release the 52 of the original group of 75 who were still in prison in mid-2010. The 11 who are still behind bars have refused to leave Cuba if they are freed.

The 75 dissidents were imprisoned in early 2003 on charges of conspiring with a foreign power -- the United States -- to destabilise the Cuban state. In response to the arrests of the dissidents and the lengthy sentences they were given, the European Union adopted diplomatic sanctions, and talks between the EU and Cuba were broken off. In his report, Sánchez complains that the draft guidelines for the sixth congress of Cuba's governing Communist Party (PCC) 'do not say a single word about the need to improve the situation of civil, political, economic and cultural rights of the citizens, which would require reforms to modernise the legal system.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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