Cuba: Human Rights Developments
Despite a few positive developments over the course of the year, the Cuban
government's human rights practices were
generally arbitrary and repressive. Hundreds of peaceful opponents of the
government remained behind bars, and many
more were subject to short-term detentions, house arrest, surveillance,
arbitrary searches, evictions, travel restrictions,
politically-motivated dismissals from employment, threats, and other forms
of harassment.
Although Cuba's human rights conditions improved little in 2000, U.S. policy
toward Cuba did begin to change. The
high-profile case of Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban
shipwreck survivor who stayed seven months in the United
States against the wishes of his father, brought increased public attention
to the United States' policy of isolating Cuba.
After the boy returned home in June, congressional efforts to relax some
aspects of the thirty-eight-year-old U.S.
economic embargo against Cuba gained momentum.
Cuba's repressive human rights practices were undergirded by the country's
legal and institutional structure. The rights to
freedom of expression, association, assembly, movement, and of the press
remained restricted under Cuban law. By
criminalizing enemy propaganda, the spreading of "unauthorized news," and
the insulting of patriotic symbols, the
government effectively denied freedom of speech under the guise of protecting
state security. The authorities also
imprisoned or ordered the surveillance of individuals who had committed
no illegal act, relying upon laws penalizing
"dangerousness" (estado peligroso) and allowing for "official warning"
(advertencia oficial). The government-controlled
courts undermined the right to a fair trial by restricting the right to
a defense, and frequently failed to observe the few due
process rights available to defendants under the law.
Even Cubans' right to leave their country was severely restricted, as the
government prosecuted persons for "illegal exit" if
they attempted to leave the island without first obtaining official permission
to do so. Such permission was sometimes
denied arbitrarily, or made contingent on the purchase of an expensive
exit permit.
Pro-democracy activists planned a series of protests to coincide with the
ninth annual Ibero-American Summit, held in
Havana in November 1999. Yet, the authorities cracked down hard on public
dissent, arresting over 200 dissidents in the
weeks before and after the summit. Many of them were placed under house
arrest, while others were temporarily
detained in police stations. This wave of repression continued through
February 2000. The Cuban Commission of Human
Rights and National Reconciliation (Comisión Cubana de Derechos
Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional), a respected
Havana-based nongovernmental group, announced in early March that 352 dissidents
hadbeen arrested over the
preceding four months, while another 240 had their freedom of movement
restricted, normally by being ordered to remain
at their homes.
While the vast majority of those arrested were eventually released without
any criminal charges being brought against
them, a few were prosecuted. The most serious case was that of thirty-eight-year-old
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet González,
who received a three-year prison sentence on February 25 for protests that
included turning the Cuban flag upside-down
and carrying anti-abortion placards. Biscet, the president of the Lawton
Human Rights Foundation, was convicted of
dishonoring patriotic symbols, public disorder, and instigating delinquency.
It was reported in August that he had
experienced severe weight loss in prison, suffered from health problems,
including an untreated gum infection, and had
been held in solitary confinement for months at a time.
Also on February 25, immediately after Biscet's trial, Eduardo Díaz
Fleitas, vice-president of the Fifth of August
Movement (Movimiento 5 de Agosto), and Fermín Scull Zulueta, were
convicted of public disorder by the same court.
Díaz Fleitas was sentenced to a year of incarceration, while Scull
Zulueta received a year of house arrest. Like Biscet,
they were anti-abortion protesters, and had carried signs at a November
10 demonstration.
The most encouraging development of the year came in May when three leaders
of the Internal Dissidents Working
Group (Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna, GTDI) were freed prior
to the expiration of their sentences.
Economists Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, engineering professor Félix
Antonio Bonne Carcasses, and attorney René
Gómez Manzano were granted provisional liberty within two weeks
of each other, but Vladimiro Roca Antúnez, the
fourth leader of the group, remained incarcerated at this writing. The
four had been sentenced in March 1999 to several
years of imprisonment for "acts against the security of the state," after
having spent nearly nineteen months in pretrial
detention. They were first detained in July 1997, a month after the GTDI
released "The Homeland Belongs to All" (La
Patria es de Todos), an analytical paper on the Cuban economy, human rights,
and democracy.
Whether detained for political or common crimes, inmates were subjected
to abusive prison conditions. Prisoners
frequently suffered malnourishment and languished in overcrowded cells
without appropriate medical attention. Some
endured physical and sexual abuse, typically by other inmates with the
acquiescence of guards, or long periods in isolation
cells. Prison authorities insisted that all detainees participate in politically
oriented "re-education" sessions or face
punishment. Political prisoners who denounced the poor conditions of imprisonment
were punished with solitary
confinement, restricted visits, or denial of medical treatment.
At least twenty-four prisoners faced the death penalty, according to a
list circulated in August by the Cuban Commission
of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which also provided the names
of twenty-one others who had been
executed in 1999. Although the organization noted that all of the executions
involved defendants convicted of homicide,
Cuban law permitted the use of the death penalty for numerous other crimes,
including international drug trafficking and
the corruption of minors. Cuba's secrecy regarding the application of the
death penalty-the government did not provide
information on execution-made it difficult to ascertain the actual number
of death sentences imposed and carried out. The
Cuban legal system's serious procedural failings and lack of judicial independence,
which violated the rights of all criminal
defendants, were especially problematic with regard to capital offenses.
Miscarriages of justice were also unlikely to be
remedied upon review by a higher court, since Cuban law afforded convicts
sentenced to death minimal opportunities to
appeal their sentences.
The Cuban government maintained a firm stance against independent journalism,
regularly detaining reporters and
sometimes prosecuting them. On November 10, 1999 Angel Pablo Polanco, the
director of Noticuba, was arrested and
held for a week, allegedly to prevent him from reporting on protests surrounding
the Ibero-American Summit. On January
20, 2000 José Orlando González Bridón, president of
the Cuban Confederation of Democratic Workers (Confederación
de Trabajadores Democráticos de Cuba) and writer for the Cuba Free
Press, was detained for several hours. Police
reportedly questioned him about his writings and threatened to prosecute
him. Other journalists detained and questioned
for brief periods over the course of the year included Ricardo González
Alfonso, Jadir Hernández, Jesús Hernández, and
Luis Alberto Rivera Leiva. Others were harassed or prevented from working
by police.
Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, a long-time government opponent who wrote
for the Union of Independent Cuban
Journalists and Writers (Unión de Periodistas y Escritores Cubanos
Independientes), was sentenced on January 25 to six
months of imprisonment for "hoarding" toys. Police had confiscated toys
that he had planned to give away to poor
children in his area; they had been paid for by Cuban exiles in Miami.
Just after Arroyo's trial, the Cuban authorities freed
another independent journalist, Leonardo de Varona González, who
had served a sixteen-month sentence for "insulting"
President Fidel Castro. At least three other independent journalists remained
incarcerated: Bernardo Arévalo Padrón and
Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, serving sentences of six years
and of two years and seven months, respectively,
for "insulting" Castro; and Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández,
serving four years for "dangerousness," who was reportedly held in
solitary confinement until early August.
On October 16, after his release from prison, Arroyo was reportedly beaten
and insulted by state security agents. He and
another dissident were picked up from a friend's house, driven to the police
station in Güines, beaten en route, and then
driven dozens of miles away and released after being beaten again.
Foreign journalists too faced government harassment if they attempted to
work with or assist their Cuban colleagues.
Italian freelance journalist Carmen Butta was reportedly detained by police
on June 18 after meeting with independent
journalists as part of her research for an article on the Cuban independent
press. In August, three Swedish journalists
were arrested in Havana by state security agents. They had traveled to
Cuba on tourist visas but had held a seminar on
press freedom for independent journalists. The three were deported after
spending two days in detention. Earlier that
same month, French journalist Martine Jacot was detained and interrogated
at the Havana airport by six members of the
Cuban security forces. She had spent a week in Cuba interviewing independent
journalists and family members of
incarcerated journalists. Jacot's equipment, including a video camera,
was seized, as were some documents.
While the government permitted greater opportunities for religious expression
than in past years and allowed several
religious-run humanitarian groups to operate, it continued to maintain
tight control over religious institutions, affiliated
groups, and individual believers.
The government recognized only one labor union, the Worker's Central of
Cuba (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba,
CTC), and restricted labor rights by banning independent labor groups and
harassing individuals attempting to form them.
It tightly controlled workers employed in businesses backed by foreign
investment. Under restrictive labor laws, the
authorities had a prominent role in the selection, payment, and dismissal
of workers, effectively denying workers the right
to bargain directly with employers over benefits, promotions, and wages.
Cuba alsocontinued to use prison labor for
agricultural camps and ran clothing assembly and other factories in its
prisons. The authorities' insistence that political
prisoners work without pay in poor conditions violated international labor
standards.