|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Civil & Human Rights |
|
Human Rights in Cuba |
Current rating: 0 |
by rich
Email: letsthinksomemore (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
19 Jan 2005
|
|
The most recent Amnesty International Report on Civil Rights in Cuba. |
Cuba
Covering events from January - December 2002
REPUBLIC OF CUBA
Head of state and government: Fidel Castro Ruz
Death penalty: retentionist
International Criminal Court: not signed
A number of initiatives by unofficial organizations in Cuba called for greater openness and respect for human rights in the country. The authorities largely ignored these efforts, although there were some incidents of harassment of those involved. In February a busload of youths crashed a bus into the Mexican embassy, apparently in search of asylum. The incident sparked a number of apparently pre-emptive arrests of dissidents, with the result that at the end of 2002 there were more prisoners of conscience than at any point during the previous year. New death sentences were handed down although the unofficial moratorium on executions appeared to remain in place. The embargo by the USA against Cuba continued to contribute to a climate in which fundamental rights were denied.
All AI documents on Cuba
Cuba’s relations with some sectors of the international community improved over 2002. A November meeting with representatives of the European Union indicated a positive shift in relations with Cuba. Political dialogue between the two, blocked for five years over a number of issues including human rights concerns, had reopened with an initial meeting in December 2001. Similarly, Cuba’s relations with Canada, which had deteriorated over the three previous years, improved with the visit of a senior Canadian official in November.
In April the UN Commission on Human Rights passed a relatively mild resolution on human rights in Cuba. However, the resolution was supported by many Latin American countries and for the first time Mexico voted in favour, prompting a diplomatic row with Cuba. In November, for the 11th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the USA to end its embargo.
Relations with the USA
Overall, US relations with Cuba remained difficult. Although calls in the US for a lifting of the embargo reached an unprecedented level, US President George W. Bush indicated that he would veto any legislative attempt to remove the embargo or other restrictions on Cuba unless a multi-party system was established and elections held. His position was criticized by former US President Jimmy Carter, whose visit to Cuba in May marked the highest-level mission from the USA since 1959. In October, the US House of Representatives voted to end travel restrictions on US citizens wanting to visit Cuba.
Cuba continued to express opposition to US control of the land on which the US naval base in Guantánamo is sited, but indicated that allowing the use of Cuban airspace by US planes was a gesture of goodwill on its part towards the global effort against “terrorism”. (For information on those held by the US authorities in Guantánamo, see USA entry.)
Civil society initiatives
Initiatives by civil society organizations drew increased attention to calls for fundamental freedoms.
In October the Asamblea para promover la sociedad civil, Assembly to Promote Civil Society, headed by former prisoner of conscience Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, was announced. The Mesa de ReflexiĂłn de la OposiciĂłn Moderada, Roundtable of Reflection of the Moderate Opposition, declared that by the end of 2002 discussions of a draft charter of human rights had stimulated responses from more than 10,000 Cuban citizens. The Carta de derechos y deberes fundamentales de los cubanos, Charter of Fundamental Rights and Responsibilities of Cubans, was described as a mechanism for increasing dialogue around human rights issues in Cuba.
Proyecto Varela
The “Todos Unidos” (“All Together”) movement sponsored the Proyecto Varela petition for a referendum on fundamental freedoms. On 10 May Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación, Christian Liberation Movement, and other Proyecto Varela leaders presented more than 11,000 signatures to the National Assembly demanding a referendum on fundamental freedoms. Shortly afterwards, former US President Carter arrived in Cuba and, in an unprecedented move, was allowed to address the nation in a live broadcast. He supported the Proyecto Varela petition and discussed a range of human rights matters.
On 12 June, the authorities organized a massive march in support of a new referendum initiative which would maintain the existing system. On 20 June, a petition signed by a reported 99 per cent of Cuban voters was submitted to the National Assembly calling for reaffirmed commitment to socialism. Six days later, the National Assembly voted unanimously in favour of a Constitutional amendment declaring the socialist system irrevocable and making it illegal in future for lawmakers to attempt to change it. Proyecto Varela supporters declared that this was a response to their initiative, but the authorities stated that it was in response to calls from US President Bush for a change of government in Cuba.
Prisoners of conscience
Limitations on freedom of expression, association and assembly remained codified in Cuban law. However, a decline in numbers of prisoners of conscience over the last several years was taken by some observers as an indication that repression of dissidents was waning. Several prisoners of conscience were released during 2002, including Juan JosĂ© Moreno Reyes, Vladimiro Roca AntĂşnez and Oscar ElĂas Biscet, apparently supporting this view.
However, there were more new detentions of prisoners of conscience in 2002, showing clearly the authorities’ continuing use of harsh measures to stifle potential internal dissent. In December Oscar ElĂas Biscet was redetained with a number of other activists as they took part in a discussion group on human rights.
Crackdown after Mexican embassy incident
On 27 February a busload of young men crashed into the grounds of the Mexican embassy in Havana. After several days, Havana police raided the embassy and took them into custody. Several of the younger participants were released, but at the end of 2002,
15 of them reportedly remained in detention.
The authorities’ reaction to the incident was harsh. Two Reuters journalists were reportedly beaten by police while trying to cover the events. A sweep of the neighbourhood during the disturbances resulted in several hundred arrests. Most of those detained were soon released, but there was a separate round-up of known dissidents, a significant number of whom were still in detention at the end of 2002. Ten of those detained were prisoners of conscience. Five more activists who had been detained in the days before the incident were also considered prisoners of conscience. None of the 15 had been officially charged or tried by the end of 2002.
A number of these prisoners of conscience, along with other detainees, went on hunger strike in late August to protest against their continuing detention without trial. The health of prisoner of conscience Leonardo Miguel BruzĂłn Avila deteriorated sharply before he was transferred to a military hospital in early November.
On 4 March, 12 dissidents were allegedly beaten and detained by state security officers and paramilitaries in a hospital in Ciego de Avila, where they were visiting a colleague who had been beaten during an earlier demonstration. They were still in detention without trial at the end of 2002. One of the detainees, Juan Carlos González Leyva, is blind and was subjected to severe conditions which reportedly aggravated his high blood pressure and other medical problems.
Harassment of dissidents
The authorities continued to try to discourage dissent by harassing suspected critics of the government. Suspected dissidents were subjected to short-term detention, frequent summonses, threats, eviction, loss of employment and restrictions on movement.
Death penalty
Although the unofficial moratorium on executions declared in 2001 apparently remained in place, at least three prisoners were sentenced to death in 2002: RamĂłn González, Iván RodrĂguez and Gabriel LindĂłn. Prosecutors argued for the death penalty to be imposed on at least three other individuals. At the end of 2002, more than 50 people remained on death row.
AI country visits
AI last visited Cuba in 1988. The government did not respond to AI’s requests to be allowed into the country. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
|
Health care? Ask Cuba |
by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Jan 2005
|
Here’s a wrenching fact: If the United States had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba’s, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.
Yes, Cuba’s. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health-care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest CIA World Factbook, Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates than the US.
Even more troubling, the rate in the United States has worsened recently.
In every year since 1958, America’s infant mortality rate improved, or at least held steady. But in 2002, it got worse: seven babies died for each thousand live births, while that rate was 6.8 deaths the year before.
Those numbers, buried in a recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, didn’t get much attention. But they are part of a pattern of recent statistics dribbling out of the federal government suggesting that for those on the bottom in America, life in our new Gilded Age is getting crueler.
“America’s children are at greater risk than they’ve been in for at least a decade,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and president of the Children’s Health Fund. “The rising rate of infant mortality is an early warning that we’re headed in the wrong direction, with no relief in sight.”
It’s too early to know just what to make of the increase in infant mortality in 2002 for American babies. Reliable data for 2003 and 2004 are not out yet. Sandy Smith of the Centers for Disease Control says that the statisticians are pretty sure there was not a further deterioration in 2003, but that it’s too soon to know whether there was an improvement or just a leveling off at the higher rate.
Singapore has the best infant mortality rate in the world: 2.3 babies die before the age of 1 for every 1,000 live births. Sweden, Japan and Iceland all have a rate that is less than half of ours.
If we had a rate as good as Singapore’s, we would save 18,900 babies each year. Or to put it another way, our policy failures in Iraq may be killing Americans at a rate of about 800 a year, but our health- care failures at home are resulting in incomparably more deaths—of infants. And their mothers, because women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.
Of course, deaths in maternity wards occur one by one, and don’t generate the national attention, grief and alarm of an explosion in Fallujah or a tsunami in Sri Lanka. But they are far more frequent: Every day, on average, 77 babies die in the US and one woman dies in childbirth.
Bolstering public health isn’t as dramatic as spending $300 million for a single F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet, but it can be a far more efficient way of protecting Americans.
For example, during World War II, the employment boom meant that many poor Americans enjoyed regular health care for the first time. So even though 405,000 Americans died in the war, life expectancy in the United States actually increased between 1940 and 1945, rising three years for whites and five years for blacks.
True, infant mortality and many other American health problems are largely intertwined with poverty, and experience suggests that neither the Left nor the Right has easy solutions for intractable poverty. But some of the steps the government is now taking or talking about—like cutting back further on entitlements, particularly those giving children access to health care—would aggravate the situation. Last year, a study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that the lack of health-insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year.
As readers know, I complain regularly about the Chinese government’s brutality in imprisoning dissidents, Christians and, lately, Zhao Yan, a New York Times colleague in Beijing. Yet for all their ruthlessness, China’s dictators have managed to drive down the infant mortality rate in Beijing to 4.6 per thousand; in contrast, New York City’s rate is 6.5.
We should celebrate this freedom that we enjoy in America—by complaining about and working to address pockets of poverty and failures in our health-care system. It’s simply unacceptable that the average baby is less likely to survive in the United States than in Beijing or Havana. |
|
