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Amnesty Int'l: Cuban Courts Complicit in Stifling Dissent

July 15th, 2010 , By admin

Find Under Focus on Cuba

HAVANA —(Associated Press)  Cuba uses repressive laws, a well-oiled state security apparatus and complicit courts to stifle political dissent as it harasses, spies on and imprisons those who openly oppose its communist system, Amnesty International said in a report released July 14. 2010.

The 35-page analysis said restrictions on expressing views deviating from the official line are “systematic and entrenched,” despite the government’s taking “some limited steps to address long-standing suppression of freedom of expression.”

Cuba’s government did not respond to a request for comment. It routinely dismisses international human rights groups as tools of the United States.

Amnesty found that things have not improved since February 2008, when Cuba signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and it blasted official prohibitions on individual liberties in the name of national security and in response to Washington’s 48-year trade sanctions.

“No matter how detrimental its impact, the U.S. embargo is a lame excuse for violating the rights of citizens, as it can in no way diminish the obligation on the Cuban government to protect, respect and fulfill the human rights of all Cubans,” the report said.

It was compiled using sources on and off the island but contained no firsthand research since Amnesty has been banned from visiting Cuba since 1990.

Cuba’s human rights situation has been tense since the Feb. 23 death of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, considered by Amnesty International a prisoner of conscience, after a long hunger strike behind bars. Another opposition activist, Guillermo Farinas, has refused to eat or drink since then, though he has received fluids and nutrients intravenously at a hospital near his home in central Cuba. Both cases drew international condemnation which has softened some since the government reached an agreement with the Roman Catholic Church to transfer political prisoners held far from their families to facilities closer to home, and to give better access to medical care for inmates who need it. That led to the transfer of seven prisoners and the release for health reasons of Ariel Sigler, who became a paraplegic while imprisoned. All were among 75 activists, community organizers and journalists who defy island controls on media arrested in a crackdown on organized dissent in March 2003.

The Amnesty report noted that through the decades, “hundreds of prisoners of conscience have been imprisoned in Cuba for the peaceful expression of their views.”

“The legal, bureaucratic and administrative infrastructure built up over the years to silence government opponents and maintain the one party system remains largely intact,” it said, adding that those opponents “continue to be intimidated and harassed, arbitrarily detained or imprisoned after unfair, often summary, trials.”

Cuba says it holds no political prisoners and safeguards human rights by providing citizens with free education and health care, as well as heavily subsidized housing, utilities, transportation and food.

Still, Wednesday’s report states that even dissidents outside prison face temporary detentions, interrogations and warnings at police stations, concluding that such intimidation has served to “create a climate of fear in Cuban society.”

Cuba’s criminal code offers an array of charges to limit dissent, according to the report, including pre-criminal dangerousness, enemy propaganda, contempt of authority, rebellion, acts against state security, distribution of false news and, simply, resistance.

“The lack of independence and impartiality of the judiciary means that these vaguely worded offenses have been used to punish the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression,” it said.

Cuba can arrest citizens accused of having a “dangerous disposition,” the report said. Those convicted of potentially committing a crime can be sentenced to therapy, police surveillance or reeducation.

Authorities also ensure citizens remain cut off from opposition views, Amnesty found, by maintaining a virtual monopoly on media. It noted that the “Law of Security of Information” prohibits Internet access from home for most Cubans, but praised island bloggers who provide uncensored information in defiance of state website filters.

CFTU Updates

  • The Passing of Bill Doherty

    Bill Doherty, 84, Executive Director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, AFL-CIO

    William Charles “Bill” Doherty Jr., who led the AFL-CIO’s outreach to trade unions in Latin America for 35 years, died August 28 after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 84.

    Born in Belleview, Ky., the oldest of nine children, Doherty was raised in the Washington, D.C. area where his father, William Charles Doherty Sr. was president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, and later the first U.S. ambassador to Jamaica. He graduated from St. Paul’s Catholic Academy High School, where he met his future wife, Jane Catherine Donovan, a Boston native.  He worked as a Capitol Hill police officer while completing his degree in philosophy at Catholic University of America, where he played defensive lineman for the football team. He also attended Georgetown University School of Linguistics and Georgetown Law School.

    Doherty’s life was defined by his Catholic faith (he spent a brief period of his life in the St. Charles Seminary, studying to be a priest) and his conviction that democratic trade unions held the key to freedom and prosperity around the world. His work with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the Postal Telephone and Telegraph International (PTTI) and the AFL-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), took him to 129 countries over his career.

    After serving as an aerial photographer with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Doherty assisted in rebuilding the trade union movement in Germany, supporting the anti-Nazi, dissident labor leaders and nascent democratic trade union movement that is today known as the Confederation of German Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerteschaftsbund, DGB).  He served in Belgium, Europe and Latin America as an AFL-CIO representative to the PTTI, an international trade secretariat.

    When President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was initiated in 1961 to support labor’s international role in nurturing democratic trade union movements abroad, Doherty was the logical choice to serve as AIFLD’s Director of Social Projects, and later as Executive Director.  He led the AIFLD under the direction of four AFL-CIO presidents, retiring in 1996.

    Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Jane Catherine Donovan, eight children and 25 grandchildren.

  • The CFTU Website

    Welcome to the CFTU website!

    We’ve designed it to keep you better informed about developments in the continuing struggle of workers everywhere to establish and maintain the right of Freedom of Association – the right to form and join unions of their own choosing, run by people they elect.

    The CFTU has been active in recent years in attempts to assist workers in Cuba struggling to assert that right – in the face of their government’s insistence that only one union, guided by the Communist Party, can represent them,  and against the background of continuing imprisonment and harassment of those who think otherwise.

    Cuba is not the only country in the world denying workers their rights.  Sadly the list is long – Burma, Vietnam, North Korea, China -  to cite a few.  But too many trade unionists in the free world are unwilling to speak out, apparently believing that somehow these regimes will transform themselves into democratic societies and that through contact with free world unions, the non-representative unions in those police states will remake themselves into legitimate unions. Such a belief flies in the face of 90 years of experience to the contrary.

    The recent hunger-strike death in a Cuban prison of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year old brick mason serving a 26-year sentence for his political activities, and the long hunger strike of  dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas, provide eloquent testimony to the determination of those heroes to see their country free and democratic and observant of all the rights of free people.

    Our committee believes that neither dictatorships nor their hand-maiden unions ever yield power willingly and that free trade unions must not be complicit in the denial of freedom of association to workers.  Rather, we believe that those who are joined in the struggle to assert workers’ rights in the face of dictators, those who risk imprisonment and harassment, need and deserve our moral and material support.  We hope you will join us in those struggles.

    Tom Donahue, CFTU Chair