Cuban Human Rights

Human rights in Cuba are under the scrutiny of human rights organizations, which accuse the Cuban government of committing systematic human rights abuses against the Cuban people, including arbitrary imprisonment and unfair trials. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have drawn attention to the actions of the human rights movement and designated members of it as prisoners of conscience, such as Óscar Elías Biscet. In addition, the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba led by former statesmen Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, José María Aznar of Spain and Patricio Aylwin of Chile was created to support the Cuban dissident movement.

Overview

Concerns have been expressed about the operation of due process. According to Human Rights Watch, even though Cuba, officially atheist until 1992, now "permits greater opportunities for religious expression than it did in past years, and has allowed several religious-run humanitarian groups to operate, the government still maintains tight control on religious institutions, affiliated groups, and individual believers". Censorship in Cuba has also been at the center of complaints. According to the report of Human Rights Watch from 2017 the government continues to rely on arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate critics, independent activists, political opponents, and others. This report added that the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an independent human rights group that lacks official authorization and is therefore considered illegal by the government, received more than 7,900 reports of arbitrary detentions from January through August 2016. This represents the highest monthly average of detentions in the past six years.

Amnesty International's 2017-2018 Annual Report also noted more arbitrary detentions, discriminatory layoffs by state agencies and harassments in self-employment with the aim of making them silent in criticism. Regarding any progress in education, Amnesty International reported that advances in education were undermined by ongoing online and offline censorship. Cuba remained mostly closed to independent human rights monitors.

With regard to arbitrary arrests and detentions, the report added that human rights activists and political activists continued to be harassed, intimidated and arbitrarily detained in high numbers. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a Cuban NGO which is not officially recognized by the state, recorded 5,155 arbitrary detentions in 2017, in contrast to 9,940 in 2016.

Cuba is a regional leader in women's rights issues.

History

During Spanish colonization, the oppression of the indigenous populations was chronicled at length by clergyman Bartolomé de las Casas. The subsequent transportation of African slaves to the island, which lasted over 300 years, led to British military intervention and a determination "to put a stop to these abuses". Since Cuba achieved independence in 1902, successive Cuban governments have been criticised and condemned by various groups, both within Cuba and internationally, for human rights violations on the island. During the latter part of the Spanish colonial era in Cuba, human rights on the island became a particular international concern. After a visit to the region in 1898, U.S. Senator Redfield Proctor estimated that up to 200,000 Cubans had died from starvation and disease within " Spanish forts", essentially concentration camps. The concern was a contributory factor in garnering support for the Spanish–American War in the U.S.

After independence, and following a sustained period of instability, the 1924–33 capitalist government of Gerardo Machado proved to be authoritarian. Machado extended his rule until Fulgencio Batista led an uprising called the Revolt of the Sergeants, as part of a coup which deposed Machado in 1933. Batista then became the strongman behind a succession of puppet presidents until he was himself elected president in 1940. According to Hugh Thomas, the post-Machado period was marked by violent reprisals, mass lynchings and a deterioration towards corruption and ''gansterismo'' throughout the island.

From 1940, Cuba had a multiparty electoral system until Fulgencio Batista (President from 1940 to 1944) staged a coup with military backing on March 10, 1952.

To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions. These murders mounted in 1957, as socialist ideas became more influential. Many people were killed, with estimates ranging from hundreds to about 20,000 people killed.CIA (1963). Political Murders in Cuba -- Batista Era Compared with Castro RegimeWickham-Crowley, Timothy P. (1990). Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory. Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe. P. 63 "Estimates of hundreds or perhaps about a thousand deaths due to Batista's terror are also supported by comments made by Fidel Castro and other Batista critics during the war itself."Guerra, Lillian (2012). Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 42 "The likely total was probably closer to three to four thousand."''Invisible Latin America'', by Samuel Shapiro, Ayer Publishing, 1963, , pg 77. "All told, Batista's second dictatorship cost the Cuban people some 20,000 dead"''The World Guide 1997/98: A View from the South'', by University of Texas, 1997, , pg 209. "Batista engineered yet another coup, establishing a dictatorial regime, which was responsible for the death of 20,000 Cubans."''The Third World in Perspective'', by H.A. Reitsma & J.M.G. Kleinpenning, , pg 344. "Under Batista at least 20,000 people were put to death."

On October 6, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, in the midst of his campaign for the U.S. presidency, decried Batista's relationship with the U.S. government and criticized the Eisenhower administration for supporting him:

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state—destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista—hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend—at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960
from the '' John F. Kennedy Presidential Library''.

In 1958, ''Time'' magazine wrote: "Cuba's fanatic, poorly armed rebels last week tried to smash President Fulgencio Batista with the ultimate weapon of civilian revolutions: the general strike. ... Fulgencio Batista got ready for the strike by offering immunity to anyone who killed a striker and by threatening to jail any employer who closed shop." During the strike, militants and youths stole guns, and threw bombs (one of which may have set up a gas-mains fire), after which some people were killed in clashes."

According to ''Time'' magazine, "The strike was short-lived: "With the upper hand, Batista drove boldly around the city while his cops proceeded to make their supremacy complete. When a patrol car radioed that it had clashed with rebels and had 'a dead man and a prisoner', the dispatcher ordered: 'Shoot him.' At midafternoon, cops burst into a boardinghouse, grabbed three young men who were leaders of Cuba's lay Catholic Action movement, which sympathizes with Castro. Two hours later their stripped, tortured and bullet-torn bodies were turned over to relatives. Total dead: 43."

In 1959, Fidel Castro and his forces succeeded in displacing Batista from power. At that time there were fundamental changes in the judicial and political process. During this transitional period there were some concerns voiced about due process.

The "Cuban National Reconciliation movement", a U.S.-based organisation that claims to act as a forum for discussing Cuban society, has detailed what it believes are complex variables when analysing human rights immediately after the revolution. In the 1960s, violent confrontations known as the Escambray Rebellion between the Cuban government and armed opposition were ongoing, but had declined by the early 1970s. The group asserts that by the time international human rights movements flourished in the 1970s, the most severe period of repression was over, making non-partisan retrospective assessments of the period difficult. The reconciliation movement also cite the difficulties in assessing accounts of abuses that are commonly split upon partisan lines. According to the group, Cuban exiles who were often the first to denounce the Cuban government, largely shared an anti-Communist ideology and overlooked violations committed by other regimes, whilst many left leaning observers did not give the claims of Cuban victims due consideration.

After coming to power in 1959, Fidel Castro's government built a highly effective machinery of repression, according to Human Rights Watch.

As early as September 1959, Vadim Kotchergin (or Kochergin), a KGB agent, was seen in Cuba. Jorge Luis Vasquez, a Cuban who was imprisoned in East Germany, states that the East German secret police Stasi trained the personnel of the Cuban Interior Ministry (MININT).

Political executions

Various estimates have been made in order to ascertain the number of political executions which have been carried out on behalf of the Cuban government since the revolution. During the first two months of 1959, Castro's government executed more than 300 Batista officials, with Latin American historian Thomas E. Skidmore says that there had been 550 executions in the first six months of 1959. In an April 1961 UPI story, the agency stated that about "700 have died before Castro's firing squads" between 1959 and 1961. ''The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators'' ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years 1958–67, while British historian Hugh Thomas, stated in his study ''Cuba or the pursuit of freedom'' that "perhaps" 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970.

The vast majority of those executed directly following the 1959 revolution were policemen, politicians and informers for the Batista regime who were accused of crimes such as torture and murder, and their public trials and executions enjoyed widespread popular support among the Cuban population. Most scholars agree that those executed were most likely guilty as charged, but their trials did not follow due process. The Cuban Government justified such measures on the grounds that in Cuba, the application of capital punishment against war criminals and others followed the same procedure which had previously been followed by the Allies during the Nuremberg trials. Some Cuban scholars maintain that if the government had not imposed severe legislation against the torturers, terrorists, and other criminals who had been employed by the Batista regime, the people themselves would have taken justice into their own hands.

Alleged forced labor camps and abuse of prisoners

In 1987, a "Tribunal on Cuba" was held in Paris in order to present testimonies by former prisoners of Cuba's penal system to the international media. The gathering was sponsored by a US-funded anti-communist group which was named Resistance International and "The Coalition of Committees for the Rights of Man in Cuba". The testimonies which were presented at the tribunal, before an international panel, alleged that a pattern of torture existed in Cuba's prisons and "hard labor camps". The torture consisted of beatings, biological experiments which included dietary restrictions, violent interrogations and extremely unsanitary living conditions. The jury concurred with allegations of arbitrary arrest; sentencing by court martial with no public audience or defender; periods of time which prisoners spent in hard labour camps without sufficient food, clothing or medical care; and the arrest of children who were over nine years old.

Political abuse of psychiatry

Although Cuba has been politically connected to the Soviet Union since the United States broke off relations with Cuba shortly after its prime minister Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, few considerable allegations regarding the political abuse of psychiatry in that country emerged before the late 1980s. Americas Watch and Amnesty International published reports which alluded to cases of possible unwarranted hospitalization and ill-treatment of political prisoners. These reports concerned the Gustavo Machin hospital in Santiago de Cuba in the southeast of the country and the major mental hospital in Havana, Claudio Abbado, Manu Chao, Walter Salles">Claudio Abbado, Manu Chao">Claudio Abbado">ith which ...