Posts Tagged ‘Havana’
Written by admin on 20 January 2010
Havana, Jan 20 (IANS/EFE) The state of human rights in Cuba did not improve last year and is unlikely to get better in 2010, a dissident organisation said, though noting that the number of political prisoners declined from 205 to 201.
‘Unless a miracle happens, the situation of civil, political and economic rights in Cuba will remain the same or worse in the course of 2010,’ the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said Tuesday in a statement distributed to the press by its chairman, Elizardo Sanchez.
‘Nothing indicates that the current governors are ready to initiate the judicial, economic and political reforms the country needs,’ the document said.
Some in Cuba and abroad had hoped that the transfer of power from the ailing Fidel Castro to his younger brother would bring an easing of the Communist Party’s grip. But while Raul Castro has encouraged more open debate within official forums, he has shown no inclination to relinquish the government’s media monopoly.
In its report on 2009, the human rights commission attributes continuing repression to fear on the part of a ‘minority within the top nomenclatura (leadership) that continues exercising totalitarian power’.
That minority, according to the commission, is afraid that loosening the reins would be tantamount to opening a ‘Pandora’s box’ of the communist regime’s past crimes.
The report cited an increase in authorities’s tendency to ‘replace political repression based on prolonged incarceration with other procedures, equally illegal but less costly from the political viewpoint, such as brief arbitrary detentions, threats and other forms of intimidation’.
One of those tactics involves the deployment of government supporters to verbally harass and – sometimes – physically accost dissidents as they try to mount peaceful protests.
A total of 869 government opponents were detained in 2009, some of them more than once, the commission said, frequently on the charge of ‘pre-criminal social dangerous’, an offence unique to the Cuban penal code.
Last year’s reduction in the total number of political prisoners was due largely to detainees completing their sentences, the commission said.
‘Particularly disturbing’ are the cases of Santiago Padron, Ihosvani Suris and Maximo Pradera, ‘radical anti-Castro opponents’ who have been held without trial since 2001, the report said.
The commission also noted that while it is almost two years since the Cuban government signed two major UN human rights conventions, Havana has taken no steps to ratify or implement the accords.
Tags: Havana
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Written by admin on 12 January 2010
Havana, Jan 12 (IANS/EFE) Cuban Vice President Marino Murillo has said that a shortage of hard currency remains the most pressing problem for the island’s communist government.
Murillo, who is also economy minister, said that Cuba needs bigger exports and import substitution to generate reserves.
The vice president told a gathering of economists that the government is giving priority to revenue-producing sectors such as tourism, telecommunications and civil aviation, Communist Party daily Granma reported.
Cuba is suffering through one of its worst slumps in decades as a result of the global recession, the continuing US embargo and the shortcomings of its own economic model.
Raul Castro, who formally succeeded ailing older brother Fidel almost two years ago, has reduced the size of Cubans’ food rations, cut back on energy use and suspended payment of Havana’s foreign debts in a bid to relieve the government’s liquidity squeeze.
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Written by admin on 11 January 2010
Havana, Jan 11 (IANS/EFE) First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado has said that Cuba does not lack leaders to replace those who carried out the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, the Juventud Rebelde newspaper reported.
‘The leaders of the future are everywhere,’ 79-year-old Machado said Sunday in an address to the Union of Communist Youth, or UJC, a party entity, in the coastal city of Cienfuegos.
‘There are always many who have the qualifications. You have to reach them and have a good organisational policy,’ he said.
Machado is second-in-command to President Raul Castro, who officially became head of state Feb 24, 2008, after initially serving as Cuba’s interim president.
Eighty three-year-old Fidel Castro, who stepped down from the presidency in favour of his younger brother, Raul, 79, after being stricken by a serious illness in July 2006, remains the leader of the Cuban Communist Party.
‘A revolution renews itself, and young people have a fundamental role to play in it and will take over. We do not have the least doubts,’ Machado said.
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Written by admin on 07 January 2010
Havana, Jan 7 (IANS/EFE) An American detained in Cuba for alleged links with US secret services was still undergoing interrogation, an official said, adding the accused was not being mistreated.
‘I can assure you that he is much better than the victims of those (US government) contractors around the world,’ Ricardo Alarcon, speaker of the Cuban parliament, said here Wednesday.
He described the person in custody, whose name is being withheld, as ‘a gentleman hired by a firm that has contracts with the US secret services’.
‘It’s a new constitution they have in the United States, that they are agents, torturers, spies who are hired in the privatisation of war,’ Alarcon said.
The detainee was arrested Dec 5 for allegedly distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications gear among dissidents in the communist-ruled country.
On Dec 12, the US State Department had issued a statement about the arrest in Cuba of an employee of Development Alternatives Inc, characterised by The New York Times as a ‘kind of do-it-all development company that provides services to the US government in countries around the world.’
DAI refused to comment on what its employee was doing in Cuba.
Cuba’s first statement on the arrest came on Dec 20 when President Raul Castro said the State Department ‘euphemistically’ referred to the detainee as a government contractor.
The DAI employee engaged in ‘the illegal supply of sophisticated communications equipment’ to elements that Washington hopes will subvert Cuban society, Castro said.
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Written by admin on 05 January 2010
Havana, Jan 5 (IANS/EFE) Cuba’s prominent opposition leader Oswaldo Paya has asked his countrymen to participate in a forum that will seek changes in the communist-ruled country.
Paya, recipient of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, announced the creation of the Foro Cubano (Cuban Forum) to work for change, a group that will be open to all Cubans, both inside and outside the country, starting on Tuesday.
‘It’s not a new project, it’s a new step to empower and achieve through solidarity the objectives of all the peaceful, collective and personal projects and initiatives that represent advances in the rights of citizens and reconciliation among Cubans,’ Paya said in his statement.
He also noted that the Forum will seek options for an improvement in the quality of life, ‘spiritual and humane promotion’ and the preservation of the environment in the country.
Paya said that among the basic elements that the Forum identifies itself with are love for country, transparency, participation and freedom.
‘We’ve come to the year 2010. This is the time of the people; it’s the time of change because we Cubans have already decided and yearned for change in our minds and hearts and we know what the changes are that we want and we have the strength of will to realise them,’ the statement added.
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Written by admin on 02 January 2010
Havana, Jan 2 (IANS/EFE) Cuba Friday celebrated the 51st anniversary of its revolution with traditional dances at the main squares of the communist-ruled island.
State-run daily Granma Friday wrote what life was like in the country before 1959, when the uprising led by ex-President Fidel Castro ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Unlike last year, when official events were organised to celebrate the revolution, this time no activity was planned by the government, nor has there been any message to the public from President Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother.
However, the streets were decorated with Cuban flags and posters bearing revolutionary slogans.
At midnight Thursday the traditional 21-gun salute sounded from Havana’s La Cabana Fortress to kick off the anniversary. TV channels then transmitted a music video dedicated to Fidel Castro.
Tags: Havana
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