UN panel queries Havana on human rights abuses, prison deaths

By JUAN O. TAMAYO — McClatchy Newspapers


A U.N. panel on torture Tuesday demanded that Cuba provide information on the deaths of several political prisoners, the repression of dissident groups such as the Ladies in White and the 2,400 arrests of government critics reported last year.
 The demand came on the same day that Cuba's Granma newspaper and Prensa Latina news agency published reports defending the island's prison system, which faces allegations of "slave labor" in the 1980s and other current abuses.
 Members of the U.N. Committee Against Torture, which is based in Geneva, requested the Cuban government explain the recent deaths of dissidents Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Wilman Villar after lengthy prison hunger strikes, and that of Juan Wilfredo Soto after an alleged beating by security officials.
 Complaints that Cuban prisons are plagued by overcrowding, malnutrition, bad hygiene, and beatings for those who protest and forced exile for others have been received in Geneva, said panel member George Tugushi.
 Cuba also has been asked to explain the "aggressions and harassments" against the Ladies in White, bloggers Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo and Zapata's mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, the panel noted during the first day of its two-day hearing on Cuba.
 The U.N. committee also asked for explanations of the more than 2,400 short-term detentions of dissidents reported in 2011 by Havana human rights activists, including Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
 "We want Cuba to clarify all these cases," said Nora Sveaass, one of the 10 panel members and a Norwegian human rights attorney, according to media reports from Geneva.
 The panel, which monitors enforcement of the U.N. Convention on Torture and Other Physical Abuses and Transgressions, reviews the records of several U.N. member nations each year. This year it was Cuba's turn.
 Cuba's Deputy Attorney General Rafael Pino defended his government during his appearance before the panel, saying that "no one in our country has been persecuted or sanctioned for exercising their rights, including those of free expression and association."
 Pino added that of the 263 complaints of prison abuses filed with the government from 2007 to 2011, only 46 led to findings that security agents were responsible. He gave no further details.
 His comments came as Granma published an article defending the country's prison system and Prensa Latina quoted Antonio Llibre, identified as a Cuban expert in international rights, as saying Cuba has been "free of torture" since 1959.
 Those claims were disputed by human rights activists in Cuba and abroad.
 "Former prisoners ... consistently describe deeply inhumane conditions in Cuba's prisons - from overcrowded cells to inadequate food and water, from poor medical treatment to a hazardous lack of hygiene," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division.
 Sanchez and Vivanco also have noted that Cuba does not allow the Red Cross to inspect its prisons. "If Cuban prisons are model institutions, why prevent people from seeing them?" Vivanco asked.
 Cuba now has 57,337 inmates, including 31,494 "in locked conditions," Granma noted, without explaining the meaning of the term.
 Sanchez previously estimated the prison population at 70,000 to 80,000.
 He noted that before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Cuba had 14 prisons and 4,000 inmates in a population of 6 million, or about one inmate per 1,500. Today, the 57,337 inmates in a population of 11.2 million equal one per 195.
 About 27,100 inmates receive schooling and 24,531 are participating in job-training programs, added Granma, the official voice of the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba.
 Granma also reported that prisoners can play sports and engage in religious activities. The paper noted that famed singer Silvio Rodriguez and other artists played in 16 prisons during a tour in 2008.
 It mentioned that inmates have a "strong health program" but gave no details. A pro-government blogger wrote last week that prisons have one doctor for every 300 inmates, a dentist for every 1,000 and a nurse for every 120.
 Criticisms of the island's prisons erupted this year amid reports that the IKEA furniture chain had contracted for Cuban prison labor in the late 1980s. A series of videos allegedly shot inside a Havana prison showed dirty toilets and walls and leaking sewage.
 The newspaper added that about 23,113 inmates are "participating in labor" and receive a salary "according to the tariffs established" for others in the labor force, but gave no further details on their salaries or employers.
 Four Cuban-American members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to the United Nations' International Labor Organization on Monday requesting an investigation of the reports about IKEA's prison connection.
 "The Castro regime has been given a pass far too many times by international organizations willing to look the other way on Cuba's grave human rights abuses," said the letter by South Florida Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera, and New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires.