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CUBA
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Honduras to Sponsor Resolution on Cuba's
Human Rights Situation
VOA News, 02 Apr 2004.
Honduras has announced it is sponsoring
a resolution critical of the human rights
situation in Cuba.
The Honduran Foreign Ministry said Thursday
that the Central American nation will ask
the U.N. Human Rights Commission to approve
sending a representative to Cuba to assess
the situation there.
On Wednesday, before the official Honduran
announcement, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe
Perez Roque said Tegucigalpa is acting at
the request of the United States. He said,
among other things, that the United States
promised economic aid to Honduras in return
for that country sponsoring the resolution.
The Reuters news agency quotes the Honduran
Foreign Ministry as saying the move stems
from Honduras' concern for international
law and is devoid of any political considerations.
Cuba opens doors to journalists in campaign
to polish human rights image
Anita Snow, Thu Apr 1.
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) - Cuba has opened the
doors of two penitentiaries to international
journalists, hoping to rebut criticism about
prison conditions in the weeks before the
UN human rights body votes on the island's
rights record.
The Wednesday visit by international media,
limited to the hospital wards of Havana's
Combinado del Este for men and the Manto
Negro Western Women's Prison, was the first
such group media visit to Cuban prisons
in more than 15 years, authorities said.
The unusual tour through the prisons' iron-barred
doors and down its freshly painted halls
came two weeks before the United Nations
Human Rights Commission is to consider a
resolution expressing "regret"
for a crackdown on the opposition that put
75 activists behind bars last year.
"The conditions here are very acceptable,"
prisoner Julio Zamora, 48, told reporters
at the Combinado del Este's National Prisoners
Hospital on Havana's eastern outskirts.
"The food has a lot of calories and
is varied," added Zamora, among inmates
authorized by authorities to speak to journalists.
Zamora, serving a 20-year sentence for robbery,
was not a patient at the hospital.
"I don't think what they are doing
in the United Nations is right," said
inmate Enrique Prieto, 31, who joined the
hospital's two-year nursing program while
serving 30 years for armed robbery. "The
people are attended with a lot of care."
Military doctors and nurses led reporters,
photographers and cameramen through operating
rooms, an intensive care ward, and recovery
rooms linked by hallways reeking of disinfectant
and fresh paint.
Journalists were invited to join the tour,
originally organized for a national congress
on prison medicine.
"With true satisfaction, we can affirm
that inmates and detainees in Cuba receive
adequate and humane treatment," Interior
Ministry Col. Pablo Hernandez Cruz told
the Cuban Congress on Prison Medicine earlier
this week.
Later Wednesday, reporters toured the medical
wards - including cells for new mothers
and their babies - at the Western Women's
Prison.
The prison maternity wing last year cared
for 48 pregnant women and 37 newborns, said
medical director Dr. Orestes Gonzalez. He
said pregnant and nursing mothers receive
more specialized food and calories than
other inmates, and their babies get regular
checkups, including once a week during their
first month.
"They give a lot of attention here
to the mothers and children," said
Federica Sotomayor, 35, who is serving eight
years for malfeasance of funds.
U.S. senior officials in Havana, speaking
on condition of anonymity, told a small
group of journalists this week that Cuba's
growing focus on prison conditions was diverting
attention from a larger issue: the long
sentences given 75 activists a year ago.
While there has been some international
criticism of Cuba's prison conditions since,
complaints have focused more on whether
the activists' actions warranted prison
terms of six to 28 years.
Cuba charged the activists with being mercenaries
working with U.S. diplomats to undermine
Fidel Castro's socialist system. The dissidents
and Washington have denied that, saying
they were only expressing their rights to
free expression and assembly.
"None of these cases involved violence
or the threat of violence," one of
the U.S. officials said of the 74 men and
one woman arrested in the March 2003 roundup.
Relatives of some imprisoned dissidents
have complained their loved ones are not
getting adequate medical care behind bars,
a charge that has enraged Communist officials.
Human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez,
who has spent 8½ years in Cuban prisons,
characterized Wednesday's tour as "primitive
propaganda."
Migrant Released From Hospital
Tue Mar 30. WPLG Click10.com.
One of the three migrants who survived
a dangerous journey from Cuba is out of
the hospital.
The U.S. Border Patrol took Carlos Hernandez
from Holy Cross Hospital to the Krome Detention
Center Monday night. He could be released
some time today.
He and two other migrants made it to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea
in innertubes Thursday. Five others died
at sea.
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