|
By Anthony Boadle
WASHINGTON,
Jan 30 (Reuters) - Cuba's communist government continued to systematically
violate civil and political rights on the island in 1997, the United States said
on Friday. Restrictions on religious practice were relaxed prior to last
week's visit by Pope John Paul II, but Cuban authorities continued to repress
dissidents in the one-party state, the U.S. State Department said in its annual
report to Congress on human rights around the world.
"Cuba is a totalitarian state controlled by President Fidel Castro,"
the report stated bluntly.
It said freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association did not exist in
Cuba, and the judiciary was subordinated to the ruling Communist Party.
"The authorities routinely continued to harass, threaten, arbitrarily
arrest, detain, imprison, and defame human rights advocates and members of
independent professional associations, including journalists, economists, and
lawyers, often with a goal of goading them into leaving the country," the
report said.
"There were several credible reports of death due to excessive use of
force by the police," it added.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces, run by Castro's younger brother Raul, hold
the key positions in the state security apparatus, which suppresses dissent
through a pervasive system that uses undercover agents and informants, the
report said.
It said at least seven bombs exploded in hotels and a restaurant in Havana
last year. One explosion on Sept. 4 killed an Italian tourist
Four members of the "internal dissident working group" (economist
Martha Beatriz Roque, professor Felix Bonne Carcasses, lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano
and Vladimiro Roca Antunes) were arrested in July on charges of disseminating
enemy propaganda. By year end there was no sign the government would put them on
trial, the State Department said.
Ten human rights activists in Santa Clara began a prolonged fast on Oct 9.
At year end, six of the dissidents were still fasting, four of them in hospital,
the report said.
The State Department said the Cuban government continued to control all
significant means of production, while allowing some carefully controlled
foreign investment.
"Foreign employers continue to contract workers through state agencies,
which pay the workers extremely low wages while receiving large hard currency
payments," the report said.
Prior to the Pope's visit, the government allowed the first open-air mass
since 1961 and door-to-door visits to inform of the pontiff's coming. It also
restored Christmas as a public holiday as a one-time exception.
But Cuba continued to limit strictly the Catholic Church's access to the
media and refused it an independent printing capability, the State Department
said.
The government has also maintained its ban on religious schools, though it
has increased the number of visas for foreign priests and nuns allowed to work
in Cuba, it said.
16:53 01-30-98 |