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By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Cuban authorities have closed discotheques and
cleared prostitutes and hustlers off the streets of Havana in a campaign against
rising crime, witnesses said on Saturday.
Numerous uniformed police were strictly enforcing the new measures, which
began last week but were most obvious over the weekend when Havana's night-life
is busiest.
The capital's most popular discotheques were shut without explanation on
Friday night, while prostitutes had disappeared from usual haunts like the
sea-front Malecon and the Old Havana district, a Reuters reporter confirmed.
The measures follow recent exhortations from President Fidel Castro and
other senior officials on the communist-run island against an upsurge in crime
this year and corruption in Cuban society.
They insist such social problems are a new and still relatively small
phenomenon for Cuba compared with other Latin American and Caribbean neighbours
but need to be dealt with firmly from the outset.
Police kept a high-profile street presence on Saturday, and were checking
identity papers frequently. A few hustlers were still in evidence but kept to
the shadows, checking no police were watching before hissing surreptitiously at
tourists to offer food, trinkets or women.
Cuban authorities have not publicly confirmed this week's measures on the
streets of Havana.
But government spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez, quizzed on the subject at a
recent news briefing, said Cuba intended to do what was necessary to prevent the
growth of crime.
``We cannot be unaware of these expressions of criminality in our society,
which are totally abnormal and unusual for us,'' he said. ``The intention exists
to adopt measures to prevent these activities proliferating.''
Although Cuban authorities periodically carry out such clean-up campaigns,
such as before Pope John Paul II's visit in January, some witnesses said the
scale and severity of this week's measures were unusual.
``I know why they've done this. They're worried about drugs in the discos,
and they're sick of the bad publicity they're getting for the prostitute
problem,'' said a hotel doorman, who asked not to be named, near the Salsa
Palace, one of the closed discos. ``But as always, they've left it too late
without doing anything, and then gone to this extreme which punishes the whole
city, the good people with the bad ones.''
Other Havana residents, scared by talk of a spate of violent crimes in the
city which have not been reported by state media but passed on by word of mouth,
expressed cynicism that authorities were not tackling the real problems.
``They're just worried about the places where the tourists go, but what
about my neighbourhood where there have been two murders and a rape in the last
week?'' said one mother of three in the Havana district of Playa who asked not
to be named.
Castro and his government are proud of cleaning up Cuba in the years after
the 1959 revolution and are clearly stung by some perceptions the situation is
again getting out of hand.
Before the revolution, Cuba was sometimes disparagingly referred to as ``the
bordello of the Caribbean,'' a playboy's paradise whose women, casinos, beaches
and swinging night-life attracted a stream of foreign visitors and celebrities.
According to some estimates, there were 100,000 prostitutes then among a
population of six million.
While largely wiped out in the intervening decades, the prostitution problem
reemerged in the 1990s as Cuba opened up once more to foreign tourists and its
superpower ally, the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving islanders increasingly
desperate for ways to make money.
Common crime, particularly theft, has grown at the same time, although most
visitors still regard Havana as far safer than other cities in the region.
12:17 10-17-98
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