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From Herald Staff and Wire Reports
Published Thursday,
February 18, 1999, in the Miami Herald
U.S. officials and international human rights groups on Wednesday condemned
a new Cuban law that creates a broad, new category of counterrevolutionary
crimes for government opponents.
The National Assembly of Peoples Power approved the law Tuesday, along with
an overall tightening of the island's penal code, but set the maximum penalty at
20 years in prison, instead of the 30 initially proposed.
Patrick Boudouin, head of the Paris-based International Federation of Human
Rights Leagues, called the law ``scandalous and said Havana ``has taken off the
mask of relative tolerance it wore for the past year.
Reporters Without Borders, a French group that works for freedom of
expression, said the new law would severely trouble the 40 or so opposition
journalists now active around the island.
The Miami-based Inter American Press Association, which represents about
1,300 news media outlets in North America and Latin America, said the law
``elevates censorship to the status of law.
U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley branded it ``a clear attempt to
silence independent thinking and civil society in Cuba.
Copyright © 1999 The Miami Herald |