|
Other activists and dissidents remain incarcerated
Human Rights Watch, May
7, 2002.
(New York, May 6, 2002) Human Rights Watch today applauded the release of
political dissident Vladimiro Roca Atúnez, one of Cuba's most prominent
pro-democracy activists. Roca was freed on Sunday, two months before the
expiration of his five-year sentence for sedition.
Three of Roca's co-defendants, sentenced together with him in 1999, were
released in May 2000 after serving out part of their sentences. Other prominent
activists, such as Oscar Elías Biscet González, remain
incarcerated.
"By freeing Vladimiro Roca before the expiration of his sentence, the
Cuban government has sent an encouraging message," said José Miguel
Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. "But
it is important that the government not stop here: it should release all of the
human rights activists and political dissidents who are incarcerated in
violation of their fundamental rights."
Roca and his three co-defendants, attorney René Gómez Manzano,
engineer Félix Bonne Carcassés, and economist Marta Beatriz Roque,
were originally arrested on July 15, 1997. Their arrest came after they
published a joint declaration [Homeland Belongs to
Us All] on the Cuban economy, human rights, and democracy.
Roca, an economist and former MiG fighter pilot, is the son of the late Blas
Roca, considered a hero of the Cuban revolution.
Cuba continues to detain many other political prisoners. In July, the Cuban
Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (Comisión Cubana
de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional), a respected Havana-based
nongovernmental group, released a partial list of political prisoners that
included 246 cases they considered to be reliably documented.
Related Material
Cuba: Beating and Incarceration of Human Rights
Activists Condemned
En Español
HRW Press Release, April 25, 2002
Cuba: Overview of Human Rights Developments
En Español
HRW World Report 2002
Cuba's Repressive Machinery
En Español
HRW Report, June 1999 | 
