ABC News. March 31, 2000
March 31 — Cubans often point out that their island now has health care and education for everyone, and produces some of the world’s most respected medical scientists.
Some note the recent relaxation in controls and the warming with the Catholic Church.
But they seldom feel free to talk about the suppression of dissidents. A leading human right group in Cuba said earlier this month that some 350 dissidents had been jailed in the previous four months for their political activities.
Four of them were tried and convicted, and may spend many years in prison — although, the government points out, they have had, for Cuba, unprecedented rights to visit their families.
Complains of Abuses
The Miami-based relatives of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, at the center of a battle with other relatives in Cuba for custody of the boy, say that if he is brought home, Elian would be living in a dictatorship, have no freedom, and face severe repression.
Washington has slightly relaxed restrictions on dealing with Cuba, but still says the Caribbean country does suppress speech and political dissent and restrict travel. The United States has decried the arrests of the four dissidents for, it says, simply complaining of Cuba’s one-party
rule.
"Cuban laws," Human Rights Watch wrote in a report last year, "allowed the government to silence opponents under a veil of legality."
It said that Cuba crushes dissent, that prisoners face "malnourishment," lack of medical attention and can be beaten if they refuse "re-education," that it stomps out labor movements, and that journalists are not allowed free reign.
The Cuban Response
Cuban officials fire back that critics of its human rights record, including the European Union and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, are lackeys of the United States.
"We listened with respect to opinions on the human rights situation in Cuba, where we did not agree," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said this week after a Lisbon, Portugal, meeting during which Cuba tried to convince EU members to allow more trade with Cuba.
He added that a "campaign of disinformation and calumnies" did not reflect the true situation in Cuba, where he said rights were fully guaranteed.
Torture in Cuba has been written about from the decades before Fidel Castro staged his revolution in 1959 and, by most accounts, did away with many of the deep disparities between rich and poor.
Materially, Elian Gonzalez does seem to have a better life in Florida than he would in Cuba — or at least than he would have had he and his mother stayed there. Poverty has forced many Cubans into prostitution, others into a hardscrabble existence on just a few dollars a week.
Elian’s father and other Cuban relatives can now travel to the United States, a privilege denied many who live under Castro’s regime. Dissidents say that in the past year, the crackdown on dissent has become especially intense.
Still, if Elian does go back to his homeland, if he is not involved in politics, and is never put in a Cuban jail — and since he is likely to live long past the rule of Castro, who is 73 — who can say for sure where his life would be better?
ABCNEWS.com’s Dorian Benkoil, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Copyright ©2000 ABC News Internet Ventures. |