Dr. CLAUDIO F. BENEDI BERUFF
3304 Chicamuxen Court
Falls Church, VA. 22041
Telephone: (703) 578-0160
FAX: (703) 578-1587
Washington, DC, March 3, 2000
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS (CIDH)
Honorable Chairman, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) Inter-American System Organization of American States (OAS) Honorable Chairman and Honorable Members:
With the capacity that I have accredited since the inception of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (CIDH), of the Inter-American System, as the Coordinator for the Associations and Organizations of Present and Former Cuban Male and Female Political Prisoners, of the Historical Political Prisoners, of the National College of Cuban Attorneys, of the Association of Relatives of Present and Former Cuban Male and Female Political Prisoners, of the Human Rights Commission, of the Cuban Municipalities in Exile, of the College of Attorneys of Havana, and as the Representative of the Cuban Patriotic Board, I have the high honor of addressing you and the Honorable Members of the CIDH in order to thank you for this new opportunity and to reiterate the denouncements of the following:
In Cuba, during this period of sessions of the CIDH, and during the whole year of 1999 and up to date, there has been an attempt for ostensibly disguising, sometimes in a covert manner and overtly at other times, the repression against opponents of the totalitarian Marxist-Leninist regime and the so-called dissidents, especially in the process that preceded and also during the performance in Havana of the IX Ibero-American Summit, that took place last November.
When these events and their effects were completed, there has continued to increase the number of Cuban male and female political prisoners; there have been executions by firing squads and the "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment has continued as well, especially against the Cuban male and female political prisoners, which we have denounced and that we now reiterate, and there has been no change in the institutional structure of the communist system; it continues unabated, as the provisions of the 1976 Constitution were ratified and widened in the new Socialist Constitution enacted on September, 1992, and again enlarged in 1999, as we have demonstrated and will prove in this testimony, and that you are able to verify on your own, since all of this is public and evident.
Now they are preparing the widening of the scope of violations in two new laws, in order to strengthen the original structure of the totalitarian communist regime and to guarantee its staying in power. This implies the increase in violations of human rights (both institutional and human) by the totalitarian communist regime, with the increase in the application of the death penalty, the establishment of life terms of imprisonment and sentences of 30 and 20 years in prison for dissidents and opponents, as well as the reaffirmation of the existence of a single party, the Communist Party, and of the totalitarian state that owns all rights, while the human person is helpless, has no rights vis-à-vis the state and it is thus provided in the constitution and the laws.
The totalitarian regime that rules in Cuba has imprisoned 668 Cuban male and female opponents during 1999, whose only violations consisted of peacefully requesting: Respect for human rights, free elections, freedom and democracy, freedom of the press, of opinion, of assembly and the release of other imprisoned dissidents.
Precisely last July, while commemorating the anniversary of the revolution, the very maximum communist leader, from his totalitarian stage, breaking all diplomatic molds and closing a new cycle of deceitful, sophisticated and malignant falsehood and simulation towards the United States (in a new enticing attempt), reiterated what nobody should have forgotten: That the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba makes no concession nor opening; that the death penalty would continue to be applied to those who would conspire or somehow fight against the communist regime, since no dissidents or opponents can be had or tolerated vis-à-vis the communist regime (he euphemistically calls it a "socialist system" to deceive the useful idiots), that whoever would want to destroy it or render it inoperative would die, because it was preferable that its enemies die rather than the communist system, and he has widely demonstrated that during the 40 years of totalitarian communist regime; he has reiterated it in November and December, 1999, and now in the year 2000.
Those who would assist the United States would be severely punished (with prison sentences of up to 20 and 30 years and, in some serious cases, with the death penalty); also imprisonment sentences for dissidents and the independent press that would associate with them, and he has thus been doing that until March 2000.
Already, the euphemistically so-called Congress had enacted as a law what Castro said, widening the sanctions provided by the new communist criminal law, enacted last February, 1999. In his above listed speech, Castro ratified that no opposing parties or organizations are permitted in Cuba against the communist regime; that those who would attack the regime would be sentenced to 20 or 30 years of imprisonment and some "traitors" to the death penalty. In Cuba, one has to be with the communist regime or against it; there are no alternatives and no intermediate postures are allowed, only those which the regime would like to use for its propaganda purposes, and to deceive the useful idiots.
All of which implies an increase in the staging of police terror, a total closure for the various illusions of the naïve and useful idiots and a frank public exposé for the accomplices and traitors, a new stage of police terror in the totalitarian communist regime.
The much publicized "modification" of the so-called Socialist Constitution of Cuba of 1992, to deceive the gullible, has left intact the totalitarian structure of the current regime in Cuba, and it could not be any other way, because the communist system continues to be ideologically intact as communist; it cannot change because it would not continue to be communist, and thus the violations of human rights continue unabated, de jure and de facto: institutional violations and human violations of human rights, as we have proven and will reiterate in this testimony.
We have the unavoidable duty to denounce before this CIDH in this testimony, and to request your intervention and condemnation for the current existence of those blatant violations of human rights in Cuba. Since in Cuba the communist regime continues its violations of human rights, we are obligated to reiterate the condemnation of those violations, and it is also an unavoidable duty for this honorable CIDH, upon learning of those violations, to condemn them in their dual dimension: Institutional and human.
Dr. Ariel Remos, the author of the important book entitled "Around a New World Order" ("En Torno a un Nuevo Orden Mundial"), denounces and proves that repression is on the increase in Cuba. In a recent issue of Diario Las Américas, he stated that Osvaldo Payá Sardiñas and Héctor Ruíz Palacios had been imprisoned. Both are dissidents and had been having interviews with several delegates to the IX Ibero-Ameican Summit in Havana.
The arrests were made by agents of the communist Secret Police. Dr. Remos has mentioned the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), denouncing that "at least two dozen peaceful dissidents remain under arrest as a result of the wave of detentions effected last November, December and January, among them Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet,. who has been imprisoned since last November 3. The aggressions have continued, and that is why Dr. Remos denounces the following, in accordance with the information received:
"During the attack, the government mob caused serious destruction within the Sigler brothers' residence, who own it, according to information received by the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Directory in Miami. After the mob's assault, police and state security proceeded to arrest the victims of the aggression, and they have remained imprisoned thus far. They are: Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya, Juan Alberto Mora, Pedro Hildo Roa Roque, Gulliver Sigler González, Antonio Berrier, Ulises Sigler González and Roberto Noriega Ibáñez. The remainder, made up by Juan Rogelio González, Juan Francisco Martínez and Miguel Sigler Amaya - the latter with several fractured ribs as a result of the assault - were released and fined 30 pesos each.
We make these denouncements our own, as violations of human rights, and we request that they be made a part of our accusations in this testimony.
THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES (OAS) CONDEMNS THE ATTACK AGAINST FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION BY THE COMMUNIST REGIME IN CUBA. OUR DUTY IS TO REITERATE THIS DENOUNCEMENT BECAUSE OF THE WIDENING AND IMPLICATIONS THAT IT HAS HAD, AND ALSO DUE TO ITS EXISTENCE TODAY, ON MARCH, YEAR 2000.
Let us see how it happened: The Special Relator for Freedom of Expression in the Americas, of the Organization of American States, Dr. Santiago A. Cantón, has publicized his deep opposition to the recent law enacted by the National Assembly of the Popular Power, "Law for the Protection of National and Economic Independence of Cuba". The high dignitary of the OAS underlines: "This new legislation represents a direct attack against freedom of expression".
The Special Relator adds: "The new provisions of the law imply a serious threat to the activities of the independent press in Cuba. According to the new law, there would be transgressions, for instance, the supply, quest or obtainment of information; the introduction to the country of subversive materials and its reproduction or propagation. Likewise, the new legislation classifies as a felony the collaboration with radio or TV stations, newspapers and other communication media that may imperil the security of the State".
"Undoubtedly, this legislation jeopardizes the activities of the independent press, that in view of the impossibility of publishing in its own country, collaborates in newspapers or magazines of other countries, and conveys information abroad for the knowledge of the international community. There are in Cuba some 40 independent journalists, divided into eight news agencies who are daily threatened, harassed and arrested by the State's security forces".
"Cuba is the country in the hemisphere with the greatest restrictions to freedom of expression. Unfortunately, measures such as the above listed do not indicate any intention for opening, but quite the contrary", because of their reiteration, we add, and their existence until today, March 3, 2000.
Despite the virtual disappearance of the ex-Soviet Union, and the false promises and all of the events and later "reforms" from the Fourth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, the subsequent assembly and the latest electoral farce, there is no variation in the problem of human rights, because those violations, both INSITUTIONAL and HUMAN, in the Constitution and laws, are intrinsic to the Marxist-Leninist system, as we have proven, as you know and as this CIDH has denounced in reiterated SPECIAL REPORTS and in its ANNUAL REPORTS, that they are prevalent there in the solid totalitarian structure. That continuous pattern of violations of human rights not only extends to the suppression of freedom, that reaches the whole Cuban population, but also includes the suppression of life, and as Alfonso X, the Wise, said: "Whoever deprives me of life, also deprives me of all other rights".
We reiterate that the EXECUTION WALL CONTINUES TO OPERATE, and that disappearances, tortures in the communist dungeons and re-impositions of sentences, pre-fabricated sentences, the so-called felonies, the Revolutionary Courts have not ceased either. Those are on the margin of legality, as there are also the attacks and aggressions in public places and streets committed by the henchmen of the regime, as we have denounced previously and we reiterate in this testimony, because there continue unabated the serious violations denounced, impelled by the terror that affects the hierarchy of the communist regime, due to the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Russian internal movements, the increase of internal dissidence, etc. That is why the persecution and imprisonment of opponents have continued, and we are obliged to reiterate that in this testimony, in order for all of it to be considered in your denouncements.
The communist regime of Cuba has been fully bared once more, through the latest executions by firing squads on the Wall, murders for political reasons and the intensification of terror and repression, after the brief propaganda period of a false opening. Castro announced it in his recent speech and statements, upon returning from the summit meeting held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last June, that constitutes a reiteration of the existence and objectives of the international communism's struggle today and its enforcement in Cuba. All of this has been reiterated by Castro and his totalitarian communist regime in 1999 and 2000.
There were no fair proceedings in any of the firing squad executions that have been known. No due process of law; no respect for procedural guarantees that are customary in all civilized countries of the world, and that are specifically recorded in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, that this CIDH guards, protects and defends, and in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Declaration of Human Rights and the Helsinki Accords. Those human beings, the Cuban political prisoners, had no legitimate defense; the human person remained helpless in front of the totalitarian State. All of the members of the so-called Tribunal were communists committed to the totalitarian tyrant, as well as many who pretended to act as lawyers; all of them were committed to convict the defendants and, finally, the sentence had been written beforehand. It was a pre-fabricated sentence. That was another juridical monstrosity, one more affront to our civilization and the law, to justice and human rights. The news of that have leaked with a great risk for those who have conveyed them, and we also submit that to this CIDH.
The CIDH has previously condemned these deeds and its denouncements have served to evidence, before the Americas and the world, that despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union, the last multilateral bastion of communism in the world is here, in the Americas, in Cuba, and while it exists nobody can say that human rights are unlimitedly respected in the Americas, as they are written in the Santiago Declaration and in multiple statements, as well as in the CIDH reports.
In its year's end message, the Inter-American Press Society (SIP) asserts its well-founded preoccupation about the lack of freedom for the press in Cuba.
In the Cuban case, the SIP has affirmed in that annual report that "this nation has shown a constant reason for alarm, because it is the country where freedom of the press is a fiction".
"Only a handful of independent journalists who pay no heed to the official voice has attempted to keep open a resemblance of freedom of information in Cuba, but at a very high price: Aggressions, threats and imprisonment, that have become daily occurrences for these colleagues", the SIP underlined.
The SIP continues to await the opportunity to visit Cuba, in order to support the independent journalists and to attempt an opening, albeit minimal, for freedom of the press, since there is not even a minimal freedom in Cuba.
Maritza Lugo, a female leader of Cuban opposition, is in a "walled-up cell" (celda tapiada). After a lengthy period in a communist prison, Maritza Lugo Fernández was released on September 28, only for a brief period of time. She was again imprisoned on November 12, up until November 15. On December 4, 1999, she was imprisoned once again for several days. She was released, but again jailed on December 25, and she has been imprisoned since. Maritza Lugo has been over 40 days in a "walled-up cell", under sub-human conditions. In the visits that her relatives have made to the prison, they have verified the progressive deterioration of her precarious health.
All of this has had negative repercussions upon her family, especially her minor children, and even more on her 8-year-old daughter, who suffers a lot and has no explanation of why they are doing that to her mother. We denounce these violations of her human rights and request of this honorable CIDH its efficient and quick intervention for the cessation of tortures to Maritza Lugo Fernández, and her release as well.
Former Colonel Nilvio Labrada Vicent, a Cuban officer, is being tortured in Cuba and his life is in jeopardy, his daughter has denounced. He was a Colonel at the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and has been subjected to intense electro-shock sessions at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital for dissenting from the Castro regime and is now detained in a division of the State Security, where there is danger for his life, as denounced recently by his daughter, Dr. Malvis Labrada, in Miami.
The former Colonel's daughter denounced that "he is being injected with neuro-electrics, has lost over 30 pounds and shows symptoms of intoxication by medicaments, with many tremors and an infectious respiratory ailment that is believed to be pneumonia", as affirmed by Dr. Malvis Labrada in an interview with "El Nuevo Herald".
She reiterated that her father, Nilvio Labrada Vicent, 60 years old, has been detained since last May at the "Isidro de Armas" clinic, located at the Sevillano Subdivision, and she affirms that such facility apparently belongs to the State Security.
This is not the first time that State Security agents have detained the former colonel, a veteran of the Angolan War, in a hospital setting, as a punishment for his opposition to the regime. Her daughter explained that four years ago, when her father first publicly denounced the Castro regime, he was arrested and sent to the Psychiatric Hospital for six months as a punishment.
"During that time, they gave him electro-shocks without the necessary dental protection, and his mouth was shattered, burned his temples, intoxicated him with psycho-drugs, he had lost his hair when he was released and led him to an emotional destabilization", Dr. Labrada affirmed. "When he was released, he was weighing 90 pounds, showed a catatonic condition and did not recognize my mother nor me", his daughter, Dr. Melvis Labrada, denounced.
AN ACCELERATED INCREASE OF REPRESSION IN CUBA
Castro's communist regime assaults and imprisons dissidents. The big offensive that violates human rights in Cuba has increased since February 15 and threats with spreading even more. That includes detention in secret jails, which is practically a kidnapping, and the threat of secret executions is so violent that human rights activists deem it to be the worst in the last ten years.
ELIZARDO SANCHEZ DENOUNCES REPRESSION AND VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA
"According to our information, the worst wave of repression in the last 10 years" is happening today in Cuba, as denounced by Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, human rights activist inside Cuba. He added that, according to his data, 121 persons were arrested in November, 141 in December and 42 in January, and that in February the number of arrests is similar to that of January. Among the dissidents there are physicians, lawyers, engineers, journalists, peasants, Christians, economists and workers.
THE PRESIDENT OF ARGENTINA, CARLOS SAUL MENEM, HAS STATED THAT: "ASKING FOR FREEDOM IN CUBA IS LIKE ASKING AN ELM FOR PEARS".
Upon a question about changes in Cuba, he opined: "After 40 years, it is not possible to ask an elm for pears; it is not a very optimistic panorama, but it is like that".
In December 1998, the communist regime attacked the Cubans who commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many dissidents were thrown in jail.
On February 5, 2000, the Mexican magazine "Siglo XX" (The 20th. Century) condemned the beating given by Castro's henchmen in the town of Pedro Betancourt to the Sigler Amaya family for requesting the release of political prisoners. "Siglo XX" condemned the dictator Castro and his gangster-like system.
On December 10, the Warsaw Freedom Union, in Poland, condemned the violations of civil rights in Cuba committed by the Castro-communist dictatorship.
Document released in support of dissidents. On November 15, 1999, President Vaclav Havel and several former Czech dissidents released a document in Prague, supporting the Cuban dissidents. Also, former President Lech Walensa, of Poland, and Yelena Bonner, the widow of Sakharov, and 45 Eastern-European dissidents signed that document.
French Minister criticized arrests in Cuba. The Minister of Foreign Relations of France criticized "the numerous arrests of peaceful opponents and dissidents in the recent weeks in Cuba, which have extraordinarily increased", when Felipe Pérez Roque, Castro's Chancellor, visited him shortly ago.
Cuba is the worst violator of human rights. On December 10, in its annual report, the organization Human Rights Watch denounced in its report that "Cuba is one of the countries where human rights are violated the most by the government".
BRUTAL BEATINGS DENOUNCED AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATED
This denouncement was publicized by Mercedes Moreno Moreno, of Nueva Prensa Cubana (New Cuban Press), from the province of Las Villas, and she relates the following:
Inmates Andrés García Aguilera and Yuliesky Viera Pozo were beaten by their jailers at the correctional centers of Las Grimas, Placetas and Guamajal, respectively, in Santa Clara, reported our colleague Omar Pernet.
García Aguilera was the victim of aggression when he refused to discover the identity of the person who had given him three tablets of metroclopamide.
Official Raidel del Pino and other three guards handcuffed the inmate and gave him such a beating that they caused him a wound under his left eye that required a suture with 8 stitches.
On the other part, Yuliesky Viera Pozo, a patient of tuberculosis, was beaten so savagely that he suffered a hemorrhage on his right eye, a fracture on his left arm, and he is suffering from intense pains due to the kickings he received on his abdomen. This inmate is kept in an isolation cell and, according to the report, has no medical assistance.
IMPRISONMENT OF JOURNALISTS IN CUBA IS DENOUNCED AND THEIR RELEASE DEMANDED
The well-known organization REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (MSF) has raised its voice in protest before the whole of the Americas and demanded of the communist regime in Cuba the cessation of pressures on three independent journalists, as well as the release of another three who are serving a sentence for trying to practice their journalistic profession. The journalists subjected to those pressures are: Amarilys Cortina, Gustavo Carrero and Margarita Yero.
Th organization Reporters without Borders also denounced that the journalists Bernardo Arévalo Padrón, Miguel Antonio González Castenos and Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández are still imprisoned. The first two were sentenced to 27 months of imprisonment the former and 6 years the latter, for contempt, and the third one received 4 years of imprisonment for "social perilousness".
The MSF denounces that freedom of the press is not allowed in Cuba; the only press is the official one.
During year 1999, four independent journalists were forced to go into exile lest they would be imprisoned; 40 journalists were arrested and 41 were subjected to a strict home surveillance.
THERE IS CURRENTLY A TOTALITARIAN VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, AS Dr. CLAUDIO F. BENEDI HAS DENOUNCED AND PROVEN
We have the unavoidable duty of denouncing this before this CIDH in this testimony, and of asking for your intervention and condemnation for the current existence of blatant violations of human rights in Cuba, in their dual dimensions: Institutional and human.
Allow us to respectfully recall and ask once more, in this year 2000, and reiterate what was denounced by this CIDH in its annual report for 1989-1990, especially the following paragraph, eloquent and definer of the situation then and now, in the year 2000 in Cuba, existing in a doubtless form that is easily verifiable. It literally reads:
"The exposition made throughout this section reveals the extremes reached by the Cuban government in its repression of every form of dissent. To that effect, the government utilizes all of the resources of a legislation prepared with the purpose of subordinating the rights of the individual to the demands of the state that, in these cases, are those of a small group in power. This characteristic is the one that led the commission to qualify the current Cuban political system as a totalitarian one in the seventh report about the human rights situation in Cuba, and to indicate that the rule of law does not exist in that country".
In this paragraph of the Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) there are expressly denounced:
A. The institutional violation of human rights (comprised in our "Benedi doctrine").
B. The fact of having a totalitarian regime.
C. The fact of being a tyranny.
D. That there does not exist a regime of law in Cuba. (We have denounced and proven that, wherever a rule of law does not exist, human rights are not respected). Today, in March 2000, there does not exist a rule of law in Cuba, and the same human and institutional violations of human rights persist.
All the evidence, the denouncements and circumstances that led this Commission to make this statement about violations of human rights in Cuba, far from having changed, the justifications have increased, and this Commission has ample evidence and sufficient denouncements to conclude that the situation has not improved; that is why, in this Annual Report that the CIDH is preparing for 1999-2000, we request the reiteration of that honest and fair accusation, in compliance with your lofty and honorable functions of protection and defense of human rights.
As the Cuban State is a part of the Inter-American System and of the OAS, what is excluded is the current communist government, and the former is also a part of this Commission. The CIDH has the legal powers and the moral obligation to continue to act in the case of violations of human rights in Cuba. The competency of this CIDH is proven and indubitable. No one can deny today, in the year 2000, that such a situation persists.
Any decrease in the category of the denouncements or in the appreciation of what is happening in Cuba in this year 2000, could be erroneously interpreted as a variation of the incidence of violations, or as a decrease in the brutal totalitarian repression currently prevailing in Cuba, or as a change in the institutional structure of the totalitarian communist system, which would be totally erroneous, inaccurate and counterproductive. Any attenuation in the language and enumeration of violations could send the wrong signal to those who are not aware of the monstrosities that even today continue to take place in Cuba. Silence could be construed as partiality. It is imperative for this CIDH to include in its annual report those blatant violations of human rights in Cuba, and we thus respectfully request that in this testimony.
For those naïve persons and useful idiots who still believe that the totalitarian regime (as it has been defined by this CIDH) is capable of reforming or modifying itself to propitiate a democratic system, the enactment of the Socialist Constitution in September, 1992, gives them a definitive response: There is no possibility of reforms, neither total nor partial, as we demonstrated in that testimony with the copy of the aforesaid constitution and the pertinent comments to its text, and as we reiterate now, in the year 2000, since it is all about the ideological and institutional structure of the Marxist-Leninist-Communist system, and Castro has repeated it indubitably in his famous speech upon returning from the United Nations meeting in Rome, Italy, at the end of 1996, and again recently in 1999, upon returning from the Summit Meeting in Brazil, and also in January, 2000.
The sovereignty and human rights of the Cuban people have been violated, whose rights are recognized and guaranteed in the American declaration of the rights and duties of man, in the Charter of the Organization of American States and in the accords, agreements and resolutions signed and ratified in the Americas; the principles and values of the Inter-|American System and the Organization of American States (OAS) and those human rights that this CIDH protects and defends have also been violated.
We reiterate the way in which those violations of human rights have taken place in Cuba, both in the subjection as a satellite of the Soviet Union first, and of Russia later, in the previous constitution and in the new one, and in the pragmatism of the Cuban Communist Party, reiterated by Castro upon returning first from Rome and then from Asia and South-Africa, from Europe in 1998-99, and recently from Brazil, in 1999.
GEOPOLITICS AND GEOSTRATEGY
It must be taken into account, upon judging these denouncements, how we have proven that the Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba took that country out of its GEOPOLITICS IN THE AMERICAS and took it into THE SOVIET GEOSTRATEGY, because it erroneously believed that the Soviet Union represented he future world government; they joined the Soviets and they have been defeated. The denouncements made by us confirm that said relationship has not been really eliminated, although it may have experienced some modifications, more in style than in substance. If Russia and some countries of the former Soviet Union do not give Cuba all of the cooperation that they gave it previously, it is largely due to the fact that they lack the necessary financial resources to keep the former level of subsidies, but they do give it the military and espionage support: In the submarine base at Cienfuegos, the electronic espionage base at Villa Lourdes, Havana, and the nuclear plant at Juraguá. The Russian and communist presence of other allied countries in that international subversive movement, very especially joined by the Chinese communist government, constitutes a threat for the whole of the Americas.
On the other hand, the current Socialist-Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba has ratified in 1998, 1999 and now in the year 2000, in an indubitable manner, that it does not accept or propitiate reforms or changes of any nature whatsoever. It has thus been consecrated, at the constitutional level, in the newest Socialist Constitution enacted and officially released in September, 1992, and now upon his return from his trip to Europe and Brazil. It would be extensive the enumeration of its articles, but it would suffice to transcribe Article 5 of the aforesaid Constitution in force, that literally reads:
"ARTICLE 5: The Cuban Communist Party, a follower of Martí and the organized Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the highest leading force of the society and the State, that organizes and guides the common efforts towards the lofty purposes of the construction of Socialism and the progress towards the Communist society".
If this constitutional set of norms had been made several years ago, there would be the possibility of thinking that, it having been enacted before the events in the Soviet Union, some modification could take place, but it having been enacted in September, 1992, and ratified later on, it is quite the contrary a reiteration of the intolerant Marxist-Leninist line, and brings to its closure that cycle of speculations, interested and bastard, without any foundation, because it has been ratified in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 by Castro himself and the Cuban Communist Party.
THE INSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
In following that same inflexible political line, in the aforesaid latest Socialist Constitution the INSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS is maintained., and not only in the Constitution, but also in the Criminal Code and the Socialist laws in force. Let us view a single article to realize that such an INSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION persists. They had it in the old Constitution, in Article 61; now that Article is No. 62 that literally reads:
"ARTICLE 62: NONE OF THE FREEDOMS RECOGNIZED FOR CITIZENS CAN BE PRACTICED AGAINST THE PROVISIONS IN THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS, NOR AGAINST THE EXISTENCE AND PURPOSES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE, NOR AGAINST THE DECISION OF THE CUBAN PEOPLE OF BUILDING SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM. THE TRANSGRESSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS PUNISHABLE".
When did the Cuban people agree to build Communism? It has never agreed upon it, nor will it do so.
In order to verify that human rights are currently violated in Cuba, it would suffice to read this Constitutional article. That INSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION is maintained through the whole so-called "Socialist Legality", during years 1997, 1998, 1999 and this year 2000. This constitutional article is a challenge and a blatant violation of human rights protected, defended and represented by this CIDH, from the Totalitarian Communist State, and the human person has no right vis-à-vis the State; it remains helpless, at the mercy of the tyrant in charge.
As a complement to this Article 62, let us refer to provisions in the Penal Code, published on the Official Gazette of Cuba on December 30, 1987, and still in force now, in March, 2000, that violates the institutional human rights and states:
"TITLE XI: THE CONDITION OF PERILOUSNESS AND SECURITY MEASURES. Chapter I- The Condition of Perilousness.
Article 72: There is considered as Condition of Perilousness the special proclivity in which a person is in order to commit transgressions, as demonstrated by the conduct that such person observes in a manifested contradiction with the standards of Socialist morals".
What is that "Socialist morals"? Which are the "communist standards"? What about the human rights that God has given to the human person? Castroite communists have suppressed God from the Constitution, the laws and the public teaching.
In accordance with that Penal Code, all male and female Cubans whom the communist regime might want to prosecute, it would suffice to apply to them this article about perilousness, interpreted by the so-called Revolutionary Tribunals, made up by communists, in violation of all legal procedures and guarantees established in the civilized world, and the person would be punished with the loss of liberty and even of life, as it has already happened and continues to happen in our day, in this year 2000, when this article has been ratified.
We must add that it is not enough for the person to commit a misdemeanor or a felony. It would simply suffice, as provided in Article 75 of the same Penal Code, that he/she had "…links or relationships with persons who are potentially perilous for society…" That is definitive, against opposition and dissent, that would be tolerated as far as the authorities would deem them to be convenient for their objectives. There are included herein persecution, surveillance, discrimination, to which the so-called dissidents (true or pretended) are subjected in 1998, 1999 and 2000, who do not serve the communist regime and are thus considered as enemies, and all of those whom they would like to eliminate as enemies, violating all of their human rights.
THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that has already prepared seven (7) special reports and multiple annual reports about the violations of human rights in Cuba, in their dual dimension: institutional and human, and that is preparing the eighth report, that we request to be completed soon, has stated the following, in condemning the communist regime of Cuba, and we reiterate it in this year 2000 because of its great actuality and importance:
"The exposition made throughout this section evidences the extremes reached by the Cuban government in its repression of all manners of dissent. For that purpose, the government uses all the resources of a legislation prepared to the effect of subjecting the rights of the individual to the demands of the state that, in these cases, are those of a small group in power. That is the characteristic that led the commission to qualify the current Cuban system as a totalitarian one, in the seventh report about the condition of human rights in Cuba, and to indicate that there does not exist the rule of law in that country".
That categorical statement, that exposes the Marxist-Leninist regime of Cuba in its somber reality before the Americas and the world, has been made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a multi-lateral organism of the Inter-American System and of the OAS, the oldest and most prestigious in the Americas. That is the condition prevailing nowadays there, in the year 2000. That is why, with all due respect, we request the promptest possible completion of the EIGHTH REPORT ABOUT THE CONDITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA. Nothing has changed in this Commission (CIDH); only its members.
THE LAW ON FOREIGN INVESTMENTS IN CUBA, IN FORCE SINCE 1995
This law that is applied now in the year 2000, allows explicit remuneration conditioned to government control. What does this mean? Simply that the foreign company does not directly hire Cuban workers (with which there is a violation of the freedom for hiring and the rights of workers), whose hiring is made through a government entity that creates the circumstances for the exploitation of workers; besides, the foreign company pays in dollars, and the state organization takes possession of the dollars and pays the workers in devalued Cuban pesos.
Likewise, if the foreign company were not satisfied with any worker, it notifies the state organization in order to replace him/her, and the worker is completely helpless, is left out of the company, can not complain, because the regime will imprison him/her. The worker has no tenure or defense whatsoever. That only happens in a totalitarian communist regime. There is only one workers' union, the regime's official one, in which the worker is an indentured servant at the mercy of the totalitarian communist State. That is a blatant violation of his/her work rights.
THE REGRESSIVE TRANSCULTURATION
We wish to emphatically reiterate in this testimony, once again, the enforcement in Cuba now of this regressive transculturation that is intrinsic to the Communist regime.
The Marxist-Leninist regime of Cuba has performed there one of the most serious political phenomena of our century, thus violating the human rights of the Cuban people: THE REGRESSIVE TRANSCULTURATION. Values and principles have been destroyed, on which there is the support for the civilized cohabitation of the free nations of this Hemisphere, and there have been forcibly imposed massive indoctrination and terror, other falsely called "values" that run counter to the traditions, the culture, the morals, the family and the history of the Cuban people and of the Americas, that oppose the Judeo-Christian civilization and also the aboriginal civilizations of our continent. That is why they have not been able to create "the new man and woman", because that doctrine, besides its being a TRAGIC UTOPIA, goes against nature and has taken the peoples back to stages that are not recalled by the history of humankind; it is a change in the system, anthropocentric, without God and without freedom, vis-à-vis our theocentric system, with God, freedom and democracy.
VIOLATION OF THE PRESS AND INFORMATION FREEDOMS IN CUBA
The communist regime of Cuba, through the officials of the State Security, has been performing a campaign of persecution and harassment against independent journalists, which has been denounced by the Inter-American Press Society (SIP), through the Commission for Press and Information Freedom, that also rejects and condemns that harassment campaign. Several independent journalists have been threatened, charged and summoned during 1999 and this year 2000 by agents of the Single System for Surveillance and Protection of the current totalitarian government of Cuba.
The greatest accusation is that of collaboration with a foreign country, especially the United States, in order to undermine and destroy the communist revolution. The communist regime persecutes free journalism. There is only one official newspaper in Cuba; magazines also belong to the government and any others are prohibited.
That has also been denounced by the OAS, by Dr. Santiago A. Cantón and by this CIDH, as we have demonstrated.
REINSTATED DEATH PENALTY FOR JOURNALISTS AND OPPONENTS IN CUBA
Death penalty for telling the truth. On February 16, 1999, the Castro-communist dictatorship enacted a "Law" whereby they can sentence independent journalists, opponents, dissidents and human rights activists to death by firing squad or imprisonment for 15 to 30 years, for telling the truth about what is happening in Cuba, and about the totalitarian system imposed to the Cuban people, charging them with "treason against the country" and with "assisting Yankee imperialism".
THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT OF CONTINENTAL CHINA HAS TWO ESPIONAGE BASES IN CUBA
On June 24, 1999, it was revealed in Washington that the communist government of China has two electronic espionage bases in Cuba; one in the northeastern sector of Santiago de Cuba and another in Bejucal, province of Havana, from which they intercept all communications from the United States. On this year 2000, another Chinese-communist electronic espionage base has been discovered in Cuba.
A DEFEAT FOR THE CASTRO-COMMUNIST REGIME IN THE UNITED NATIONS
In view of its defeat on July 27, 1999, the communist regime was forced to withdraw a motion that it had introduced with the United Nations' Economic and Social Council, requesting that said Council annulled the condemnation for violations of human rights against said regime, that was approved by the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights in Geneva last April. Moreno, the representative for Castro, withdrew the motion when he verified that the majority of members of the Council was against it, and thus avoided a second defeat through a vote. In year 2000, the defeat would be through a larger number of votes.
THE INTER-AMERICAN PRESS SOCIETY (SIP) AGAIN CONDEMNS THE NEW LAW ISSUED BY THE COMMUNIST REGIME OF CUBA, BECAUSE IT VIOLATES THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The Inter-American Press Society (SIP) has stated that the new law issued by the communist regime of Cuba, called "Law for the Protection of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba", "curtails the freedom of the press" in Cuba. The SIP has made public that it has sent a written protest to the communist regime of Cuba, in which it states its "deepest opposition to that measure, which evidently raises to the rank of law censorship and prohibition to report".
The SIP added emphatically that: "Democracy cannot be supported by the control of information. Even more, penalizing the diversity of opinions on behalf of national security is a vague recourse that what it finally attempts is closing the Cuban press, that with no hindrances nor political or ideological commitments divulges the reality of the country", the SIP underlined.
It also added that forcing a whole society to have the same line of thought "attempts against the very human nature and is a violation of the human rights of the citizens whose government claims to defend".
UNITED STATES CHALLENGES AND CRITICIZES THE CUBAN COMMUNIST REGIME FOR THE ENACTMENT OF THE NEW LAW THAT INCREASES VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, Mr. Foley, said on behalf of the United States that the penal reforms and measures enacted by the Cuban Congress "maintain the repressive nature of the regime". He added that the same "are a clear attempt to silence the independence of thought and civil society".
Mr. Foley underlined that the United States has constantly condemned the Cuban regime's efforts to suppress fundamental human rights".
JOURNALISTS EXPELLED FROM THE SO-CALLED NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF POPULAR POWER
The dictator Fidel Castro expelled on July 21, last year, all foreign journalists from the plenary session of the National Assembly of the Popular Power (made up by 500 "delegates" appointed by him, whom Cubans elect without having any candidates against them). Castro launched a diatribe wherein he accused foreign journalists of being "ideological adversaries, servants of the imperialism" and other absurd accusations that he has now reiterated in his speeches on July and August 1999.
Complaint by the SIP. The Inter-American Press Society (SIP) complained on July 23, 1999, against the expulsion of foreign correspondents from the aforesaid Assembly and called Castro's attention to show more respect for journalists and their information work. It surely will file a new protest for Castro's expressions in his speeches on July and August 1999.
We reiterate that "Reporters without Borders" complained in France. The organization "Reporters without Borders", based in Paris, France, complained about the imprisonment in Havana of Cuban independent journalists Rafael Solano and Bernardo Fuentes, and for the harassment against the journalist Roxana Valdivia, from Camagüey, among other imprisoned and threatened journalists.
POLICE OFFICERS SAVAGELY BEAT A CUBAN CITIZEN IN A TOURIST AREA By Jorge Olivera
"New Cuban Press" (Nueva Prensa Cubana) reports from Havana that a citizen who requested alms from foreign visitors in the area of the Cathedral, Old Havana, was close to death as a result of a severe beating administered by several police officers. "The officers did not take into account the weak physical condition of the person, not the lack of his right forearm", told this agency the human rights activist Rolando Pérez Alfonso.
This incident, that took place on September 3, 1999 - approximately at 6:30 in the evening, as related by Pérez Alfonso - happened before the astonished vision of several tourists, who did not dare to intercede. The beaten man, black-skinned and about 50 years old, was dragged to the intersection of Mercaderes and Empedrado streets, where punches and kickings increased. Due to the seriousness of the beating, the wounded person suffered an epilepsy seizure. At this point, the officers began to look for a doctor. Mendicancy in the privileged tourist areas has recorded an increase in recent years, stemming from the precarious economic and social circumstances of the country. This situation multiplies police abuses against those who interrupt the tranquility of foreigners. Although not all outcomes are such as that described above, verbal abuse and some threats weigh enough in the expressions from the citizenry.
WRITERS HAVE PROTESTED FROM PARIS BEFORE THE COMMUNIST REGIME OF CUBA FOR THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AGAINST JOURNALISTS IN CUBA
Among those writers there stands out the well-known Peruvian writer and novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as Dr. Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Carlos Franqui, the latter representatives of groups of journalists, writers and intellectuals, who have condemned the communist regime for violating the human rights of Cuban independent journalists.
THE S.I.P. DENOUNCES VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA
On August 27, 1999, the Inter-American Press Society (S.I.P.) denounced before Spanish Prime Minister Aznar "that freedom of the press is not respected in Cuba and that Castro has not complied with any of the agreements he has signed at the Ibero-American Summits", an assembly promoted by Spain.
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF PASSAGE IS VIOLATED IN CUBA, BOTH FOR LEAVING AND FOR ENTERING
CUBANS FLEE CUBA IN WHATEVER WILL FLOAT, even in small rafts (balsas); that is why they are called "balseros" (rafters). As we have denounced before this Commission, and we now reiterate, the right to leave the country freely is violated in Cuba. Many male and female Cubans, of all ages, decide to leave on small improvised contraptions made out of automobile inner tubes and pieces of wood in order to sail. It has been verified that over one half of those who depart die in the waters of the Florida Straits. Those incidents have continued in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
WE DENOUNCE THE VIOLATION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ENGINEER ERNESTINO ABREU
In this testimony we want to reiterate that the human rights that this honorable CIDH protects and defends are being once again violated, this time against Engineer Ernestino Abreu and former Rebel Army Captain Vicente Martínez Rodríguez, both of them included in the same summary together with the latter's nephews, Mario Milló Martínez and the brothers José and Rolando Corrales Martínez. Engineer Abreu is 75 years old and Capt. Martínez is 66 years old.
This honorable CIDH has known and acted about our denouncements. We believe that the CIDH has been a factor to save Engineer Abreu's life. Both have been imprisoned without a trial. A sentence of 26 years of imprisonment is requested for them. From their arrest until this writing, they have been subjected to severe tortures, both physical and psychological, by the communist State Security, a specialized entity for these violations. One of those tortures is keeping them standing day and night, with lights on, until they get exhausted and faint. They are awaken by throwing water at them and then the same tortures begin, with the purpose of breaking them down and force them to make statements in praise of the communist government, but that has not happened. They have been locked up in "walled-up" cells (tapiadas), not knowing whether it was day or night, hearing rats coming and going, with the hard floor as their only bed, amid rats and fetid sewer waters. They have been locked up together with common criminals, for the latter to violate them. They have also been taken to jail cells or hospital wards for AIDS patients and people suffering from other contagious illnesses, and they have refused to live in those places or eating contaminated food, because of which, after days of fasting, Engineer Abreu had lost 35 pounds. He was always thin, but with this loss of weight he is very weakened, as well as Vicente Martínez and his nephews.
Dr. Alicia Abreu, daughter of Eng. Ernestino Abreu, has been recently allowed to go to Cuba and listen from the accused own lips the stories of physical and psychological tortures that they have been subjected to.
If a sentence of 26 years of imprisonment were requested for a person such as Eng. Abreu, who is 75 years old, that would be tantamount to a life term, because he would have to be over 100 years old when released. Even a lesser sentence would be very serious at that age. Some believe that the communist regime of Cuba hopes to make some political gains through these political prisoners.
What are they charged with? They only went to their homeland, Cuba, unarmed, without being an immediate or potential threat for the communist regime. They went to promote a peaceful civic democratic movement on behalf of freedom, democracy and human rights, but that is a serious crime in Cuba for any Cuban citizen.
We request of this honorable CIDH, in accordance with its legitimate rights and doubtless jurisdiction, to intervene with the urgency required by this case on behalf of Eng. Ernestino Abreu, Mr. Vicente Martínez and the latter's nephews, for the physical and psychological tortures to cease, that their human rights be respected and that they will be released.
THE USE OF PSYCHIATRY FOR TORTURE IN CUBA
A numerous group of British physicians condemned the unlawful use of psychiatry in Cuba, and asked the regime to allow an impartial inspection, made by "experts" in its psychiatric hospitals. The British Medical Association has published a book entitled: "MEDICINE BETRAYED". The participation of physicians in the abuses against human rights, is documented in that book, that contains a list of psychiatric abuses carried out in Cuba by the totalitarian regime. We request the intervention of the CIDH to put an end to that cruel, inhuman and degrading practice, that despite the period of time lapsed since our previous denouncement, has continued unabated in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
SLAVE AGRICULTURAL WORK IN CUBA
We reiterate that approximately 460,000 students and teachers have been forced to work in the agriculture by orders from the regime in 1998, 1999 and this year 2000. If anyone refuses, such a person is deemed to be a "counter-revolutionary" and severely punished as a lesson for others, including periods of imprisonment.
PERSECUTION AGAINST THE JEWS IN CUBA
We ratify the denouncements we have made before this Commission about the religious situation in Cuba. That is why we deem it sufficient to reiterate those denouncements. But allow us to state, among other things, that there were 12,500 Jews in Cuba when Castro seized power in 1959, and now there remain only a few over 1,200. It would be pertinent to ask: What was the reason for that massive exodus of Jewish men, women, children and whole families? They left behind everything they had, not only material possessions such as houses, businesses, lands, but the spiritual and moral patrimony that they had contributed, and that uprooting meant for them leaving the land that that had become their own, where their children were born and where they expected to have their final places of rest. We have seen them in exile; we have been close to them and we have known their sufferings and pains; we have seen many of them die while carrying Cuba in their hearts. Let this denouncement serve as an affectionate tribute to their sacrifice.
It has likewise happened with Catholics, Protestants and members of many other religious denominations and also of the religious syncretism. Although as propaganda for the Rio de Janeiro Summit in June 1999, and the Ibero-American Summit in November 1999, Castro has made some concessions just to deceive the naïve and the useful idiots, but keeping intact the structure of the communist regime. The crime has been against everybody, because his regime is a materialist and atheist one, without God. Our tribute of identification and affection as well for these other persecuted people.
NATURAL SCIENCES PROFESSOR IMPRISONED IN CUBA
The Cuban Professor of Natural Sciences, Francisco Chaviano González, 46 years old, a human rights activist, was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment on April 15, 1994. He has been imprisoned for six-and-a-half years. He was accused of "revealing state secrets and falsifying documents". A whole accusation pre-fabricated by the communist regime to silence and annul him, for his being an activist on behalf of human rights. His wife, Ana Aguililla Saladrigas de Chaviano, has denounced from Havana that her husband has been confined (locked up) in a solitary cell at the Combinado del Este prison, Havana, where he is subjected to beatings and harassment by his jailers. His name was included in the list of political prisoners whose release was requested by Pope John Paul II.
THE CUBAN EXILE - A PRODUCT OF THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM: AN ACCUSATION AND AFFRONT FOR THE AMERICAS
There is now a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign by the regime of Cuba regarding a small opening that only serves to deceive the naïve and the compromised, as well as to their accomplices and infiltrated.
The Cuban exile amounts now to over two million of male and female members, the largest exile in the whole history of the Americas. Only this would be enough for this prestigious Commission to finalize the preparation of the EIGHTH REPORT that we requested and that you approved, so that all of our denouncements would be included in it, as well as those that this Commission may have received and whatever the Commission may have investigated and verified on its own, for the inclusion in this CIDH Report for Year 2000 the violations of human rights in Cuba in their dual dimension: INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN.
WRITERS OF THE DOCUMENT "THE MOTHERLAND BELONGS TO ALL" PROSECUTED
The four authors of this document: Vladimiro Roca Antúnez, María Beatriz Roque Cabello, Félix Bonné and René Gómez Manzano, imprisoned by the Castro-communist regime for over 26 months now (since July 16, 1997) were "arraigned" on Thursday, September 24, 1999, by the Office of the Attorney General of Cuba, under the accusation of "sedition and other crimes against the security of the State". This is the Working Group of the Internal Dissidence (GTDI). Prosecutors requested prison sentences of 5 and 6 years. They have been subjected to a pantomime of a trial and imposed jail sentences in which their human rights have been violated as well. Their terms of imprisonment are close to completion for some of them.
These political prisoners have been psychologically tortured; they have been placed in different institutions and they have been threatened. They have been constantly harassed by their jailers for a long time.
Beatriz Roque Cabello declared herself in a hunger strike to death if no date was set for the trial. They solved that at the end of last September. Pressures have been lessened on her and she has been allowed to have one-day leaves, possibly due to her health condition.
In this year 2000 testimony, we reiterate our denunciation.
NUMBER OF POLITICAL PRISONERS (OF CONSCIENCE) IN CUBA UP TO DATE
According to fully reliable sources, there are now over 2,700 political prisoners (of conscience) in the Cuban prisons. After the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba, the communist regime has locked up in its prisons over 400 political prisoners. Their number has increased of late and it continues to increase at a fast pace after Castro's speech and the new and longer sentences established by the modification of the Penal Code in 1999 and now in this year 2000.
THE COMMUNIST REGIME ATTACKS THROUGH "GRANMA"
The Granma newspaper, official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, attacks independent journalists, charging them with printing lies against the Castro regime, thus violating the right to the freedoms of expression and the press, and accelerating the persecution against them.
A MEXICAN NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION DENOUNCES THAT THERE ARE 800 PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN CUBA
The Mexican non-governmental organization, International Promoter of Human Rights (Promotora Internacional de Derechos Humanos) has denounced that the current government of Cuba keeps over 800 confirmed "conscience prisoners" in "punishment cells", subjected to tortures and physical abuses. Mr. Enrique Salcedo, current chairman of that institution, denounced that "the government of Fidel Castro is one of the major violators of human rights in the world". Salcedo asserted that dissidents in Cuba receive a especially abusive treatment, because they have their food rationed and necessary medical assistance is denied them. He emphasized that "conscience prisoners" urgently need help, given the precarious health condition which they are enduring.
It has not been possible to identify many more political prisoners in Cuba, although their existence in "cruel, inhuman and degrading" prisons is known throughout the island.
The number of these "conscience prisoners" has been on the increase during 1998, 1999 and 2000.
THE VISIT OF POPE JOHN PAUL II TO CUBA
Pope John Paul II made in January 1998, a historical visit to Cuba, defying the atheist totalitarian communist regime and proving that the Cuban people repudiates the communist regime.
The Pope called for "Cuba to open to the world", and that "the world will open to Cuba". He said and emphasized that in this priority order: "That Cuba will open to the world", and, after this happens, "That the world will open to Cuba".
Cuba has not been opened to the world, not does its government have any intention to do so; the communist system is not able to open itself. The Castro regime has taken advantage of the Pope's visit to Cuba for its political objectives, and it has of late, in this year 2000, increased persecution and repression
During the Pope's visit to Cuba, and a couple of months later, repression, abuse and persecution were politically disguised and diminished by the totalitarian regime, but it has ceased to simulate and has increased violence and persecution against the enemies of communism, including the political prisoners, whose release was requested by the Pope, and who have been sentenced, one of them to seven years of imprisonment.
CHURCH OR DEATH! CARDINAL ORTEGA EXCLAIMS IN VIEW OF THE NEW CUBAN LAW THAT INCREASES THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Cardinal Ortega, of the Cuban Catholic Church, in view of the so-called "Law for the Protection of Independence and Economy in Cuba", labeled it as worrisome, as a serious threat for freedom and an increase in the enumeration of transgressions and sanctions.
Cardinal Ortega fears that the aforesaid law could interfere with religious and evangelization freedom in Cuba, and he even exclaimed that, if the fears incited by that law are fulfilled, Catholics will have to exclaim: CHURCH OR DEATH!
Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, of Hungary, must serve as an example for Cuban Catholics in front of communism.
MORE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA; CONTINUING IN 1999 AND 2000
Licentiate Jorge Moniz, on behalf of the Cuban Patriotic Board, chaired by Dr. Roberto Rodríguez de Aragón, that makes these denouncements theirs, has denounced and documented the following violations of human rights in Cuba in 1999 and 2000, that we endorse as ours and submit as denouncements in this testimony:
Ten years of imprisonment sought for Dr. Biscet. On August 10, 1999, Attorney Sergio Hernández, defense counsel for peaceful opponent Oscar Elías Biscet, reported that the Castro prosecutors seek for his defendant 10 years of imprisonment in Causes 18 and 19 of year 2000. These requests for sentencing were also confirmed by Mrs. Elsa Morejón, Dr. Biscet's wife.
Finally, in a masquerade passing for a trial, Dr. Biscet received a sentence of three years in prison for opposing the communist regime.
They want to sentence her for criticizing the dictatorship. On February 2, 2000, it was known that Castro's prosecutors seek two years of imprisonment for the peaceful opponent Migdalia Rosado, whose only crime is criticizing the Castro-communist dictatorship.
Sentenced for distributing leaflets. Peaceful opponent Luis Grave de Peralta and three more oppositionists were sentenced on February 2, 2000, to 13 years of imprisonment for distributing leaflets against the totalitarian dictatorship.
Visiting oppositionists expelled from jail. On January 24, 2000, peaceful oppositionists Roberto Rodríguez, Santiago López, Caridad González and Carlos Alberto Rodríguez were forcibly expelled from the jail at 100th and Aldabó streets, in Havana, when they went there to inquire about Oscar Elías Biscet and Maritza Lugo, who have been detained there since late November 1999, without having been taken to court yet.
The youngsters Roberto Galá and Juan Martínez were executed by a firing squad in Santiago de Cuba in late March 1999, charged with being enemies of the Castro communist regime.
Ramón Martínez, 17 years old, a resident of the eastern part of Cuba, was shot to death by a Castro henchman when he protested against the dictatorship on December 2, 1999.
On March 19, 1999, the activist Fidel Roldán, 32 years old, was murdered by two shots fired by Captain Romualdo Leiva, of Castro's National Police, for opposing the Castroite dictatorship. Capt. Leiva told Fidel Roldán him before murdering him that "he had bothered him too much with all of his denouncements against the revolution".
On February 9, 1999, police officer Hermes Cuevas murdered with a shot to the head the youngster Amaury Rivero, 23 years old, when the latter was loading plantains in a banana plantation reserved for the high-ranking officers of the government, at the Lutgardito subdivision, Municipality of Quemados de Güines, in the center of Cuba.
Political prisoner Ernesto Nodarse León was beaten to death by guards in the Manacas jail on April 8, 1999.
The youngster Alfredo Duval, 24 years old, was shot to death on April 14, 1999, by Colonel Juan Herrera, for opposing the communist regime. Nothing has happened to Herrera.
On June 10, 1999, the youngster Orlando Rodríguez Rodríguez was beaten to death by police officer Juan Carlos Reyes at the San Miguel del Padrón police station. The family was told at his wake "not to talk to the human rights people", or they would endure the consequences of their denouncement.
We denounce that, on July 31, 1999, independent journalist Bernardo Padrón was being tortured by guards of Prison No. 80, near Cienfuegos, in the center of Cuba.
European journalists demanded on June 18, 1999, the release of independent journalist Bernardo Arévalo Padrón and two other journalists imprisoned in Castro's communist jails.
Political prisoner Francisco Chaviano, who is serving a 15-year sentence since May 1995, for alleged "activities against the powers of the State", has been punished for complaining about the abuses committed by guards at the Combinado del Este prison. They have curtailed relatives' visits, spacing them to 45 days instead of 20 days, as they were scheduled before they complained.
We denounce that, on June 28, 1999, political prisoners Francisco Pérez Antúnez, Lázaro Constantín Durán and Francisco Hernandez were being tortured in the Castro prisons.
On January 24, 2000, in the town of Jovellanos, province of Matanzas, the residence of the peaceful oppositionists, the Sigler family, was attacked by some 25 members of the Castro's Rapid Response Brigades, who savagely beat the occupants inside the house, also destroying pictures of Jesus Christ and José Martí, and signs reading: "The Motherland Belongs to All" and "Freedom for Political Prisoners". The 10 men and 4 women who were in the house were arrested. One of them, a 68-year-old, was beaten and thrown to the ground by one of Castro's thugs. Among the arrested there are: Miguel Sigler, who suffered the fractures of several ribs; Luis Noriega, with a deep wound on his head; Juan González, Juan Martínez and another 10 persons, who are detained at the Headquarters of the State Security (the Castro's KGB).
ARRESTED JOURNALISTS
During the month of December 1999, 20 independent journalists were arrested by agents of the State Security in Cuba.
ARRESTED OPPOSITIONISTS
We have known that during last December there were 30 arrests of oppositionists in Havana, 40 arrests in Matanzas and 13 in Santiago de Cuba. The international press did not mention these arrests of peaceful oppositionists because it was only focused upon the marches organized by Castro to require the deportation of the child Elián González. Among the aforesaid detainees there are four children, 8, 9 and 12 years old in Matanzas, and the 12-year-old girl Lesie Catá, in Santiago de Cuba, with her mother and her grandmother Lala Montiel, 66 years old.
There are between 136 and 200 oppositionists imprisoned, taking advantage of the fact that the attention of the foreign press and the world public opinion is focused upon the six-year-old child rafter, Elián González. Among those arrested are: Nelson Aguilar Ramírez, Miriam Cantillo Ramos, Joana González Herrera, Lázaro Bolaños, Emilio Iglesias, Katia Domenech, Nilda Diepa Padrón, Sara Silvia Sánchez, Maritza del Valle Puerto, Osvaldo Borges Gómez, José Perigurria, Silverio Bitó San Martín, Eugenio Bitó San Martín, Allen Barceló Guzmán, Mario Remedios de los Cuetos, Aracelia Remedios, María García Delgado, José Barrero Vargas and José Manuel Pérez.
In the last few days, 70 dissidents have been arrested in Havana. The latest known ones were detained on December 17, 1999, and their names are: Venancio Roberto Rodríguez, Carlos Alberto Domínguez, José Manuel Rodríguez, Joel Manuel Bacallao, Miguel López Santos, Ileana González, Adela Soto, María Rodríguez, María González Amaro, María Miranda, Osvaldo Céspedes, Odalys Victores, Ricardo González Alfonso, Alida Viso Bello, Miguel Varga Martínez, Santiago Santana, and Amarilis Cortina, among others.
On February 5 of this year, Castro's prosecutors requested sentences of 4 years and 1 year of imprisonment respectively for the peaceful oppositionists Fermín Scull Zulueta and Eduardo Díaz Fleites, accusing them of public disturbance when they tried to ask for the release of political prisoners at the Dolores Park, in the Lawton Subdivision, city of Havana, on November 10, 1999. They were attacked and beaten by dozens of police officers and Castro's henchmen dressed in civilian clothes, who were those who caused the public disturbance with their shouting and beating of Díaz and Zulueta.
On January 24, 2000, the dissidents Oswaldo Payás, Héctor Palacios, Gisela Delgado and Antonio Bridón were detained for several hours by Castro's police, who questioned them in a police office and then released them, with the warning not to make a coordinated movement with another 18 oppositionists and that, if they did that, the consequences would be up to lengthy imprisonment sentences.
On January 14, 2000, the independent journalist Víctor Rolando Arroyo was sentenced to six months of imprisonment for trying to distribute 140 toys among needy children in the city of Pinar del Río, on the Holy Kings' Day. Arroyo was sentenced to nine months of imprisonment in 1996, on charges of "contempt" and "lack of respect" in an incident where a member of the Castro police was involved.
On the same day, "Amnesty International", the organization that advocates for human rights, said in a statement that "on the last two months, over 260 persons have been arrested in Cuba and at least a dozen are awaiting trial. "Amnesty International estimates that there are several hundred political prisoners in Cuba".
Ministers of the Pentecostal Church arrested. Since last October there have been imprisoned by the State Security the ministers of the Pentecostal Church: Bishop Santos O. Domínguez Borja; the Reverends Lázaro Ortega, René Iturralde and Reinaldo Carballosa, who were arrested in Holguín. They are accused of distributing "Enemy Propaganda", for preaching to their parishioners what the Bible teaches.
Amnesty and access to the Cuban prisons requested. On last October 9, the Catholic Church, in a message from Cardinal Ortega, asked the regime for a partial amnesty and access to the prisons. The regime does not allow any international organization to ever visit the Cuban prisons. Experts estimate that there are from 60,000 to 100,000 political prisoners (according to Amnesty International, 400 of them are "prisoners of conscience".)
Violations of human rights continue in Cuba. There have taken place 12 violations of human rights and 200 arrests in the eastern municipalities of Santiago de Cuba and Julio Antonio Mella, as well as in the Municipality of Pedro Betancourt, Matanzas, and several neighborhoods of Havana. Last July, at Julio Antonio Mella, the 23-year-old Luis Ferrer was sentenced to six months of imprisonment, on charges filed by Captain Noel, a member of Castro's police. When the captain arrested Ferrer, he savagely beat the youngster, and even tried to strangle him because he is an oppositionist to the Castro dictatorship over the Cuban people.
More oppositionists arrested. On December 20, 1999, agents from the Ministry of the Interior in Palma Soriano arrested the peaceful oppositionists Alexis Rodríguez and Vivian Acosta.
Arrested at the Rincón religious procession. On December 17, 1999, during the St. Lazarus procession to Rincón, the peaceful oppositionists Diosdado González, Marcel Valenzuela, José Aguilar and Carlos Oquendo were arrested by eight agents of the State Security after the four shouted: "Fredom for Political Prisoners". The repressive agents made the arrested board Lada automobiles and took them in an unknown direction.
Four oppositionists arrested. Matanzas. Four oppositionists were arrested by agents of the political police in the province of Matanzas in order to thwart the activities of the Human Rights Day. Those arrested are: Angel Moya Acosta, chairman of the Alternative Option Movement, and the brothers Guido and Ailier Sigler Amaya, members of that movement. All of the dissidents are residents of the western area of Matanzas. The agents did not tell their relatives in any of the cases where the prisoners were being taken.
ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1999, A WAVE OF ARRESTS IN CUBA WAS DENOUNCED IN "DIARIO LAS AMERICAS" BY ANGEL PABLO POLANCO (OF THE NEW CUBAN PRESS), DUE TO THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
That Thursday, on the eve of the fifty-first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a wave of arrests that began Tuesday in Havana continued at Pedro Betancourt, Matanzas, where six new arrests were reported, according to several sources.
At the aforesaid town, police agents arrested at four hours on Thursday afternoon, Juan Alberto Mora and Juan Sigler at their respective workplaces; José A. Barrier at home, and Juan Yeyo González out on the street. All of them are members of the peaceful movement "Alternative Option", and reside in that town, as reported by Lidy Simoya to NotiCuba. She is the sister of the chairman of that organization, that opposes the Castro regime. It is unknown where those arrested were taken, the source said.
On the other hand, at the township of El Roque, in the Municipality of Perico, also in Matanzas, an agent of the political police named Vladimiro and three individuals who wore the Cuban police uniform, arrested the president of the Peace, Love and Freedom Party, Diosdado González Marrero, thirty seven years old, a resident of No. 29 Santa Rita street,. as reported to this news service by the arrested person's wife, Alejandrina García Rivas.
The arrest took place at four in the afternoon, on Thursday, December 9, 1999, at González's place, and the agents said that he would be taken to the provincial headquarters of the political police, located in the city of Matanzas. When he was arrested, Diosdado said that he would be in a hunger strike until released or arraigned.
In Havana, at ten in the evening on Thursday, December 9, 1999, two subjects wearing National Police uniforms but who did not identify themselves and who allegedly carried an arrest warrant, that they did not show either, broke into the dwelling of Carlos Alberto Domínguez and arrested him, said his son, Ansel Domínguez González. Carlos Alberto, 45 years old, is the secretary general of the "30 de Noviembre Democratic Party of Frank País" and lives at No. 64 María Luisa Street, between Estela and Sofía Streets, in the Párraga subdivision of the Municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, near Havana. It is not known where the arrested person was taken.
The wave of arrests began in Havana last December, with the detention of three dissidents. On that same day, but in the evening, three more were arrested, but the latter at Pedro Betancourt, among them the chairman of the "Alternative Option Movement", Angel Moya Acosta, who had called a public activity for that Friday, at four in the afternoon, at the central park of the town, in order to commemorate the fifty-first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE VIOLATED IN CUBA IN A TOTALITARIAN MANNER, IN THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS, THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN FORMS OF VIOLATIONS
Two political prisoners in serious health condition. We recently learned that Engineer Jesús Soler Galindo and his brother, Licentiate Reinaldo Soler Galindo, who are serving sentences of 11 and 10 years of imprisonment respectively, for charges of sabotage to the Tallapiedra electric plant in Havana, were very sick in Building 11 of the Combinado del Este Prison, and that they are not getting any medical assistance, as an attempt to have them die. Both were sentenced on March 27, 1995, on that charge, and we have been informed that they continue in prison and in a precarious health condition.
Political prisoner Camilo Pérez Villanueva, who is serving a sentence of 18 years of imprisonment for being an oppositionist to the Castro-communist regime, is in a punishment cell at the KILO-7 prison, located on the Nuevitas highway, province of Camagüey, over 700 kilometers away from Havana, where his children and other members of his family live.
Oppositionist Augusto César San Martín Albister was sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment on June 29, 1999, for opposing the totalitarian dictatorship.
In Santiago de Cuba, on July 14, 1999, young oppositionist Ernesto Rodríguez :Lovaina was arrested by agents of the State Security. Prosecutors request for him a sentence of 20 years of imprisonment for opposing the Castro-communist dictatorship.
Andrés García Concoso, a Cuban human rights activist, was arrested on August 7, 1999, by agents of the State Security, together with another activist whose name we do not know, near Puerto Padre. Both are in the Victoria de las Tunas jail, charged with conspiring to leave the country.
We know that, on July 31, 1999, independent journalist Bernardo Padrón continued to be tortured by guards at Prison No. 80, near Cienfuegos, at the center of Cuba.
We likewise denounce that on August 18, 1999, political prisoners Nelson Ramírez and José Victorero Escalona were being strongly beaten and punished by the warden of the prison where they are serving a sentence of three years for "enemy propaganda", that is, criticizing the Castro totalitarian dictatorship.
On August 17, 1999, it was known that Professor Félix Bonne Carcasés is in a serious health condition, without receiving any medical assistance, at the Guanajay prison, were he is serving a four-year imprisonment sentence issued by a "Revolutionary Tribunal", only for having been one of the authors of the document entitled "The Motherland Belongs to All", where the Castro regime is criticized.
On August 17, 1999, at 9 o'clock in the morning, opposition attorney Leonel Morejón Almagro was arrested by State Security agents near his residence; they also arrested oppositionist Fermín Scull Zulueta, of Colón, Matanzas; Vladimir Morejón Castillo, Gilberto Morejón and Petra Díaz del Castillo. Agents of the State Security seized a 1995 statement from "Concilio Cubano" about environmental issues, regarding the airport built at Cayo Loco only for foreign tourists.
BEATINGS AND OUTRAGES CONTINUE IN CUBAN PRISONS By Gabriel Ramón Castillo, Cuba Press
Havana, Cuba Press -- The "Pedro Luis Boitel" National Movement for Civic Resistance knows about violations of human rights in Cuban prisons, a source from that organization said.
Francisco Díaz Echemendía, a political prisoner at the Boniato jail, continues to be sick and has no medical assistance. This does not prevent jail officers from beating and insulting him when he complains about his ailments.
Several common-crime inmates, in complicity with jail officers, not only watch over political prisoners but also steal their belongings and are hostile to the latter. Convicted criminal Francisco Guevera Rojas, who tried to murder Díaz Echemendía last June, was taken out of the galley when that incident happened. But later on he was returned to the same correctional area.
The "Pedro Luis Boitel" National Movement for Civil Resistance adds that over 300 kilometers from Boniato, at the "Kilo-8" prison in Camagüey for "special regimen", Ernesto Durán was given a serious beating for proclaiming anti-government slogans. Likewise, Andy Frómeta Cuenca was very close to die, due to the violence of the physical punishment he was given.
We also denounce that, on the same day of July 28, 1999, political prisoner Lázaro Planes Farías, who is in a hunger strike and has lost a lot of weight, was isolated in a maximum-security cell at Prison No. 1580. Planes lived at 229th. Avenue, in the Fontanar Subdivision of Havana City, and the Castro's henchmen accused him of criticizing the Castro government, because of which he was sentenced to many years of imprisonment.
On September 14, 1999, at 1:30pm., peaceful oppositionists Manuel Valenzuela, Joaquín Martínez, Alejandro Chang, Angel Pérez Castillo, Oscar E. Biscet, Marlo Carrero and independent journalist Angel Pablo Polanco, were arrested by agents of the State Security at the "Buttari Park", in the city of Havana, where they had gathered. Castro's henchment ordered them to stop giving more classes on peaceful opposition and, when they shouted "Long Live Human Rights!", the henchmen began beating them and took them to the cells at 100th. and Aldabó Streets. It is reported that they are going to be prosecuted for "public disturbance", because of their expression. All seven are in a hunger strike at the jail.
Since August 27, 1999, peaceful oppositionist Manuel Charada Rodríguez is confined to the Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital, where he has been given electro-shocks. Charada is asking the world public opinion to help him, since Dr. Bernabé Ordaz, the director of that hospital, has him confined there on orders of the State Security.
The youngster Iory Martí, 21 years old, was arrested by State Security agents for wearing a T-shirt reading: "DOWN WITH FIDEL!" He has been charged with contempt for the first figure of the revolution.
Oppositionist Augusto César San Martín Albistur was sentenced on June 29, 1999, to 17 years of imprisonment for opposing the totalitarian dictatorship.
Joel Martínez, who was deported to Cuba by the Clinton government, is being constantly harassed by State Security, despite the agreement with the US. Government forbidding harassment of deported persons.
We denounce that, on August 28, political prisoner Leonardo Varona González will complete one and a half year of imprisonment, on charges of "contempt towards the Commander in Chief", for criticizing Fidel Castro.
A Protest from the International Press Institute. On February 11, 2000, the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, Austria, denounced that Fidel Castro's security forces continue to repress Cuban journalists who report what is happening in their homeland. In their denouncement, they emphasize the prison sentences being served by independent journalists Bernardo Arévalo, who has been beaten several times at the Ariza prison; Lorenzo Páez, imprisoned in Pinar del Río, and Juan Carlos Recio Martínez, sentenced to hard labor in Villaclara. The Institute also denounced how "the Castro government controls everything that is published and imposes a strict prohibition on having access to the Internet, that can only be used by government officials and is forbidden for everybody else.
Masons not allowed to lay a wreath at José Martí monument. On February 2, 1999, the Castro Directorate of Justice forbid Masons to lay a wreath at the José Martí monument, in Havana's Central Park, on the anniversary of his birthday, January 28.
Imprisoned journalists denied medical assistance. We learned on February 1, 2000, that independent journalists Manuel González Castellanos and Leonardo Varona, the latter only 23 years old, are in a very grave health condition and are being denied medical attention by the director of the prison where they have been confined for alleged "contempt" against Fidel Castro (that is, criticizing his government), and awaiting trial.
Shouts of "America's Tyrant" for Castro in Venezuela. On February 2, 2000, at the Venezuelan Congress, several senators left their hemicycle shouting: "Castro, America's Tyrant", while Col. Chávez was taking possession of the presidency of Venezuela.
Italian newspaper complaints about imprisoned Cuban journalists. On February 3, 1999, the Italian newspaper "La República" attacked the Castro dictatorship for having imprisoned 6 independent journalists.
Amnesty International condemns Castro. On its annual report issued on June 16, 1999, in London, Amnesty International condemned the Castro-communist tyranny for the violations, tortures, imprisonments and executions by firing squads committed against the Cuban people.
Cuban KGB burns thousands of Bibles in Havana. On February 3, 1999, at Arroyo Naranjo, province of Havana, thousands of Bibles that had been sent from the United States were burned by Castro's KGB because of deeming them as "enemy propaganda", since they read on their covers: "Cuba for Christ".
Portuguese journalists expelled. The Angolan government expelled two Portuguese journalists on January 22, 2000, who had reported the presence in said country of 200 Cuban military personnel to combat UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) there.
Mention of the word "Christ" forbidden. On February 3, 1999, an Evangelical Pastor of Sancti Spiritus, province of Las Villas, was forbidden by the communist authorities to continue mentioning the word "Christ" to the members of his congregation, because it is deemed to be "enemy propaganda".
Pablo Benito Marrero arrested by Major Díaz Pupo. On June 30, 1999, the oppositionist Pablo Benito Marrero was arrested by members of the State Security under the command of Major Díaz Pupo.
Another political prisoner denied medical assistance. We knew that on June 24, 1999, political prisoner Jesús Díaz Hernández had been denied medical assistance in the Canaleta prison, where he is serving four years of imprisonment for alleged "pre-criminal perilousness".
Oppositionists arrested on the day of festivity for Our Lady of Charity. José Aguilar Herrera, Alejandro Chang Cantillo and Marcel Valenzuela Salt, members of the Civic Fellowship Movement, were accused of being oppositionists because of their Catholic beliefs. Dr. Oscar E. Biscet was also arrested at 9am on September 8, 1999, the day of the festivity, reported Mrs. Elsa Morejón, the wife of the leader of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DENOUNCES IN ITS ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1999-2000, THAT THERE HAVE INCREASED IN CUBA THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN A SYSTEMATIC MANNER, IN THEIR DOUBLE DIMENSION, INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN.
The Annual Report from the U.S.A. on human rights accuses the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba for SYSTEMATICALLY VIOLATING HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA. Said report was published on February 25, 2000. In the aforesaid report it is also charged that "last year there were 350 political prisoners in Cuba, and their number has increased to 400". Castro's regime, the report says, continues making arbitrary arrests, detentions, imprisonments and defamations against human rights advocates and the regime also charges journalists, economists, physicians and lawyers with many non-existent transgressions, in order to pressure and coerce them to leave the country.
SIX SPANIARDS WERE SPYING FOR CASTRO
On January 18, 1999, it was revealed in Spain that Spaniard businessman José Fernández and five agents of the Spanish Intelligence were spying, both in Spain and Miami, on behalf of the Castro regime, having been recruited by Castro's DGI (Directorate General for Intelligence) since 1991, and also that they were falsely implicating Cuban exiles for the latter to be expelled from Spain.
VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA DENOUNCED IN GERMANY
Professor Heinrich Brechtmann, chairman of the Human Rights Commission in Essen, Germany, has performed an intense campaign in denouncing the violations against human rights committed by the Cuban communist regime.
Professor Brechtmann, in a visit to the United States on February 1997, stated to "Diario Las Américas", in an interview with Dr. Guillermo Cabrera Leiva, the following: "We stand on a struggle footing against the abuses of personal rights everywhere in the world, and especially in Cuba, where a totalitarian system rules that tramples those rights. Our campaign takes advantage of all means at our disposal in order to divulge the truth about Cuba. A few weeks ago, we ordered several thousands of match books with the picture of Cuban political prisoner Francisco Chaviano, sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment on the island, and bearing this slogan in German: "May those be damned who have forgotten us".
Dr. Brechtmann requests in his statements for letters to be mailed to the Cuban embassy in Bonn, Germany, requesting the release of Francisco Chaviano González.
THERE HAVE BEEN NO DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS IN 40 YEARS OF COMMUNIST RULE IN CUBA
This Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, made up by prestigious jurists who represent the whole of our Americas, cannot be deceived into believing the electoral farces staged by Castro. On the contrary, you must clearly state in your Annual Report, and also in the Eighth Report, that there have been no free and democratic elections in Cuba for a period of 40 years, and that the rights of voting, electing and being elected have been infringed upon for all of that time.
THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTED BY THE CRIMINAL SINKING OF THE TUGBOAT "13 DE MARZO" BY THE COMMUNIST REGIME OF CUBA. THIS CIDH HAS ALREADY CONDEMNED IT BASED ON TRUSTWORTHY EVIDENCE CONTRIBUTED BY MANY OF US, AND IT HAS ALSO INVESTIGATED IT. THE ACCUSATION FOR THOSE CRIMES IS STILL IN FORCE ON THIS YEAR 2000.
This violation has been documented at a hearing by the U.S. Congress, where four survivors were in attendance, who contributed plenty of evidence and testimonies.
We have also reiterated and we now amplify our denouncement regarding that blatant violation of human rights committed by the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba. The following has been documented before this CIDH and publicly verified, including the CIDH condemnation:
On July 13, 1994, there sailed out of the Havana harbor, in Cuba, on a tugboat named "13 de Marzo", 72 Cuban men, women and children, who were trying to flee towards freedom. Seventeen miles away from the Cuban shores, outside of Cuban jurisdictional waters, they were intercepted by several fire-fighting ships and patrol boats of the Cuban Navy, and despite the fact that the 72 persons who were on the tugboat stated that they were surrendering, they were flooded with high-velocity hoses, throwing many into the sea, including a child who was in his mother's arms and who was lost at sea. Some tugboat passengers tried to protect themselves by going to the machine room, on the lower part of the tugboat, due to the force of the water thrown by the high-velocity hoses, that threatened to send them all to sea.
Not content with this uncivilized and cruel act, the government ships rammed the tugboat, because of which the tugboat sank, and in the wreck there died 41 persons, including 20 children.
Survivors were taken back to Cuba. The men were imprisoned, the women and children who survived were returned to their homes, which were surrounded by the Rapid Action Brigades, who attacked and threatened them, and later kept in home detention. Many of them are still in prison and others have been persecuted by the regime; that is why we are requesting that the denouncement be reiterated.
The relatives of those who died in the holds and engine rooms of the tugboat have asked the Cuban government to rescue the bodies to inter them, but the regime has denied the request alleging that it has no divers. Several Cuban exiled divers have volunteer to undertake the tasks of the rescue, but the United States Government has denied them the necessary authorization. Thus, the bodies continue at the bottom of the sea. They must be lifted in order to inter them.
We ask this CIDH to file that petition with the communist regime, because the human rights of the victims and their relatives continue to be violated. At least, a permit ought to be issued to lift the bodies and give them a Christian burial.
The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, has stated that "this is one more example of the brutal nature of the Cuban regime".
We condemn this monstrous and barbaric action, in which not only there were violated the human rights of the Cubans involved, but it went beyond all limits that a civilized country must respect.
Those human rights that the CIDH defends and protects have been violated, because of which we ask that the unpostponable condemnation of this barbaric action would be widened and reiterated; that the release of those who are still imprisoned be requested and that there will be respect for the women and children who continue to be attacked in their homes by government mobs in this year 2000.
The Cuban Episcopacy has petitioned the Cuban government for a wide investigation about the sinking of the aforesaid tugboat, but we have no news that any investigation has been made, or any response given to the petition.
U.S. Congressmen, Dr. Lincoln Díaz Balart, Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Roberto Menéndez have asked the United Nations to open an investigation about the sinking of the tugboat "13 de Marzo", and the United Nations, attending to that petition presented by the U.S. Government, have resolved to open an investigation about the case. All of that is in process towards the issuance of a condemnation at the United Nations level for that barbaric action and the violations of human rights committed against the victims laying at the bottom of the sea and against their relatives as well.
The Government of Spain requested an exhaustive investigation from the Cuban government, and for responsibilities to be clarified against the culprits for the sinking of the tugboat "13 de Marzo", as well as against their accomplices.
It has been learned that Capt. Jesús Martínez was the most aggressive in ramming the tugboat. He should be prosecuted and punished.
Representative Dan Burton, chairman of the Sub-Committee of Foreign Relations in the U.S. House of Representatives, joined by Congress Members Dr. Lincoln Díaz Balart, Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Roberto Menéndez held a hearing on January 25, 1995, about the sinking of the tugboat, in which hearing were heard testimonies of survivors and documents and other evidences were submitted.
Through our testimonies and denouncements and others, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), officially and formally initiated a case, the "CASE OF THE TUGBOAT `13 DE MARZO', and the condemning resolution was timely publicized.
Dr. Alberto Fibla, in a historic, clarifying and brilliant manner, described in his excellent book, entitled "BARBARISM", recently published, the horrible crime committed by the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba upon sinking the tugboat "13 de Marzo", where there died 41 persons, among them 20 childen whose bodies lay in the depths of the sea. The totalitarian regime has not lifted them nor has it allowed anyone else to do that. We respectfully request that the tragic events about that tugboat be included and publicized in the "Annual Report" that the CIDH will issue this year.
TWO CIVILIAN SMALL PLANES SHOT DOWN OVER INTERNATIONAL WATERS BY THE COMMUNIST REGIME OF CUBA: A PREMEDITATED AND PERFIDIOUS MURDER OF FOUR CUBAN-AMERICAN PATRIOTS OF THE AMERICAS, AN ACCUSATION STILL STANDING ON THIS YEAR 2000.
The horrendous crime committed by the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba, that shocked the Americas and the civilized world, the murder over international waters of our heroic and martyrized compatriots Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Acosta, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales, members of the organization "Brothers to the Rescue", devoted to the humanitarian task of saving lives of men, women and children in the waters of the Caribbean. That was a blatant violation of human rights that has already received the repulsion and condemnation of the international community.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), based on our denouncement and others, opened the Case Summary with the following title and number: "Case No. 11,589 - CUBA - Armando Alejandre Jr. and others".
That blatant violation of human rights has also been denounced before the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. The evidence is so evident and conclusive that we respectfully ask this Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) to reiterate its condemnation against the communist regime for the incidents that took place on February 24, 1996, that ended the lives of the four Cuban-American pilots riddled with bullets from Cuban military planes over the international air space, that was first issued in its report for 1998-1999.
VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
The totalitarian communist Castro regime does not allow the installation of parabolic TV antennae, in order to prevent the reception of signals from foreign TV networks, which also prevents receiving the signals from any TV station authorized in Cuba. The installation of those antennae is punishable with a long term of imprisonment.
INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was the first entity that denounced before the highest organism of the OAS, its General Assembly, through its Annual Reports for several years, especially the latest six, the violations of human rights in Cuba. Those denouncements set the foundations for the recognition of the "BENEDI DOCTRINE" about the aforesaid violations, in their DUAL DIMENSION: INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN.
In the press release from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) at the end of its latest period of sessions, wherein they render an account of their work and include the violations of human rights in Cuba, that we expect to be included in the next Annual Report, it is verified that Dr. Claudio F. Benedí has appeared before the Commission on behalf of the Free Cubans.
The Commission, in a previous press release, that we reproduce in order to maintain the historical sequence, underlines the following:
"Regarding Cuba, the Commission states its great preoccupation for the human rights situation in that country, since there subsist the two features that prevent the enforcement of civil and political rights: concentration of power in a small group of persons and the non-existance of the rule of law. People in Cuba do not have any resources to protect them against the arbitrary actions that the state may carry out. The repressive control practiced by the state machinery against sectors not akin to the regime has translated, as in previous years, into repeated violations of human rights".
From the well-documented and extensive list of violations of human rights committed in Cuba, included in the Annual Report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for 1993 and 1994, we are only going to highlight these eloquent and defining paragraphs about the violations of human rights in Cuba, that are still been committed and extended into 1995 and 1996, and are still in force for years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000, that literally read:
"Cuba:
I. Background
"The Inter-American Commission on human rights has continued to observe with a special attention the manner in which the human rights situation in Cuba has evolved in the course of year 1993. This section has the objective of updating the information that has been constantly considered by the commission in the respective sections of its annual reports and in the seven special reports.
"The information to which the Inter-American Commission has resorted during the period covered by the 1993 Annual Report allows it to consider that the human rights situation in Cuba has experienced scant changes regarding the previous years. The two features are maintained that have originated the lack of existence of civil and political rights: concentration of power in a small group of persons and non-existence of the rule of law, since persons are deprived of the resources that might protect them against those arbitrary actions that the state may carry out. Thus, the deterioration of life circumstances and the repressive control practiced by the state through its security organizations against sectors not akin to the regime has translated into repeated and constant violations of human rights. Hence all those factors, coupled with a serious economic and social crisis, permit to consider that the prevailing negative circumstances will tend to become accentuated.
"In effect, the increased repression of all forms of independent organization on the part of the Cuban Government, and the most serious difficulties of an economic nature that the Cuban people is traversing, have brought about situations, the evolution of which foresees a pronounced deterioration of the Cuban society in general and of the human rights situation in particular". All of this represents an execrable reality, that in itself demands your consideration and condemnation. Nothing has changed, except for the worsening of the violations of human rights in Cuba on years 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and now 2000. You have the evidence that has been published in the Americas and the world.
THE ILLEGITIMACY OF THE SO-CALLED "SOCIALIST LEGALITY"
We have attained to have publicly stated, by human rights organizations in the Americas and Europe, THE ILLEGITIMACY OF THE PRESUMED "SOCIALIST LEGALITY", because we have been able to prove that it is extrinsically and intrinsically ILLEGITIMATE, and that is survives as an inseparable part of that totalitarian communist regime, that replaced the previous system that existed in Cuba.
Among many other proofs of that ILLEGITIMACY, that are plentiful, irrefutable and current, let us only mention some as the following ones, that are still prevailing in this year 2000:
A. That neither the Constitution, nor the laws or any other presumably "legal" provision within the parameters of the so-called "SOCIALIST LEGALITY", proceed from the free consent of the governed, thus violating the law and the legality recognized and established in the Western World.
B. That it has no foundation upon natural law, and it not only ignores the latter, but also denies its existence, which constitutes the culmination of the ideological aberration and the greatest lack of legality.
C. That it violates the human rights in their dual dimension: INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN, as we have documented and has been recognized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights.
There exists in Cuba the unusual and incredible paradox that human rights are violated according to the "socialist legality", that is, that it is "legal" in the totalitarian and undemocratic regime of Cuba , we repeat, "legal", to violate human rights", thus creating a total denial of the law, a "juridical" aberration and an affront to the Free World and to the dignity of the human person.
Let us offer only a very objective and clear example: If one of more male and/or female Cubans gathered to print a newspaper or a magazine, they would be immediately jailed and sentenced, because the "socialist legality", in its Constitution, states that it is only the STATE which has the right to publish newspapers and magazines, and thus it violates the right to freedom of expression of any journalist or editor to publish newspapers and magazines. Minding this would be very useful for freedom and democracy that the mass communication media (press, radio and television) would take notice in order for them to do the following: a) Contribute to protect the freedom of expression and of the press that they enjoy throughout the free and civilized world. b) Help Cubans to restore freedom of expression, so that free newspapers and magazines could again be published, in accordance with the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which are in force in the rest of the Americas.
C. When the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) and the United Nations denounce that "THERE IS NOT A RULE OF LAW IN CUBA", that declaration and that denouncement, both de facto and de jure, are denouncing the ILLEGITIMACY of that system and of the "juridical" regime that there exists in that country, which is euphemistically called "SOCIALIST LEGALITY", a painful farce and a punishment that the Cuban people have endured for too long. All of that is still in force on this year 2000.
E. When the International Organization of Jurists, an organism attached to the United Nations, after an exhaustive and detailed investigation and study, denounced in its report that "the rule of law does not exist in Cuba", this is also an irrefutable and convincing denunciation of the ILLEGITIMACY OF THE "SOCIALIST LEGALITY", and that denunciation is still valid in this year 2000.
F. The blatant violation of the juridical and political foundations of the civilized world's systems, division of powers proclaimed by Montesquieu: Executive, Legislative and Judicial, does not exist in Cuba, as the world's human rights organizations have denounced and, among them, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) in several Reports, and as we have denounced and proven, and we are reiterating now before this CIDH on this year 2000, because those violations still persist.
THE UNITED NATIONS' GENERAL ASSEMBLY ALSO CONDEMNS THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA IN THEIR DUAL DIMENSION: INSTITUTIONAL AND HUMAN, IN 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 AND 2000.
The United Nations' Relator, Mr. Carl-Johan Groth, after receiving our denouncements and performing his investigations, submitted his report to the United Nations in 1995 and 1996. In his Report, Mr. Groth denounced the continuous abuses of human rights in Cuba and the INSTITUTIONAL nature of those violations, that have been widely denounced and proven by us, and that are included in our doctrine about the dual dimension of those violations: The "Benedí Doctrine".
According with these denunciations and the results of pertinent investigations, the United Nations' General Assembly, in its session for December 20, 1993, approved a Resolution backed by 74 votes in favor, condemning the totalitarian Socialist-Marxist-Leninist of Cuba for its violations of human rights. This comes to prove what we mentioned in the preceding paragraph about the universal and public nature of the violations of human rights in Cuba, in their dual dimension: Institutional and Human. The same condemnation was reiterated in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997. Circumstances have not changed: Those violations continue to happen in 1999 and 2000 in Cuba; that is why the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights has condemned the regime that continues to commit them.
A NEW INSTITUTIONALIZED FORM OF CRIME, CREATED BY THE SOCIALIST-MARXIST-LENINIST REGIME OF CUBA, AND INTRINSIC TO IT, IS STILL IN FORCE FOR 1998, 1999 AND 2000.
A new form of crime has been institutionalized and is brutally enforced in Cuba: that of claiming for respect of human rights, either individually or collectively. Whoever will dare to ask for respect for his/her human rights, whatever these might be, is deemed to be a counter-revolutionary person, an enemy of the totalitarian regime. If the person claiming for the enforcement of human rights, does not do that only to get that his/her rights be respected, but also those of other people, that person automatically becomes a self-avowed enemy of the anti-democratic, Socialist-Marxist-Leninist regime, and he/she is persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and even executed by a firing squad, to set an example and increase terror. Although we know that this form of alleged crime is not only existing in Cuba, but that is was created by the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist system and intrinsic to the same, it is in Cuba where this CIDH has the jurisdiction and power to record and condemn it, because of which we reiterate our denouncement and petition to this Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, since it being still in existence and having been enforced in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999, the CIDH is empowered to reiterate its condemnation and we so request in this testimony in the year 2000.
THE SO-CALLED "REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS"
We reiterate before this CIDH that the designation of "TRIBUNALS" given to those accomplice and executor entities for the crimes of the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist regime is an unheard-of insult to justice, since they are made up by juridically illiterate, fanatic and cowardly communists, who lack any ethic or morals. These so-called "TRIBUNALS" are only instruments created by the regime, such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Action Brigades, only intended to apply and comply with the arbitrary orders dictated by the totalitarian tyrant and his minions. The Western World is often confused by that disinformation (that is not only the lack of information, mind you, but "false information intentionally planted in order to deceive the naïve", a typical practice of communism) when it is printed or said on press or TV that there operate in Cuba the so-called "REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS". Nothing could be farther from the truth. If there is no Rule of Law in Cuba, there cannot be any legitimate courts. They can be called "tribunals" to deceive the naïve, but they are only farcical courts, "kangaroo courts", when compared to those that operate in the free and civilized world. It has thus been denounced and proven by legal associations and organizations in the Americas and Europe, and we thus reiterate it in this testimony, because it continues to happen in this year 2000.
PRE-FABRICATED SENTENCES WITHOUT ANY DUE PROCESS
The total absence of due process in Cuba has been repeatedly denounced and the CIDH has recognized it in all of its special and annual reports, but since it is a constant occurrence in this year 2000, we denounce it and request its inclusion in the final statement of this CIDH for this year. The fact of the continuous existence of those violations of human rights in Cuba forces you and us to condemn it with a greater strength, based on the existing irrefutable evidence. If this is not done, it would create the erroneous assumption that they have diminished or disappeared, and that is false.
The lack of due process and guarantees in Cuba began to exist as soon as the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist regime seized total power, first through deceit and then by terror, and it continues up to our time, because all of that is an intrinsic and inseparable part and parcel of the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist system.
Thousands have been executed by firing squads with no trials, or else through farcical mockeries of trials; thousands have been persecuted and imprisoned without even fulfilling the formality of a farcical trial; this is public and notorious. Since the CIDH released its First Special Report about Human Rights in Cuba, in May, 1962, our denouncements are there, and in that Report there is, besides, the one we submitted about the Cubans who were imprisoned in Playa Girón, the members of Brigade 2506, for their lives to be respected and that they would be released, as it is recorded in the CIDH archives.
The Cuban Patriotic Board has received a letter from our compatriot Valentino Hernández Ramírez, whose brother, Gilberto Hernández Ramírez, died in combat at Playa Girón, Cuba, and he underlines that "he and his colleagues of the Brigade 2506 died fighting on Playa Girón, but they are buried in common graves with no markers. Valentino requests authorization for their relatives to be authorized to rescue those bodies and give them a Christian burial.
We are requesting in this testimony that the CIDH will intervene to achieve that humanitarian and just objective.
THE CUBAN WORKERS' MOVEMENT AND THEIR ELIMINATED ACHIEVEMENTS
The Cuban labor movement, that was the most advanced in the Americas, including that of the United States, was totally destroyed and its many labor and social achievements were eliminated; its leaders were persecuted, imprisoned and even some of them executed by firing squads. The excellent CONFEDERATION OF CUBAN WORKERS (CTC in Spanish), was wiped out and, with it, the workers' freedom. This situation continues unabated on this year 2000.
The right to strike was not only suppressed, but what is even worse, the workers' freedom and the freedom of initiative. Since that happened, no worker can change jobs voluntarily, nor get a transfer, nor resign his/her employment, nor demand compliance with the eight-hour period of work, nor minimum wage. They never get any raises; they have no collective working agreements attained through free negotiations; working mothers lost their benefits, they have no retirement fund in accordance with their earnings, nor any decorum of respect either, let alone payment for overtime. On the contrary, they are forced to perform "voluntary work" with no pay and in most instances far away from their regular places of work.
We have proven the violations against workers' rights before this CIDH. Now we are reiterating that denunciation and we are proving, through irrefutable documents, that such circumstances not only persist, but have considerably worsened. That is why we request that these denouncements be included in the Final Declaration for this year 2000. We are obliged to reiterate these denouncements once again, to prevent the communist propaganda to confound public opinion by saying that there have been any improvements. That is totally false.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM'S SPIES SENT BY THE CASTRO REGIME TO THE UNITED STATES VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS
Ten communist spies of Cuban origin, infiltrated in the United States and in the Cuban exiles' organizations, have been discovered and publicly denounced, eight men and two women, who have violated human rights and "threatened to attack the very core of the United States' security system". This has been officially stated by high-ranking U.S. officials in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
Also, in 1999 and 2000, a well-organized espionage network from the communist regime of Cuba was discovered in Spain, other European countries and the United States, which evidences the continuity of those espionage operations sponsored by the totalitarian regime of Cuba.
Those spies have the mission of creating violations of human rights among Cuban exiles, in order to involve the latter and trying to get them convicted, with the purpose of causing them to lose their prestige.
VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA DENOUNCED AND RECOGNIZED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE
Senator Steve Symms denounced in the U.S. Senate the following items that were publicized in the Congressional Record. These denouncements are still current, among others.
"Mr. Chairman: Dr. Benedí is the author of the Benedí Doctrine about the institutional violation of human rights by the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba. Dr. Benedí has been fighting, during the last three decades, in the defense of freedom and dignity for human beings, for the security of the Americas and for the liberation of Cuba".
Senator Symms requested that the denouncement were included in the Congressional Record, which was done, and it literally reads:
"UNITED STATES SENATE - CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - AUGUST 2, 1989
"Institutional Violation of Human Rights. This has been documented by Dr. Claudio F. Benedí for over twenty years. This effort has been recognized in the Americas and Europe as the "Benedí Doctrine". It has even attained `naturalization documents'.
"The violation of human rights documented by Dr. Benedí has two dimensions: The human dimension and the institutional dimension.
"The human dimension can be violated by authoritarian regimes of the right or of the left. In the first case, it is possible to rectify it; in the second case it can be mitigated but not eliminated, since is it intrinsic with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
"The institutional violation can only be committed by communist or nazi-fascists regimes. It is committed in their constitutions and laws; in their criminal codes; in their criminal procedure laws and in any other laws in force, as it is currently happening in Cuba.
"The institutional violation is brought about by the total deprivation of human rights, since the communist system proclaims that the State has all rights and the human person has no rights vis-à-vis the State. But what happens is that for the communists, the State is represented by the Communist Party, which in turn is directed by a small `clique' of people, and these are controlled by the `tyrant on duty', whether his name may be Stalin, Castro, etc. That tyrant thus becomes the `owner of all lives and properties'.
"There is not a `rule of law' in those communist regimes where institutional violations have been enacted, as it has been stated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Organization of American States. And where the `rule of law' does not exist, there cannot be any defense or respect for human rights. Therefore, the violations of human rights have been institutionalized, as an integrating element of the same communist system.
"What human rights are being violated? All of them. Not only those God-given, that are inalienable and imprescriptible, but also the very rights to life, freedom, etc., that have been engraved in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the Human Being, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"The Bill of Rights Amendment for human rights is included in the United States Constitution, that is over 200 years old. General Lafayette proposed similar human rights for the French Constitution, as an addendum to that Constitution. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Cuba and all other communist-subjugated countries, those rights are precisely the ones that are institutionally violated, since in the communist regimes, according to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the human person `delegates' his/her rights to the totalitarian state".
THE "BALSEROS" (RAFTERS) AND THE RIGHT TO FREE PASSAGE IN CUBA
The right of free passage for Cubans has been violated in Cuba, both for entering and for departing the country, and even within the country, the internal passage is strictly regulated, in an explicit violation of that legitimate right that every human being has, for entering and leaving his/her country as desired.
Due largely to the difficulties for getting a free departure from the country, male and female Cubans of all ages, races and walks of life risk their lives in taking to the sea on whatever will float, including the improvised rafts that lack the most elementary resources and safety measures. It has been reported that, out of every four persons who leave Cuba under such circumstances, in many instances only one is able to arrive alive in the United States and other countries of Central-America and the Caribbean.
Despite the almost unsurmountable obstacles, Cubans have continued to leave in 1998, 1999 and 2000, which constitutes a human denunciation against the violations of the rights of passage for human beings in the Americas.
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN CUBA
We have denounced and we herein reiterate the denunciation of religious persecution in Cuba; the closure and confiscation of religious schools of all denominations, the suppression of all means of religious communication, and the punishments imposed to those who somehow would practice their religions. Public instruction is materialist and atheist. The State continues to be an atheist one and the system is a materialist one, contrary to all religions. Some isolated practices are allowed as propaganda, or as an incentive to cooperate with the system. But these meager expressions do not solve the problem of human rights for the Cubans who are believers, since these violations are intrinsic with the communist system. The communist system is an anthropocentric one, without any sense of transcendence towards God. There circumstances are still persisting on this year 2000, at times similarly and in other instances disguised, after the Pope's visit to Cuba and the Brazil and Havana Summits.
The totalitarian communist regime of Cuba officially denies the existence of God and it thus teaches at all levels.
UPON THE CLOSURE OF THE SESSIONS OF THE SO-CALLED "ASSEMBLY OF THE POPULAR POWER", CASTRO REITERATED THE SOCIALIST-MARXIST-LENINIST NATURE OF HIS REGIME
Some naïve and useful idiots expected an opening from the regime, a greater respect for human rights, some reforms, albeit small. All of that was totally and absolutely shattered when Castro himself ratified the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist nature of his regime and denied any possibility of change or reform. That began in 1996, and he has reiterated it in 1997, 1998, 1999 and now 2000.
On all of those years, the communist regime has reiterated that neither "perestroika" nor "glasnost" were to be permitted in Cuba, because what happened in the Soviet Union will not be repeated in Cuba, since the communist regime will be in force in Cuba forever.
"WATCHING A CRIME IN SILENCE IS EQUIVALENT TO COMMITTING IT"
Those words were pronounced by José Martí, the Apostle of Cuban Independence. Now, when some political and "revolutionary" leaders in the Americas tear down their vestments upon hearing of any violation of human rights by a rightist government, we would like to see who, through a "subsequent connivence", would be willing to legitimate a self-avowed and convicted Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist regime, or who would dare to try to "cleanse it in the Jordan River of the Inter-American System", in trying to reinstate it into that System and the OAS. That would be complicity with the communist totalitarian tyranny and its atrocities, and an affront to the Americas.
On these last four decades, over 44,700 male and female Cubans have been executed by firing squads at the Wall; meanwhile, over 475,000 male and female Cubans have gone through the filthy communist dungeons as political prisoners, and there are over 2,700 of them down there. There has existed, and there still exists, a numerous group of "PLANTADOS", or political prisoners who refuse to submit to the so-called communist "rehabilitation". Besides, there are hundreds of male and female "conscience prisoners" who make up the "historical cadre of prisoners".
WE FINALLY REQUEST THE FOLLOWING:
Honorable Chairman and Honorable Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:
We request the speedy processing of the eighth report, that this Commission has agreed to prepare and publish; that this CIDH will denounce and condemn, with its inclusion in said report and also in the Annual Report that this Commission will prepare for the Ordinary General Assembly of the Organization of American States, that there is no state of law in Cuba; that the rule of law does not exist there; that there are institutional and human violations of human rights in Cuba; that the rights to property have been not only violated but eliminated; that all properties owned by Cubans and foreigners have been confiscated, in violation of their rights consecrated in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Men and in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights; that there is in Cuba a totalitarian anti-democratic regime; that the so-called "socialist legality" of Cuba is illegitimate and violates human rights in a totalitarian manner; that male and female Cuban political prisoners receive a "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment"; that the censure against Castro's totalitarian regime be reiterated for the barbaric sinking of the tugboat "13 de Marzo" and the attack against the Freedom Flotilla, as well as for the shooting-down of the two small planes belonging to "Brothers to the Rescue" that resulted in the deaths of their four passengers; that the repression has increased as there nears the catastrophic end of the "tragic utopia", undemocratic and incompatible with the Inter-American System; that executions by firing squads continue in Cuba for political reasons, and that the "Rapid Action Brigades" are only repressive instruments for the Socialist-Marxist-Leninist regime, once again proven in the protest that took place on August 5, 1994, and later in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000, of late against independent journalists, dissidents and oppositionists. That the totalitarian communist regime of Cuba be condemned for the genocide that we have denounced in this testimony, and that the CLASH OF TWO CULTURES, TWO IDEOLOGIES AND TWO SYSTEMS is taking place there, with the replacement of the democratic system by a Marxist-Communist one, consequently bringing about institutional and human violations of human rights, a legal, cultural and total violation of those human rights declared and guaranteed in our theocentrical Judeo-Christian culture, defended and protected by this prestigious and respected CIDH, vis-à-vis the anthropocentric totalitarian system, one without God, that the communist system has been and will always continue to be.
That the communist spies sponsored by the totalitarian regime of Cuba, discovered and denounced, were performing espionage work "that threatens the security of the United States and of all other nations of the Americas, violate their human rights and try to involve Cuban exiles in those violations committed by them, seeking to silence the enemies of the communist regime.
The Marxist-Leninist (communist) system is "intrinsically atheist and materialist, with no sense of transcendence towards God, in which the human person is rendered helpless in front of the totalitarian State, that alleges to have and that really usurps all rights, leaving the human person deprived of all rights vis-à-vis the State, which constitutes an affront to God, the Free World and Democracy.
I remain yours, with my utmost respect and consideration,
Dr. Claudio F. Benedí Beruff Coordinator for Human Rights since the inception of this prestigious CIDH, and the Representative of the Associations and Organizations of Male and Female Current and Former Political Prisoners; of the Historical Political Prisoners; of the Commission for Human Rights of the Cuban Municipalities in Exile; of the National College of Cuban Attorneys in Exile; of the Association of Relatives of Former Cuban Male and Female Political Prisoners; of the College of Attorneys of Havana in Exile, and of the Cuban Patriotic Board. [Home]