CNN/Reuters: Report: Human rights not improved under Raul Castro

Report: Human rights not improved under Raul Castro
January 9, 2007


Fidel Castro's chair is conspicuously empty as his brother Raul attends a Cuban National Assembly session in December in Havana.

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Respect for human rights has not improved in Cuba under interim leader Raul Castro, though the number of Cubans jailed for political reasons has fallen to 283, the country's main rights watchdog said Tuesday.

Cuba remains the nation in the Western Hemisphere with the most political prisoners in proportion to its population, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said in its year-end report.

The group, illegal but tolerated by Cuba's communist government, expects the civil liberties situation, from freedom of association and information to the right to travel and self-employment, to remain unchanged or deteriorate further because no reforms are in sight.

"The provisional team designated by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro has done nothing to improve fundamental rights," said the commission, led by veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez. "Cuba's government continues to violate each and every civil, political and economic right," it said....

"Due to the oppressive and repressive nature of the totalitarian regime and its enormous capability for social control, we cannot see any factors or components that are able to exert effective pressure on the government from inside Cuban society to begin a process of modernizing reforms," it said.

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The International Red Cross, which has been denied access to Cuban prisons since 1989, recently said it would urge Havana to resume the visits....

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/01/09/cuba.rights.reut/index.html