European muscle needed to change Castro’s policy

Date: 19/09/1996

IN the name of human rights, the United States and the European Union have implemented radically distinct policies toward Cuba.

But so far, neither has brought about a fundamental change in the human rights situation on the island.

American policy has relied for decades on the dogma that isolation will force the government of President Fidel Castro to improve its human rights record. The EU's policy is based on the premise that political dialogue and economic engagement will produce the sought-after changes.

While American policy is mainly interested in satisfying domestic electoral concerns rather than building an effective strategy to advance the human rights cause, Europeans have failed to apply the leverage they have been developing over the Cuban government in recent years to promote reform.

Moreover, any improvement in the island's economy which may have resulted from the arrival of European investment has not been matched by any greater opportunity for civil society.

Nearly 40 years after Fidel Castro came to power, the Cuban government systematically continues to violate the rights of freedom of expression, association, assembly, privacy, and due process of law. Indeed, the Cuban penal code provides a solid legal foundation for the repression of political dissidence.

Laws defining such crimes as “enemy propaganda”, “clandestine printing”, and “contempt of authority” are vaguely worded and wide-reaching, with an almost limitless potential for discriminatory application by government officials.

Security police continue to arrest, detain, harass and intimidate human rights monitors, labour organisers and pro-democracy activists. The latter are merely non-violent Cubans whose only crime is to dissent publicly from the official line.

Hundreds of Cubans remain imprisoned for peacefully opposing government policy. They include Ruben Hoyo Ruiz, whom I interviewed as he served out a six-year sentence for writing a letter describing the human rights situation in Cuba to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Last February, dozens of leaders from a coalition of more than 135 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were imprisoned as they attempted to prepare for their first meeting. This crack-down on the right of association clearly demonstrated zero tolerance for the growth of civil society in Cuba.

Lately, Cuba's security apparatus has introduced a novel repressive tactic: seeking to 'persuade' dissidents to leave the country rather than face prosecution and inevitable imprisonment.

Isolation is not always a bad policy against repressive governments. Economic sanctions played an important role in South Africa's transition to a democratic multi-racial society. More recently, in Haiti, they helped to re-establish President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as the country's first democratically-elected president.

But in Cuba, the US embargo has been ineffective and its breadth, by preventing Americans and Cubans from freely exchanging information “regardless of frontiers”, violates the United States' international human rights obligations under Article

19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

To some extent, the embargo's ineffectiveness has resulted from the fact that it is not part of a principled human rights policy, but is instead a blunt tool for the overthrow of the Castro regime.

It is not difficult to conclude that, after operating for over 30 years, the policy of isolation has failed to bring about improvements in Cubans' basic enjoyment of human rights.

The EU's policy toward Cuba has so far resulted in the periodic release and subsequent exile of several political prisoners.

Although these results are of unquestionable humanitarian value, more fruitful rewards could have been expected from several years of constructive engagement and dialogue.

Neither the content of the laws under which dissidents are imprisoned, nor their practical application, has been even minimally influenced by EU policy and, in effect, the vicious circle of human rights repression continues.

Furthermore, European corporations, along with firms from Canada, Mexico and various Latin American countries, continue to profit from joint ventures with the Cuban government in which basic labour rights - including that to form independent trade unions - are outlawed.

Profiting from this shameful arrangement can only be justified if investors press Castro to repeal legislation which violates the basic international principles governing modern labour relations, including the most fundamental: the right to freedom of association.

Until the EU manages to achieve concrete human rights improvements which will bring about the transformation of Cuba's repressive structures, its approach will remain as discredited as Washington's opposite policy of isolation.

An open dialogue between the Union and Cuba does not on its own serve human rights. If the EU wishes to promote human rights in Cuba, it must use its influence as a means to achieve that end.

As a first step, the Union should insist that Cuba grant unconditional access to Carl-Johan Groth, a Swedish diplomat named by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 1992 as special rapporteur to monitor and report publicly on human rights in Cuba.

Ever since Ambassador Groth was nominated, the Cuban government has refused to allow him to set foot on the island. Not even Chile's General Augusto Pinochet dared to show such open defiance of the international community.

The EU must also insist that Havana grant the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) unlimited access to Cuba's prisons, from which it has been barred since 1989.

The ICRC does not publicise its findings, but works behind the scenes to protect the rights of political prisoners. Allowing the ICRC access to prisons

is a minimal demonstration of the commitment to human rights which can be expected of even repressive and highly secretive governments.

Above all, the EU must use its relations with the Cuban government to press for the repeal of Cuban legislation which makes the exercise of internationally-protected rights, such as the freedom of speech and association, a criminal offence.

The cases of Carlos Pérez Trueba and Dominiciano Torres Roca, both of whom I interviewed when I formed part of the only international non-governmental human rights delegation allowed into Cuba in 1995, illustrate the personal tragedies behind this repressive legislation.

Pérez Trueba has been in prison since 1994 for writing a book, as yet unfinished, about the political, economic and social situation in Cuba. Torres Roca recently completed a three-year sentence for writing the slogan “Down with Fidel” on a wall.

The credibility of the EU's policy hangs in the balance. Constructive engagement - and any future cooperation between Brussels and Havana - should be used as a lever to achieve change.

If human rights conditions do not improve, Europe's diplomatic approach will be revealed to have been a resounding failure.

José Miguel Vivanco is executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas. Human Rights Watch is a non-governmental organisation established in 1978 to monitor and promote the observance of internationally-recognised human rights in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and among the signatories of the Helsinki accords.