IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 96

tions already committed and still being
committed, according to our own President Castro.
Now we can say: Human rights are
violated in Cuba
Before Obama arrived, we knew he
would meet with dissidents and speak of
human rights. His Cuban counterpart
would not be able to evade the issue.
And he did not. During the press conference on March 21, journalist Andrea
Meachung (NBC) asked about the
guarantee of these rights in Cuba. Castro responded with another question:
"How many countries in the world meet
the 61 human rights?" He answered
himself: "None. Some meet less; others
more. We are within the last ones. Cuba
complies with 47 human rights." Of
those 47 guaranteed rights (according to
him) he mentioned free public health,
free and universal access to education,
that every Cuban child is born in a
hospital regardless of their economic
status or how remote his or her family
lives; health and education (again); ah,
equal pay for women and men for equal
work, although practically women have
less access to the best paid job. It cannot
be denied that Castro showed signs of
goodwill. Not only by admitting that
Cuba complied with 47 human rights
(therefore at least 14 are violated, if we
take his calculation as correct), but also
expressing willingness to release, before
the night was over, all Cuban political
prisoners if the Cuban-American journalist who asked about them could give
him a list of names. Provide such a list
would have been very difficult for the
journalist. In Cuba, the status of political prisoner or prisoner of conscience is
not recognized. Writers and journalists
Jorge Olivera and Raúl Rivero, incar-

cerated during the Black Spring (2003),
told me they were imprisoned with
common criminals despite the fact that
they had been tried for violating Law 88
(a.k.a. Gag Law), which punishes anyone who, in the interests of a foreign
state, commits an act with the intent to
diminish the independence of the Cuban
state or the integrity of its territory,
incurring in ten to twenty years of
prison or death. That law constitutes a
threat to those who exercise freedom of
speech and press, and it has not been
repealed. In most cases, as exemplified
by writer Angel Santiesteban, the official cause of trial and imprisonment is a
criminal offense, but actually it is a
punishment for political activism. Santiesteban was jailed for allegedly injuring the mother of his child; however, all
warnings he received before being
paroled were related to their links with
dissidents. Officially, he was a common
prisoner, but he was treated as a political prisoner without having such status
granted.
Changing everything that must be
changed ... so that everything remains
the same
Cuban authorities are resorting now to
the tactic of making short and arbitrary
detentions. It would have been more
productive and interesting that the
journalist asked for the abuses against
the Ladies in White, who tried —the
very Sunday President Obama arrived
in Havana— to maintain their routine of
peacefully marching. Many of them
were arrested together with other dissidents, as if the Cuban authorities also
refused to vary their routine. Opponents
and human rights activists say they are
suffering temporary detentions and the
reports have increased in recent months.

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