Human Rights: Preliminary Notes & Links

 

Cuba is a representative democracy. The Communist Party of Cuba, plays no role in the electoral process. Candidates are nominated not by political parties or well-heeled politicos, but by the people themselves in open, public meetings or by their elected representatives who were themselves nominated at such public meetings. To prevent abuses of power (intimidation, etc.), secret ballot votes are conducted at each level (municipal, provincial and national). Voters even have the right to reject all candidates and to call for a whole new slate of candidates at the provincial and national levels. Also, it costs nothing to be elected even to the highest political office in the land.

Political repression in Cuba, though not without some justification, appears to be quite limited in scope. According to a recent NBC News report, "CIA: Most Cubans loyal to homeland", there are only about 100 dissident activists with perhaps a support group of 1000 more (out of a population of about 11,000,000), and they have almost no public support. Incredibly, they often meet with foreign delegations visiting Cuba as though they were somehow representative of the Cuban people! Some even travel abroad and appear in the commercial media there. They also receive funding from the US government (e.g. USAID) -- the same government that has invaded Cuba, and sponsored terrorism and sabotage there, as well as the almost universally condemned embargo.

(Historically, it is interesting to compare the Cuban and American revolutions on the issue of human rights and the mass exodus that followed each.)


Some useful notes and links:

 

Even the renowned human rights organization, Amnesty International, recently felt compelled to break with its long-standing policy and to comment on what would seem to be the fundamental injustice of the US embargo. In their 2001 Annual Report on Cuba, they write:

The US embargo against Cuba continued. The Cuban government has traditionally argued that it is justified in depriving dissidents of fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly in order to maintain the unity of the country against hostile forces abroad.

As if to indicate that what it sees as political oppression is a result, at least in part, of the US embargo, in the very next sentence, they write:

Although AI's mandate does not permit it to take a position on the US embargo against Cuba or any other type of sanction, AI recognizes that the embargo has increased hardship within Cuba and has contributed, for example, to poor prison conditions.

Although Amnesty stops short of saying that this justifies what it sees as political oppression, this is clearly a condemnation of the embargo and a recognition of the suffering it has caused. In my opinion, Cubans have a lot to lose, and are morally justified in aggressively defending their Revolution and their democracy against those seeking to create disunity among them in the face of powerful and ruthless enemies. The Cuban electoral system seems more than adequate to safeguard against abuses of power and makes the government accountable to the majority--more so, in my opinion, than even in the USA or Canada.

Compare Amnesty International (AI) Reports on Cuba, Mexico and the USA. I think that even if you take these reports at face value, you will find that Cuba compares favourably. On the one hand, we have what AI calls "harassment" in Cuba. On other we have "paramilitary death squads" and "torture." Judge for yourself:

 

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