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CUBA: Human Rights Organizations in Cuba Send Violations Reports to United Nations Council

26.01.2009

Cuba. January 26, 2009. Cuban Democratic Directorate. At the beginning of February, the government of Cuba will undergo a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Two major independent organizations of human rights defenders on the Island were able to provide reports summarizing patterns of systematic human rights violations in Cuba. Governmental front organizations submitted numerous reports to try to portray the regime in a positive light.

"Despite reprisals that we have lived with in recent months to prevent our work as human rights defenders, we managed to get our report, albeit a summary, of the situation in the prisons and deaths caused by Cuban prison authorities; repression, arbitrary detention and imprisonment of opposition figures and human rights activists; cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other injustices that are committed in a systematic way in Cuba, and that occurred during 2008, "said Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, executive secretary of the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs of Cuba, one of the organizations that delivered a report to the UN Human Rights Council to be taken into account during the upcoming February 5 UPR session in Geneva, Switzerland.

On Sunday January 25, the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced that this meeting will be attended by Justice Minister Maria Esther Reus and other senior officials of the Cuban dictatorship. Human rights activists in Cuba have in recent months repeatedly reported increasing repression against opposition activists on the Island and the population in general. Their investigations revealed an increase in the number of arbitrary arrests to over 1,500 according to a report of the Council of Human Rights Reporters in Cuba distributed earlier this month.

"We have asked that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights signed by the Cuban government in early 2008 be published. We have formed the Committee against Mistreatment to collect information on cases of impunity and injustice in the country. We have not received a reply from the authorities, the only thing we have received is more repression," said Julio Romero Muñoz, who heads the Movement in Solidarity with Free Speech, the other independent organization in Cuba that presented a report on inhumane and degrading treatment on the Island

In addition Amnesty International, Centrist Democrat International, Freedom Now, Human Rights First, Human rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Consultoría Jurídica Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, and Christian Solidarity Worldwide have submitted reports on human rights conditions inside Cuba.

Below are the links of these reports and the report prepared by the UN on the subject of human rights in Cuba that will be debated next February 5.