As Guillermo Farinas' hunger strike ends with the release of 52
dissidents, questions remain on why President Raul Castro isn't doing
more to advance human rights.
July 10, 2010
At least one life saved. Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas ended a
hunger strike following the announcement that 52 political prisoners
would be freed from jail under a deal Spain and the Roman Catholic
Church negotiated with the government of President Raul Castro. The
agreement came too late for Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of
conscience who died in February on a hunger strike protesting
mistreatment, but just in time for the 48-year-old Farinas. A
psychologist and journalist, Farinas was seeking the release of other
political prisoners. He stopped eating a day after Zapata Tamayo died,
and had been fed intravenously at a hospital since March and recently
suffered life-threatening complications.
Of course we welcome the release of the dissidents, who were arrested
during a government crackdown in the spring of 2003, even as we question
why the Cuban government needs three to four months to free them, and
why the prisoners apparently must trade jail for exile. Furthermore,
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission for Human
Rights and National Reconciliation, has identified another 115 political
prisoners who will not be released. That may be fewer than at any other
time since the 1959 revolution, as Sanchez says, but it is still
unacceptable.
So too are the laws and lack of due process that landed the dissidents
in jail, and the conditions in which they are held. The prisoners are
critics of the government, not violent plotters. And it's too easy for
the government to refill the jails; that's what happened the last time
it freed scores of detainees, following Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit
to the island. As Amnesty International stated in a report published
last month, "Those who voice views beyond those permitted by the
authorities continue to be intimidated and harassed, arbitrarily
detained or imprisoned after unfair, often summary, trials."
Zapata Tamayo's death was an international embarrassment for Cuba, and
Castro clearly wanted to avoid a repeat with Farinas. Moreover, he wants
Europe to relax its Common Position on Cuba, a 1996 policy that makes
normalization of relations contingent on advances in human rights and
democracy. The Spanish government argues that engagement is more
productive than confrontation, and we agree. That's why we urge the U.S.
Congress to pass a bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee last
week to repeal a ban on American travel to Cuba and weaken other Cold
War sanctions. It should do so not because Cuba deserves it, or has
earned it by freeing 52 prisoners, but because the 50-year-old trade and
travel prohibitions have failed to bring about democratic change in half
a century.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cuba-20100710,0,173688.story
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