Cuba authorities urged to stop harassing dead activist’s family
22 February 2011

Amnesty International has urged Cuban authorities to end the harassment of relatives of a human rights activist who died during a hunger strike last year.

Reina Luisa Tamayo, whose son Orlando Zapata Tamayo died at a Havana prison in February 2010, told Amnesty International she was arrested by state security agents who threatened to stop her and other mourners from commemorating the anniversary of Orlando’s death in church, on 23 February.

“The fact that the Cuban authorities have so far failed to initiate an investigation into Orlando’s death is outrageous and preventing his family from properly celebrating his life is a scandal,” said Javier Zuñiga, Special Advisor at Amnesty International.

Tamayo, 72, her husband and another activist, Daniel Mesa, were forcefully detained on Friday 18 February by more than a dozen local security agents as they were walking around their village in Banes, north-west Cuba. Tamayo and her husband were released 12 hours later and Mesa, two days later.

Tamayo said the agents had threatened to prevent her leaving her home and go to the cemetery where her son is buried, in breach of her human rights.

“The recent releases of activists in Cuba, who shouldn’t have been put in prison in the first place, will only be meaningful if, once all activists are released, they are able to carry out their legitimate work defending human rights without fear of reprisals,” said Javier Zuñiga.

“The harassment suffered by people like Orlando Tamayo’s relatives clearly goes to show that things still have not changed in Cuba and the authorities need to do much more to ensure human rights are a reality for all.”

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arrested in March 2003 and sentenced to three years in prison in May 2004 for “disrespect”, “public disorder” and “resistance”.

He was subsequently tried several times on further charges of “disobedience” and “disorder in a penal establishment” - the last time in May 2009 - and was serving a 36 year-sentence at the time of his death in prison.

Reina Tamayo said she intends to live in exile in the USA along with a number of her relatives and has been granted all relevant documents by the US authorities.

The Cuban government has yet to issue the necessary permits.

URGENT ACTION

MOTHER HARASSED FOR MARCHING FOR DEAD SON

The mother of a Cuban prisoner of conscience who died after hunger striking has been repeatedly harassed and intimidated in an attempt to stop her from organizing marches to commemorate her son's death. The next march is planned for 15 August.

Reina Luisa Tamayo is the mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of conscience who died on 22 February 2010, having spent several weeks on hunger strike whilst in prison. Since her son’s death, Reina Luisa Tamayo has organized weekly marches on Sundays in the town of Barnes, Holguin Province, Cuba, to honour her son's memory.

Relatives and friends accompany Reina Luisa Tamayo on these weekly marches from her home to attend mass at the Nuestra Señora de la Caridad Church, in Barnes and from there to the cemetery where Orlando Zapata Tamayo is buried. Last Sunday, 8 August, the group reported that as soon as they tried to leave Reina Luisa Tamayo’s house to start their march, they were confronted a few metres away from the house by hundreds of government supporters who blocked their way and beat some of the participants. They were pushed back to the house and followed into the house’s garden. The participants tried twice more to leave the house and resume the march but they were again violently confronted by the government supporters, who stayed outside the house until late in the afternoon. According to Reina Luisa Tamayo, during all this time a police patrol was close to her house watching as the events unfolded and failing to intervene.

The group have reported how prior to 8 August, they have also been confronted by government supporters and state security officials who have gathered around Reina Luisa Tamayo's house and prevented them from marching, sometimes preventing them from reaching the church, the cemetery, or both. They have also reported how state security officials and police officers have set up check points on the routes to Reina Luisa Tamayo’s house on the day prior to the march to prevent people from reaching the house and joining the march.

PLEASE WRITE IMMEDIATELY in Spanish or your own language:
Calling on the authorities to ensure an immediate halt to the harassment and intimidation of Reina Luisa Tamayo by government supporters, and that of her relatives and friends and any other citizens who seek to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression, assembly and association;
Calling on the authorities to permit Reina Luisa Tamayo and others to march peacefully as is their right on Sundays.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 22 SEPTEMBER 2010 TO:

Head of State and Government
Raúl Castro Ruz Presidente
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +53 7 8333085 (via Foreign Ministry); +1 2127791697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)
Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission to UN)

Salutation: Su Excelencia/Your Excellency

Interior Minister
General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +53 7 8333085 (via Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
+1 2127791697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)

Salutation: Su Excelencia/Your Excellency

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. Check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.

URGENT ACTION

MOTHER HARASSED FOR MARCHING FOR DEAD SON
Additional Information

Reina Luisa Tamayo is one of the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), a group of women relatives and friends of prisoners detained during a major crackdown on government critics in March 2003. In 2003, over several days, the Cuban authorities arrested 75 men and women for their peaceful expression of critical opinions of the government. They were subjected to summary trials and were sentenced to long prison terms of up to 28 years. Amnesty International declared the 75 convicted dissidents to be prisoners of conscience, 32 of them remain in prison.

Damas de Blanco organizes peaceful weekly marches in Havana where they distribute flowers and call for the release of their relatives and friends. In March 2010 Damas de Blanco organized a daily march for a week to mark the seventh anniversary of the arrest of their relatives. On 17 of March 2010, their march was forcibly broken up by Cuban police, who briefly detained several women. Some of the women claimed that they were beaten by the police.

UA: 174/10 Index: AMR 25/012/2010 Issue Date: 11 August 2010

(Source: Amnesty International).

By MARC LACEY

MEXICO CITY — The Cuban government’s announcement last week that it will release 52 political prisoners has done little to quell the island’s fiercest critics, who are asking President Raúl Castro, “What about the rest?”

But exactly how many people are said to remain jailed on the island because of their political beliefs varies widely, depending on who is doing the counting. On the low side, Amnesty International says that only one confirmed prisoner of conscience will remain in Cuba should the Castro government follow through on its plans to release all 52 in the coming months. That one prisoner is the lawyer Rolando Jiménez Posada, and the human rights group — which coined the term prisoner of conscience in the 1960s — called on Cuba to immediately release him as well.

Before the announcement of the latest planned release, the Cuban Commission on Human Rights, an independent group that is tolerated on the island but not recognized by the government, put the number of political prisoners at 167, which it said was the lowest since the 1959 revolution in which Fidel Castro came to power. Its new figure, should all 52 get out, will be 115.

Other groups, however, say the real figure is much higher. Human Rights Watch does not specify an exact number, but includes in its tally scores of people who have been arrested in recent years for the vague Cuban crime of “dangerousness."

Some former prisoners contend that there is a political element to so many detentions in Cuba — and that the government does not allow adequate legal representation to those it wants isolated. They say the real number probably reaches into the thousands.

“If the Castro tyranny really would like to make a good faith gesture, it ought to liberate all those prisoners in its dungeons,” said Miguel Sigler Amaya, an activist now based in Miami who spent two years in a Cuban prison for “disobedience” and “resistance,” and contends that thousands of fellow Cubans are detained on similarly nebulous charges. One of his brothers, Ariel, a political prisoner, was released last month after suffering health problems in prison, and another, Guido, is among those expected to be released.

The brothers were among the activists and journalists rounded up by the government in March 2003 in a mass crackdown on dissent known as Black Spring. Those detainees were arrested on various charges and convicted after brief, closed trials. Their sentences ranged from six years to 28 years.

For its part, the Cuban government puts the number of political prisoners that it is holding at zero. Fidel Castro, the ailing former president, acknowledged holding thousands of prisoners of conscience decades ago, but in recent years he has said that Cuban jails hold only common criminals and those who illegally acted as paid agents of the United States.

One reason for the varying figures is the definition of who, exactly, is a political prisoner. Another is that the Cuban government has not allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit its prisons.

Agreement on a precise figure is unlikely, as is determining why President Castro chose to make his drastic announcement now. Another looming question is how the United States, which has long called for the release of Cuba’s political prisoners and has welcomed those released in the past, will respond to President Castro’s overture.

“It’s something that is overdue but nevertheless very welcome.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters last week.

Acknowledging that its figure is on the low side, Amnesty International defines prisoners of conscience as those inmates jailed for their beliefs who have been found not to have used or advocated violence.

“Some other ones may not be on our radar,” said a spokeswoman for the group, Guadalupe Marengo, who noted that Amnesty had not been permitted to visit Cuba to conduct research in more than two decades.

Amnesty International said Mr. Posada, the one remaining Cuban inmate it considers a prisoner of conscience and thus entitled to immediate release, was given a 12-year sentence in 2003 for “disrespecting authority and revealing secrets about state security police,” after he participated in a peaceful demonstration calling attention to the plight of political prisoners.

Human Rights Watch, which conducted a surreptitious study inside Cuba last year, documented more than 40 cases of people imprisoned for “dangerousness” since Raúl Castro replaced his brother in 2006, as well as scores of other people sentenced for violating laws that criminalize free expression and association.

Noting that Cuba has conducted prisoner releases in the past and then gone on to fill its jails with even more political dissidents, Human Rights Watch said that the country’s judicial system clearly needed an overhaul.

“The international community needs to pressure Cuba to go beyond the periodic release of jailed dissidents and instead dismantle the repressive laws, courts and security forces that put them in prison in the first place,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, who secured the release of six prisoners from Cuba in 1995.

One aspect of the planned release that has critics of the Cuban government upset are reports that once the prisoners are liberated, they are to be flown out of the country, and thus will be far less able to continue their activism and hold the government accountable.


But Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Havana’s Roman Catholic archbishop, who played a critical role in negotiating the releases, suggested that leaving Cuba would be an option, not a requirement, for the former prisoners. The first 17 are expected to travel to Spain as early as Monday, church officials said. Others may choose other countries or decide to stay in Cuba, they said.

The decision, which was first reported by the Roman Catholic Church but later appeared in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, although with no mention that the inmates to be released were political prisoners, prompted the activist Guillermo Fariñas to end the hunger strike he had begun in February to press the government to release ailing prisoners.

But Mr. Fariñas would not take credit for the planned release. A statement that his supporters pressed up to a window in the hospital where he remained Sunday said, “Only Cuba, our nation, has won.”

Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.

30 June 2010 - Cuba's repressive legal system has created a climate of fear among journalists, dissidents and activists, putting them at risk of arbitrary arrest and harassment by the authorities, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in Cuba highlights provisions in the legal system and government practices that restrict information provided to the media and which have been used to detain and prosecute hundreds of critics of the government.

"The laws are so vague that almost any act of dissent can be deemed criminal in some way, making it very difficult for activists to speak out against the government. There is an urgent need for reform to make all human rights a reality for all Cubans," said Kerrie Howard, Deputy Americas Director at Amnesty International.

Yosvani Anzardo Hernández, the director of the Candonga online newspaper, is one of many Cuban independent journalists who have been arbitrarily arrested, interrogated and intimidated by the authorities.

In September 2009 he was arbitrarily detained for 14 days, before being released without charge. At the time, police also confiscated his computer, which hosted the website, and disconnected his telephone line.

Although Yosvani Anzardo is resigned to not continuing with the site, he still does not understand why it was closed. "We were hoping that the government understood that what we were doing was exercising a right, we didn't hurt anyone," said the journalist. "We tried very hard to give information about what was happening in the country. They [the authorities] considered this to be dangerous."

The Cuban state has a virtual monopoly on media while demanding that all journalists join the national journalists' association, which is in turn controlled by the Communist Party.

The authorities have also put in place filters restricting access to blogs that openly criticize the government and restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

The Cuban Constitution goes even further in curbing freedom of expression by stating that "[n]one of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to what is established in the Constitution and law, or contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism."

The Penal code specifies a range of vague criminal charges that can also be used to stifle dissent, such as "social dangerousness", "enemy propaganda", "contempt of authority", "resistance", "defamation of national institutions" and "clandestine printing".

Provisions of Law 88 on the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba have also been used to repress criticism and punish dissidents who work with foreign media.

With a judiciary that is neither independent, nor impartial, critics of the government find that an unlimited range of acts can be interpreted as criminal and end up facing trials that are often summary and unfair.

Cuban authorities deny the existence of political prisoners in the country but Amnesty International knows of at least 53 prisoners of conscience who remain incarcerated in the country for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and assembly.

One of 75 dissidents arrested in the "Black Spring" crackdown in 2003, independent journalist Pablo Pacheco Avila, was sentenced to a 20-year jail term for writing articles for foreign and online newspapers, being interviewed by foreign radio stations, and publishing information via the internet.

Despite some prisoners of conscience being released on health grounds, including Ariel Sigler Amaya in June 2010, most of them, including Pablo Pacheco Avila, are still imprisoned.

The Cuban government has sought to justify its failure to protect human rights by pointing to the negative effects of the embargo imposed by the US.

"It is clear that the US embargo has had a negative impact on the country but it is frankly a lame excuse for violating the rights of the Cuban people," said Kerrie Howard. "The government needs to find solutions to end human right violations, instead of excuses to perpetrate them."

Amnesty International called on the Cuban government to revoke or amend legal provisions that unlawfully limit freedom of expression, end harassment of dissidents, release all prisoners of conscience, and allow free exchange of information through the internet and other media.

"The release of all prisoners of conscience and the end of harassment of dissidents are measures that the Cuban government must take immediately and unconditionally," said Kerrie Howard.

"However, to honour its commitment to human rights, Cuba must also dismantle the repressive machinery built up over decades, and implement the reforms needed to make human rights a reality for all Cubans."

Reuters- Human rights group Amnesty International urged Cuba to release political prisoners and take other measures to end what it called a "climate of fear" for government opponents, in a report issued on Wednesday.

"The release of all prisoners of conscience and the end of harassment of dissidents are measures that the Cuban government must take immediately and unconditionally," Kerrie Howard, the group's Deputy Americas Director, said in a statement that accompanied the report on Cuba's limits to free expression.

"It is clear that the U.S. embargo has had a negative impact on the country, but it is frankly a lame excuse for violating the rights of the Cuban people," Howard said.

Amnesty International says Cuba has 53 "prisoners of conscience." The independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights says the island has about 190 political prisoners locked away, including the 53 cited by Amnesty.

Cuba views dissidents as mercenaries working for the United States and other enemies to undermine the government.

It has said control of government opponents will end when the United States stops promoting political change in Cuba.

The trade embargo was imposed 48 years ago after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in a 1959 revolution and remains in place, never having achieved its aim of toppling the government.

Amnesty International said Cuban laws restrict freedom of speech and stifle dissent, and are capriciously interpreted by courts serving the desires of the state.

It said the government "has a virtual monopoly on media while demanding that all journalists join the national journalists' association, which is in turn controlled by the (ruling) Communist Party."

The government blocks access to opposition Internet sites, the group said.

Cuba must "dismantle the repressive machinery built up over decades and implement the reforms needed to make human rights a reality for all Cubans," Howard said.

Cuba came under international criticism after the February death of dissident hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo and in recent weeks has slightly relaxed its policies toward dissidents.

One political prisoner was released earlier this month and 12 other moved to jails closer to their families following a meeting between President Raul Castro and Cardinal Jaime Ortega, head of the Cuban Catholic Church.

Church officials have said they are hoping for the release of more prisoners.

Cuban prisoner of conscience set to face trial

22 June 2010

Cuban President Raúl Castro must release a prisoner of conscience set to face trial on Tuesday on spurious charges after he organised a protest against the authorities, Amnesty International has said.


Darsi Ferrer, an independent journalist and Director of the Juan Bruno Zayas Health and Human Rights Centre in Havana, has been detained since his arrest in July 2009, just hours before a protest he had organised against repression in Cuba.

He was later charged with receiving illegally obtained goods and "violence or intimidation against a state official", charges that appear completely baseless.

“The Cuban authorities must drop these trumped up charges against Darsi Ferrer and release him immediately“, said Kerrie Howard, Americas deputy director at Amnesty International.

“He has been detained solely for his work promoting freedom of expression in Cuba”.

Darsi Ferrer has been held at a maximum security prison in the capital intended for inmates convicted of violent crimes. Ordinarily, an individual accused of these crimes would be bailed awaiting trial. However, Darsi Ferrer has been refused bail four times.

In February 2010, Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience.

On 9 July 2009, Darsi Ferrer and his wife, Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, were detained by state security officials and police officers just before the protest was about to begin.

Darsi Ferrer was handcuffed and beaten by more than eight police officers. He and Yusnaimy were released without charge a few hours later.

When they arrived home, they noticed that two bags of cement, some iron girders and two window frames, which had been on their property for a few months, were missing. According to neighbours, police officers had confiscated them.

On 21 July, four police officers took Darsi Ferrer in for questioning about the materials. Once at the police station he was detained and driven to a maximum security prison on the outskirts of Havana.

The other charge of "violence or intimidation against a state official" apparently relates to comments Darsi Ferrer was overheard making - that an injustice was being committed and sooner or later things would change in Cuba.

Darsi Ferrer has previously been detained and prevented from leading and participating in human rights events.

Every year since 2006, he has been detained or summoned to a police station on or around 10 December (International Human Rights Day), apparently to prevent him from participating in activities celebrating the day.

The right to a fair trial is limited in Cuba, with courts and prosecutors under government control.

Cuba’s National Assembly elects the President, Vice-President and the other judges of the Peoples’ Supreme Court, as well as the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General.

In addition, all courts are subordinate to the National Assembly and the Council of State, raising concerns over internationally recognised standards for fair trial and the right to trial by an independent and impartial tribunal.

The right to a fair and proper defence is also unlikely to be fully respected, as lawyers are employed by the Cuban government and as such may be reluctant to challenge prosecutors or evidence presented by the state intelligence services.