UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Fifty fourth Session

16 March - 24 April 1998

Agenda item 8

Question of the human rights of all persons subjected to any form of detention or inprisonment.

Oral Statement by the TRANSNATIONAL RADICAL PARTY an

NGO in consultative status (Category General)

Mr Chairman,

There is a country - and unfortunately it's not the only one - in which its authoritarian regime does not allow prisons to be visited. There is a country - and unfortunately it's not the only one - in which not even a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights was allowed to visit this contry and its prisons.

There is a country where, according to what the same Special Rapporteur reported, the judiciary power is totally controlled by the one-party regime.

There is a country where no trade union activity is allowed.

There is a country where no freedom of association exists.

There is a country where "the electoral law does not genuinely make it possible for persons opposed to the government and not looked on favourably by the authorities to compete freely" as the UN Special Report states.

Mr Chairman,

what we were saying a few days ago in this very same hall about the need for progressively transforming the effectiveness of the sovranational Right and Law, about the need for going on the path opened by the establishment of the International ad hoc Tribunals on Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the path which will bring the world to have the International Criminal Court, what we were saying brings each of us and everybody to look at the evidence that the entire island of Cuba is a prison.

This is a country that has not adopted any measure to comply with the minimum international standards for the treatement of prisoners. Beatings, far from constituting isolated incidents, are used habitually and systematically by Cuban State agents as a mean of punishment or intimidation. Particularly serious is that the complaints of mistreatement brought before the competent authorities never go anywhere. It is clear in the light of the facts that the Cuban State not only violates the principles and standards set forth in the various International Human Rights Instruments, but that it breaks its own laws.

It is a matter of ill-treatement of prisoners, and it is even something worse: in such a state individuals can be arrested for neboulous offenses as "disrespect", "resisting authority", "enemy propaganda" and "a person's special proclivity to commit offences as demonstrated by conduct that is manifestly contrary to the norms of socialist morality". We are quoting the Cuban Penal Code.

In such a country can happen and it does happen, that a citizen can be arrested for spreading enemy propaganda and for publicly criticizing the system. There is an example of a prisoner who was kept in solitary confinement in punishment cells a number of times for disciplinary reasons. He has in several occasion been beaten. This same prisoner has been lately condemned to an additional four years inprisonment for having refused to shout "Viva Fidel Castro".

We are not doing anything else but quoting the most recent Reports made by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cuba, Mr.Carl-John Groth. On the wonderful island of Cuba there are prisoners, political prisoners. Some of them are members of our organization, the Transnational Radical Party.

Mr Chairman,

it is time to reaffirm that the US embargo - something very different from a worldwide embargo - is just an alibi to the Cuban regime and to those, numerous, who are still considering that the totalitarian cuban regime is a paradise, a promise of a new world. Forgetting exactely that the wonderful island is a huge prison, accepting that top-officials of this country reaffirm that human and individual rights can and must be sacrificed for the sake of a leading class, hidden by the pretext of a "socialist morality".

Mr Chairman,

in the same way like the members of the Transnational Radical Party who are currently in prison in Cuba just because of having expressed their opinion, a number of us has been knowing prisons and tribunals. Just like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King did, we have to affirm law against illegality, Right against violations of Right and rights.

Nonviolent individuals, gandhian organizations, Mr.Chairman do so, and will continue to do so.

Hasta la victoria of the rule of law.

I thank you, Mr Chairman