BRIEF: Castro’s Retirement Does Not Signal Relief for Political Prisoners

HAVANA, Cuba- There are an estimated 230 people imprisoned in Cuba for expressing their political beliefs. While this number is down from 283 at the end of 2006, human rights activists do not equate this decrease with political transformation. 

"Even if Castro no longer calls the shots, the repressive machinery he constructed over almost half a century remains fully intact," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, a director at Human Rights Watch, a New York based non-governmental organization.

Amnesty International declared 58 of the prisoners to be “prisoners of conscience”-teachers, journalists and human rights defenders- imprisoned for peaceful expressions of their beliefs. Amnesty also contends that the trials convicting these prisoners failed to conform to international standards of justice.

While Cuba signed the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Amnesty declared that reform must start with the release of all prisoners of conscience and judicial review of unfair trials and the abolition of the death penalty.

For more information, please see:

Washington Post - No end to repression after Castro, activist says - 20 February 2008

Amnesty International - Cuba: reforms to human rights much needed - 19 February 2008