CUBA

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20 May 2008
Cuba Solidarity Day Offers Hope for Cuban Political Prisoners

By Eric Green
Staff Writer

Washington -- Cuba Solidarity Day May 21 is designed to offer hope to the hundreds of political prisoners being held in Cuba’s prisons, says Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Briefing reporters May 20 at the State Department’s Foreign Press Center, Shannon said that “there’s great hope for Cuba and great hope for Cuba's political prisoners. And that's really what [Cuba Solidarity Day] is about.”

The assistant secretary said the day also shows “broad solidarity with the people of Cuba” and makes it clear “that as we look forward toward a democratic future for Cuba, we believe that the ultimate drivers of that future, the ultimate protagonists of it will be the Cuban people.”

The United States believes that for a political transition in Cuba to be peaceful and enduring, “there has to be some kind of broad, comprehensive national dialogue about Cuba's future in which the Cuban people can participate,” Shannon said.

For that dialogue to be meaningful, he said, “the fear factor really has to be removed from Cuban political discourse, and that one of the most dramatic ways to begin this process would be by freeing political prisoners and for the Cuban regime to make clear that it has enough confidence in itself and enough confidence in the Cuban people that it can begin a dialogue without using the secret police and the security services as a moderator of political discourse.”

With that in mind, said Shannon, Cuba Solidarity Day aims “to call for the freedom of political prisoners, to call for full compliance with human rights accords that Cuba has signed,” with the most recent accord being U.N. covenants on political and civil rights.

“We believe that in an environment that promotes human rights and an environment that does not use the police and prisons to control political discourse, that Cuba would indeed be able to begin the kind of national dialogue necessary to chart a peaceful, democratic course for its future,” said Shannon.

When asked about Cuba’s charges that the United States is intervening in the island’s affairs, Shannon responded that “the accusation is not new.” The United States, he said, has a “well-known policy of humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, especially to political prisoners, to families of political prisoners and to dissidents. And we will continue that practice and policy.”

Shannon, in response to a question about Caribbean nations seeking to strengthen their relations with Cuba, said every country has a “sovereign right and authority to determine how it relates with other countries, and it's not our purpose to interfere with that.”

But he added that the United States is urging its “friends and partners in the region and those who do have diplomatic relationships with Cuba … to send clear messages that the international community expects and anticipates a democratic Cuba in the future,” and that the Cuban government must release its political prisoners and respect human rights.

MALTREATMENT OF CUBA’S POLITICAL PRISONERS

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez said May 18 that even though there is “some disagreement” in the international community about the long-running U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, “at least we can all agree on” the lack of human rights and the plight of political prisoners in the Caribbean nation.

Interviewed on CNN, Gutiérrez said the approximately 270 political prisoners in Cuba have been “thrown in dungeons” and in some cases small cells where the prisoners are “unable to stand up.”

Invariably, said Gutiérrez, the prisoners “get sick almost immediately and they're denied medical attention. This is brutality at its worst.”

Gutiérrez co-chairs, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, established in October 2003 to explore ways the United States can help bring about a transition to democracy in Cuba.

Gutiérrez, a native of Cuba, said it would be a bad idea to talk to the Cuban regime of Raúl Castro, as some people have suggested.

“I think we have to not legitimize [Raúl Castro] who is putting people in jail, putting them in dungeons,” Gutiérrez said. “[W]e owe it to the Cuban political prisoners. We owe it to their families to shine a spotlight on them and to show what's really going on. That's the priority.”

Gutiérrez announced at an April 2007 conference on Cuba that the U.S. government’s sponsorship of a "Day of Solidarity with the Cuban People” would promote peaceful democratic change in Cuba and show broad international support for the Cuban people.

See “Cuba Solidarity Day Reminds World of Cuba’s Political Prisoners.”

Additional information on the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is available on the commission’s Web site.

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