Why has the Castro regime systematically barred human rights experts from Cuba ?

International Committee of the Red Cross has been able to visit the U.S. Guantanamo Detention Center to report on detainees over 100 times while the Castro regime allowed one visit in 1988.

Protesting Guantanamo Detention Center but silence on Castro's prison complex

Human rights experts have been systematically barred from entering Cuba for years. The last time the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch were granted permission to enter a Cuban prison was in 1988. The International Committee of the Red Cross prior to that had not had access since 1959.

Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons arrived in Cuba today, April 10th to examine the "challenges Cuba faces in addressing trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation, as well as any other forms of trafficking." Human trafficking is a big problem in Cuba, addressed in an earlier post, and one hopes that Ms. Grazia Giammarinaro is able to see beyond the Potemkin experience that Cuban officials will present to her. It will be interesting to learn how much access she will have to fulfill her mandate as a human rights expert.

Amnesty International in its 2016/2017 report stated the following:

"Independent human rights organizations and mechanisms, including UN Special Rapporteurs, did not have access to Cuba. Independent monitors were also denied access to prisons. Cuba remained the only country in the Americas region which Amnesty International did not have permission from authorities to visit."

The usual retort from the Castro regime and it's apologists is to cite the dismal human rights situation in the Guantanamo Naval Base. However the reason that so much is known and documented with regards to the prisoners there is because the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited the Guantanamo detention facility over 100 times.

Meanwhile the Castro regime over the past 58 years permitted only one visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuba's prisons and that was 29 years ago in 1988.


The lack of international outrage sends a message and that is that not allowing human rights organizations to visit prisons for decades has a lower cost then opening them up to international inspection.

You do the math. This doesn't add up to anything good in the long run.