International Human Rights Day: Recovering Cuba's Pre-Castro human rights legacy

 For freedom and justice

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

Human rights are an intrinsic part of Cuban history that the current dictatorship has spent decades systematically trying to erase and deny, but  every day Cubans for decades have stood up for the defense of human rights and dignity at great cost to themselves.  Below is an essay from three years ago that remains relevant today in light of the San Isidro protest in Havana, Cuba and the 11J protests across the island on July 11, 2021.

The Miami Herald, December 8, 2018

Can Cuba’s human rights legacy be recovered?

By John Suarez
Freedom House
 

Over the past 15 years, I witnessed how Cuban diplomats undermined international human rights standards, first at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and later at the UN Human Rights Council.

• On April 15, 2004 when the UN Human Rights Commission decided by a single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record, a Cuban human rights defender attending the session, Frank Calzon, was physically attacked by a Cuban diplomat.
• On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation, together with the Organization of Islamic Congress, successfully passed resolutions that turned the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression into an investigator into abuses of freedom of expression.
• On Feb. 2, 2009 during the Universal Periodic Review of China, Cuban Ambassador, Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios, recommended that China repress human rights defenders with more firmness.
• On March 17, 2014 at the UN Human Rights Council, Cuban diplomats defended the North Korean regime’s human rights record.
•  On Sept. 21, 2018 Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, during the Universal Periodic Review on Cuba at the UN Human Rights Council stated that “our country will not accept monitors. Amnesty International will not enter Cuba and we do not need their advice.”

Less than a month later, Cuban diplomats led an “act of repudiation“ at the UN to prevent a discussion on political prisoners in Cuba.

Artists are now being arrested in Cuba for protesting Decree 349, a law that would eliminate the few artistic freedoms remaining there.

Prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet marked two years in prison on Nov. 30 for speaking critically of Castro’s legacy.

International Human Rights Day in Cuba will be a day that the Cuban secret police harass, detain, and assault human rights defenders attempting to exercise their rights.

It was not always this way.

Seventy years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

Democrats should share this history with Cubans on the island to demonstrate that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the regime in the island today would like erased.

John Suarez is a program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House in Washington, D.C. 

Cuba: San Isidro movement and allies under frightening levels of surveillance | Amnesty International

Report from earlier today on repression against San Isidro Movement

Amnesty International, December 15, 2020

Cuba: San Isidro movement and allies under frightening levels of surveillance

Members of the San Isidro Movement – the group of Cuban artists, academics, and other alternative thinkers who garnered global attention by staging a rare protest outside the Ministry of Culture on 27 November – as well as independent journalists covering their story, are under frightening levels of surveillance and face arrest by police and state security officials if they leave their houses, which amounts to house arrest, said Amnesty International today.

“The disturbing level of restrictions to which activists and independent journalists are now being subjected is like something out of an Orwell novel set in Havana’s palm-lined streets. The police presence outside their homes, and constant threat of arrest, is so relentless that activists are essentially being imprisoned in their own homes,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“The surveillance and harassment we are seeing is unacceptable under international law as it violates the rights to privacy and in many cases it constitutes a deprivation of liberty, or at least unlawful restriction on freedom of movement. We will continue to monitor this alarming situation.”

Over the space of two weeks, Amnesty International researchers gathered testimony from activists describing police surveillance details outside their homes, risk of arrest should they try to leave, and restrictions placed on where they can go. The organization’s researchers and its Crisis Evidence Lab analysed and verified the location of photos and videos documenting this surveillance outside the homes of approximately 11 activists, some who are living with other activists.

In most instances, the photos show one or more marked police cars parked on the street corners outside the activists’ homes. In other instances, plain clothed individuals, who activists believe are also state security officials, appear in the photos, often on motorbikes.

In the photos received from activists between 1 and 13 December, Amnesty International researchers observed 24 different marked police cars. Several activists had at least five different police vehicles parked outside their home over that same period.

Anamely Ramos González pidió que compartiéramos este video si era detenida por la Seguridad de Estado. https://t.co/Qn7jpu8BPY

— ADNCuba (@CubaAdn) December 15, 2020

Anamely Ramos González and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who Amnesty International named prisoners of conscience following the raid on the San Isidro headquarters in Old Havana on 26 November, are just two of the activists who have almost permanent surveillance outside their homes.

Following the raid, Anamely Ramos González, like most of the other activists at the headquarters, was taken home. But after she tried to leave again in the early hours of the 27 November, she was arbitrarily detained and alternating state security vehicles drove her around Havana and its outskirts for more than 12 hours. She told Amnesty International there were always four officials present, mostly men. She was eventually released to a home where she is now staying with another activist.  

On 11 December, Anamely told Amnesty International that she has only been able to leave home once in more than 10 days. “Really, it’s very uncomfortable… They search people who come, they ask for their identification… They have searched their pockets… You feel isolated.”

On the occasion she did leave to go to the Mexican embassy, it was only with the permission of the state security officials permanently located outside her house, three of whom took her there. A doctoral student in anthropology at Mexico’s Ibero University, Anamely believes authorities allowed the visit to the Embassy because “it suits” the authorities for her to leave the country.

According to Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a vocal voice in the San Isidro Movement, following the raid on the 26 November he was taken to hospital where state security officials monitored him day and night in his room. Since 2 December, the day after he was returned home, he says he has had permanent surveillance on the street corners outside his house. He says a new security camera has also been placed directly facing his front door. “The camera moves with me,” he told Amnesty International. “If I go outside, they will arrest me… Eighty percent of my friends are under surveillance.

As of 11 December, according to information provided to Amnesty International by the San Isidro Movement, and according to information verified by Amnesty International, at least six activists, including Anamely Ramos González, Omara Ruiz Urquiola, Maykel Castillo Pérez, Esteban Lázaro Rodríguez López, Niovel Alexander Tamayo, and Osmel Adrián Rubió Santos have been under almost permanent surveillance for nearly two weeks.

#ATENCIÓN Detenido por la policía política Osmel Adrián Rubio. #15Dic #Cuba pic.twitter.com/mouNLKvSbY

— Movimiento San Isidro (@Mov_sanisidro) December 15, 2020

International Human Rights Day: Recovering Cuba's Pre-Castro human rights legacy

"We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation." - Guy Pérez-Cisneros

San Isidro protesters in Havana, Cuba in November 2020

Human rights are an intrinsic part of Cuban history that the current dictatorship has spent decades systematically trying to erase and deny, but  every day Cubans for decades have stood up for the defense of human rights and dignity at great cost to themselves.  Below is an essay from two years ago that remains relevant today in light of the San Isidro protest in Havana, Cuba.

The Miami Herald, December 8, 2018

Can Cuba’s human rights legacy be recovered?

By John Suarez
Freedom House
 

Over the past 15 years, I witnessed how Cuban diplomats undermined international human rights standards, first at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and later at the UN Human Rights Council.

• On April 15, 2004 when the UN Human Rights Commission decided by a single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record, a Cuban human rights defender attending the session, Frank Calzon, was physically attacked by a Cuban diplomat.
• On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation, together with the Organization of Islamic Congress, successfully passed resolutions that turned the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression into an investigator into abuses of freedom of expression.
• On Feb. 2, 2009 during the Universal Periodic Review of China, Cuban Ambassador, Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios, recommended that China repress human rights defenders with more firmness.
• On March 17, 2014 at the UN Human Rights Council, Cuban diplomats defended the North Korean regime’s human rights record.
•  On Sept. 21, 2018 Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, during the Universal Periodic Review on Cuba at the UN Human Rights Council stated that “our country will not accept monitors. Amnesty International will not enter Cuba and we do not need their advice.”

Less than a month later, Cuban diplomats led an “act of repudiation“ at the UN to prevent a discussion on political prisoners in Cuba.

Artists are now being arrested in Cuba for protesting Decree 349, a law that would eliminate the few artistic freedoms remaining there.

Prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet marked two years in prison on Nov. 30 for speaking critically of Castro’s legacy.

International Human Rights Day in Cuba will be a day that the Cuban secret police harass, detain, and assault human rights defenders attempting to exercise their rights.

It was not always this way.

Seventy years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

Democrats should share this history with Cubans on the island to demonstrate that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the regime in the island today would like erased.

John Suarez is a program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House in Washington, D.C.