The adoption of the Universal Periodic Review outcome on Cuba by the members of the UN Human Rights Council today presents an opportunity to focus on human rights challenges in Cuba, and some of the actions taken by activists over the years. There are currently over 1,000 political prisoners in Cuba, and at least another 38 were detained following nonviolent protests on March 17, 2024.
The situation in Cuba has worsened, but the repression is familiar.
The last time I addressed the UN Human Rights Council was in 2018 during the same session Sirley Ávila León spoke about the machete attack she suffered in Cuba in 2015, and the cycle of repression by the political police that led to that act of extreme violence.
My first foray into the international human rights body was in 2003 when it was called the UN Human Rights Commission. It was a baptism by fire in the immediate aftermath of nationwide crackdown on Cuban human rights defenders, independent journalists, and Project Varela petitioners by the communist dictatorship in Cuba. On two occasions during that session addressed what was taking place. This is a summary of second statement.
... "More than 100 human rights activists had suffered searches, arrests and expedited trials in Cuba. Many had already been condemned to sentences of up to 26 years in prison for defending civil and political rights in the country. On 7 April 2003, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was tried without due process and today was facing up to 25 years in prison for defending human rights in Cuba. In Cuban prisons, political prisoners were denied medical assistance as a form of punishment for upholding their ideas. Highly dangerous criminals were used by State Security to attack imprisoned activities, as was the case of Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, a young activist whose jaw was broken in three parts, and who was severely beaten on three more occasions before being taken to the hospital."
Seven years earlier in 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, one of the deans of the Cuban human rights movement, addressed the UN Human Rights Commission shortly after his release from a Cuban prison. This is a short excerpt of that statement.
My name is Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, and I am the Vice-president of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization founded in Cuba in 1976 to observe the respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the island.
On the 15 of January 1992 I was arrested in my home by the Cuban political police; the second time in ten years. On October of that year I was sentenced to 4 years and eight months in prison for the sole crime of reporting to this Commission the violations of human rights committed by the government of my country. The labor of those volunteers of this Commission inside of Cuba are considered by the government as "enemy propaganda."
I will not enter into the details concerning the multiple irregularities of the judicial process always against me, nor about the conditions that I had to tolerate for more than three years. I will refer solely to one aspect of this my last experience in Cuban prisons.
When I was arrested in January of 1992, I enjoyed excellent general health for a man my age, 60 years then. I weighed around 170 pounds, and ran 5 to 6 kilometers every morning. Eight months later, when after a campaign of denunciations of my family I was transferred finally to a military hospital, I'd lost over 30 pounds and suffered from multiple ailments.
He passed away on December 22, 1997 due to the lack of medical treatment, and poor prison conditions he endured in Cuba.
During my second visit in 2004 to the UN Human Rights Commission loaded down with posters, fliers, and reports entering and exiting was not a problem until a Falun Gong member handed me a flier for a parallel event they were holding in the same building in a room facing the session. A short time later I tried to go through the security screening to enter the UN Human Rights Commission session and was told I could not enter with the Falun Gong event flier. I had pounds of paper and posters criticizing a number of governments including the dictatorship in Cuba - those were "OK" but not the Falun Gong flier. I asked for the guards supervisor who repeated to tell me to choose: either leave the flier and enter or hang on to it and stay out.
The following day at the Falun Gong meeting in a room filled with human rights activists around the world to listen to the atrocities committed against this Chinese minority I learned that many others had experienced the same outrage but had remained silent not wanting to rock the boat. This led me to ask - isn't your job as a human rights activist precisely to challenge injustice?
Cuban dissidents who resisted the communist dictatorship in Cuba, and suffered greatly have traveled to Geneva over the years to denounce the crimes committed against them, and the Cuban populace more broadly. There are many more, but these are a few sampled to reflect the many.
Blanca Gonzalez, a Lady in White, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2005 on the plight of her son Normando Hernandez.
Former prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernández, with his niece, Bertha Antúnez testified in a side event at the UN Human Rights Council in 2009.
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