US-Cuba Human Rights Abuse Comparison
[January 13, 1999, part 5 of 5]

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports of 1997 and 1998 show that substantial abuse of human rights, including physical and psychological incidences of torture, occur in both nations. My conclusion is that the incidences in Cuba appear to be singular and sporadic while in the U.S. some types of torture are common and even systematic. There is far more written about the US than Cuba by these human rights groups, both because they have greater ability to investigate and because there is more to investigate. You decide.

Cuba Abuse

"There were frequent reports of ill-treatment, in some cases amounting to torture, resulting in at least one death," Amnesty wrote in 1998.
Heriberto Véliz Ramos, detained for common crimes, "reportedly died as a result of severe beatings while he was held in a police station in Manzanillo, Granma province." Interior Ministry officials maintained he had died of a heart attack.

In September, several prisoners were injured in Ariza Prison, Cienfuegos, when "prison officials attacked them with bayonets, sticks and tear-gas."
Three political prisoners held in Guantánamo Provincial Prison were reportedly beaten and kicked while handcuffed by 20 guards and then "held in darkness in a bare rat-infested punishment cell."

"The government of President Fidel Castro justified suppression of political dissent on the grounds that the country continued to face hostility from the US Government" which includes the economic blockade, infiltration of terrorists who bomb and sabotage, funding internal opposition, etc.

One United States citizen, Walter van der Veer, was sentenced to 15 years for "the promotion of armed action against Cuba." He had captained a rapid motor boat into Cuban waters to illegally transport Cubans to Miami, paid for by Miami exile organizations. The 1996 incident caused deaths.

A.I. asserted that prison conditions were so deteriorated that this constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Although these conditions were "undoubtedly exacerbated by economic pressures, including the effects of the US embargo," there were reports that "medical attention and food were often deliberately withheld as a punishment."

There was one "unconfirmed report of torture" used in obtaining the confession of Francisco Dayson Dhruyet for alleging murdering his wife.

Human Rights Watch´s 1999 report (for 1998) complains that "Cuban law broadly defined sedition as including nonviolent opposition that `perturbs the socialist order´." Hundreds of dissidents have been arrested and sometimes tried and sentenced under a variety of internal security laws. Oftentimes pre-trial detentions are lengthy--up to 20 months in the recent case of four persons.

"Whether held for political or common crimes, inmates endured severe hardships in Cuba´s prisons," observed Human Rights Watch. It points to the same conditions as does A.I., and also recognizes the negative role that the US embargo plays.

Human Rights Watch objects to "beatings and solitary confinement", and cites one case of a death in 1998. Reinery Marrero died in police custody. Police said he committed suicide but a family member who viewed his corpse noted that he was heavily bruised.

Claims of abuse are almost always lodged by family members of the subject-victim. These are difficult to verify as outside monitors are not allowed to investigate in Cuba.

On the matter of government executions for crimes, Cuba has a death penalty but rarely uses it. A.I. reported no cases between 1996 and 1998, while H.R.W. reported one, that of Daniel Reyes, shot by a firing squad in Las Tunas Provincial Prison, on October 29, 1997. At the end of 1997, there were seven persons sentenced to death convicted of brutal or murder. They awaited appeals, which usually take less than one year.

More than 350 people have been executed in the USA between 1990 and 1998. Over 3,300 others sit on death row. A.I. maintains that some persons have been executed for crimes they did not commit, and the death sentence is applied in a racist manner. One nation after another abolishes the death penalty--Cuba says it will when the US ceases its aggression--but the US increases its use.

United States Abuse

"Everyone has the right not to be tortured or ill-treated. However, every day, in jails and prisons across the USA this right is being violated," Amnesty International: USA Campaign--Rights for All 1998 report, page 9.

"Throughout the USA people are being injured and even killed by police using excessive force or deliberately brutal treatment. Police officers are punching, kicking, beating and shooting people who pose no threat…(they cause) serious injuries, and sometimes death, by misusing restraints, chemical sprays or electro-shock weapons. Most reported incidents take place during arrest, searches, traffic stops or in street incidents.

"Every year there are thousand of reports of assault and ill-treatment by police officers. Inquiries into some of the largest urban police departments have uncovered systematic brutality."

A.I. has taken on the case of Ronnie Hawkins, a black common criminal, who was shocked with an electric stun belt in a California courtroom, in June 1998. The 50,000-volt electric discharge "constituted torture under international law."

The year before, Amnesty reported the use of an electro-shock belt used on prisoners known as REACT (Remote Electronically Activated Control Technology), which causes great pain, involuntary bowel movements and incapacitates victims.

Amnesty is calling for the end of torture against Oscar Lopez Rivera, a Puerto Rican political prisoner. Along with religious groups and other human rights organizations, Amnesty condemns the "extended periods of isolation and sensory deprivation" imposed upon Rivera as torture. He is subjected to this 22 hours a day for most of the two decades he has been in maximum security. In addition, Rivera has often been assaulted and subjected to multiple body cavity searches.

"Government authorities" hope to "break him" and the other 14 Puerto Rican political prisoners, and thus break the "independence movement as a whole," contends the United Church of Christ.

Women prisoners are commonly raped in prisons. Rape is torture and has been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and in some court cases brought by women or the federal government against state prison officials. The practice of sexual torture persists, in part, "because inmates fear retaliation and feel too vulnerable to complain," wrote A.I. in 1998.

Amnesty´s overall 1998 report shows that police and prison guards use several torture methods.

Abner Louima is one horrid example of New York police torture. The Haitian "was kicked and beaten in the police car and, on arrival at the station, an officer thrust the handle of a toilet cleaner into his rectum and then jammed it into his mouth. Despite serious injuries, including a punctured small intestine and damage to his bladder," he was not taken to a hospital for two and a half hours. Failure to punish police officers and prison guards for their repeated abuses is a serious complaint of human rights organizations.

Police sprayed OC (pepper) spray at "non-violent demonstrators for prolonged periods in Eugene, Oregon," wrote A.I. One protestor was beaten and sprayed on his face and genitals and required hospital care.

In another demonstration in Humboldt County, California, police swabbed "liquid pepper spray directly into the eyes of anti-logging demonstrators."
A prisoner in California, Sammy Marshall, died from periodic spraying of OC.

In some prisons, cruel abuse is exercised against prisoners through restraints such as the "four-point restraint chair" with arm and leg shackles immobilizing the prisoner. In Utah, mentally ill prisoners have been held in such chairs for "several hours or even several days." Mitchel Valent died after being held in this restraint chair for 16 hours.

Hogtying--tying subspects´ ankles to their wrists behind their back--has become common practice in many places and has caused deaths.
In Brazoria County Detention Center, Texas guards repeatedly beat and kick prisoners and coaxed "dogs to bite prisoners and use stun guns."
In Alabama, prisoners are chained for hours with their hands raised over their heads as punishment--"hitching rail."

The cases of imprisoned political prisoners Geronimo Pratt (former Black Panther) and Leonard Peltier (former American Indian Movement member) are cited for denial of fair trials.

In some prisons, guards use bullets to "calm disturbances." "Since Corcoran State Prison in California opened in 1988, fifty inmates, most of them unarmed, were shot by prison guards and seven were killed," wrote Human Rights Watch in its 1999 report. A current court case alleges that prison guards regularly pitted black and whites against each other in "gladiator-style fighting," using this as a pretext for firing down on black prisoners from watch towers.

"Police have engaged in unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and unnecessarily rough treatment," wrote Human Rights Watch.
"Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States…" This persists because there is little "accountability", allowing abusers to "escape due punishment," which leads them to "repeat their offenses."

The United States just signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, becoming the 191st nation to do so. Somalia is the only remaining country not to ratify it. Both A.I. and H.R.W. charge the US with gross mistreatment of children imprisoned in US jails and prisons, or interned in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) enclosed camps.

The INS detains 5000 unaccompanied children each year, most of them having entered the US illegally or seeking asylum. They experience cruel, degrading, filthy and unsafe conditions. They are "shackled and chained, physically and verbally abused, and denied access to families, lawyers and organizations that could help them."

Children are also "being tried as adults in the general criminal justice system," and "people are executed for crimes that they committed when they were children, in clear violation of international human rights laws. As of June 1998, there were 70 people on death row for offenses committed when they were under 18 years of age," wrote Amnesty International.

Human Rights Watch wrote, in 1999, that "international human rights monitors have documented serious gaps in U.S. protections of the human rights of vulnerable groups. Both federal and state governments have nonetheless resisted applying to the U.S. the standards that, rightly, the U.S. applies elsewhere."

There have been no claims that Cuban officials rape women prisoners, or abuse detained children or mentally handicapped. Nor does Cuba fabricate or sell torture equipment.

"I had electric shocks applied to my feet and hands for so long they had to change the batteries…" stated Pius Lustrilanang, an Indonesian political activist, in February 1998.

In 1993, the US Commerce Department licensed the export of thousand of electro-shock stun guns to Indonesia.

"The US government has supplied arms and security equipment to governments and armed groups that have committed torture, political killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world. It has trained military officers who have committed human rights violations," Amnesty International wrote in 1998.

US torture equipment and torture instructors were at the disposal of dictators from Batista (Cuba), Pinochet (Chile), Somoza (Nicaragua) to scores more in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, Uganda, Congo, South Vietnam, South Korea, Iran, Turkey, and the list grows. In fact, the Nixon government, led by Kissinger, conducted several coups in Latin America and aided in the torture of hundreds of thousands of persons in its paramilitary-governmental Operation Condor. Robert Redford and Jack Lemon even shot Hollywood films about this.

How can it be, then, that Western Democracies, Denmark included, allow the US to sit in the judge´s chair pointing its bloody finger at Cuba, or at Serbia for that matter?

We need not deny that there are human rights abuses in Cuba--albeit far less serious and numerous than in the United States, as this record shows--nor that Serbs are brutal in their conduct towards Albanians. Yet we must not give the gavel to Democratic Torturers simply because they are elected and have lots of money and guns.