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Activists arrested in March crackdown
Cuban Political Prisoners
Cuban law greatly limits freedom of expression, association and assembly.
Anyone attempting to voice views, attend meetings, or form organizations that do
not conform to government policy or state ideology is likely to be persecuted,
the punishments ranging from harassment and loss of employment to imprisonment
and beatings.
For this reason, in Cuba there are hundreds of which we know, probably many
more of which we do not know, who are political prisoners and/or prisoners of
conscience. Political prisoners are generally thought as individuals
incarcerated for political reasons. Amnesty International defines prisoners of
conscience specifically as "people who are imprisoned by reason of their
political, religious, or other conscientiously held beliefs or by reason of
their ethnic origin, sex, colour or language, provided they have not used or
advocated violence" ("Cuba: Current prisoners of conscience must be released,"
AMR 25/36/99).
Cuban political prisoners and prisoners of conscience run the gamut of age,
sex, and color. Some have been explicitly convicted for political reasons, such
as "enemy propaganda" or "desacato," a vague legal term that can be translated
as "contempt for authority." Others have been detained on fictional criminal
charges to disguise the political motivations for their arrests.
The judicial system in Cuba has little in place to protect these individuals
since lawyers are employed by the Cuban state and are often reluctant to
question seriously the arguments put forth by prosecutors or the Department of
State Security. Furthermore, lawyers are not always given adequate time to
prepare a defense, or alternately, detainees are held for long periods of time
without access to a lawyer and sometimes even pressured to sign incriminating
documents. ("Cuba: Current prisoners of conscience must be released,"AMR
25/36/99).
CUBAN POLITICAL PRISONERS BIOGRAPHIES
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