“The Cuban government continues to suppress and punish virtually every form of dissent and public criticism,” he said the international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its annual reportwhere he stresses that “in 2022, Cubans continue to suffer from a serious economic crisis that affects their fundamental rights”.
Summarizing the human rights situation in the world, the NGO founded in 1978 dedicated to studying the problem pointed this out In 2022, the regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua committed “abnormal abuses”.and urged Latin American leaders to push for a democratic transition in those countries.
Regarding the island HRW recalls that last year’s trials of hundreds of 9/11 protesters “frequently violated basic guarantees of due process and resulted in disproportionate prison sentences,” noting that “demonstrations continued across the country in 2022, as a result of power outages, shortages of food and medicine, and deteriorating living conditions.”
“The repression implemented by the government, as well as its apparent unwillingness to address the underlying causes that brought people onto the streets, forced thousands of Cubans to leave the country in unprecedented numbers,” he recalls, adding that “the United States has continued its failed policy of isolation from Cuba, including the embargo.”
In its report, HRW emphasizes that the immigration reform pushed by Raúl Castro “has given the government broad discretionary powers to restrict travel on ‘defense and national security’ or ‘other grounds of public interest’,” which “authorities selectively deny to dissidents, to leave or return to the country”.
As an example of this mechanism of repression, the report cites the case of the professor and art critic Anamely Ramos, for whose activism the regime prevented her from returning to Cuba from the United States, where she was staying and where she is staying for personal reasons denounce their forced exile with the complicity of US airlines.
HRW regrets that “over the decades, the international community has failed to make sustainable progress on human rights in Cuba”and recalls that “the US embargo provides the Cuban government with an excuse for the country’s problems, a pretext for abuses and evokes the sympathy of governments that would otherwise have been more inclined to condemn abusive practices in the country” .
Despite this, the report states: “During the third review of Cuba in June, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed its concern at reports of ill-treatment and arbitrary detention of boys and girls who had taken part in the 2021 protests.” .
“Since her election to the UN Human Rights Council in 2020 – her fifth term in the last 15 years – Cuba has repeatedly rejected resolutions warning of human rights abuses in Russia, Ethiopia, Syria and Nicaragua, among others,” he points out.
Likewise, in the field of international relations in Havana, HRW emphasizes that “the European Union is pursuing its policy of relations with reservations towards Cuba and has issued statements expressing its dismay at the government’s violations of human rights”.
“Frustrated by the lack of progress on Cuba’s human rights record, the European Parliament passed a resolution in December 2021 condemning ‘systematic abuses’ against dissidents and critics and urging the EU to agree to a suspension of political dialogue on human rights grounds in Cuba to consider and bilateral cooperation agreement”, concludes.