Thank you Cuba for imprisoning and torturing political dissidents

[Brian_Expat]

http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/trialdissidentshrw.html

In the coming weeks, the Cuban government is expected to try four leading dissidents for sedition, a "crime against state security," although none of them has ever advocated violence against the state.

Recent high-level visitors to Havana, including the pope and the Canadian foreign minister, have appealed unsuccessfully to Castro for the dissidents' release.

Some commentators have suggested that international monitors should observe whether the Cuban courts are following established legal norms in the case. These well-meaning suggestions miss the point. The problem is that Cuban laws criminalize free speech and free assembly and undercut defendants' rights to a fair trial. These provisions allow the Cuban government to claim, with some credibility, that it adheres to the rule of law.

The Cuban government has detained the four leaders of the Internal Dissidents' Working Group (Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna, GTDI), for over fourteen months in maximum security prisons, without trial. The dissident leaders, who have all been labeled counterrevolutionaries, are Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, an economist, Vladimiro Roca Antúnez, also an economist, Félix Antonio Bonne Carcasses, a professor, and René Gómez Manzano, an attorney. Though the dissidents were arrested on July 16, 1997, Cuban prosecutors only charged them with a crime in September 1998. The prosecutors have announced their intention to seek a six-year term for Roca Antúnez and five-year sentences for the other three.

The Cuban criminal code serves as the foundation of Cuba's repressive machinery by criminalizing the freedom of expression. Cuba has repeatedly refused to modify criminal code provisions that restrict the fundamental rights to free speech, association, and movement.

[amber dog democrat]

1. They sound just like us.

If only the Cubans had a secret military base on Key Largo, or Waco Texas where they could imprison and interrogate people THEY don't like. Odds are we would help them do it.