Number of Political Prisoners Doubles In Last Year, According To Human Rights Group

Number of Political Prisoners Doubles In Last Year, According To Human
Rights Group

14ymedio, Havana, 8 May 2017 – The number of political prisoners has
doubled this year, according to the most recent report from the Cuban
Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), which
counts 140 people charged for these reasons in April, compared to 70 for
the same months in 2016.

The organization's monthly accounting puts the number of arbitrary
detentions for political reasons of at least 475, which includes 43 more
detentions than in March." In addition, there were also 11 physical
assaults, 9 cases of harassment and 2 acts of repudiation against activists.

The organization most affected by politically motivated imprisonments is
the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU), which has a majority presence in the
eastern part of the country and to which 54 inmates belong.

The CCDHRN also denounces the situation of the "thousands and thousands
of innocent people who languish in the nearly 200 prisons, labor camps
and criminal settlements" of the island.

The organization, dedicated to the denunciation of human rights
violations, reports that in the last year "political repression has had
an evident mutation" and has become "more selective and less noisy."

Raul Castro's government has more often used "preventive repression in
the form of police threats and other systematic intimidating actions,"
the report points out.

"The prohibitions on travel within Cuba or abroad, home searches,
arbitrary confiscations of possessions, means of work and money," are
among the most frequent practices in the work of State Security against
the opposition.

"Espionage and defamatory campaigns, as well as the imposition of
abusive and disproportionate fines," complete these strategies of pressure.

The text of the CCDHRN devotes special attention to "the expulsion, for
clearly political reasons" of Professor Dalila Rodríguez González and
student Karla Pérez González from the Central University of Las Villas.

The CCDHRN figures exceed 467 arbitrary detentions during the month of
April, documented by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based
in Spain.

Source: Number of Political Prisoners Doubles In Last Year, According To
Human Rights Group – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/number-of-political-prisoners-doubles-in-last-year-according-to-human-rights-group/