US diplomat slams Cuba for rights abuses
HAVANA, Sunday (Reuters)
President Fidel Castro’s communist government is clinging to power by
trampling on the rights of Cuba’s 11 million people, the top U.S.
diplomat in Havana said on Saturday in his first public meeting with
Cuban dissidents.
U.S. mission chief Michael Parmly said the targeting of opponents by
angry mobs of government supporters sent to demonstrate outside their
homes was a “particularly disgusting” practice that recalled Nazi
brownshirts or the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Cuban regime does not represent the people,” Parmly said in a
speech to dissidents and foreign diplomats marking International Human
Rights Day at his residence.
“It maintains itself by isolating Cubans from the rest of the world,
keeping Cubans artificially poor and dependent on a state that demands
unquestionable compliance, and instilling fear among those who question
the regime’s lies,” he said.
Wives of imprisoned political prisoners, known as the Ladies in
White, attended the event along with Cuba’s leading dissidents, who said
government repression worsened in 2005.
Rights groups say the one-party state is holding more than 300 people
in prison for political reasons.
“The situation is deteriorating. We are seeing more repression every
day by a government that is on its last legs,” said Vladimiro Roca, the
son of one of the founding fathers of Cuban communism. Dr. Hilda Molina,
who pioneered neurosurgery in Cuba, said: “In my opinion, not a single
human right is respected in Cuba. We have a government that operates
entirely by whim.”
Molina quit the ruling Communist Party a decade ago because she
disagreed with preferential treatment given to foreigners by Cuba’s
medical system to generate hard currency.
The Cuban government has denied Molina’s requests to travel to
Argentina to visit her son and see two grandchildren she has never met.
“The public health system is caring for foreigners and discriminates
against Cubans,” she said.
The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba shortly
after Castro’s leftist revolution in 1959.
The two ideological foes are represented by low-level interest
sections opened in each capital in 1977. |