A Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support by Kinsman Jeremy;Bassuener Kurt;

Author:Kinsman, Jeremy;Bassuener, Kurt;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2013-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Members of Cuba’s dissident group Ladies in White demonstrate during their weekly march in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, January 30, 2011. Ladies in White is an organization created by wives and mothers of political prisoners. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

There are also efforts to verify the health of prisoners of conscience. Cuban authorities do not grant human rights monitors access to their prisons. Recently, some prisoners of conscience have undertaken hunger strikes. One of the 75 arrested in March 2003, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died as a result of his hunger strike on February 23, 2010. Foreign leaders, such as US Secretary of State Clinton and Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero condemned the act, which Amnesty International called “a terrible illustration of the despair facing prisoners of conscience who see no hope of being freed from their unfair and prolonged incarceration.” The Mexican and Chilean parliaments adopted similar declarations. President Raúl Castro expressed unusual public regret for Zapata’s death, though the authorities then arrested dozens of his supporters to prevent them from attending the funeral. It was, however, attended by diplomats from several countries. There have been concessions since, worked out in a meeting in May 2010 between Raúl Castro and Cardinal Ortega. At the meeting, measures were taken to ensure adequate hospital treatment for sick prisoners and to move prisoners to their home provinces to facilitate family contacts and in July 2010, all 52 remaining prisoners from March 2003 were released.

In August 2009, five EU diplomats from Sweden, the UK, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic brought food and clothing to the wife of Darsi Ferrer, imprisoned without charge in July the day before he was to lead a demonstration for human rights. The Cuban Foreign Ministry protested that “the EU is putting in danger the political dialogue begun with Cuba,” but as Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, an EU mission spokesman in Havana restated about the EU’s policy on the occasion of relaunching the dialogue, “there is no reason to lack trust in our desire to do both things at the same time — improve dialogue with the government, and with civil society, including the peaceful opposition.”

Such acts by diplomats, demonstrating solidarity and witnessing events, have the effect of offering some protection to activists and human rights defenders who have already courageously crossed the line of protest so that gestures of moral support for their rights do not expose them particularly to greater danger.

Direct acts of protection have also been performed by embassies in Havana over the years. Dr. Sweig (2009) records the most prominent of these:

By March of 1980 a handful of Cuban citizens had already smuggled themselves into foreign embassies in search of asylum. The Peruvian embassy was one target, and the Peruvian government was not at the time disposed to return the intruders to Cuban authorities. Later that month, when several Cubans crashed a bus into the gate of the Peruvian complex and provoked a violent incident with Cuban soldiers, Fidel responded by removing all police protection from embassy grounds. Within 48 hours, over 10,000 citizens had taken refuge inside the gates.

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