WHITE HOUSE DIGEST PAPER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R001903620001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 27, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

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STAT:
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA
Almost since coming to power, Soviet supported Cuba has
been violating her neighbors' right to self determination by
.attempting to "spread the revolution" throughout Central.
America -- recruiting Communist rebels and providing them funds,
arms, advisors, and organization. The Cubans and their Soviet
allies are attempting to turn the entire Carribbean basin into an
American version of Eastern Europe.
Already, Cuban intervention has helped establish a new
Soviet client state in Nicaragua and is threatening the. fledgling
democracy of El Salvador. Cuban agents have tried to destabilize
Guatemala for two decades. To fully understand what Cuban
aggression means to the people of the region it is important to
to look at the Castro government's appalling record on human
rights.
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In over two decades, that record has shown no sign of
improvement.. Like other Coiumunist countries, Cuba is a tightly
controlled, highly centralized, repressive state. The government
freely discriminates against those it identifies as being ""in
opposition to the state," and, of course, the consequences of
such discrimination are much greater in a totalitarian state than
a free one,
What's worse, over tale years Castro has jailed
thousands who opposed or were. suspected of opposing or
criticizing Communist rule. Most. sources place the current number.
.of political prisoners at. up to 1000, some of whom have been in
jail since 1959, making them some of the longest-held political
prisoners in the world.
Prisoners are treated brutally. Several hundred
prisoners, known as ""Flantados, " have refused '"reeducation'.'
and refuse to wear uniforms that would identify them as common-
criminals. As.punishment they have been denied food, medicine,
and clothing.
TORTURE
Beatings are common. Prisoners are sometimes punished
.by,being held,.naked, in cold, dark isolation cells for long
periods. According to Freedom House, the non-partisan human
rights organization, the CuLdns, like the Soviets, are using
psychiatric hospitals as prisons.
Recently a long-time political prisoner, poet Armando
Valladares, gave the world a chilling first hand account of Cuban
treatment of political prisoners. In December 1982, Valladaree,
only lately released, testified in Congress that repression of
Cuban political prisoners is '*ferocious." According to
Valladares, the Cuban police forced his mother to write a letter
denouncing him. The letter was dictated by a Cuban secret
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policeman holding a court order that would have sent Valladares'
sister to jail had her mother refused to cooperate.
V4l1adares testified that the imprisoned include,
children and that physical and psychological torture is common..
While in prison, he was brutally beaten and at one point was
denied food for more than 40 days, loosing the use of his legs as
a result.
CUBAN ? 'RUFUSENIKS"
Though Castro claims. that Cubans. are free. to emigrate,,
and though some emigration, as in the Mariel exodus in 1980, is
strongly encouraged, the Cuban government. routinely refuses to
allow citizens to leave the country. This. restriction is applied
especially, though nqt exclusively, to political oponents of the
regime., and especially to opponents who have been imprisoned.
Cuban . poet. Angel Cuadra Landrove was released.from
Castro's prisons in April 1982.-Though he holds several foreign
visas, the Cuban' government will not allow him.to leave.the
country. Andres Vargas. Gomez, a.Cuban intellectual and diplomat,
also served many years in Castro's political prisons. Now out of
prison, he is still denied the exit permit required. for.
emigration.
The case of Cuban Ambassador Gustavo Arcos Bergnee is
especially instructive. Arcos fought and was wounded at Castro's
side during the famous July 26, 1953 attack on Bastista's Moncada
A
barracks. When Castro took power, Arcos was named Cuban
Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. But, in
the mid-1960s, he was recalled and imprisoned for four years for
his democratic beliefs.
In 1979 his son was gravely injured in a motorcycle
accident in Florida. The U.S. Congress appealed to the Cuban
government to allow Arcos to leave Cuba and come to his son. The
appeal was refused. Months later, Arcos was charged with
attempting to leave the island without the necessary papers and
was given a seven year prison sentence.
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The reverse policy, forced emigration, can be just as
cruel. During the 1980 Mariel exodus, when 125,000 Cuban ""boat
people' fled to our sh-.-es, the Castro government shipped along
many of Cuba's psychiatric patients. The American Psychiatric
Association denounced this action"'on Septmeber 28, 1980, saying
it was:
""deeply. concerned about.,the plight of numerous recent
refugees who have been identified as mentally ill.
There is growing evidence that many of these Cuban
citizens were bused.from Cuban mental hospitals to the
Freedom Flotilla to the United States. If this is the.
case, the transplantation of these patients constitutes
a grossly inhumane act since it deprives the patients
of their right to psychiatric treatment'within the
context of their culture and primary language."'
""MISSING''
American citizenship has.been.no protection. Several.
dual-national Cuban Americans have ""disappeared$$ while visiting
relatives in Cuba. Amnesty International has transmitted a report
that last year 29 prisoners were executed for political offenses.
Recent sources indicate that some prisoners who have been in jail
for as long as 22 years have just been given new long sentences.
As in the Soviet Union, in Cuba opposition political
parties, like.all forms of dissent, are outlawed. There is no
freedom.of the pressor of speech. All print and electronic media
are owned-and censored by the Ministry of Culture. Freedom of
expression is further hampered by a wodespread informer network, ?
part of which is institutionalized in the neighborhood
""Committees for the Defense of. the Revolution."
""ARTISTIC" STANDARDS
Artists have been jailed for not conforming with the
government's artistic guidelines. In 1977, for instance,
journalist Amaro Gomez was arrested and sentenced to eight ye rs
in prison for possessing his own unpublished and uncirculatedt'
poems and plays. Freedom House states that ""writing or speak 1ng
against the system, even in private, is severely repressed."
Though literacy is growing in Cuba, less and less can be written
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` Those who practice religion are excluded from the
Communist Party and thus from responsible positions in the
government or the army. The religious also face discrimination
in employment, housing, and.schooling. Some believers have been
prosecuted for their differences with the government. Other have
lost their jobs or have been excluded from universities.
JAILING WORKERS
Free trade unions, collective bargaining, and-strikes
are all forbidden. In the last year, over 200 workers have been
.prosecuted for trying to organize strikes in the sugar and
construction industries. Five trade unionists were condemned to
death. But, according to reports, their sentences were reduced to
30 years after their cases became-public-knowledge. The. Cuban
government, after at first denying the facts, has said the
""terrorists" received severe sentences.
At the recent conference of the World Federation of
Trade. Unions in Prague, the Cubans defended the sentences,
explaining they were necessary to block any.possible attempts to
set up a Solidarity-style organization.
Rather than permit citizens to join independent groups,
the government enrolls people in mass organizations such as the
five million member Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.
These'non-democratic groups are-used to channel the people's
energies toward party-approved goals and to isolate people from
more fruitful, but to the Party, dangerous associations.
As a. result of 24 years of Communist control,. more tha
one million Cubans,.more than 10 percent of the island's
inhabitants, have fled their homeland. An estimated. 200,000 more
have applied to emigrate, even though those who apply are usually
stripped of their jobs, their ration cards and their housing,' and
their children are forbidden to attend school.
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6
THE GREAT CUBAN ""EXPERI T0"
All-in-all the great.'"Cuban experiment" has developed.
into nothing more original than a little Soviet Union bobbing in
the Carribbean. Arid that is precisely what those who are trying
to spread revolution to other Central American countries have in
mind for the entire region. It is,no wonder then that in
Nicaragua there is.growing opposition to the Sandinista regime,
nor that the people of El Salvadors, 80 percent of whom voted .n
recent elections, are resisting the attempts of Communist
terrorists to destroy democracy in that country.
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STAT
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