Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Cuban jailings dip, harassment up, dissidents say
07-06-2006

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): The number of Cubans political prisoners dropped to 316 from 333 in the first six months of this year, but the government stepped up extrajudicial harassment of opponents, the island's main rights group said on Wednesday.

"The slight decline ... appears to reflect a change in the form of political repression," the nongovernmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said in a report.

The illegal but tolerated group charged the government was organizing supporters to surround and intimidate dissidents at home and on the street, arresting opponents for brief periods of time, increasing visits by security officials and firings from state jobs, among other tactics.

"There is a decline in numbers of prisoners, but it is irrelevant because it is still more than 300," commission President Elizardo Sanchez told Reuters by telephone.

"Without a doubt the government has changed its tactics. They are resorting more to other methods besides prison."

The Cuban government brands all dissidents U.S. mercenaries and counterrevolutionaries and has passed harsh laws in recent years making it a crime to aid or abet U.S. efforts to topple President Fidel Castro's government.

Always tense relations between Cuba and the United States have deteriorated in recent years and government action against internal opponents increased as the Bush administration has aggressively pursued a policy of openly providing moral, organizational and financial support to dissidents.

"The Cuban government for decades has used Washington's disposition to support us as a pretext to increase repression," Sanchez said.

Cuba's fractured movement to establish a multiparty political system and more free enterprise suffered a major blow in March 2003 when 75 of its members were rounded up and imprisoned for terms of up to 28 years on charges of conspiring with the United States to overthrow Cuba's one-party state.

Only 15 of them have been released on medical parole.

Amnesty International says Cuba has 81 prisoners of conscience, more than any other Western Hemisphere country.