UN envoy 'deeply concerned' over Cuban dissidents
|
| Published on Thursday, June 14, 2007 |
Email To Friend Print Version |
GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters): A UN rights envoy expressed "deep concern" on Tuesday about the health of some 60 Cuban dissidents jailed during a crackdown four years ago.
Addressing the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, French magistrate Christine Chanet said the human rights situation on the communist-ruled Caribbean island had shown no significant improvement since her last report.
"I am deeply concerned with the physical and mental conditions of detainees who are currently suffering from various forms of illness, including cases of tuberculosis," she said, referring to the dissidents.
Seventy-five government critics -- journalists, writers and members of associations -- were jailed in 2003, many for long terms, for allegedly abetting the United States in a political campaign against veteran Marxist President Fidel Castro. Chanet, who was appointed special rapporteur for Cuba in 2002, tempered her criticism of Cuba's record on political rights with praise for its education and health systems.
She also attacked Washington's "devastating" economic embargo against Cuba, in force for more than 40 years and which the government blames for the island's economic woes.
The independent envoy, who has never been able to visit Cuba, told the 47-state council the time had probably come to halt the special reports on the country because of Havana's lack of cooperation.
Cuba could be covered by council plans to submit the human rights records of all countries to periodic scrutiny, she said.
Whether countries should continue to be singled out for investigation, the old "naming and shaming" of the Human Rights Commission, the council's discredited predecessor, is one of the most contentious issues still to be resolved by the council.
Several members of the council, which aims to conclude a year of negotiations on its rules this week, made clear during the Cuban debate they opposed any continuation of the system.
Amongst those calling for no more so-called country mandates were Russia, China, South Africa and Cuba. Developing countries have always resented the fact only poorer and less politically powerful states tend to be singled out.
"This farce is about to end. Soon the curtain will come down to put an end to this grotesque show. It will carry with it the hypocrisy, double standards and complicities which sank the defunct Commission into discredit," Cuba's ambassador Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios said in a speech. But human rights activists fear that the council would be rendered toothless if it loses the right to put individual countries in the dock for gross abuses.
|
|
