Cuba and Human Rights: A Tale of Two Sides of One Island

Each year the US State Department issues a report on the state of human rights around the world – a nation-by-nation review from the perspective of the current administration of how our global neighbors measure up. As the preface to the report issued last March notes:

All men and women desire and deserve to live in dignity and liberty. As President Bush said: "The advance of freedom is the great story of our time." Promoting human rights and democracy is a worldwide phenomenon and there is a growing global discussion of democracy and the universal values protected by democratic governance.

More than a hundred nations are included in the State Department report, from Antigua to Zimbabwe. Not among them is the US itself.

Each year one of the countries topping the US government’s bad boy list is that troublesome island 90 miles off the Florida coast – Cuba. Here is what the report issued last March had to say about conditions there:

The government's human rights record remained poor, and the government continued to commit numerous, serious abuses. At least 333 Cuban political prisoners and detainees were held at year's end.

The report went on to specifically cite:

beatings and abuse of detainees and prisoners, including human rights activists, carried out with impunity, denial of fair trial, particularly to political prisoners.

Speaking of “Prison and Detention Center Conditions” in Cuba, the Bush Administration had this to say:

Prison conditions continued to be harsh and life threatening. Conditions in detention facilities also were harsh. Prison authorities frequently beat, neglected, isolated…detainees and prisoners. Authorities often subjected detainees and prisoners to repeated, vigorous interrogations designed to coerce them into signing incriminating statements or to force their collaboration with authorities. Some endured physical and sexual abuse, typically by other inmates with the acquiescence of guards, or long periods in isolation or punishment cells.

Of course, nothing in the Bush Administration’s assessment of human rights in Cuba includes the goings on at that other, increasingly infamous, prison facility on the island. That would be the one run by the US government, Guantanamo.

If the State Department report is accurate, then the Bush administration currently holds more political prisoners on the Cuban island that Fidel Castro, currently reported at 460 (almost 130 more than Castro). And what the US has to say about Castro’s jails and justice system could not only be applied to the US’s practices at Guantanamo, but would have to be made more extreme to create an accurate picture.

Prisoners held there by the US have been held for more than four years, most without charges, and face indefinite detention with none of the rights afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions or to criminal suspects in the U.S. justice system. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has accused the US military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo, leading to worldwide calls for the prison’s closure.

Even a senior official in the government that has backed Bush the hardest in his “war on terror” – Great Britain – recently observed: "If it is perfectly legal and there is nothing going wrong there, why don't they have it in America?"

It is true that once upon a time the US really was a credible voice for human rights in the world. The emphasis put on rights by President Carter in particular were a noble undertaking.

However, no example highlights the hypocrisy at hand in the Bush Administration than the tale of two sides of the Cuban island. Fidel Castro should be held to global account for human rights abuses (as should all governments). But who in the world is supposed to take the US credibly when it warns of torture and abuse on one side of the island while practicing the same and worse just a stone’s throw away?

“Do as I say and not as I do,” is not a great basis for any nation’s foreign policy, especially a nation that boasts as much about its commitment to human rights as the US does.