Immediately one can listen to the optimistic readings on political changes in Cuba, as if ignoring the repressive regime's skill to hold in power for more than half a century. However, so long as first generation human rights are considered a crime, nothing will change in that country and those who are being released can be sent back to prison anytime.

By Gabriel C. Salvia

During the visit of the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos to Cuba, the Cuban Catholic Church announced on July 7 that the government of Raúl Castro will set free 52 political prisoners, who had been detained during the repressive crackdown known as "Cuban Black Spring" on March 2003, processed through summary trials and most of them sentenced to around 20 years in prison.

Immediately one can listen to the optimistic readings on political changes in Cuba, as if ignoring the repressive regime's skill to hold in power for more than half a century. However, so long as first generation human rights are considered a crime, nothing will change in that country and those who are being released can be sent back to prison anytime.

The judicial-political regime in Cuba violates most of the basic guarantees established in all the international instruments approved over the last decades, and that currently are part of the international law on human rights. In this sense, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on 2006 recommended the Government of Cuba to "order the immediate and unconditional release of all the victims nullifying the sentences against them, for being based in laws that impose illegitimate restrictions to their human rights".

More recently, on November 2009, a categorical report by Human Rights Watch stated: "Raúl Castro's government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms. Raúl Castro's government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they might commit an offense in the future. This "dangerousness" provision is overtly political, defining as "dangerous" any behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most Orwellian of Cuba's laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government's repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a potential threat and thus worthy of punishment… The "dangerous" activities in these cases have included handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging peaceful marches, writing news articles critical of the government, and attempting to organize independent unions.

In this sense, the important matter in terms of political opening in Cuba was set in the Declaration "The exercise of rights is no crime", signed by 75 judicial, political and social figures from Latin America, among them Julio César Strassera, Patricio Aylwin, Graciela Fernández Meijide, Guillermo O'Donnell, Daniel Sabsay, Vicente Palermo and Emilio De Ipola: "We agree that the region should normalize its relations with Cuba, but for that the government of the Castro brothers must harmonize its internal rules eliminating the restrictions to the most elemental human rights… It is time for Latin America to stand side to side with Cuban democrats and to demand the regime of the Castro brothers to begin a political opening guaranteeing very elemental rights such as the freedom of association and speech, something that would allow the release of many political prisoners for the principle of the validity of the mildest law".

That is to say, instead of limiting to ask the freedom of political prisoners - something praiseworthy - democratic governments who want to positively influence on the political opening in Cuba, must claim the Cuban government to firstly introduce changes in its Constitution and Criminal Code, and erase special laws like number 88, thus recognizing fundamental freedoms. If the exercise of rights continues to be criminalized in Cuba, no political change can be expected in the Island and even less a democratic transition, so there is no profound reason for the European Union to modify its Common Position adopted in 1996.

Gabriel C. Salvia is Chairman of the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL).

Gabriel C. Salvia

General Director of CADAL

Human rights activist dedicated to international democratic solidarity. In 2024 he received the Gratias Agit Award from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. He is the author of the books “Memory, human rights and international democratic solidarity” (2024) and “Bailando por un espejismo: apuntes sobre política, economía y diplomacia en los gobiernos de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner” (2017). In addition, he compiled several books, including “75 años de la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos: Miradas desde Cuba” (2023), “Human rights in international relations and foreign policy” (2021), “Desafíos para el fortalecimiento democrático en la Argentina” (2015), “Un balance político a 30 años del retorno a la democracia en Argentina” (2013) and “Diplomacy and Human Rights in Cuba” (2011), His opinion columns have been published in several Spanish-language media. He currently publishes in Clarín, Perfil, Infobae and La Nación, in Argentina. He has participated in international conferences in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Balkans and the United States. Since 1992 he has served as director of Civil Society Organizations and is a founding member of CADAL. As a journalist, he worked between 1992 and 1997 in print, radio and TV specialized in parliamentary, political and economic issues, and later contributed with interviews in La Nación and Perfil.