Cuban Human Rights Group Denounces The Death Of A Political Prisoner Pending Trial

Cuban Human Rights Group Denounces The Death Of A Political Prisoner
Pending Trial / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 7 March 2017 — The Cuban Commission for Human Rights
and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) has denounced the death of
political prisoner Hamel Santiago Maz Hernández, an activist from
UNPACU, who died* on February 24 at Combinado del Este prison in
Havana. The opponent had been imprisoned for eight months without trial
for the alleged offense of contempt.

The CCDHRN has released its report for the month of February in which it
says that “there have been thousands of cases of Cubans killed in
government custody,” a situation for which the authorities bear all the
“moral and legal responsibility.”

The report includes the 482 arbitrary arrests of dissidents last month,
a “slightly higher figure than in January.”

The CCDHRN also documented 16 cases of physical aggression and 18 of
harassment, “by the secret political police and para-police agents,”
with the victims being peaceful opponents, adds the report.

The text clarifies that, given “the closed nature of the regime that has
ruled Cuba for almost 60 years,” it is “impossible to record the
thousands of violations of fundamental rights” that occur throughout the
island each month.

Nevertheless, it reports that the Ladies in White and the Patriotic
Union of Cuba (UNPACU) are once again the organizations most
repressed. In the case of the women’s organization, they have been
“subjected to humiliations and other abuses” over and over. For its
part, 54 members of the UNPACU “are political prisoners, most of whom
remain imprisoned without formal charges or pending trial.”

During 2016, the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented 9,940 arbitrary detentions. This
figure “places the Government of Cuba in the first place in all of Latin
America,” according to the independent organization.

*Translator’s note: Cuban State Security informed his wife that he died
of a heart attack.

Source: Cuban Human Rights Group Denounces The Death Of A Political
Prisoner Pending Trial / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba –
translatingcuba.com/cuban-human-rights-group-denounces-the-death-of-a-political-prisoner-pending-trial-14ymedio/