Little to cheer on Cuba file

The Obama administration has lifted restrictions imposed by George W. Bush on visits and remittances to the island by Cuban-Americans, and has resumed discreet talks on cooperation in practical matters such as migration, drug trafficking and postal services.

But administration officials have said that they will not lift the economic embargo imposed on Fidel Castro's regime in 1960 until Cuba takes steps toward political and economic freedom.

For his part, Raul Castro, who replaced his brother at the head of Cuba's government in 2006, has offered to talk to the Americans, but insists that the island's communist political system is non-negotiable.

On both sides there are pressures for further change. These are more visible in the United States. The foreign relations committee of the House of Representatives is to discuss a bill to lift the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba. Supporters of this measure claim to have close to the 218 House votes required to approve it. Its chances in the Senate look slimmer.

Public opinion favors ending the travel ban. More surprisingly, a recent poll found that a majority of Cuban-American respondents do, too. But most Republicans and some influential Democrats still support the embargo.

The administration has been guarded on the travel ban. But if it is lifted, the rest of the embargo might soon follow as different business lobbies press for a piece of the action in Cuba, says Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. U.S. hotel companies would doubtless want to be allowed to invest there, for example.

In Cuba, meanwhile, the police state remains intact. In a report released this week, Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, says that Raul Castro's government has made greater use of a provision of the criminal code that allows indefinite detention for "dangerousness," defined as conduct "in manifest contradiction to the norms of socialist morality."

The report, based on an undercover investigation, states that at least 40 Cubans have recently been jailed under this provision for trying to exercise basic rights, such as staging peaceful marches or writing critical news articles.

(On Nov. 6 Cuba's most prominent independent blogger, Yoani Sanchez, was forced into an unmarked car, beaten and threatened, before being dumped on the street.)

There are at least 200 political prisoners, and probably more: Cuba is one of only eight countries in the world that denies the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its prisons.

While Cuba justifies all this as self-defence against repeated U.S. attempts to overthrow the Castro regime, in fact it is aimed at enforcing political conformity, argues Human Rights Watch. It wants the United States, before lifting the embargo, to secure a commitment from Europe and Latin America to press for the release of political prisoners.

That looks naive. Many left-wing governments in Latin America apply a double standard when it comes to human rights: While suspending the not very repressive de facto civilian government in Honduras from the Organization of American States, they want Cuba to rejoin. (After the coup in June that toppled Manuel Zelaya, Honduras' president, Raul Castro, with no apparent irony, even joined calls for an economic embargo against the country.)

The European Union has normal economic ties with Cuba, but is critical of its trampling of human rights. Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Moratinos, has said that he wants to use his country's six-month presidency of the EU from January to soften that policy. Just as the U.S. embargo has been futile and counterproductive, there is no evidence that "engagement" by Europeans or Latin Americans has much impact in Havana.

In the end, if change comes to Cuba it will be from within. Raul Castro has launched a wide-ranging public debate on the economy, and is taking modest steps toward more reliance on market mechanisms. The changes are aimed at preserving communist control, and their pace will be glacial as long as Fidel remains alive.

But there can be little doubt that a lifting of the U.S. embargo would help those within the regime in Havana who want to move in a more liberal direction.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 21, 2009 A17