Posted on Mon, Sep. 22, 2003



Cuba's many prisons may hold 100,000
If accurate, the figure would give the country the highest number of
inmates per capita, even ahead of the United States. An estimated 300 are
political prisoners.
BY NANCY SAN MARTIN
nsanmartin@...

Cuba's jailing of 75 dissidents six months ago has focused fresh
attention on one of the largest per-capita prison systems in the world, with
an estimated 100,000 or so inmates in about 200 prisons and labor camps
spread around an island slightly smaller than Pennsylvania.

Letters smuggled out by a handful of the imprisoned dissidents
describe tight, filthy quarters infested with rodents and bugs; food too
disgusting to eat; limited access to medical care; and physical and mental
abuse.

But the estimated 300 political prisoners in Cuba make up only a
fraction of what may be the world's most extensive per-capita prison
gulag -- even larger than the U.S. penitentiary system, which tops the list
kept by the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies.

Cuba today has an estimated 100,000 inmates in about 200 prisons and
correctional labor camps, including 80 maximum and lesser security
penitentiaries, according to the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and
National Reconciliation, an independent organization in Havana. Officials at
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said they have no independent
knowledge of the number of prisoners but do not dispute the 100,000 figure.
A 1995 U.N. report on Cuba's human rights situation in Cuba estimated there
were ``between 100,000 and 200,000 prisoners in all categories.''

If accurate, the figure of 100,000 inmates in an island of nearly 11.3
million people would give Cuba 888 inmates per 100,000 people, far ahead of
the United States, which, according to the Prison Studies center's latest
report, has 701 inmates per 100,000.

The center, considered one of the world's leading authorities on
prison systems, uses a 1997 estimate for Cuba of 33,000 prisoners, or 297
prisoners per 100,000 people, putting it in 32nd place on the center's list
of 100 nations. Center officials said they obtained the estimate from an
academic in Norway and had not updated it since then.

HARD TO ASSESS

Cuba's prison population is difficult to assess because the Cuban
government does not officially report figures and does not allow independent
human rights monitors to visit prisons. The last foreign visit to Cuba's
prison system was in 1989 by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Then the inmate population was about 40,000, said Joanne Mariner, deputy
director of the Americas Program for Human Rights Watch.

Cuban officials could not be reached for comment.

But Vladimiro Roca, a human rights activist who served nearly five
years in prison, said it's no surprise that Cuba's prison population is so
high.

''Here, people get thrown in prison for anything,'' Roca said in a
telephone interview from Havana, adding that breaking the law is often a
matter of survival in a country where the government's monthly food rations
last less than two weeks and the average wage is about $10 per month. ''If
you kill a cow to feed your family, you go to jail,'' Roca said. ``That's
part of the government's method to maintain control over the population.''

Owners of private restaurants known as paladares can land in jail if
they sell lobsters -- officially reserved for tourist hotels and
government-owned restaurants. So can those who exhibit behavior deemed by
authorities as ''dangerous'' or who sell their homes or cars without
government approval.

Beyond the high rate of prisoners, harsh conditions, at least as
described by inmates, also have raised concern among international
organizations, especially because there have been no outside inspections
since the Red Cross' 1989 visit.

Annick Bouvier, who covers Latin America for the Geneva-based
organization, said the visits stopped because ''our modalities were not
accepted by detaining authorities.'' She declined to provide details but
said the organization generally seeks complete access and the ability to
speak privately with prisoners.

Mariner of Human Rights Watch said it is difficult to assess whether
Cuba's prison system is worse than elsewhere in the region ``because prison
conditions in Latin America tend to be generally very poor.''

''But there are aspects of Cuban prisons that are different and
extremely worrisome,'' she added.

A 1999 Human Rights Watch report titled Cuba's Repressive Machinery
said the island ``confines its sizable prison population under substandard
and unhealthy conditions, where prisoners face physical and sexual abuse.

''Most prisoners suffer malnourishment from an insufficient prison
diet and languish in overcrowded cells without appropriate medical
attention. Some endure physical and sexual abuse, typically by other inmates
with the acquiescence of guards, or [spend] long periods in isolation
cells,'' the report said. ``The inhumane conditions and the punitive
measures taken against prisoners have been, in several instances, so cruel
as to rise to the level of torture.''

U.S. REPORT

Similar concerns were raised in the State Department's annual Human
Rights Practices report released in March. ''Prison conditions continued to
be harsh and life threatening,'' it said.

``The government claimed that prisoners had rights such as family
visitation, adequate nutrition, pay for work, the right to request parole,
and the right to petition the prison director; however, police and prison
officials often denied these rights in practice, and beat, neglected,
isolated, and denied medical treatment to detainees and prisoners, including
those convicted of political crimes or those who persisted in expressing
their views.''

Roca, jailed in a maximum security penitentiary and released last
year, said such descriptions do not fully capture the horror. His first
three years were spent in solitary confinement in a cell so narrow ''there
was hardly space to sit down,'' he said.

''It's hard to put into words what prison conditions are like here,''
Roca said.

``You have to live it to believe it. In reality, most of the inmates
that were in that prison with me should have been dead. That's how bad it
was.''



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