28089: Hermantin(News)U.S. report slams Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Mar. 09, 2006


HUMAN RIGHTS
U.S. report slams Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti
Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti were among the nations singled out for human rights 
abuses in the State Department's annual report.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

The State Department's annual human rights report Wednesday skewered Cuba and 
Venezuela for cracking down on dissidents, and it admonished Colombia and 
Haiti's interim government for allowing abusers to go free.

Documenting in exhaustive detail human rights issues in 196 countries, not 
including the United States, the report's introduction focused largely on the 
Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa.

But Cuba, the increasingly autocratic rule of President Hugo Chávez in 
Venezuela and impunity of military and illegal paramilitary fighters in 
Colombia made the list of some of the world's worst examples of human rights 
abuses.

CUBA'S REGIME

''In Cuba, the regime continued to control all aspects of life through the 
Communist Party and state-controlled mass organizations,'' the report said. 
``The regime suppressed calls for democratic reform, such as the Varela 
Project, which proposed a national referendum.

``Authorities arrested, detained, fined and threatened Varela activists and the 
government held at least 333 political prisoners and detainees.''

Venezuela came under attack for politicizing the judicial branch and cracking 
down on press freedom, including ''legal harassment and physical intimidation'' 
of journalists.

``The government use the judicial system selectively against the political 
opposition, and implementation of a 2004 media law threatened to limit press 
freedom.''

The State Department also pointed out the difficulties that many countries in 
the Americas are having sustaining democracy, including Ecuador, where the 
legislature last year removed democratically elected President Lucio Gutierrez.

Haiti's U.S.-backed interim government, which took over when President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country during an armed revolt, was criticized 
for its inability to reform the police and judicial systems.

The State Department noted that police raided a soccer match in Port-au-Prince 
in August looking for gang members and shot and killed six young men. Other 
groups said more people were killed, hacked to death by gang members working 
with the officers. Fifteen officers have been arrested for involvement in the 
massacre.

TWO SET FREE

U.S. officials also criticized the Haitian justice system for releasing two 
alleged human rights abusers of years past -- former Port-au-Prince police 
chief Jackson Joanis, held in the killing of The Rev. Jean-Marie Vincent; and 
Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who was convicted in absentia for a massacre in the 
northern port city of Gonaives in 1994.

``The release of Chamblain and Joanis . . . called into question the [interim 
government's] commitment to respect rule of law and to strengthen democratic 
institutions in the country.''

The State Department report does not look at the United States' own practices, 
which have come under increasing criticism in the past two years for alleged 
abuses against terrorism suspects abroad and a legal moves seen as aiming to 
stifle the press, including the jailing last year of then New York Times 
reporter Judith Miller.