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Perspective Series: Cuba: Systematic Repression of Dissent
"This report has been written to address the information needs and issues of concern to U.S. Asylum Officers. [...]. As described in chapters II-VII of this report, Cuba is a one-party Communist state, in which every Cuban is subject to a totalitarian system of political and social control. That system is institutionalized and given legal framework by the 1976 Constitution and the Penal Code, which together outlaw virtually any form of political or civic activity outside the purview of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Anyone deemed by the regime to be in opposition to it is regarded as a 'counterrevolutionary' and an 'enemy,' and is therefore at risk of punishment. The judicial system is constitutionally subordinated to the executive and legislative branches and under the control of the PCC. That leaves Cubans with no recourse before the unlimited powers of the state, which has 'zero tolerance for the growth of civil society'1 and systematically violates the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, privacy and due process of law."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
1998-12
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Perspective Series: Human Rights Conditions in Cuba since the Papal Visit
"The visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba on January 21-25, 1998 opened new, though limited, space for the Cuban Catholic Church. However, the Cuban government of President Fidel Castro did not heed the Pope's call for democratic change. Since then, Castro has disregarded similar pleas from Canada, the European Union and members of the Organization of American States, and a year after the Pope's visit Cuba remained under the totalitarian control of a one-party Communist state. […].Heightened repression continued into 1999 with renewed waves of detentions and, in March, with the convictions and sentencing of four of Cuba's most prominent dissidents on charges of 'sedition,' as described later in this section and in Section XII. As the trial approached, at least 100 dissidents, including human rights activists and independent journalists, were temporarily detained or placed under house arrest in an evident attempt to prevent them from campaigning on behalf of those being tried, or from attending or reporting on the proceedings. Cuban human rights monitors said that it was from 482 to 381. However, another 79 prisoners were presumed to have been incarcerated for political reasons, while 16 detained on evidently political grounds were still awaiting trial."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
1999-03
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Question and Answer Series: Peru Shining Path Actions in 1998: Summation and Partial Chronology
"As indicated by data compiled from Peruvian news sources by the Lima-based Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), the decline in activities by Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) has continued in 1998. However, despite this decline, Shining Path has manifested that it maintains the capacity to orchestrate activities in several departments throughout the country, including Lima. In the first nine months of 1998, there were 223 actions by armed groups in Peru, compared with 460 in all of 1997, indicating a decline in 1998 of about 33 percent on an annualized basis. Of the 223 actions, 168 were known to be carried out or were claimed by Shining Path and 13 by remnants of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), while in 42 actions the perpetrators were unknown. In actions involving violent attacks, the great majority of which involved Shining Path, there were a total of 73 deaths and 34 wounded, about 80 percent of which casualties were incurred among civilians, police and soldiers. In 1997 the total of dead and wounded was 200, indicating a decline in 1998 of about 30 percent on an annualized basis. In the coastal department of Lima, which includes the nation's capital, there were 122 guerrilla actions in 1997, resulting in 13 deaths and 22 wounded among civilians, police and soldiers, but no recorded losses among insurgents."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
1998-11
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Question and Answer Series: Honduras: Hardship Considerations
"Prior to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch in late October and early November 1998, Honduras, with a population of about 6.2 million people, was one of the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America. As a result of the storm, social, economic and environmental conditions worsened substantially throughout the national territory. International aid needed for the enormous task of rebuilding was slow in coming, and the debt-strapped Honduran government appeared to have difficulty in establishing mechanisms for making proper and effective use of it. Preparatory to the conference on hurricane aid for Central America held in Stockholm on May 25-28, 1999, the government developed a five-year plan for reconstruction, with costs estimated at around $4 billion. In Stockholm, donor countries and international financial institutions promised to provide up to $3 billion in various forms of assistance to Honduras over the course of four years. However, as of mid-June 1999, it had yet to be determined when the aid package would fully come on line or how Honduras would absorb it. Meanwhile, with the start of another rainy season and renewed flooding in May, and the potential threat of another hurricane with the approach of summer, most Hondurans remained in a day-to-day struggle merely to subsist."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
1999-09
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Question and Answer Series: El Salvador: Re-Emergence of 'Social Cleansing' Death Squads
"From December 1998 through January 1999 there were at least a dozen extrajudicial killings which pointed to a resurgence of activities by paramilitary death squads that target marginalized social sectors. All of those killed were members of maras, youth gangs, and the modus operandi was very similar to the spate of 'social cleansing' executions carried out by the Sombra Negra, Black Shadow, organization in 1994-1995. Amid the recent wave of killings, public threats against gang members were issued by two previously unknown organizations: the Grupo de Exterminio, Extermination Group, and La Voz del Pueblo, The Voice of the People. Salvadoran police officials suggested that the killings were the result of internecine gang warfare. But a public prosecutor who worked on the Sombra Negra case, as well as Salvadoran human rights organizations and the Catholic church, were convinced that the murders had been carried out by one or more armed clandestine groups. Youth gangs themselves alleged that members of the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC), National Civilian Police, were involved, as had been the case with Sombra Negra, but as of early March 1999 there was no evidence of that."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
1999-03
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Question and Answer Series: El Salvador Hardship Considerations
"El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Latin America, with about 5.8 million people living in an area roughly the size of Massachusetts. Its society is characterized by extreme social and economic inequality. According to a 1998 study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Latin America has the greatest disparities in income distribution in the world. In gauging the relative levels of disparity among Latin American countries, the IADB study found that El Salvador fell about midway between Brazil, the country with highest level of inequality, and Uruguay, the country with the lowest. The Human Development Index (HDI) produced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provides a broad assessment of relative levels of development in the world. The HDI considers three basic dimensions--longevity, knowledge and standard of living--and measures life expectancy, educational attainment and literacy, and income. In the 1999 HDI, El Salvador rated 107th out of 174 countries, while the United States rated third, Costa Rica 45th, Honduras 114th, and Nicaragua 121st. Overall, countries fall into one of three categories--high, medium and low development. At number 107, El Salvador is near the low end of medium development. According to a UNDP study of El Salvador published in 1997, there are significant disparities in levels of development between the country's fourteen administrative departments. Only two of the country's departments, San Salvador and La Libertad, have a higher HDI rating than the national average. The twelve others have lower HDI ratings, with the lowest ratings found in the most rural departments."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
2000-01
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Perspective Series: Honduras Update on Human Rights Conditions
"After decades of right-wing military rule, the Honduran armed forces finally gave way to elected civilian rule in 1982. However, over the next decade, the military maintained its status as the most powerful institution in the country. It retained control of the national police force, and it continued to enjoy high levels of institutional autonomy and unaccountability, as well as impunity with regard to violations of human rights. After the return to civilian rule, the military also expanded its constellation of business interests, making the armed forces by the early 1990s one of Honduras' ten largest corporations. Meanwhile, elected civilian governments remained weak and riddled with corruption, and it was not until the mid-1990s under President Carlos Roberto Reina that the inordinate power of the military began to be curtailed. In 1997, the national police--a paramilitary force called the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (FUSEP), Public Security Force, which had been under the control of the military--was transferred to civilian authority. In 1998, a new Ministry of Security headed by a civilian was established to oversee all police operations. Also that year, the Honduran Congress amended the constitution to establish civilian control over the 12,000-member armed forces through a civilian Minister of Defense. In January 1999, the government of President Carlos Flores Facussé, elected in November 1997, named Edgardo Dumas, a lawyer and businessman, the first civilian Minister of Defense in nearly five decades and only the third in the nation's 178-year history."
INS Resource Information Center
Payne, Douglas
2000-09
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