Monitor says fewer in Cuba held as political prisoners

HAVANA - The number of political prisoners in Cuba continued a notable decline in the first half of 2010, the island's top human-rights monitor said Monday, meaning their ranks have dropped by nearly half since Raul Castro took power in 2006.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said the government was using long-term imprisonment less frequently and turning instead to a strategy of quick arrests and releases apparently to intimidate those who openly oppose its communist system.

It classified 167 inmates as political prisoners - a drop of 34 since January. But the commission also documented 802 brief arrests for dissident activities or beliefs during that time and said many activists were detained only long enough to keep them from holding antigovernment demonstrations.

The report said Cuba's government had made "false promises of 'structural and conceptual change' " while "systematically violating all civil, political, economic and some basic cultural rights."

Still, there appears to be a concerted effort to reduce the number of political prisoners.

The commission counted 316 prisoners of conscience in July 2006, when Fidel Castro underwent emergency intestinal surgery and ceded power to his younger brother.

Commission director Elizardo Sanchez said by telephone that the drop indicated a shift in tactics in dealing with dissent rather than a transfer of power between the brothers.

The new figure is likely the lowest since the 1959 revolution, which was followed by a roundup of officials of the toppled dictatorship, many of whom were quickly executed.

The government refuses to recognize the commission, which is funded by international human-rights groups, but largely allows it to work.

Its lists are used by Amnesty Intentional and others, though some of the prisoners it includes were convicted of violent acts, such as a string of hotel bombings in Havana in the 1990s.

Others are serving lengthy sentences on such charges as terrorism, disrespecting authority, resistance, threats, and "pre-criminal dangerousness," which allows authorities to jail dissenters who they believe have the potential to do something wrong.

In February, jailed dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a long hunger strike, the first Cuban opposition figure to die after refusing food in nearly 40 years. The case drew international condemnation and prompted another opposition activist, Guillermo Farinas, to begin his own hunger strike.

Tensions over Cuba's human-rights record softened somewhat, however, after the government reached an agreement in May with the Roman Catholic Church to move political prisoners held far from their families to facilities closer to home.