Cuba criticised by UN envoy

CUBA: As world attention remains focused on the treatment of people held without trial at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, a United Nations human rights envoy has sought to draw attention also to the dozens of Cuban dissidents held in what she described as "alarming conditions" following their imprisonment in a crackdown early last year.

Ms Christine Chanet, a French magistrate appointed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to inquire into alleged rights abuses by Cuba, also said that her appeals to President Fidel Castro to pardon the dissidents had gone unanswered.

"The personal representative of the High Commissioner has received particularly alarming information about the conditions of detention of these people," Ms Chanet said in her report to the UN on the situation in Cuba. Prisoners were being placed in "trying" physical and psychological conditions, whether in isolation cells or crammed together with "common criminals", she added.

The report, which will be presented to the annual meeting of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights next month, called on Dr Castro's government to grant fundamental freedoms, such as those of expression and assembly, and the right to leave the country.

Cuba triggered a storm of international protest last April when it sentenced about 75 dissidents to jail terms of between six and 28 years on charges of conspiring with the United States to overthrow its government.

Ms Chanet, who was appointed to her job in January last year, has not yet received permission to visit Cuba.

She also criticised the US over its 40-year economic blockade of Cuba. "One cannot ignore the disastrous and persistent effects of the embargo . . . economically and socially, as well as with regard to civil and political rights," she wrote.