Human-Rights Commission Demands Protection for Cubalex Employees

EspañolThe Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requested on Thursday that Cuba take steps to safeguard employees of the Center of Legal Information (Cubalex), after they were subject to an “alleged series of constant harassment and threats.”

The Cuban organization offers free legal advice on human-rights matters, immigration procedures, housing legalization, and the defense of civil rights for Cubans and foreigners living in the Caribbean nation.

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Information obtained by the Organization of American States (OAS) was judged to demonstrate that the members of Cubalex are “in a serious and urgent situation, because their lives and personal integrity are in danger.”

The commission requested Cuba to adopt all necessary measures to protect the life and safety of the organization’s staff, so they can “develop their activities as advocates of human rights without being subject to violence and harassment.”

It also asked the government report back within 15 days on the adoption of the security measures. However, it is unlikely that Havana will answer the commission’s request.

Cuba was expelled from the OAS in 1962, after the organization declared that its Marxist-Leninist ideology under Fidel Castro was “incompatible with the Inter-American system.”

The sanction was cancelled in 2009 at the General Assembly of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, but the Cuban government subsequently refused to attend summits. The presence of Cuban President Raúl Castro at the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama earlier in March was a surprise breakthrough, although work remains to be done before Cuba is fully integrated again.

The OAS has released multiple studies and reports on the human-rights situation in Cuba. As the only organ of the OAS in charge of the promotion and protection of human rights in the Americas, the commission views Cuba as “legally responsible” for rights violations, as the 1962 resolution excluded the Cuban government, and not the nation itself, from the Inter-American system.

Source: El País