The US said on Monday that Cuba had a responsibility to improve prison conditions, rejecting President Raul Castro’s characterization of recent hunger strikes as US and European-backed “blackmail.”
US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the US was concerned about overcrowding, poor hygiene and a lack of drinking water in Cuban jails, along with the detention of about 200 political prisoners.
“Somehow prisoners are rebelling against these conditions and we’re led to believe that this is the responsibility of the United States?” Crowley told reporters.
“No, it’s the responsibility of the Cuban government. It has fundamental responsibilities under international law for its citizens, including those in custody, and they should live up to those obligations,” he said.
He said that Cuba does not allow foreign humanitarian agencies such as the International Red Cross to monitor its prisons.
Guillermo Farinas, 48, a cyber-journalist who challenged Cuba’s state monopoly of the media, has been on a hunger strike for the past month. He decided to give up food when he learned of the death on Feb. 23 of Orlando Zapata, 85 days into his own hunger strike to protest prison conditions.
Speaking on Sunday, Castro vowed never to give in to the dissidents’ demands, calling it “blackmail” organized by the US and Europe.
The Cuban president charged that the US and Europe were waging “an unprecedented publicity war” against Havana allegedly supported by “major Western media.”
The US maintains a decades-old trade embargo on the only one-party communist regime in the Americas, but US President Barack Obama took office last year offering to improve ties if Castro improved human rights.
ELIAN GONZALEZ
Meanwhile, Cuba has released photographs of one-time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress.
Gonzalez, now 16, is shown during last weekend’s congress at a drab convention center in western Havana. The images were posted on Monday on Cuban government Web Sites and then picked up by the state-controlled media.
When he was five, Elian was found floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube after his mother and others drowned trying to reach the US. Elian’s father, who was separated from his mother, had remained in Cuba.
US immigration officials ruled that the boy should be returned to Cuba over the objections of his Miami relatives and Cuban exiles, creating a national furor.
When his relatives refused to give him up, federal agents raided the Little Havana home of his uncle 10 years ago this month and seized the boy from a closet.
On his return Elian was celebrated as a hero and his father, restaurant employee Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was elected to parliament — a seat he retains to this day.
Gonzalez formally joined the Young Communist Union in 2008, making headlines across Cuba.
The green uniform with red shoulder patches he is seen wearing is common among Cuban military academies. There is a military school in the city of Matanzas, near the boy’s hometown of Cardenas, but it was unclear where he is attending school. Reports in state media provided no details.
“Young Elian Gonzalez defends his revolution in the youth congress,” read the headline over the photograph posted on Cuba Debate on Monday, the same Web Site on which Fidel Castro has posted regular essays since ceding power to his younger brother, Raul, for health reasons in 2006.
Elian and his father are closely watched by state authorities, which continue to restrict their contact with the international press.
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