WITH Jimmy Carter arriving Sunday on the first visit by a former US president to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, human rights are again in the spotlight, and an old joke about free speech is being recycled on the streets of Havana.
A visiting American tells a Cuban acquaintance: ”I can stand in front of the White House and shout ‘Down with Bush!’ and no one will arrest me.” Same here, comes the reply. ”I can stand in front of the Palacio de la Revolucion and shout ‘Down with Bush!’ and nothing will happen to me, either.”
The popularity of the joke suggests Cubans are keenly aware that human rights and democracy mean different things to Carter and his communist host, President Castro.
Carter came out of obscurity to capture the presidency in 1976, and lost it by a landslide four years later. He has since made a career out of monitoring elections in emerging democracies to ensure they are clean and competitive.
Castro, by contrast, has ruled nonstop for 43 years, running every so often in uncontested elections that recognize only one legal political party – the Communist Party of Cuba.
Though Carter’s trip is opposed by some Cuban exiles, it has the guarded assent of the politically powerful Cuban American National Foundation, which says it expects him to emphasise human rights and not hand Castro a propaganda coup.
When a foundation delegation met with Carter in Atlanta last week, chairman Jorge Mas Santos gave him a letter saying in part: ”It is deeply troubling that you have entered into discussions with the Cuban regime, thereby giving a measure of legitimacy to a small group that rules through fear rather than the consent of the governed.”
Nevertheless, it said, ”we come today because we are prepared to take any risk that might speed the day when Cuba is again free. … We are confident you will choose to identify more with the prisoners of conscience than with their wardens.”
Carter aides have indicated that during the five-day visit he will meet with the same rights activists that Castro labels ”counterrevolutionaries.” If he does, it will be a striking illustration of how much Cuba has changed since he was president.
Although it remains a heavily controlled society, some opposition is now tolerated. The number of political prisoners has also plunged, from several thousand to a few hundred.
A decade ago there was no publicly known dissident community on the island. Today there are plenty for Carter to meet: human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, reform advocate Oswaldo Paya and Castro opponent Vladimiro Roca, who was freed from prison last Sunday in what was seen as a goodwill gesture to Carter even though Roca had just two months left in his five-year sentence.
Carter is the highest-profile American ever to visit Castro, and comes armed with official permission from the US government, which licenses all American travel to Cuba. Castro, who invited Carter in January, says he wants his guest to tour the country, and ”he can criticise all he wants.”
But communist officials still grow defensive toward those who say their country is undemocratic and violates human rights.
Castro on May 1 insisted Cuba was ”by a long shot the most democratic” country in the world. Cuba’s elections are cleaner than most because they don’t require campaign contributions, he said. The State Department disagrees.
”Cuba is a totalitarian state,” it wrote in its report on human rights in Cuba.
”President Castro exercises control over all aspects of life through the Communist Party and its affiliated mass organisations.”
On human rights, Cuban communists point to a broad social safety net that ensures people food, shelter, health care and education for all.
They argue – and international rights groups generally agree – that Cuba has been spared the institutionalised torture and death squads that have terrorized some Latin American countries.
But those rights groups say individual rights to freedom of speech, media, association and assembly are often denied.
During Carter’s administration, negotiations led to the release of more than 3 000 Cuban prisoners.
More than 240 political prisoners are still held in Cuban prisons, and Wayne Smith, the top US top diplomat in Havana during the Carter administration, hopes Carter’s visit will lead to freedom for some of them. ? Sapa-AP