The European Parliament announced Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas as the recipient of its annual human rights award – the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought – on Thursday. Farinas led a 134-day hunger strike on the island, protesting the detention of political prisoners arrested during a 2003 crackdown. While Farinas himself was not in prison when he began his hunger strike last year, the act of protest is credited with helping to trigger a prisoner release agreement, brokered by the Catholic Church. The Wall Street Journal reports that Farinas remains in Cuba where he was reached by phone on Thursday. He called the award a “very direct message to Cuba's leaders, who have done so little” in the area of human rights. He also said he would begin another hunger strike if the Cuban government doesn't fulfill its July 8 pledge to free, within four months, all 52 political prisoners jailed in 2003 (November 8 is the deadline).
Currently 39 of the 52 have been released. The remaining thirteen say they will not leave Cuba for Spain as the other 39 have agreed to do. More in a statement from Human Rights Watch, as well as an El País interview with Farinas himself.
The Miami Herald’s coverage of the news argues the Sakharov award announcement is one in a “string of setbacks for Havana” in recent days. Earlier in the week, President Barack Obama, in a somewhat vague response to a reporter, seemed to suggest he was still waiting for additional signs of reform in Cuba before making new US Cuba policy changes. Additionally, Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, “often criticized for being too friendly to Cuba,” (in the Herald’s words) was also replaced. And, says the paper, it seems unlikely that the EU, meeting later this week to assess its Common Policy toward Cuba, will “end a policy that ties assistance to Cuba’s human rights record.”
Meanwhile, on the same day Mr. Farinas was honored, the Catholic Church announced it has secured the release of five more Cuban prisoners. However, none are among the group of 52, jailed in a 2003 roundup of dissidents, the AP writes. Rather, they include four men and one woman “convicted of such crimes as hijacking and terrorism.” Like in previous release cases, all five have agreed to leave for Spain in return for their freedom.
Staying in the Caribbean:
· A suspected outbreak of cholera in rural central Haiti has already killed at least 135 people, overwhelming hospitals in the country, the AP reports. CEPR’s “Haiti Watch” has more on the potential public health disaster – and how it must “bring to the forefront” the still neglected issues of shelter and sanitation. On Tuesday, Walter Kaelin, the UN Representative on the Human Rights of the Internally Displaced addressed those issues:
“This is a humanitarian crisis that needs a development solution. In line with its primary responsibility, the Government of Haiti needs to endorse and communicate publicly a plan on how to provide durable solutions for those in the camps and to inform and consult with the displaced on its implementation.”
Also in Haiti, an independent commission financed by the Haitian government and the UN to investigate the indiscriminate killing of Haitian prisoners in a Les Cayes prison following last January’s earthquake, issued its findings this week. The inquiry, which came out a New York Times investigative piece on the matter, says at least 12 individuals were indiscriminately executed in what amounted to a “grave violation of human rights.”
· The Washington Post reports that a promise made by Barack Obama during his April 2009 visit to Mexico – the ratification of “an inter-American treaty known as CIFTA” which would curb small-arms trafficking (what Obama called the “source of so many of the weapons used in the drug war”) – has gone absolutely nowhere in the last year and a half. The Post: “While the Obama administration has taken other actions, such as sending anti-trafficking teams to the border, neither the White House nor Congress has pushed the treaty, which the gun lobby opposes.”
· Other Mexico reporting today. Just the Facts brings together the human rights community’s criticisms of this week’s Mexican government announcement on military abuse trials. Similarly, Human Rights Watch has a new statement on the matter. “So long as the military is allowed to investigate itself, Mexico will leave victims of military abuse without access to justice, and all Mexicans without an effective public security policy,” HRW’s Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco says. And Al-Jazeera with a video report from Reynosa on the infiltration of security forces by drug gangs there.
· On California’s Prop. 19, CNN Money looks at what passage of the initiative would do to help the state’s stretched law enforcement budget. For the second week in a row, Edward Schumacher-Matos in the Washington Post with a pro-Prop. 19 opinion. The LA Times, meanwhile, repeats its opposition to Prop. 19 in an editorial yesterday.
· Colombia Reports writes on the official opening of an investigation of Alvaro Uribe and his role in the country’s wiretap scandal. “Former DAS official Martha Leal has been ordered to testify in the investigation and provide any details she has about Uribe's involvement in the wiretapping scandal,” the news organization reports. El Tiempo has more, saying Leal, the former deputy director of DAS, will testify next Thursday, October 28.
· Meanwhile, El Tiempo also speaks with US ambassador to Colombia, Michael McKinley on what some are calling Washington’s “new Colombia agenda.” A high profile US delegation arrives in Bogotá this weekend, but McKinley downplays the “newness” of what will be discussed by the US officials and their Colombian counterparts. “The delegation’s visit,” McKinley says, “reflects work that is already underway, strengthening an relationship that should be 50:50.”
· Speaking at the New School in New York yesterday, Peruvian presidential contender Ollanta Humala presented his vision of a new Peru. The AP reports. This writer adds that Humala outlined an agenda which included recovering Peru’s natural resources, promoting regional integration, creating a “national market economy,” and fighting corruption. He also said his campaign has made an “educational revolution” its centerpiece, time and again returning to need for a strong state that would “translate economic growth into development” and was capable of being present in the entire national territory. According to most polls Humala is in fourth place in a crowded field which includes former president Alejandro Toledo, the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, Keiko Fujimori, and former Lima mayor Luis Castaneda.
· José Miguel Insulza spoke on the crisis in Ecuador at the Inter-American Dialogue Thursday. Audio available here.
· Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is wrapping up his international travels. In Iran, Chavez and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reaffirmed their pledge toward to change the current “world order.” In Syria, new Venezuela-Syria energy agreements, including the construction of a new refinery in Syria. Meanwhile, back in Venezuela, more signs that the country is finally coming out of its economic recession. During a budget speech Thursday, Finance Minister Jorge Giordani said he expects 2% GDP growth in 2011.
· BBC Mundo says Latin America’s surprise economy of the year may be Paraguay. According to new IMF numbers, the South American country will see much higher than expected growth next year, now estimated at between 9 and 10.5%. Those numbers come on the back of high commodity prices, particularly soya and beef. But the question of how that growth can be translated into poverty reduction and reduced inequality remains open.
· And finally, on the media in Latin America, this week’s Economist writes that “with democracy having replaced dictatorship everywhere bar Cuba in Latin America, the region’s media face few of the menaces of the past, such as censorship or the army kidnapping, torturing and murdering journalists. But in several countries the media are finding that freedom from state repression does not mean they can publish what they please.” Organized crime, the magazine writes, is threat number one to journalism, with Mexico being on the front line of this struggle, along with Central America. In a second category, the magazine also highlights government restrictions on private media, citing Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina, among others. On these restrictions, the Economist writes:
“There is merit to these governments’ complaint that a few private hands control too much of the media. Yet all too often their remedies seem aimed at preserving that power—and shifting it to the state.”
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