... and the year is not even half over.
"The Cuban government, far from an opening or the releasing of any prisonser of conscience continues to imprison peaceful dissidents for defending human rights and exercising public freedoms recognized in international covenants on civil and political rights, manufactured crimes made to look like common crimes," the Cuban Council of Human Rights Rappateurs.
Some other numbers, according to the council:
- At least 26 government opponents have been sentenced to prison so far in 2009.
- At least 21 prisoners, in only 11 prisons in the Castro gulag, have died from "common neglect, hardship, beatings and abuse."
- There are almost 100,000 inmates in some 250 Cuban prisons, many of which are overcrowded, forcing prisoners to suffer horrific conditions.
Some political prisoners, according to the report, have told human rights groups that the dictatorship appears to cover up its crimes, in preparation for a possible visit by the United Nations top anti-torture official. Cell blocks are being cleaned, and some prisoners are being transferred to remote work camps in order to relieve overcrowding in the prisons.
"Everything is being changed to try to clean the image," said political prisoner Luís Enrique Ferrer García, who in 2003 was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
The Cuban human rights council also released an updated list of political prisoners. Read it here.
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