14ymedio, Madrid, 8 March 2024 — The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reported on Thursday that Cuba rejected 31 recommendations from different countries to the Island during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council held in November.
The organization, based in Madrid, said in a statement that all the suggestions “pointed, precisely, to the hard core of repression in Cuba and demanded the release of political prisoners.”
Similarly, the OCDH also criticized the fact that the Island did not accept a request to “guarantee the necessary medical care to imprisoned political opponents.”
All the suggestions “pointed, precisely, to the hard core of repression in Cuba and demanded the release of political prisoners”
Last November, Cuba was submitted to the UPR, a review of the human rights situation that all countries carry out every four and a half years in the UN Human Rights Council, in which they receive recommendations from their peers.
Among the rejected recommendations is the Dutch request to “put an end to harassment, repression and arbitrary arrests (…)”; the Swedish, which requested the “access of independent observers (…) to trials and prisons”; the Spanish, which called for reforms to allow the “full exercise of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association”; and the American, to end the “one-party system and allow the holding of truly free elections.”
Despite this, the OCDH pointed out that the Cuban Government did assume 292 recommendations and “take note” of 41 others.
According to the latest data from the organization Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, there are 1,066 political prisoners on the Island, a large part of them participants in the anti-government demonstrations of July 11, 2021.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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