Tag Archives: Freedom of Movement

“Euphoria” in Cuba as Raúl Castro Loosens Travel Policy

By Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, October 17, 2012

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/17/v-fullstory/3054779/euphoria-in-cuba-as-raul-castro.html#storylink=cpy

The Cuban government’s bombshell decision to drop the widely hated exit permits required for citizens travelling abroad has unleashed “euphoria” on the island as well as concerns abroad over a possible mass exodus.
A decree published Tuesday made it clear the communist government will continue to decide who can leave the island, as it has since Jan. 9, 1959. It repeatedly noted that any Cuban could be kept from travelling “when the proper authorities so decide.”
“But there is an incredible euphoria here because what 1 million or more people here really want is to leave” for good or just to visit relatives or friends abroad, dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe said from Havana.
University of Miami professor Jaime Suchlicki warned of a “legal Mariel.” And a pro-Cuba activist urged Washington to avert a possibly massive increase in the number of Cubans arriving by ending its wet-foot, dry-foot policies and the Cuban Adjustment Act.
State Department spokesman William Ostick said Washington welcomed the changes because they favor human rights, but warned Cubans not to “risk their lives” crossing the Straits of Florida and noted that they still need visas to enter most nations.
“Now the question is where, where can we go to,” said Katarina Ponce, a recently laid off government secretary, trying to figure out if any countries do not require Cubans to obtain visas in advance of their arrival. “Russia? Cambodia? Any place.”
Havana blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit permits more than 20 times, wrote on Tweeter that “The devil is in the details of the new migration law” and called the decree “gatopardista” — a situation where change is more apparent than real.
The new rules appear likely to allow more average Cubans — those without political or other issues pending with the government — to travel abroad more easily, stay out longer and return with fewer complications, costs and paperwork.
They also may help ease some of the social and financial pressures ballooning inside Cuba under Raúl Castro’s decisions to reform the economy by laying off nearly 1 million state employees and cutting subsidies to the food, health and education sectors.
More than 1 million Cubans now live abroad, mostly in the United States, and about 7,400 islanders without visas arrived in the United States in the one-year period that ended Sept. 30. All Cubans who step on U.S. soil can stay permanently.
The decree noted that as of Jan. 14, Cubans will no longer need the exit permits, which cost $150 in a country where the average monthly wage stands at $20. They also will not need letters of invitation from their foreign hosts, which cost $200 to process.
The changes also extend from 11 to 24 months the amount of time that Cubans can spend abroad before they are ruled to have officially migrated and lose benefits such as health care. Further extensions are possible.
But the government retains final say on who gets passports because U.S. migration policies that favor Cuban migrants “take away from us the human resources that are indispensable to the economic, social and scientific development of the country,” according to a report Tuesday in the Granma newspaper announcing the changes.
Supervisors must approve the issuance of passports to government and military officials, professionals, physicians and other medical personnel, top sports figures and others whose work is deemed “vital” to the state, according to the decree.
Passports also can be denied to any Cuban “when it is so determined by the appropriate authorities for other reasons of public interest,” the decree added, or when “reasons of defense and national security suggest it.”
“If that’s the way it is, then I have to believe that the government will be as arbitrary as always,” said Wilfredo Vallín, a Havana lawyer who heads the non-government Cuban Judicial Association.
Also barred from obtaining passports — whose price rose from about $60 to about $110 — are those who are subject to the military draft or have other unspecified “obligations” to the government.
“The government continues to regard migration not as a right of all Cubans but as a gift that it gives to people according to its own interests,” said Juan Antonio Blanco, a Florida International University professor who has studied Cuba’s migration regulations.
The decree also abolishes the reentry permit required for Cubans who live abroad and wish to visit the island, and extends the time they can visit from one month to at least three months per visit.
Not all will be welcomed back, however. Blocked are those who “organize, encourage or participate in hostile actions against the political, economic and social basis of the state,” and any others “when reasons of defense and national security call for it.”
Also on the don’t-come list, according to the decree, are those with criminal records for terrorism, money laundering or weapons smuggling, and those “linked to acts against humanity, human dignity (or) the collective health.”
“This continues the government effort to control the conduct of citizens inside and outside the island, through an opaque system that rewards and punishes at its own discretion,” said Blanco, a former analyst for the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
The migration reforms were the most anticipated of all the changes that Raúl Castro has been talking about and putting in place since he took over from older brother Fidel Castro, temporarily in 2006 and officially in 2008.
The exit permit was required in 1959 initially to block the escape of officials and supporters of the Batista government toppled by the Castro revolution just nine days before. The re-entry permit was required beginning in 1961, to try to control the return of radical Castro opponents.
But Raúl Castro told the nation’s legislature last year that Cuban migration policies needed an update because those leaving the country nowadays are “émigrés for economic reasons” rather than hostile exiles.
Suchlicki, head of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at UM, on Tuesday reissued a column he wrote on May 3 warning that Castro was planning a mass exodus to relieve pressures inside Cuba. The column was titled, “Is Cuba planning a legal Mariel?”
John McAuliff, a New York activist who has long opposed the U.S. embargo on the island, also predicted that with more Cubans free to travel abroad, more will wind up in Mexico and Canada and will step across the U.S. border.
The Obama administration should therefore immediately end the wet-foot, dry-foot policy and the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. territory to stay permanently, and to remain, McAuliff wrote in an email.
Mauricio Claver Carone, executive director of the pro-embargo U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee in Washington, remained skeptical.
When Cubans start jamming foreign diplomatic missions in Havana in search of visas and come up empty handed, he said, the Castro government will tell them, “Well as you can see, other countries also don’t want you to travel.”
Even more skeptical was Blanco. “When all this blows over, the Cubans and the media will realize that not much has changed in the tight control system,” he said. “Stalin can continue to sleep in peace.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/17/v-fullstory/3054779/euphoria-in-cuba-as-raul-castro.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

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The Economic Implications for Cuba of Relaxing Restrictions on the Freedom of Movement

By Arch Ritter, October 16, 2012

Cuba’s relaxation of its much-loathed travel regulations, to come into effect on January 14 2013,  is welcome news as it will improve the freedom of movement for Cuban citizens considerrably– one hopes .  It is certainly to be welcomed warmly.

The new policy abolishes the requirement to have a foreigner make an invitation and pay $224.00 (CDN in 2009) for an exit visa (non-refundable even if the permit is refused.) It also permits Cubans to remain outside the country for 24 months, extendable, rather than the current 11 months, without having their property in Cuba confiscated.

There are a number of unknowns in the new policy however.

  • Restrictions or controls apparently will remain on professionals . How broad these are is not clear.
  • Will the restrictions still apply to independent professionals such as pro-democracy critics such as Oscar Chepe or Yoani Sanchez?  Will they still require exit permits?  Will they then be free to return to Cuba?

Dimas Castellanos, Miriam Celaya, Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sanchez; Will Cuba’s Pro-Democracy Bloggers now be able to exit Cuba freely and – one hopes – to return freely as well?

 TheEconomic Consequences of the New Travel Regulatoions

 Increased Emigration?

Easier exit and 24 months – extendable – absence may lead to more emigration and the  loss of “human capital.”  Already annual net emigration is high, reaching 38,165 in 2010 (ONE 2011 Table 3.21). Those who emígrate are disproportionately better education and entrepreneurial and ready to face the challenges of starting over in a new country. Such population loss is especially onerous in view of Cuba’s declining population and the prospect of accelerated decline as an aging population becomes a dying population .

Or Decreased Emigration?

Greater freedom to exit and re-enter Cuba may in fact reduce emigration as Cubans in Cuba are able to leave more freely.

Perhaps increased numbers of Cubans will remain in Cuba if they are free to visit abroad for lengthy periods ot time and also to return.

For some Cubns such as musicians oir major league Cuban baseball players in the United States and Canada,  spending part of the year in the US but returning for some months to Cuba each year would be an ideal situation. Would some such professionals ultimately  return to live in Cuba part-time?

Declining or Increasing Revenues for the Government?

The Cuban Government will lose the revenues from the very high exit permit fees. (These were an extortionarte $ US 224.00 for each person in 2009 when I tried to invite two  Cubans, Miriam Celaya and Yoani Sanchex to visit Canada in a prívate capacity. The payments were non-refundable.)

But will increased foreign travel lead to higher government tariff revenues from the increased volumes of products imported by air passengers?

 Increased Remittance Payments from Migrants?

Will more Cubans leave Cuba to work abroad but support their families at home in Cuba and revisiting often? The result would then be increased inflows of hard currency to Cuba.

In summary, the economic implications of the relaxation of the travel restrictions are ambiguous and not yet clear – as is the detail of the legislation itself at this time.

However, the government perhaps is to be congratulated for renouncing some easy forms of hard currency income from the elimination of the exit permit fee and facing the risk of increased emigration.  Over time, the crass monetary aspects of the improvement in peoples’ freedom of movement should be more positive in terms of government revenues and National economic gains.

 Currency Inconvertibility and Monetary Dualism as Limits on Freedom of Movement

The most serious violation of the freedom of movement of Cuban citizens results from Cuba’s monetary and exchange rate system.  Cuba’s currency has been inconvertible for 50 years and the dual monetary and exchange rate system has prevailed for the last 20 years. Currency inconvertibility means that citizens can not routinely change their earnings for foreign currencies in order to travel freely. Instead, from 1961 to 1992 they have had to get permission from the Government to exchange their earnings in Moneda Nacional pesos into a foreign currency. This meant that for the average citizen travel was highly restricted unless one could find a foreign sponsor to pay the bills.

The economic powerlessness of most Cuban citizens was further intensified when the dual monetary system came into play in the early 1990s,. With the collapse of the value of the “old peso” (Moneda Nacional) vis-a-vis the US dollar (and then the convertible peso or “CUC”) the purchasing power of earnings in the official economy also collapsed.

At the exchange rate for Moneda Nacional to the US dollar at around 26 to 1, the average monthly income is somewhere around US$ 20.00. It is not easy to travel outside – or inside – Cuba independently with this level of income!

In sum, Cuba’s exchange rate and monetary systems impoverish Cuban citizens in terms of the international transferability of their earnings from work.

Only when Cuba establishes a normal exchange rate and monetary system will greater freedom of movement become a realistic possibility for the average Cuban citizen.

 

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BBC: “Cuba to End Exit Permits for Foreign Travel”

From the British Broadcasting  Corporation, October 16, 2012

Original article here: Cuba to end exit permits for foreign travel

Cuba has announced it is removing the need for its citizens to obtain exit permits before travelling abroad.

State media said the move, to come into effect on 14 January next year, would “update” migration laws to reflect current and future circumstances.

Cubans currently have to go through a lengthy and expensive process to obtain a permit and dissidents are often denied one, correspondents say.

The move is the latest in a series of reforms under President Raul Castro.

Cubans who have permanent residency on the island will also be allowed to stay abroad for up to 24 months, instead of the current 11, without having to return to renew paperwork.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford, in Havana, says the exit permit process is hated by most Cubans so this reform, which was much anticipated, will be widely welcomed.

Cuba previously saw people attempting to leave the country as traitors or enemies of the revolution, says our correspondent, but official recognition is growing that many Cubans want to leave for economic reasons and that the country can benefit from the cash and knowledge they bring back with them.

Now all that Cubans will need to leave is a valid passport and a visa.

However, the new law still argues for the need to protect Cuba’s “human capital”, our correspondent adds, so highly-qualified professionals like doctors, will continue to face extra hurdles to travel.

Government critics are also likely to experience further difficulties, as passport updates can be denied for “reasons of public interest defined by the authorities”.

The restrictions have failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of Cubans emigrating illegally in the past few decades, many of them to the US where they have formed a strongly anti-Havana diaspora.

The US grants automatic residency to anyone who reaches it from Cuba.

Brink of war

For nearly half a century, Cuba was run as a command economy, with almost all activity controlled by the state. But under President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2008, it has gradually eased restrictions in many areas of politics, business and society. The latest reform comes on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war as the US and the Soviet Union nearly went to war over Soviet missiles placed on the island. But the crisis was resolved diplomatically when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba.

However the relationship between Cuba and the US remains hostile – they have no diplomatic relations and an American economic blockade of the era is still in effect.

Cuba has struggled economically since the collapse of the Soviet Union and now relies heavily on the support of the left-wing government of Venezuela.

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Espacio Laical: “Por un consenso para la democracia”

A document entitled Towards a Concensus for Democracy” has just been published by Espacio Laical, a project of the Centro Cultural Padre Félix Varela of the Archdiocese  of Havana. The editor is Lenier Gonzalez.

The complete document is available here: Espacio Laical, Por un consenso para la democracia

Table of Contents

 – Cuba está viva. 6
– En torno a la democracia en Cuba. Por Roberto Veiga González 8
– ¿Es rentable ser libres? Por Julio César Guanche 14
– Hacia una democracia de los consensos. Por Roberto Veiga González 21
– Por un consenso para la democracia. Por Julio César Guanche 27
– Compartir la búsqueda de nuestro destino. Por Roberto
Veiga González 32
– Cuba hoy: compatibilidad entre cambios reales y el panorama constitucional. Por Monseñor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes 36
– Dossier sobre los desafíos constitucionales de la República de Cuba. Por Jorge I.  Domínguez, Julio A. Fernández Estrada, Dmitri Prieto Samsónov y Roberto Veiga González 47
– Fuerza por la unión, no unión por la fuerza. Por Mario Castillo 69
– Apuntes para una reforma del Poder Popular en Cuba. Por Roberto Veiga González 73
– Sobre la democracia y los partidos políticos: contribución a un debate impostergable. Por Armando Chaguaceda 80
– Dossier sobre la necesaria reforma al Partido Comunista de Cuba. Por Víctor Fowler, Orlando Márquez, Ovidio D’Angelo, Alexis Pestano, Arial Dacal y Lenier González 84

Lenier González

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Cuba economy czar says cooperatives by year-end

By PETER ORSI Associated Press; July 23, 2012

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s economy czar said Monday that plans are in place to begin an experimental phase of non-state cooperatives in sectors ranging from food services to transportation by the end of the year.

While cooperative farming has already begun, Cubans have been waiting for regulations allowing them to form worker-owned co-ops in other sectors. The pilot program announced by Marino Murillo in a session of Cuba’s parliament will include 222 cooperatives.

The creation of midsize cooperatives is a long-promised lynchpin of President Raul Castro’s economic reforms, and Cuba’s economy czar promised state support to jump-start the pilot program. Murillo said some will be converted state-run enterprises, and co-ops will be given preference over private single-owner businesses.

“For these cooperatives and the non-state entities, in the coming year $100 million is being budgeted which is the financing necessary so they can be assured production, because if we create them and there is no financing, they won’t work,” Murillo told lawmakers in one of the parliament’s twice-a-year sessions.

He also reiterated that Cuba must also make its state-run enterprises more efficient and productive, since they will continue to dominate.

“The most important part of our economy will be the socialist state enterprise,” Murillo said. “Don’t think that all of a sudden the private-sector workers will generate $40 billion, $50 billion in GDP.”

Castro’s five-year plan to overhaul the economy has already legalized the sale of homes and cars and swelled the ranks of private-sector entrepreneurs by a quarter-million since 2010. Nearly all are small mom-and-pop shops, however, the likes of restaurants, cell-phone repair shops and jewelers.

Cuba insists that the reforms are not are not a wholesale embrace of capitalism but rather an “updating” of the nation’s socialist model, and most key sectors will remain under government control.

Other than a statute on taxation, no new laws were announced Monday. Foreign journalists were not allowed access to the session of the National Assembly, but state television aired Murillo’s speech in the evening. For islanders wondering whether the assembly would take action on long-promised reform of travel restrictions, it was another disappointment.

Early this year, Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon said in an interview that a “radical and profound” change to the rules, which keep most Cubans from leaving the country, was imminent.

There has been no word since then about scrapping the much-loathed “tarjeta blanca,” or “white card,” which islanders must apply for to travel abroad. Speaking to parliament, Castro repeated that the government still intends to reform the migratory rules, but did not say when it might happen. “It has not been relegated. On the contrary,” Castro said. “We have continued working toward its gradual relaxation, taking into account the associated side-effects.”

The pace of Castro’s reforms has slowed this year with no blockbuster changes announced since December, leading many economists to question whether Cuba can meet its own targets for reducing bloated state payrolls by 1 million workers, and shifting 40 percent of the economy into non-state control.

Last week, the island’s burgeoning small business class was dealt a blow with the low-key announcement of new, stiff tariffs on imported goods. The entrepreneurs say that without access to wholesale markets, the only way they can supply their businesses is through “mules” who transit between Cuba and places such as Miami, Ecuador and Panama with their bags stuffed with food, spices, clothing, electronics, diapers and other items tough to come by on the island.

On Monday, Cuban state media published an article seeking to quiet what it called the “numerous comments and anxieties” about the new customs duties. It made no mention of the small businesses, however, and insisted that the measures were necessary because excess baggage is slowing down service at the airport, making it resemble a cargo terminal.

Murillo said Monday that Cuba is studying how to establish wholesale markets, but did not announce specific plans.

Economists say it’s clear that Castro’s changes are here to stay, but change is happening slowly and measures to stimulate the private sector come with other decisions throwing up obstacles in entrepreneurs’ paths. “It’s very confusing because they are really sending mixed signals,” said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a Cuba analyst based in the Washington area.

Castro also reiterated that the government will not be pressured into hurrying. “On a national level and above all in the exterior, there has been no lack of appeals, not always well-intentioned, to accelerate the pace of transformation,” Castro said. “It is a matter of such scope upon which the country’s socialist and independent future depends, that there will never be space for the siren calls that call us to immediately dismantle socialism and impose so-called shock therapies on the people.”

Cuba celebrates Revolution Day on Thursday. The date is sometimes used to make major announcements, though less so in recent years since Castro replaced his older brother Fidel as president.

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Blogger Yoani Sanchez filed the demand to know why she’s banned from leaving Cuba.

By Juan O. Tamayo; jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com May 30, 2012

Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez has filed a notice with the Interior Ministry demanding to know why she’s not allowed to travel abroad, the latest in a string of daring legal challenges to the communist government.
Sánchez said the notice filed Wednesday asks Interior Minister Abelardo Colomé Ibarra to explain why the ministry office that is in charge of exit permits never answered her Nov. 18, 2010 request for the reasons behind the refusals.
Colomé Ibarra now has 60 days to respond to her complaint of “administrative silence,” Sanchez said. If he doesn’t, she will file a lawsuit against the minister seeking a court order that he must reply.
“Of course, I know what’s going to happen. But I want to maintain that innocence of having hope,” Sánchez added, referring to the high probability that her complaints will go nowhere in a country where the courts faithfully follow the government line.
Cubans who want to travel abroad require a government permit, known as a “White Card” and regularly denied to dissidents. It has turned down several Sánchez requests to travel abroad to receive prizes, attend conferences or for other reasons.
She has repeatedly asked for an explanation at the Interior Ministry’s Office for Immigration and Foreigners’ Affairs, but received none. Her notice Wednesday elevated her question to the minister’s office.
“It’s a step before a lawsuit,” she told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Havana. “It is a legal, juridical opportunity in the hands of citizens, which allow an appeal against Cuban authorities when the authorities have not responded to a petition.”
Her notice was the latest in a handful of bold attempts by dissidents and others to use Cuba’s legal system to challenge official actions. The courts have knocked down almost all the cases, including some filed against police.
But the Cuban Juridical Association is still fighting a three-year-old case seeking the legal recognition of the Justice Ministry as a group of lawyers that provides legal advice on a nonprofit basis, usually to government critics.
CJA chief Wilfredo Vallín, who also is advising Sánchez on her case, took the first step required to register the group in April 2009 by asking the Justice Ministry’s Registry of Associations to certify that no other group had registered the same name.
The registry never replied so the 1992 graduate of the University of Havana Law School elevated his request to Justice Minister María Esther Reus. When she didn’t reply, he filed suit under Cuba’s Law for Civil, Administrative and Labor Procedures.
To his surprise, a three-judge panel first officially accepted Vallín’s complaint, and then ordered Reus to appoint lawyers to defend her. Cuba’s highest court, the Supreme Tribunal found a technical fault with one of his filings last year but allowed the case to continue and later ordered the minister to reply to Vallín’s initial request.
The Justice Ministry certified last June that no other group was registered with the same name or purpose as the CJA, but earlier this year it rejected the CJA’s application for recognition on technical grounds. Vallín has vowed to appeal.
Ministry officials had never officially recognized any dissident group, making them illegal and therefore subject to sanctions for the crime of “illegal association.”
Cuba’s justice system argues that the role of the law is to promote stability and the development of a “socialist society.” Dissidents put on trial are almost always convicted.
Lawyers are required to work for the government or government-approved Collective Law Offices, where criminal defense attorneys can be hired. But lawyers who spend too much time defending dissidents are sometimes fired from the law offices.

Arch Ritter, Yoani Sanchez and Reinaldo Escobar, Havana April 2012

 

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After 50 years, Cubans hope to travel freely

May 2, 2012 Wednesday 6:56 AM GMT

After 50 years, Cubans hope to travel freely

BYLINE: By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press

DATELINE: HAVANA

After controlling the comings and goings of its people for five decades, communist Cuba appears on the verge of a momentous decision to lift many travel restrictions. One senior official says a “radical and profound” change is weeks away.

The comment by Parliament Chief Ricardo Alarcon has residents, exiles and policymakers abuzz with speculation that the much-hated exit visa could be a thing of the past, even if Raul Castro’s government continues to limit the travel of doctors, scientists, military personnel and others in sensitive roles to prevent a brain drain.

Other top Cuban officials have cautioned against over-excitement, leaving islanders and Cuba experts to wonder how far Havana’s leaders are willing to go.

In the past 18 months, Castro has removed prohibitions on some private enterprise, legalized real estate and car sales, and allowed compatriots to hire employees, ideas that were long anathema to the government’s Marxist underpinnings.

Scrapping travel controls could be an even bigger step, at least symbolically, and carries enormous economic, social and political risk.

Even half measures such as ending limits on how long Cubans can live abroad or cutting the staggeringly high fees for the exit visa that Cubans must obtain just to leave the country would be significant.

“It would be a big step forward,” said Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Virginia-based Lexington Institute. “If Cuba ends the restrictions on its own citizens’ travel, that means the only travel restrictions that would remain in place would be those the United States imposes on its citizens.”

The move would open the door to increased emigration and make it easier for Cubans overseas to avoid forfeiting their residency rights, a fate that has befallen waves of exiles since the 1959 revolution.

It could also bolster the number of Cubans who travel abroad for work, increasing earnings sent home in the short term and, ultimately, investment by a new moneyed class.

Scrapping exit controls should win Cuba support in Europe, which improved ties after dozens of political prisoners were freed in 2010.

But Peters and several other analysts said they doubt the new rules would bring about any immediate shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba, which includes a ban on American tourism. Those restrictions are entrenched and enjoy the backing of powerful Cuban American exiles.

“I don’t think it would lead to a drastic change in U.S. policy, but an accumulation of human rights improvements could lead to an incremental change,”

Peters said.

Cuba-born Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, said any discussion about immigration reform on the island is a peripheral issue.

“The kind of changes I’m interested in are not about immigration,” said Ros-Lehtinen, who heads the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “I’m interested in changes that affect fundamental freedom, democracy and respect for human rights.”

U.S. officials said they have been watching for an announcement for months, noting there has been such talk as far back as August. But nothing has happened, and they are skeptical that the Castro regime is truly committed to such reform.

Asked about possible reciprocal measures, one U.S. official said the Obama administration can’t promise anything because it doesn’t know what exactly Cuba plans to announce. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and demanded anonymity.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. “would certainly welcome greater freedom of movement for the Cuban public.”

Rumors of the exit visa’s imminent demise have circulated on and off for years.

The whispers became open chatter last spring after the Communist Party endorsed migration reform at a crucial gathering. But Castro dashed those hopes in December, saying the timing wasn’t right and the “fate of the revolution” was at stake.

Alarcon’s comments, made in an interview published in April, revived hopes that a bold move is coming.

“One of the questions that we are currently discussing at the highest level of the government is the question of emigration,” he told a French journalist. “We are working toward a radical and profound reform of emigration that in the months to come will eliminate this kind of restriction.”

But on Saturday, Vice Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodriguez told exiles not to set their hopes too high, vowing the government would maintain some travel controls as long as it faced a threat from enemies in Washington.

Havana residents say they are anxiously waiting to see what the government does.

“The time has come to get rid of the exit visa,” said Vivian Delgado, a shop worker. “It’s absurd that as a Cuban I must get permission to leave my country, and even worse that I need permission to come back.”

Added Domingo Blanco, a 24-year-old state office worker: “It’s as if one needed to ask to leave one’s own house.”

Many Cubans are reluctant to talk about their own experience with the exit visa.

One woman named Miru, who has been trying to leave Cuba since 2006, shared her story on the condition her full name not be used for fear that speaking with a foreign journalist could land her in trouble.

“This has been a very long process,” she said of her odyssey, which began when her husband defected from a medical mission in Africa and sought asylum in the U.S.

First, she had to get a letter releasing her from her job at a government ministry a process that took five years. Only then could she apply for the exit visa. That was three months ago, and Miru still hasn’t received an answer.

Officials say her case is complicated but won’t give a specific reason for the delay.

“I am very anxious to see my husband again,” she said.

The exit controls are a Cold War legacy of Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union. They were instituted in December 1961 to fight brain drain as hundreds of thousands of doctors and other professionals fled, many for new lives in Florida. That was three months before the U.S. embargo barring most trade with the island went into full effect.

Over the years, it has become much easier for Cubans to obtain permission to travel, though many are still denied, and it is particularly hard to take children out of the country.

Also, the exit visa’s $150 price tag is a small fortune in a country where salaries average about $20 a month. In addition, the person the traveler wishes to visit must pay $200 at a Cuban consulate.

Those who leave get only a 30-day pass, and the cost of an extension varies by country. In the U.S., the fee is $130 a month. Those who stay abroad more than

11 months lose the right to reside in Cuba. Before 2011, any property would automatically go to the state.

“The Cuban government has monetized every part of the humiliating process of coming and going,” said Ann Louise Bardach, a longtime Cuba expert and author of “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington.” “Getting out means running a gantlet, and it is all based on how much humiliation you can endure, and by the time they end up in Miami, people are filled with hate and dreams of revenge.”

Cuban officials have long portrayed the measures as necessary to counter Washington’s meddling. They accuse the U.S. of trying to lure away doctors by letting them walk into any American consulate and request asylum.

Cuban officials say even ordinary islanders are encouraged to leave by U.S.

regulations that automatically grant asylum to any who reach American shores, a policy Cuba says has encouraged thousands to attempt the dangerous trip on leaky boats and makeshift rafts across the Florida Straits.

It’s not clear how emigration reform will affect dissidents, who are routinely denied permission to leave and could still find themselves on some form of no-exit list.

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez called the exit controls “our own Berlin Wall without the concrete … a wall made of paperwork and stamps, overseen by the grim stares of soldiers.” She has been denied travel papers at least 19 times by her own count.

Some hardliners in Florida predict any change will be merely a sleight of hand designed to export malcontents, ease a severe housing shortage and fob off legions of superfluous state workers.

But for hundreds of thousands of Cubans like Miru, the exit visa is a personal matter, not political. After six years separated from her husband, she clings to hope that she will finally obtain permission or benefit from a change in the law.

“I have followed all the rules of my country,” she said. “I’ll be so happy to leave.”

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Peter Orsi in Havana, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami, and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow Paul Haven on Twitter: www.twitter.com/paulhaven

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Human Rights Watch, WORLD REPORT 2012, Chapter on Cuba

Human Rights Watch published its WORLD REPORT 2012 on January 22, 2012.The full report can be seen here: Human Rights Watch, WORLD REPORT 2012.

The Chapter on Cuba is presented below.

Summary

Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. In 2011 Raúl Castro’s government continued to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions. In 2011 the Cuban government freed the remaining 12 political prisoners from the “group of 75”  dissidents—human rights defenders, journalists, and labor leaders who were sentenced in 2003 in summary trials for exercising their basic rights—having forced most into exile in exchange for their freedom. Also in 2011 the government sentenced at least seven more dissidents to prison for exercising their fundamental rights, and human rights groups on the island said dozens more remain in prison.

The government increasingly relied on arbitrary arrests and short-term detentions to restrict the basic rights of its critics, including the right to assemble and move about freely. Cuba’s government also pressured dissidents to choose between exile and continued repression or even imprisonment, leading scores to leave the country with their families during 2011.

Political Prisoners

Cubans who criticize the government are subject to criminal charges. They are exempt from due process guarantees, such as the right to a defense or fair and public hearings by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal. In practice, courts are “subordinated” to the executive and legislative branches, denying meaningful judicial protection. Dozens of political prisoners remain in Cuban prisons, according to respected human rights groups on the island. In June 2011 the Cuban Council of Human Rights  Rapporteurs issued a list of 43 prisoners whom it said were still incarcerated for political reasons. In May 2011, four dissidents from Havana—Luis Enrique Labrador, David Piloto, Walfrido Rodríguez, and Yordani Martínez—were prosecuted on charges of contempt and public disorder for demonstrating in Havana’s Revolutionary Square and throwing leaflets with slogans such as“Down with the Castros.” They were sentenced to three to five years in prison. The council estimates that there are many more political prisoners whose cases they cannot document because the government does not let independent national or international human rights groups access its prisons.

Arbitrary Detentions and Short-Term Imprisonment

In addition to criminal prosecution, Raul Castro’s government has increasingly relied on arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate individuals who exercise their fundamental rights. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation documented 2,074 arbitrary detentions by security forces in 2010, and 2,224 between January and August 2011. The detentions are often used preemptively to prevent individuals from participating in meetings or events viewed as critical of the government. Security officers hardly ever present arrest orders to justify detentions, and threaten detainees with criminal prosecution if they continue to  participate in “counterrevolutionary” activities. Victims of such arbitrary arrests said they were held incommunicado for several hours to several days, often at police stations. Some received an official warning (acta de advertencia), which prosecutors may later use in criminal trials to show a pattern of delinquent behavior. Dissidents said these warnings aimed to dissuade them from  participating in future activities considered critical of the government. For example, on July 24, 2011, state security agents arbitrarily detained 28 human rights activists for 4 to 30 hours in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba province, when they tried to participate in a religious service to pray for the release of political prisoners.

Forced Exile

The death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February 2010 following his 85-day hunger strike, and the subsequent hunger strike by dissident Guillermo Farinas, pressured the Cuban government to release the remaining political prisoners from the “group of 75,” who were detained during a 2003 crackdown on dissent. Yet while the final 12 prisoners from the group  were released in March 2011, most were forced to choose between ongoing prison and forced exile. Since that time dozens of other prominent dissidents, journalists, and human rights defenders have been forced to choose between exile and ongoing harassment or even imprisonment. For example, Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, an outspoken human rights activist, former political prisoner, and president of a dissident youth group in Guantánamo, was arrested in December 2010. Held for months while awaiting trial, he said authorities told him that unless he agreed to go into exile, he would be sentenced to five years of prison. He accepted forced exile to Spain in April 2011.

Freedom of Expression

The government maintains a media monopoly on the island, ensuring there is virtually no freedom of expression. The  government controls all media outlets in Cuba, and access to outside information is highly restricted. Limited internet access means only a tiny fraction of Cubans can read independently published articles and blogs.

Although a few independent journalists and bloggers manage to write articles for foreign websites or independent blogs, they must publish work through back channels, such as writing from home computers, saving information on memory sticks, and uploading articles and posts through illegal internet connections; others dictate articles to contacts abroad. Independent journalists and bloggers are subjected to short-term arrests and harassment by police and state security agents, as well as threats of imprisonment if they continue to work. For example, independent journalists  Magaly Norvis Otero Suárez and Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez were detained and beaten in Havana on February 23, 2011, as they walked to an event with two members of the Women in White—a respected human rights group comprised of wives, mothers, and daughters of political prisoners—to honor the one year anniversary of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s death. They later said they were  transported to a police station, where they were assaulted and held incommunicado for roughly 14 hours.

Bloggers and independent journalists have also been the victims of  public smear campaigns, such as a March 2011 episode of a government-produced news program—broadcast widely on public television—which referred to independent bloggers as “cyber-mercenaries” and “puppets of the empire.”

The Cuban government uses the granting of press credentials and visas, which foreign journalists need to report from the island, to control coverage of Cuba and punish media outlets considered overly critical of the regime. In September, for example, the government refused to renew the press credentials of a journalist from Spain’s El Pais newspaper, arguing he presented a biased and negative image of Cuba.

Human Rights Defenders

Refusing to recognize human rights monitoring as a legitimate activity, Cuba’s government denies legal status to local human rights groups and uses harassment, beatings, and imprisonment to punish human rights defenders who try to document abuses. For example, Enyor Díaz Allen, Juan Luis Bravo Rodríguez, and Óscar Savón Pantoja—members of a human rights group in Guantanamó — were trying to enter a hospital on March 10 to visit a dissident on a hunger strike when security forces detained and transferred them without explanation to a police station and held them for three days in solitary confinement, Díaz Allen said.

Travel Restrictions and Family Separation

The Cuban government forbids the country’s citizens from leaving or returning to Cuba without first obtaining official permission, which is often denied. For example, well-known blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has criticized the government, has been denied the right to leave the island to accept awards and participate in conferences at least 16 times in the past four years. The government uses widespread fear of forced family separation to punish defectors and silence critics, and frequently bars citizens engaged in authorized travel from taking their children with them overseas, essentially holding the latter hostage to guarantee their parents’ return. The government restricts the movement of citizens within Cuba by enforcing a 1997 law known as Decree 217. Designed to limit migration to Havana, the decree requires that Cubans obtain government permission before moving to the capital. It is often used to prevent dissidents from traveling to Havana to attend meetings, and to harass dissidents from other parts of Cuba who live in the capital.

Prison Conditions

Prisons are overcrowded, unhygienic, and unhealthy, leading to extensive malnutrition and illness. Prisoners who criticize the  government, refuse to undergo ideological “reeducation,” or engage in hunger strikes and other protests are often subjected to  extended solitary confinement, beatings, and visit restrictions, and denied medical care. Prisoners have no effective complaint  mechanism to seek redress, giving prison authorities total impunity.

Key International Actors

The United States’s economic embargo on Cuba, in place for more than half a century, continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on Cubans, and has failed to improve human rights in the country. At the United Nations General Assembly in October, 186 of the 192 member countries voted for a resolution condemning the US  embargo; only the US and Israel voted against it. In January 2011 US President Barack Obama used his executive powers to ease “people-to-people” travel restrictions, allowing religious,  educational, and cultural groups from the US to travel to Cuba, and permitting Americans to send remittances to assist Cuban citizens. In 2009 Obama eliminated limits on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans to Cuba, which had been instituted during George W. Bush’s administration. In March US citizen Alan Gross—a subcontractor for the US Agency for International  Development—was sentenced to 15 years in jail for distributing telecommunications equipment for religious groups in Cuba. Gross was detained in December 2009 and accused by state prosecutors of engaging in a“subversive project aiming at bringing down the revolution.” Cuba’s highest court upheld his sentence in August. He remains in prison.

The European Union continues to retain its “Common Position” on Cuba, adopted in 1996, which conditions full economic cooperation with Cuba on its transition to a pluralist democracy and respect for human rights. At this writing Cuba’s government had yet to ratify the core international human rights treaties—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—which it signed in February 2008. Cuba is currently serving a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Council, having been re-elected in May 2009

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New Publication: The Cuban Diaspora in the 21st Century

A new analysis of the potential role for the Cuban diaspora was made public today – October 7, 2011 – in Washington and will be presented in Miami on October 10. It was produced under the auspices of the Cuban Research Institute of Florida International University and more specifically, the Project entitled “The Cuban Diaspora and the Development of the Entrepreneurial Sector” of the Cuban Research Institute in cooperation with the Cuba Study Group.

As can be seen from the Table of Contents below, the Report, while concise, is wide ranging in scope and constructive in orientation. It may prove to be an important catalyst in generating changes in attitudes and eventually policy on both sides of the Florida Straits. At least, I hope that this is the case.

A distinguished group of scholars produced this Report, including Uva de Aragón (Florida International University), Jorge Domínguez (Harvard University), Jorge Duany (the University of Puerto Rico), and Carmelo Mesa-Lago (University of Pittsburgh).  Orlando Márquez, director of Palabra Nueva, a journal of the Havana Catholic Archdiocese, joined the committee in March. The coordinator for the project is Juan Antonio Blanco (Florida International University), who also coauthored the report.

The complete study is available here:

The Cuban Diaspora in the 21st Century, FIU, October 2011

From the Preface by Juan Antonio Blanco:

The authors have analyzed relations between several states and their diasporas and studied the problems and potentials associated with the Cuban diaspora’s potential role in Cuba’s national development. While this document does not attempt to evaluate the measures adopted by the Cuban government in August 2006, it suggests that Cuba’s so-called economic update would have a better chance of success were it accompanied by a parallel update of the island’s migratory policy.
The authors have reviewed the tensions, conflicts, and traumas in the history of Cuban state’s relationship with its diaspora, but their emphasis is always on the future. Without glossing over problems, they prefer to scan the horizon for possibilities that could bring about a genuine normalization of relations between the diaspora and its country of origin; in particular, changes in existing migratory policy to bring it in line with universally recognized standards. Their analysis also includes the obstacles posed by United States policy toward Cuba, especially for the Cuban diaspora, and the need for their removal.
The members of the committee—who volunteered their services to produce this report—have formulated a series of recommendations for respectful submission to the governments of Cuba and the United States, as well as to the Cuban diaspora and Cuban civil society.
As the authors note in the conclusion to this document, “Many of the observations, conclusions, and suggestions expressed in this report are aimed at tomorrow, with the hope that they will eventually be implemented in whole or in part. Tomorrow can begin today, however, if the actors with decision-making power in this area so choose, as Cuba so urgently needs.”

Table of Contents

Preface 5
Summary 7
Introduction 11

A Better, Shared Future 11
Points of Departure  12
Advantages of a Shared Future 13

State-Diaspora Relations 16

Haiti: A strategically selective state 18
The Dominican Republic: A Transnational Nation-State 20
Cuba: Between Disinterest and Denunciation 23
Policies for Improving State-Diaspora Relations 28
The Role of Government Institutions 33
Relations with Non-Governmental actors 34
Dual Citizenship Laws 34
External Voting 35
Investment Incentives  35
“Brain Circulation” 35
Ethnic Tourism 36
Nostalgic trade 36
Relations with Charitable and Voluntary Organizations 37

The Cuban Diaspora: Possibilities and Challenges 38

The Cuban Diaspora in the United States 38
New Policies and the Diaspora  45

The Diaspora: Resources and Possibilities 47

Economic Capital  48
Social Capita 50
Human Capital 50
Symbolic Capital 51
Possible Diaspora Support for the Non-State Sector  52
Venture Capital or Joint Investment in Small Enterprises  53
Using Symbolic and Social Capital to Attract Financial Capital  55
Access to Foreign Markets, Marketing, and Outsourcing 56
Tools, Inputs, and Technology 57
Training and Consulting 58
Obstacles and Challenges 59
Policy Framework: Updating Cuba’s Migration Laws 61
The Subjective Context  63

Conclusions and Recommendations .65

Conclusions 65
Recommendations 68
To the Government of Cuba  69
To the Government of the United States70
To the Cuban Diaspora 72
To Cuban Society. 72
Epilogue 73

 

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Cuba: A Half-Century of Monetary Pathology and Citizen’s Freedom of Movement

By Arch Ritter

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.  (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

In December 2009, I made a formal invitation to two Cuban citizens to visit Canada, following the official “Procedure for Inviting a Cuban National to Visit Canada” as laid out by the Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX). I paid the required Consular Fee of $CDN 256.00 for each invitation. The two Cuban citizens invited were Yoani Sanchez and Miriam Celaya. I thought naively and foolishly that while Yoani Sanchez had been denied the right to leave Cuba a number of times before December 2009 when she had been invited by official institutions, perhaps a personal invitation would be successful. I of course was wrong. The Exit Permits of course were refused. The Consulate of Cuba in Ottawa of course refused to return the $512.00.

Yoani Sanchez

Miriam Celaya

The lack of freedom of movement of Cuban citizens is well known. The case of Yoani Sanchez is a cause célèbre and also a public relations disaster for the Government of Cuba. A number of analysts have written eloquently on the practice of the Cuban Government to dishonor its commitment to Article 13 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights cited above. (See Ana Julia Faya: Nosotros tampoco viajamos libremente a Cuba, “Los permisos de entrada y salida del país son una violación de los derechos de los cubanos” and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, “The (Non) Right of Cubans to Travel, Havana Times, February 01, 2011”

Sergio Diaz-Briquets has presented a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the Consular Fees charged by the Governmemt of Cuba for the acquisition of a passport, its renewal while abroad, and various other consular services (ASCE Conference 2010). He concluded that the Consular Fees are simply abusive. (See  S. Diaz-Briquets, Government-Controlled Travel Costs to Cuba and Costs of Related Consular Services: Analysis and International Comparisons )

However, the most egregious violation of the freedom of movement of Cuban citizens lies less in the exorbitant consular fees that are routinely charged to Cubans abroad for consular services and the Exit Permit controls over Cuban citizens and more in Cuba’s monetary and exchange rate system.  Cuba’s currency has been inconvertible for 50 years and the dual monetary and exchange rate system has prevailed for the last 20 years. Currency inconvertibility means that citizens can not routinely change their earnings for foreign currencies in order to travel freely. Instead, from 1961 to 1992 they have had to get permission from the Government to exchange their earnings in Moneda Nacional into a foreign currency. On the other hand, anyone on official government business or activities sanctioned by the Government could get access to foreign exchange. This meant that for the average citizen travel was highly restricted unless one could find a foreign sponsor to pay the bills.

With the dual monetary system coming into play in the early 1990s, the economic powerlessness of most Cuban citizens was further intensified. With the collapse of the value of the “old peso” (Moneda Nacional) vis-a-vis the US dollar (and then the convertible peso CUC) the purchasing power of earnings in the official economy also collapsed. At the exchange rate for Moneda Nacional to the US dollar at around 26 to 1, the average monthly income is somewhere around US$ 20.00. Cuba’s monetary system impoverishes Cuban citizens in terms of the international transferability of their earnings from work.

In order to travel abroad, Cuban citizens now have three options. First, they can work for some branch of the government, mixed or state enterprises or organizations such as Universities for which travel abroad on official business can occur. Second, they can marry a foreigner for convenience or in sincerity – Spaniards and Ecuadoreans have been predominant recently – who then provides hard currency funding for travel abroad. Or third, they can now convert their Moneda Nacional earnings into Convertible pesos at the ratio of 26 to 1 and then acquire foreign currency through various channels with the convertible pesos. For most citizens, travel abroad is essentially blocked by the monetary and exchange rate systems.

The central planning system and the generalized controls on the economy adopted in 1960-61 meant that inconvertibility would have happened in any case. However, inconvertibility occurred under the watch of Che Guevara, who at the time was President of the National Bank and Minister of Finance as well as Minister of Industries (which included Basic Industry, Light Industry, Mining, Petroleum, and the sugar mills. Guevera was the indisputable “czar” of the Cuban economy.

Monetary inconvertibility and the accompanying loss of freedom of movement is one of Che Guevara’s gifts to the Cuban people. This has been compounded by the monetary and exchange rate policies of the Fidel and Raul Castro Presidencies after about 1990, which generated the dual system and which have so far been unable to come to grips with it and establish a unified and convertible currency.

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