Fewer arbitrary detentions but the “totalitarian model” continues (CCDHRN)

La Habana/The number of arbitrary arrests for political reasons in Cuba declined during the month of January to 178, according to the latest report of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) released Monday. Despite one of the lowest figures in recent years, the organization “looks to the immediate future with extreme skepticism as long as the regime continues to impose a totalitarian model on pour people which is the primary cause of the poverty and hopelessness that plague the vast majority of Cubans.”

The report notes that, “despite possible changes in the geopolitical scenario, the situation of civil and political rights and other fundamental rights in Cuba remains the worst in the entire Western Hemisphere.”

During the first month of the year, the Commission also recorded 48 cases of physical assaults and 36 victims of various forms of harassment by the secret political police and paramilitary agents.

The organization describes as positive the releases of political prisoners in the framework of agreements between the governments of Raúl Castro and Barack Obama, but recalled that “dozens of political prisoners and thousands of innocent Cubans continue to languish in Castro’s prisons under generally inhumane and degrading conditions.”