III. Methodology

Lack of Cooperation by the Cuban Government

The Cuban government aggressively works to prevent Cubans from documenting human rights abuses and sharing information with the international community. Nearly all dissidents’ trials are closed to independent observers, journalists, human rights defenders, and foreign diplomats. The individuals detained, prosecuted, imprisoned, or subject to any other disciplinary action are consistently denied documentation of their cases.

In the rare instances that dissidents or their family members are allowed access to trials, official documents, or other information about repression, they face considerable obstacles and risks in trying to disseminate it. Cubans lack basic access to mediums of communication such as the internet, fax machines, and sometimes even phones—and the channels that are available are under constant surveillance by the government. Moreover, individuals who do share such information with international human rights organizations, foreign media outlets, or multilateral institutions are subject to harassment, loss of employment, beatings, and imprisonment under laws that explicitly criminalize the dissemination of such information.

Human Rights Watch repeatedly requested meetings with the Cuban government to discuss the issues raised in this report, directing requests to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. and the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations New York. We also requested permission to visit Cuba, in hopes that the government would break with its practice of denying international human rights delegations access to the island. Unfortunately, Cuban officials never responded to any of these requests (See Appendix 2: Human Rights Watch Letters to the Cuban Government).

This overall lack of transparency underscores the central finding of this report: not only does the Cuban government abuse fundamental freedoms, but it even punishes the documentation of such repression.

Sources and Research

In spite of these obstacles, Human Rights Watch was able to conduct more than 60 extensive interviews with human rights defenders, journalists, former political prisoners, family members of current political prisoners, members of the clergy, independent trade unionists, members of unauthorized political groups, and other Cuban citizens between December 2008 and September 2009. The interviews were conducted over the phone and during a fact-finding mission to Cuba in June and July 2009, during which we conducted interviews in seven of the country’s fourteen provinces. These testimonies, drawn from a range of civil society members from across Cuba, establish a clear pattern of repression, from the tactics used to the types of individuals targeted. 

Human Rights Watch was able to obtain copies of nearly twenty documents, including indictments of political prisoners, official warnings for “dangerousness,” refusals of parole and permission to travel, and other legal documents. These documents, which were acquired from family members of political prisoners, unofficial civil society groups, and local human rights defenders, affirm the patterns of abuse established by the testimonies. In addition, we conducted an in-depth review of Cuba’s laws, which provide the legal underpinning for criminalizing dissent. Finally, we extensively researched press accounts— both from Cuba’s government-run papers and from the island’s independent (and thus illegal) press—as well as reports produced by local groups and international bodies such as the UN.

These sources of information are as diverse as any that can be assembled in examining a country whose government fails to cooperate with international human rights monitoring. Together, they allowed Human Rights Watch to establish the systematic pattern of abuse by Raúl Castro’s government documented in this report.

Who Is a “Dissident”?

This report will use the term “dissident” to refer to any individual who expresses dissent toward the government. This includes a broad range of nonviolent actors in Cuba, including human rights defenders, journalists, and trade unionists, as well as members of political groups, religious organizations, and other civil society groups not recognized by the Cuban government, and thus considered illegal. It also consists of people unaffiliated with any group who criticize the government or who abstain from cooperating with the state in some way. These diverse individuals do not share a single ideology, affiliation, or objective.

It is not uncommon for dissidents in Cuba to exercise their dissent through more than one medium. A person, for example, may belong to an unauthorized political group and simultaneously monitor human rights abuses. We consider this individual a human rights defender, a political activist, and a dissident. At points in this report we will refer to such individuals solely using the umbrella term of “dissident.”  The Cuban government, however, does not differentiate between these individuals or their forms of expression, branding all dissent as “counterrevolutionary” activity and thus worthy of punishment.

Anonymity and Security

Because of the risk for Cubans in speaking to outside organizations, Human Rights Watch took several precautionary steps to protect the security of its interviewees. All individuals with whom we spoke were given the option to remain anonymous in the report, to exclude information that might reveal their identities, or to leave their stories out of the report altogether.

In preparation for its fact-finding mission to Cuba, Human Rights Watch did not inform contacts of the pending visit so as not to attract surveillance or put individuals at risk. When conducting research on the island, we limited interviews to roughly an hour and did not stay for longer than necessary in any one location. Where interviews in Cuba are cited in the report, some names, dates, and locations of sources have been omitted. In spite of these precautions, some individuals interviewed for this report suffered reprisal after speaking to Human Rights Watch.