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Human Rights and Cuban Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Elena Mederos
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Extract

The traditional dualism of law and extralegal coercion in the socialist bloc countries is well known. It is also well known that this dualism provides the framework for systematic circumvention of human rights. As it occurs in the Soviet Union, this phenomenon has been the object of scholarly studies, and a similar analysis of its existence in Cuba is long overdue. The point of this article, however, is not the violation of human rights in Cuba that violates its own or international laws but, rather, the limitations on fundamental human rights that are inherent in the Cuban legal system.

Type
Articles
Information
Worldview , Volume 22 , Issue 11 , November 1979 , pp. 42 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1979

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References

1. Sharlet, Robert, “The New Soviet Constitution,” Problems of Communism, September-October, 1977, p. 5; Sharlet, “Stalinism and Soviet Legal Culture,” in Stalinism, ed. Tucker, Robert C. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), pp. 155-79Google Scholar.

2. Klein, Linda, “The Socialist Constitution of Cuba (1976),” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law , 17, 3 (1978)Google Scholar.

3. Ibid.

4. Henkin, Louis, The Rights of Man Today (Boulder, Colo.: West view Press, 1978), p.66 Google Scholar.

5. Ley de Procedimicnto Penal, Ley No. 5, 13 August 1977, in Gaceta Oficial de la Republica de Cuba, 26 August 1977, art. 305.

6. Ibid., arts. 455-58, 463.

7. Henkin, p. 74.

8. Codigo de la Ninez y la Juventud, Ley No. 16, 28 June 1978, art. 23.

9. Codigo de la Familia, Ley No. 1289, 14 February 1975, Gaceta Oficial, 15 February 1975, art. 95.

10. See Frank Calzon, “Jehovah's Witnesses Persecuted in Cuba,” Worldview, December, 1976.

11. Draft Penal Code, arts. 247 and 365, published in “Resumen del Anteproyecto de Codigo Penal,” Juventud Rebelde, 10 February 1978 (Supp.). The Penal Code was approved on December 29, 1978.

12. Codigo de Defensa Social (official ed. 1959), art. 140, as amended by Ley No. 1262, 5 January 1974, Gaceta Official, 5 January 1974.

13. See Of Human Rights, a newsletter on the human condition in Cuba, published in Washington, D.C., for recent reports by international organizations on the mistreatment of political prisoners in Cuba; and see “The Yellow Uniforms of Cuba,” by Theodore Jacqueney, Worldview, January-February, 1977.

14. “138 Cuban Prisoners Blast Exile Talks With Castro, Miami News, 12 December 1978; “138 Cuban Prisoners Reject Castro Dialogue,” Washington Post, 15 December 1978.