Rights abuses unabated in Raul Castro's Cuba: group

HAVANA (Reuters) - Eleven months after Cuban leader Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother, Cuba continues to trample on civil liberties, though the number of political prisoners has fallen, a rights group said on Thursday.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said the number of Cubans in jail for political reasons dropped from 283 to 246 in the first half of the year.

But the rights situation has not improved under acting President Raul Castro, who took over the government on July 31 after his 80-year-old brother underwent bowel surgery, the commission said in a biannual report.

"The systematic and institutional violation of each and every civil, political and economic right listed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights persists," it said.

Freedom of expression and association, and the right to form labor unions or political organizations, remain suppressed and criminalized under a draconian penal code, the group said.

The commission, led by veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, is illegal but tolerated by Cuba's communist state.

The decline in the number of political prisoners continues a two-year trend, the report said. Many of those released had served their prison terms. The releases this year have not included leading dissidents rounded up in a 2003 crackdown.

The rights group said Cuba has 200 prisons and labor camps, and is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that does not allow the International Red Cross to visits its jails.

Prison conditions are "subhuman and degrading" with bad food and inadequate medical and dental treatment, and brutal beatings of inmates, the report said.

It cited the case of Manuel Acosta Larena, a dissident who was arrested last month and died in a police station in the province of Cienfuegos. Police said he hung himself. His family has written to Raul Castro requesting an investigation.

The rights group criticized U.S. sanctions against Cuba for causing hardship to the Cuban people and providing the government with a justification for its economic failures.

It also added its voice to international criticism of the United States for the continued detention of some 375 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members at the Guantanamo Bay prison, calling for its immediate closure.

The U.S. camp was at least open to outside inspection, the Cuban rights group said.

"The only prison on the island of Cuba that is permanently under international scrutiny is the prison camp set up by the United States in the naval base at Guantanamo," it said.