No end to repression after Castro, activist says

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - International human rights groups hope Fidel Castro's retirement will lead to the release of political prisoners, but a skeptical local activist said he sees no end to repression of dissent.

"The gulag is intact and continues to swallow up Cubans. Few are being freed," veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez said on Wednesday.

His illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights estimates there are 230 people in prison in Cuba for expressing their political views, serving sentences of up to 28 years.

Amnesty International has adopted 58 of them as what it calls prisoners of conscience, who it says are imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of beliefs. It urged Cuba's communist government on Tuesday to seize the opportunity provided by Castro's departure to guarantee basic human rights.

Reform must start with the release of all prisoners of conscience, the judicial review of all sentences passed after unfair trials and the abolition of the death penalty, the organization said.

Castro, 81, announced his retirement on Tuesday, saying he was too ill to continue as president. His brother Raul Castro has been acting president since the Cuban leader was sidelined by illness in July 2006. He has not appeared in public since.

Cuba last week freed four dissidents jailed since a March 2003 crackdown on dissent. Their release on health grounds was requested by the Spanish government. Cuba insisted that the four men and their families leave for exile in Spain.

The decline in the number of Cubans behind bars for political reasons, from 283 at the end of 2006, has been seen by foreign governments as a sign of greater leniency under Raul Castro's administration.

Cuba's decision to sign the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and a similar pact on economic and social rights by March has also been seen as a step forward.

"REPRESSIVE MACHINERY"

Sanchez, a former Marxist philosophy professor turned dissident, says nothing has changed. He believes Fidel Castro will continue running Cuba as long as he is alive.

The release of political prisoners is the main indicator to gauge movement toward democratic change, he said.

"As long as there are 230 political prisoners in Cuban jails, one cannot say the situation has advanced one millimeter," he said.

Cuba does not allow the International Red Cross access to its prisons. It denies holding any political prisoners and labels dissidents "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" on the payroll of its arch-enemy, the United States.

New York-based Human Rights Watch also called on Cuba on Tuesday to unconditionally release jailed dissidents and decriminalize political dissent.