Cuba decides to abolish executions by firing squads (Brazilian report)

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(The fact that Financial Times has
reproduced this article is of great
signficance as it is occurring right
during Lula's visit to the island. It's
another reason why Lula is starting
to get a bad rap in the US media, as
we saw in Andres Oppenheimer's
Miami Herald assault on him earlier
this week.Here's the original URL:
http://www.brazzil.com/2003/html/news/articles/sep03/p141sep03.htm
===========================

FINANCIAL TIMES
Cuba decides to abolish executions by firing squads -
Brazilian report

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 27, 2003

Brasil web site; subheading as published


Havana (Cuba): On the eve of the visit by President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, the Fidel Castro government has
announced an end to executions by firing squad. Known as
"the wall" ("paredon"), as in "going to the wall", the
decision is in response to complaints by the international
community and the Catholic Church about the practice.

Cuba has now gone so far as to create a commission to study
the death penalty and could even abolish it in the future.

All this follows three executions in April and harsh
sentences for 75 others who opposed the Castro regime. The
three men executed at that time were accused of attempting
to hijack a boat to escape the island. On the day they were
executed the mother of one of them committed suicide in a
gesture of desperation.

According to a Cuban Baptist minister, Raul Soares, who is
a member of Congress and supporter of the Castro
government, there is now public feeling in favour of ending
the death penalty. Soares is a personal friend of Brazilian
presidential aide, Frei Betto, a Catholic priest. Both
Betto and Soares are connected to the Liberation Theology
movement.

In 1994, during the last revision of the Cuban
constitution, Soares was the only member of the Cuban
Congress to vote against the death penalty. Soares reports
that, at that time, Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, put
forward a motion in favour of abolishing executions but it
was voted down.

Before last April's executions, there had not been an
execution in Cuba for three years. The April executions
caused an uproar internationally. Pope John Paul II
complained and many left-wing intellectuals, such as Jose
Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Prize winning author, went
further and broke off relations with the Cuban dictator.

In July the European Union announced it was reducing
economic and social assistance programmes to Cuba.

Lula and Castro have much to talk about

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrives in Cuba tomorrow, Friday
26 September. There are great expectations regarding the
visit on the part of the Cuban people as well as on the
part of their leaders. Lula will be in the country for two
days, meeting business leaders, politicians and officials.
Of course, the most important meetings will be with
President Fidel Castro.

On Friday, a state dinner is due to take place. On
Saturday, the two leaders will have a private meeting
beginning at about midday. According to the Brazilian
ambassador in Havana, Tilden Santiago, Lula and Castro have
much to talk about and their agenda was arranged so that
they would have plenty of time to do just that.

Although it is not mentioned in public, the question of the
death penalty will be dealt with in depth. The Brazilian
Worker's Party [PT], to which Lula belongs and which is now
the biggest party in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, is
opposed to the death penalty and always has been.

Ambassador Tilden Santiago explains: "Cuba and Brazil have
different historical backgrounds. The question of the death
penalty has to been examined in context." Santiago also
points out that a final decision on the death penalty in
Cuba, like so much else there, is going to have to have a
counterpart in United States' policy.

That means, says the ambassador, that the US will have to
treat Cubans who commit crimes to get to the USA like
criminals instead of heroes. The Brazilian ambassador
condemns strongly the US embargo against Cuba, saying that
after four decades the island's economy shows signs of
exhaustion.

Suicides in Cuba are up - there have been 1,500 of them in
the last 12 months. Alcoholism is also on the rise. And
there is the problem of Cuban youths who never knew what it
was to live in Cuba before Castro and now wander the
streets with little hope for the future.

Congressman and religious leader Soares says that the death
penalty is not the only way to take somebody's life away
from them. "There is poverty and misery. An educational
system that is negligent. There is human dignity that can
be destroyed. Those are really terrible instruments of
death that affect many more people around the world [than
firing squads]," he says. Soares adds that it is important
for the situation in Cuba to evolve. "There has to be
progress, including in the area of human rights. Some
progress has taken place since 1992. We need more," he
argues.

Source: Agencia Brasil web site, Brasilia, in English 25
Sep 03

C BBC Monitoring



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