Thanks to your support and taking action, this petition to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council has amassed over 1,800 signatures. Please share it with others.
Yesterday, Pen International featured an imprisoned Cuban dissident and artist.
"To mark International Women's Day 2023, PEN International features the case of Cuban poet and activist María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez, imprisoned since July 2021 for her criticism of the Cuban government, and for participating in the peaceful protests that saw thousands of Cubans taking to the streets around the country and demanding reforms.
PEN International was founded in London, UK, in 1921. Today it operates across five continents in over 100 countries celebrating literature and defending freedom of expression.
The Communist dictatorship in Cuba remains a brutal system that is still conducting political show trials, issuing long sentences, and over a thousand Cubans have been jailed for peacefully protesting since July 2021.
While we welcome the March 7, 2023 Tweet by Ambassador Brian A. Nichols, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. Department of State in which he outlined U.S. foreign policy priorities in Cuba as: "Defending human rights, pressing for the release of political prisoners, and promoting safe & legal migration pathways."
We remain deeply concerned by the U.S. Embassy in Havana repeating the Castro regime talking point that a massacre that killed fleeing Cuban refugees on October 28, 2022 was an "accident." The families of the victims, and survivors have courageously spoken out, and are now being subjected to state security's pressures to be silenced.
Worse yet, the penal code in Cuba on December 1, 2022 became still more draconian.
Cuba’s new Penal Code, which was announced in February, approved in May, and came into force on the first of December. Amnesty International on December 2, 2022 reported on its severity calling it "a chilling prospect for 2023," highlighting the expansion of the death penalty to 23 crimes, and punishing expression for even longer prison sentences.
It is for these reasons, and many more that we continue to call for the expulsion of Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council.