Political arrests in Cuba are increasing
The son of a Cuban immigrant, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said that he hoped President-elect Donald Trump could press for change for Cubans following Fidel Castro’s death.
But in an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Cruz expressed some skepticism that anything will be better under Castro’s brother Raúl Castro, who began taking over in 2006.
“What the Obama administration has done is strengthen Raúl Castro. Raúl is the dictator now,” Cruz said. “You know, I asked my dad at dinner last night, what do you think happens now that Fidel
is dead? And he shrugged and said Raúl has been in power for years. The system has gotten stronger . ... You know, in 2015 roughly 10,000 political arrests occurred in Cuba. That is five times as many as occurred in 2010, when there were only about 2,000.”
We were interested in his statistic, so we contacted Cruz’s office. Spokesman Phil Novack told us the senator slightly misspoke, but his point is still basically accurate.
Novack told us that Cruz meant to com p are the number of political arrests in Cuba in 2010 with 2016 rather than 2015.
Cruz’s primary source was the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
Based in Havana, the commission is the island’s oldest and most respected nongov- ernment human-rights mon- itoring group, according to reports in the Miami Herald.
The commission reported 2,074 politically motivated detentions in 2010. That esca- lated to 8,600 in 2015 and then to 9,125 through Octo- ber 2016.
The com m ission predicts the number of politi- cal arrests “will exceed the level of 10,000 detentions” through the end of 2016. Experts on Cuba say the
commission has the most reliable source of data and
sometimes use it in combination with other sources.
That said, the data come with caveats.
“It’s very hard to work with exact numbers in Cuba,” said Pedro Alcántara, spokes- man for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, based in Miami. “Not only are we fighting very strong repres- sion, but sometimes the data changes every day.”
The Cuban regime uses a revolving door for arresting political prisoners — most being held for hours or some- times a couple of days and often facing violence while detained. In some cases, the pris-
oners are released without being charged.
Some pro-regime groups criticize the list of the commission, alleging it contains multiple arrests of the same individuals within the same year.
Carlos Ponce, director of Latin America programs at the watchdog group Freedom Press, said he doesn’t know if that is true or not since it is impossible to audit the list. The commission was founded by Elizardo Sán-
chez, a Cuban human rights campaigner.
“But at the same time, the list only covers the cases reported to Elizardo’s group, so you can say that there are
many cases unreported,” he said. There is also some dis
pute about how to define political prisoners, raising questions of overcounting. In 2010, for example, the Associated Press vetted a list of 167 political prisoners by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
About 50 people on the list “were convicted of terrorism, hijacking or other violent crimes, and four are former military or intelligence agents convicted of espionage or revealing state secrets,” according to the Associated Press.
While settling on a precise figure of political arrests each year is a daunting task, experts agreed that in general the numbers have risen since 2010.
Obama’s announcement in 2014 that the United States would reopen ties with Cuba did not lead to less political repression on the island.
“In terms of (Cuba’s) domestic politics, the reestablishment of ties hasn’t had any positive impact,” Sánchez, the creator of the commission’s list, told Miami Herald in July.
Our ruling
Cruz said, “In 2015 roughly 10,000 political arrests occurred in Cuba. That is five times as many as occurred in 2010, when there were
only about 2,000.” Cruz’s point about the rise of political arrests happening amid improved diplomacy with the United States is basically right.
He would have been on more precise ground had he referred to 2016 and not 2015, as a spokesman said he intended to do. And while the source of his figures is widely considered to be reli- able, experts said it is hard to track and label every arrest for political reasons.
Because his point requires additional explanation but is largely accurate, we rate
this claim Mostly True.