IF IT’S NOT GUANTANAMO, HOW CAN THERE BE human rights violations in Cuba?

Three years after the harshest crackdown on dissent in decades, human-rights conditions in Cuba have deteriorated as authorities intensify a campaign to disrupt and intimidate the island’s small opposition movement, according to dissidents, diplomats and political analysts. . . .

The attacks intensified after a speech by Castro last July in which he denounced opposition activists as U.S. government lackeys and praised supporters who two weeks earlier disrupted a dissident protest in Havana.

“The people, angrier than before over such shameless acts of treason, intervened with patriotic fervor and didn’t allow a single mercenary to move,” Castro said. “This is what will happen however many times as necessary when traitors and mercenaries go a millimeter beyond the point that our revolutionary people … are prepared to permit.”
But Sanchez and other activists say Cuban state security agents direct the pro-government attacks, which often occur in front of the homes or meeting places of dissidents, and participants include police dressed in civilian clothes.

Sanchez said the aim of the attacks is to “increase the political repression” without significantly increasing the number of political prisoners. “Why don’t they want to increase the number of political prisoners?” he asked. “Because outside, in other countries, there has been a lot of criticism.”

So I guess we need to criticize this, too. I wonder, though, why this is getting so little press.