Caribbean & Central America - June 2017 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Human rights activists were among those to object to proposed US changes to policy on Cuba hinted at by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in senate hearings.

Addressing the senate foreign affairs committee on 13 June, Tillerson strongly hinted that President Donald Trump intended to fulfil his election pledge to roll back some of the policy liberalisation measures introduced by his predecessor Barack Obama (2009-2017). Trump is expected to make an announcement in Miami on 16 June. While the White House does not seem minded to break off diplomatic relations – restored to global acclaim in December 2015 – the secretary of state suggested that new limits were being considered on US investment and travel rules in an effort to exert pressure on the Cuban government over its record on human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Various US media sources report that the Trump team is looking at renewed restrictions on US travel to the island, as well as restricting business between US companies and entities with ties to the Cuban military, a powerful economic player, including in the fast-growing tourism industry. Punitive measures aimed at cutting off financial flows that benefit the Cuban military could be framed under the terms of the 1996 Helms Burton Act, and the president, moreover, can simply use executive measures – as Obama did – to amend Cuba policy. On the travel front, for example, the US government is considering re-introducing tighter guidelines obliging US travellers to formally explain (possibly in writing) how their travel to Cuba under 12 licenced categories benefits the Cuban people (and the US). US authorities may also increase scrutiny of individual travellers and monitor the frequency of their trips to Cuba (which might affect family visits in particular). Companies potentially affected include those with hotel partnerships in Cuba such as the Sheraton Group, whose Cuban partner has military links. Others include the leading US airlines and cruise ship operators now flying/sailing directly to Cuba (these include American Airlines, Delta and Carnival Cruise).

But Cuban people themselves may not benefit either, say some rights activists. In a 13 June statement, the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (no friend of the Cuban government), said that reversing the Obama administration’s changes in US policy toward Cuba would not improve respect for human rights on the island. “The previous administration was right to reject a policy that hurt ordinary Cubans and did nothing to advance human rights,” noted Daniel Wilkinson, managing director for the Americas at HRW. “The fact that Obama’s approach hasn’t led to political reform in Cuba after just a few years isn’t reason to return to a policy that proved a costly failure over many decades.”

Wilkinson argued that restoring restrictions on travel and commerce would unlikely lead to improvements. For more than half a century, he noted, “the embargo has imposed indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban population as a whole. It has provided the Cuban government with an excuse for its problems, a pretext for its abuses, and a way to garner sympathy abroad with governments that might otherwise have been willing to condemn the country’s repressive practices”.

“Insisting on human rights progress as a precondition to a new policy is unlikely to bring about change”, he continued. “Given the Castro government’s longstanding determination to control virtually all political activity on the island, it is very unlikely that such a quid-pro-quo approach would have yielded any more results than it has in the past. Instead it would merely have prevented the rapprochement and left intact the geopolitical dynamic that has inoculated the Cuban government from international pressure for decades”.

• Pressure

“International pressure on the Cuban government is needed to help create conditions for change,” stated Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch. “But to be effective, this should be multilateral pressure brought alongside other governments in the region.”