Saturday, November 07, 1998

Isabel Vincent
The National Post

Cubans are used to queuing up for everything from gasoline to ice cream, but there are never any queues outside the doors of the Public Complaints Commission.

The commission, known in Spanish as the Oficina de Atencion a la Poblacion, is an ambitious civic initiative financed by the Canadian government.

Its main office is a tiny house tucked into a quiet residential neighbourhood behind the National Assembly here, and it's supposed to be the place ordinary Cubans go to complain about their government or elected officials.

But in a country where political dissent is often punished, and any criticism of the status quo is severely suppressed, it's probably not surprising that the office is rather quiet.

The commission's activities have never been mentioned in the official Cuban press. There is no sign on the commission's main office door. It is not listed in the Havana telephone book, and even those who live next door to it do not appear to know that it is there.

"Oficina de Atencion a la Poblacion?" muses one elderly gentleman. "Not here. It doesn't exist."

Indeed, staff at the Canadian Embassy in Havana have difficulty remembering its location; the press department of the Embassy gives me a wrong address.

Only after I consult another foreign journalist am I able to find it. When I finally reach the commission's main office, there are three people in the enclosed front porch, which serves as a waiting room.

A teenager wearing a blue NFL cap sits beside an elderly woman, shooing flies with a tattered ration booklet. A young man wearing a bright orange T-shirt stamped with a likeness of Malcolm X leaves as I enter the room. An elderly gentleman, wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses, and a short, light coat known as a guayabera sits behind a metal desk, chomping on a cigar.

When I ask him if I had reached the commission's main office, he refuses to respond. "You must speak to an official," he says, as a small crew of workers, wearing smocks and carrying industrial-sized pots of food, suddenly emerge from the main corridor of the house and make their way to a small pick-up truck parked outside.

"Is this the place people come to complain?" I ask the man in the guayabera. He says he cannot give me any information without government authorization.

It seems a strange state of affairs for an organization that was launched with much diplomatic fanfare nearly two years ago, when Lloyd Axworthy, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, paid an official visit to the island.

In January, 1997, the Canadian government stepped up its commitment to bring democracy to Cuba by helping to fund a public complaints commission, which would function much like an ombudsman's office in a democratic country.

According to an official memorandum from the Canadian Embassy in Cuba, the commission is part of a $1.2-million Canadian initiative to "facilitate dialogue on human rights and good governance . . ." on the Communist island.

"These initiatives [the commission and exchanges of Cuban parliamentary officials to learn about Canadian legal and civic procedures] . . . will enable Canada to engage a diverse group of Cuban decision-makers on governance and rights," said Mr. Axworthy at a press conference last year to announce new developments in Canadian bilateral aid to Cuba.

Although Cuban government officials say they are grateful for Canada's support, many feel there was never a need for an ombudsman.

A Western diplomat here notes that although Canadian diplomatic officials had lobbied hard for an ombudsman, the "Cubans simply couldn't handle it because it would mean having an independent body."

"What they now have is a farce: an ombudsman controlled by the government," says the diplomat, who does not want to be identified.

"We don't need an ombudsman in Cuba," says Julio Espinosa, general co-ordinator for the Committee of International Relations of the National Assembly of People's Power in Cuba.

Mr. Espinosa is an intense, stocky man with a perfectly groomed moustache. We are sitting in a sparsely furnished conference room of the National Assembly, which feels somewhat like a deep freeze with the air-conditioning on full blast. A young woman serves us canned mango juice and sweetened coffee in small white cups.

"How many complaints does the complaints commission receive per day?" I ask Mr. Espinosa. "And how many of these complaints are ever resolved?"

"I don't have a figure for how many people we attend to, but I know that we have a lot of people," he says, adding that the government has 60 days to respond to a complaint registered with the commission.

It's an odd comment coming from someone like Mr. Espinosa, who is otherwise very precise with official figures relating to Cuban civic affairs.

According to him, there are 601 federal deputies in Cuba, 1,119 provincial legislators, and 14,533 representatives elected to local councils every five years.

"With so many people who are directly elected, why would we need an ombudsman?" he says.

But Cuba, a Communist country ruled for 39 years by the same leader, is hardly an example of representative democracy. There is only one political party, and the National Assembly meets two times a year.

"If we met everyday we would talk too much and resolve nothing," says Mr. Espinosa.

He explains that Cuban parliamentarians, who do not receive a salary, have established working groups that meet all year round, and address proposed reforms in such areas as education, health, and taxation.

Delegates to the National Assembly present the working groups' findings at the twice-yearly parliamentary sessions, where they are debated. Cubans, he adds, are encouraged to complain directly to their elected officials.

If that does not work, then they can use the Public Complaints Commission, which has branch offices throughout Cuba, Mr. Espinosa says.

"People can complain about anything here: taxes, anything," he says.

But many disagree.

In Cuba, complaining about the government is effectively against the law.

Cubans can be charged with a wide variety of what the United Nations recently called "nebulous offences" such as "desacato" (disrespect for the regime) and spreading "enemy propaganda."

According to human rights watchdog groups, several hundred journalists and dissidents as well as ordinary citizens have been imprisoned in recent years for voicing their concerns about the Cuban government.

Amnesty International reported that in June of last year Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero, president of the Independent Medical College of Santiago de Cuba, was arrested after he accused Cuban authorities of covering up the extent of an epidemic of dengue fever in a statement to a foreign journalist.

Dr. Mendoza was later sentenced to eight years in jail for

"spreading enemy propaganda."

Also last year, a political activist named Hector Palacio Ruiz was arrested in Havana after he criticized President Fidel Castro in a German television interview. According to Amnesty, Palacio Ruiz was imprisoned for 18 months for "showing disrespect" to the president.

The Cuban government began a major crackdown on dissidents following the formation of Concilio Cubano.

This is a forum of more than 100 unofficial groups, including human rights organizations, independent associations, and political parties.

"Since [1995], members of Concilio Cubano and journalists working for independent organizations have been subjected to persistent harassment and frequent short-term detention," says a recent Amnesty International report.

"They have also been threatened with long-term imprisonment - and occasionally with physical violence - if they do not cease their activities or leave the country. A few have been brought to trial and imprisoned."

Even those Cubans not involved in dissidents' movements on the island live in fear of government repression if they complain about such mundane matters as taxation and health care.

Alberto and Maria Claudia (not their real names) are Cuban entrepreneurs, who are furious with the Cuban government for taxing them at what they said were "exorbitant" rates.

(Both fear that if they are identifiable in this article, the government would shut them down within 72 hours and jail them for spreading "enemy propaganda.")

In 1993, as Cubans prepared for severe austerity brought on by the loss of Soviet support and the severity of the U.S. embargo, the government allowed ordinary Cubans to set up private businesses including independent restaurants and farmers' markets.

But the government taxes them heavily. Owners of small restaurants known as paladares, for example, must pay taxes for at least three employees, whether they employ them or not.

In some cases, small entrepreneurs hand over more than 60 percent of their profits.

When asked why they did not take their complaint to the Public Complaints Commission , Alberto and Maria Claudia laugh.

The issue of human rights is a particularly sensitive one for Cuban government officials, who complain that the international press ignores the Revolution's advances in such fields as health care and education, and focus undue attention on human rights.

Despite a renewed interest in human rights issues in the wake of the Pope's visit in January, President Castro routinely rebuffs foreign attempts to mediate on human rights issues.

At the end of May, a delegation of foreign ministers from several Third World countries visited the island.

One of those ministers, Brazil's Sergio Lampreia, made a point of publicly visiting one of Cuba's moderate dissidents. He was later officially rebuffed by President Castro, who met all of the other members of the delegation, but refused to grant Mr. Lampreia an audience.

Human rights are also a sensitive issue for Canada, given the investment in the Public Complaints Commission. Mr. Axworthy has been active lately on this front, although not with regard to Cuba.

This week, he appealed to Governor George Bush Jr. of Texas to grant clemency for Joseph Stanley Faulder, a 60-year-old Alberta man who faces the death penalty for killing a woman during a 1975 robbery attempt.

But in the case of Cuba, Canada hasn't asked and the government there isn't prone to respond.

"We are a small country, but we take orders from no one," says Mr. Espinosa.

"Don't ask me about human rights when your country doesn't deal with its native people. Compared to what goes on in Canada, Cubans have nothing to complain about here."