SANTA CLARA, 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.Elizardo Sanchez, an opposition activist who heads the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said the number of political prisoners in Cuba increased from 306 in early 2005 to 333 in early 2006.
Sanchez said that about 100 pro-government crowd actions, known in Cuba as "acts of repudiation," and other attacks have occurred against opposition figures since July 2005. "The situation with civil and political rights has worsened in the past three years," said Sanchez. "And what's most worrying for us is that it seems the situation is going to get even worse."
Last week, a U.S. State Department report and UN expert Christine Chanet each criticized the human-rights situation in Cuba. Chanet also said tightened U.S. sanctions have created "extreme tension" between the two nations "which is far from conducive to the development of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly."
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