Some dissidents optimistic Raul Castro will improve Cuban human rights; others unconvinced

HAVANA -- Once known as the "fist" of Cuba's revolution, 76-year-old Raul Castro may be showing a brush of the velvet glove since taking power.

Just a week into his job as Cuba's new president, Castro discussed the island's prisoners with a visiting Vatican official and directed his government to sign two international human rights treaties that his older brother, Fidel, opposed.

Some dissidents and human rights activists see reason for cautious optimism, but others don't expect improvements.

"He wants to give the Cuban government a new image," said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a state-trained economist who became an anti-communist dissident. "In the areas of human and social rights, the government surely needs one."

The younger Castro succeeded his brother Feb. 24 after Fidel, 81, announced he was not well enough to seek another term as president -- ending his 49 years of near-absolute power.

Raul's first diplomatic meeting as head of state came with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone -- Pope Benedict XVI's secretary of state -- whose previously scheduled visit coincided with Cuba's handover in power.

Bertone said the meeting could "send a message of more openness to the United States and Europe."

But dissident Oswaldo Paya, who won the European Union's Andrei Sakharov prize for human rights in 2002, said the succession from one Castro brother to another was a disappointment.

"The driving force of society should be the sovereignty of the people, not the Communist Party," Paya wrote in a statement distributed to international media on the island. "The people of Cuba want changes that signify liberty, open expression of their civil, political, economic and social rights."

The single-party government brooks no organized opposition and dismisses dissidents as U.S.-paid mercenaries trying to topple the communist system. Havana claims it holds no prisoners of conscience, although international human rights groups list more than 200.

But at the United Nations on Thursday, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque signed two international human rights treaties from 1976 that guarantee the right of peaceful assembly and the freedom to form independent trade unions and to leave the country, as well as the right to vote.

Former political prisoner Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo founded a Miami-based opposition group but returned to Cuba in 2003 with hopes of playing an activist's role here. He said the treaties had "tremendous importance" and could open the door to creating more than a single political party in Cuba.

Cuba says it will adhere only to parts of the treaties it considers "relevant," and the foreign minister's signing of them still must be ratified by the Cuban parliament.

But Raul Castro's government signed the pacts even though Fidel opposed them for more than three decades, saying he feared U.S. agents might infiltrate independent unions to pit labor factions against one another.

When Cuba announced it planned to sign the treaties in December -- 18 months after the ailing Fidel provisionally handed over power to his brother -- Fidel ordered state television to rebroadcast 2001 footage of him denouncing them, lest Cubans forget his objections.

When the Castro brothers' rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Raul was the enforcer, directing firing squads that executed hundreds of political opponents. An often-cited foreign press account dubbed Raul the revolution's "fist" and Fidel its "heart."

But since Fidel fell ill, Raul has called for Cubans to publicly debate their country's future without fear of reprisal, so long as they don't challenge the socialist system.

"We shall not avoid listening to everyone's honest opinion," Castro said in his acceptance speech. But he added that the Communist Party as a whole will fill the void left by his brother's stepping down.

Since Raul took provisional power 19 months ago, the reported number of political prisoners on the island has dropped by 26 percent, from 316 to 234, according to the independent, Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. Another four inmates were released into forced exile in Spain on Feb. 15.

Commission President Elizardo Sanchez said once parliament ratifies the newly signed rights treaties, Cuba will be compelled to release 55 dissidents still behind bars after a 2003 crackdown that rounded up 75 people.

Many of those freed since Raul took power were already close to completing lengthy prison terms. Sanchez acknowledged a new crop of prisoners has not been jailed since then, but said there has been an increase in short detentions and beatings of dissidents.

"They have changed tactics, but the level of repression is the same," he said.