Bolivian Resident Expelled for Criticizing Fidel Castro and Evo Morales
Amauris Samartino was Morales Government’s First Prisoner of Conscience

La Paz, BOLIVIA – On Tuesday, January 9, 2007, Amauris Samartino, a Cuban refugee who has lived in Bolivia since 2000, was expelled after having been detained for seventeen days for criticizing the Bolivian and Cuban governments. The report released today by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) finds that Mr. Samartino was subjected to numerous human rights violations, including wrongful imprisonment, arbitrary detainment, forced exile, due process abuse, and undue restriction of free speech. He arrived in Colombia late last night. “Amauris Samartino’s case is a scandal and it reveals that the government of Bolivia will stop at nothing to silence dissent,” said Thor Halvorssen, HRF’s president.
 
Mr. Samartino, a medical doctor, left Cuba in 1999 in a makeshift raft. He was picked up by a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat and taken to the Guantanamo military base. He was given asylum in Bolivia along with eleven other Cuban nationals and certified by the Bolivian National Migration Service as a political refugee. He was subsequently granted permanent residency in Bolivia.
 
In 2006, Mr. Samartino criticized Fidel Castro’s government in the Bolivian media, calling it a dictatorship and decrying its influence on incoming Bolivian president Evo Morales and his government. Interviewed on television and in the press, Mr. Samartino claimed that Cuba frequently violated the right to freedom of expression and other human rights. He became politically active; in July of 2006, he announced that he had assisted thirty dissident Cuban doctors, who were visiting Bolivia in a cooperative exchange program, in defecting to Brazil and to the United States.
 
On the morning of December 23, 2006, Mr. Samartino was detained by armed men who claimed to be government agents. Taken to a cell of the Special Crime Fighting Forces in La Paz, he was informed that he was to be deported to Cuba within hours for his criticism of the Cuban and Bolivian governments.
 
A Bolivian cabinet minister, Ms. Alicia Muñoz, had ordered Mr. Samartino’s arrest and detention for violating immigration laws that prohibit the involvement of foreigners in Bolivia’s internal political affairs. However, HRF has documentation showing that the laws in question were declared unconstitutional and voided by the highest court in Bolivia in 2001. The National Director of Migration, Ms. Magali Zegarra Aragón, thus violated the Bolivian Constitution by detaining Mr. Samartino, who was held without a court order or any charges against him. Given Mr. Samartino’s status as a political refugee, the actions of the Bolivian government also violate numerous international treaties as well as the Geneva Convention of 1951, the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights, American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and the American Convention on Human Rights.
 
The Bolivian office of the Defender of the People declared on December 27 that there were no legal grounds on which Bolivia could expel Mr. Samartino and that the government erred in its attempts.
 
Cuban Ambassador Rafael Dauza held meetings with the Bolivian government expressing an interest in Mr. Samartino. On December 27, Ambassador Dauza declared that Mr. Samartino was a “criminal accused of fraud in Cuba.” Although Ambassador Dauza did not detail the accusation, he added that Mr. Samartino was considered “anti-Castro, an alcoholic, a fraudster, and thief. He will never have support in Cuba because he is considered a common criminal that during this time has acted against the interests of the Cuban people.” HRF has failed to document any alleged economic crimes committed by Mr. Samartino in Cuba. (Neither alcoholism nor verbal criticism of the Cuban government constitutes criminal activity in a free country.) Mr. Samartino was accused of planning violent protests by a senator from the government party. President Morales’s spokesman declared that Mr. Samartino had “denigrated” Fidel Castro and intervened in the political affairs of Bolivia.
 
Once the local media began discussing Mr. Samartino’s possible deportation to Cuba, the Bolivian government announced that it would seek to expel Mr. Samartino to a different country. Rejecting a habeas corpus request put forward by Mr. Samartino’s attorney, municipal judge René Delgado claimed that the immigration laws were still in effect, despite the Bolivian Constitutional Tribunal having found them unconstitutional. As the legal proceedings began and the case garnered international attention, HRF expected a full review by the Bolivian Constitutional Tribunal.
 
Samartino was expelled from Bolivia on January 9, 2007 with no court order or published legal opinion. Having begun its investigation on December 26, HRF has notified the Bolivian government that it will file a cause of action in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States. HRF will also file amicus curiae briefs in Bolivia regarding Mr. Samartino’s petition to re-enter Bolivia as a permanent resident.
 
HRF is an international nonpartisan organization devoted to defending human rights in the American hemisphere. It centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Armando Valladares, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

For a copy of the Samartino report please email sarah@thehrf.org
Contact Human Rights Foundation, Sarah Wasserman, (212) 246.8486, sarah@thehrf.org
Contact Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, Ernesto Araníbar Quiroga, (212) 682.8132
Contact Bolivian Ambassador to the U.S., Mario Guzmán Saldaña, (202) 483.4410 x227
Contact Bolivian Ambassador to the O.A.S., Mario Tamayo Arnal, (202) 785.0218
Contact Mr. Samartino's attorney, Rodolfo Téllez, tellez_rodolfo@yahoo.es