Cuban dissidents

The Cuban dissident movement is a political movement in Cuba whose aim is "to replace the current regime with a more democratic form of government". According to Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government represses nearly all forms of political dissent.

Fidel Castro came to power with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. By the end of 1960, according to Paul H. Lewis in Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America, all opposition newspaper had been closed down and all radio and television stations were in state control. Lewis states that moderate teachers and professors were purged, about 20,000 dissidents were held and tortured in prisons.

Homosexuals as well as other "deviant" groups who were barred from military conscription, were forced to conduct their compulsory military service in camps called "Military Units to Aid Production" in the 1960s, and were subjected to political "". Castro's military commanders brutalized the inmates.

One estimate from The Black Book of Communism is that throughout Cuba 15,000-17,000 people were executed. Meanwhile, in nearly all areas of government, loyalty to the regime became the primary criterion for all appointments.

In 2010, Cuba was described as the only "authoritarian regime" in the Americas by The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index. The island was the second largest prison in the world for journalists in 2008, second only to the People's Republic of China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international press organization. The military of Cuba is a central organization; it controls 60 percent of the economy and is Raúl Castro's base.

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