E/CN.4/1993/62 page 25 In our country this religious sect is an unlawful association, whose members are known for their anti-social behaviour and who, in many cases, even engage in incitement to break the law and in the desecration of patriotic emblems, since they regard themselves as foreigners in their own country. In cases involving the above-mentioned criminal behaviour, as occurred in some of the cases mentioned in your communication, the following articles of the current Penal Code are applied: article 207, paragraph 1 (Incitement to break the law); article 208 (Unlawful associations, meetings and demonstrations); article 210 (Possession of illegal printed matter). On the other hand, the right of citizens to practise the religion of their choice and to worship without any limitations other than respect for public order and the law, as established in article 54 of the Constitution, is fully respected. I should also like to refer to our note of 1 October 1990, in reply to your note G/SO 214 (56-4) of 25 July 1990 in which the legal and social protection extended to religions and religious beliefs is explained in detail. As you are aware, to question the implementation of the legal provisions in force in any State implies interference in its internal affairs; such an act is incompatible with international law and its rules. As may be seen, the allegations contained in the cases concerning which we were asked for information appear to form part of the campaign which is being conducted against Cuba, using the issue of human rights tendentiously and for political ends. Nevertheless, in answer to your request, we attach the data relating to these cases. Emilio Rodríguez was brought before the courts for engaging in propaganda and reproduction of documents for the illegal Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, but in view of his psychological condition, it was decided not to imprison him but to confine him to his home. The court sentenced him to one year’s house arrest for the offence of possession of illegal printed matter. Mabel López González, Fidel Díaz Pacheco, Alberto Bárbaro Villavicencio, Narciso Ramírez Lorenzo, Alfredo Falcón Moncada and Mercedes Feito Paredes are Jehovah’s Witnesses who engaged in illegal propaganda for that sect, but they were not sentenced to imprisonment, and the latter two even left the national territory legally on 6 June 1991. Marcela Rodríguez, Paulino Aguila Pérez and Guillermo Montes were fined for the same offence of illegal and antisocial propaganda in August 1990. Ramón López Peña was not, since the complaint received apparently contained a mistake, this being the name of a martyr of the Cuban Border Brigade who was foully murdered by United States soldiers in 1964 when performing his duty at the naval base illegally occupied by the United States at Guantánamo. In his honour, the rural community where, coincidentally, these members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect live, was named after him.