Original sentence: According to the Human Rights Watch, Over the past forty years, Cuba has developed a highly effective machinery of repression.Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly.In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners.In the name of legality, armed security forces, aided by state-controlled mass organizations, silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile.On the 0other hand, his leadership has been marked by the implementation of programs that great increased the nation's literacy rate and provided universal healthcare to the Cuban populace, tensions with the United States that peaked in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and a close partnership with the Soviet Union.The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture.The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law
Edited sentence: Initially and still popular among many Cubans, his leadership has been marked by the implementation of programs that great increased the nation's literacy rate and provided universal healthcare to the Cuban populace, tensions with the United States that peaked in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and a close partnership with the Soviet Union