STABILITY NO,
FREEDOM YES
By Osmani
Ricardo Segura García
Independent
Journalist
“La Estrella
Solitaria”
Havana, Cuba
October 26,
2007
In a speech
given on the afternoon of October 24, 2007, United States
President George W. Bush announced a series of measures to
support the work being done by opposition groups in and out
of Cuba. He also demanded that the government of Fidel Castro
immediately free all political prisoners currently in Cuban
jails, with a goal toward giving Cuba the opportunity to
achieve complete and total liberty.
In his
speech President Bush was clear and direct with respect to
Cuba’s reality today. The situation in Cuba can be changed
and he called on the international community to support the
measures he is proposing in order to help the Cuban people
achieve their true freedom.
The response
by the Cuban government was immediate. Barely two hours
after the speech by the President of the United States,
Foreign Relations Minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, was giving
its response to the White House.
At a press
conference, the Minister attacked the speech by President
Bush contradicting everything the President had said.
Without shame, as they always do in Cuba, Felipe Pérez Roque
referred repeatedly to “the people” when talking about
Cubans. He used manipulation and lies because we all know
that all decisions in Cuba are made by Fidel Castro and the
elite in his inner circle and not the Cubans that make up
the majority in the island.
It’s
important to point out that contrary to what was said by the
Foreign Relations Minister, President Bush did not utter one
lie when speaking to the Cuban people. President Bush
described the reality of Cuba today and said the United
States is willing to help our cause as we fight for a better
Cuba.
One example of
the truth told by President Bush and the lies of Pérez Roque
is the assertion by the latter that all Cubans have access
to the Internet through the Computer Clubs for Young People.
This is a huge lie! Everyone here knows that what is offered
through these Communist clubs is a very limited version of
an “Intranet”, where the government restricts the sites that
can be accessed.
I will not take
the time to point out all the lies told by Felipe Pérez
Roque at this press conference, but I will say there was a
worried look on his face and those of his cohorts. It
almost seems that they too are realizing there is little
time left to the Castro dictatorship and that CHANGE is very
near. The Cuban government wants to pretend they are not
worried, but it is they who are frustrated and desperate and
not President Bush as the Cuban Minister wants the public to
think.
Once again we
were called “mercenaries” by Felipe Pérez Roque. This is
not new. Unfortunately we have become accustomed to being
offended in the most cowardly manner. We are used to being
called names that have nothing to do with our work and the
just cause we fight for, even while being constantly harassed
for the simple fact of publishing the truth and defending
the freedoms that are denied to us by the Cuba of Fidel
Castro.
If I am labeled
a mercenary for defending freedom and human rights and for
publishing the truth that is hidden by the Cuban government,
so be it. I will continue to be a committed mercenary in
the service of my people. All the ignominy and cruelty
perpetrated against us by putting us behind bars in the
worst prisons imaginable or exiling us to remote corners of
the island will not break our desire and our spirit to
continue our fight.
This is the reason that I dedicate
this article to those who, like me do their part, no matter
how small, to bring freedom to Cuba. And I ratify without
any qualms what was said by the President of the United
States, George W. Bush, in his magnificent speech to the
Cuban people. I paraphrase, “WE DO NOT WISH STABILITY FOR
THE CUBAN PEOPLE, WHAT WE WANT IS LIBERTY! STABILITY NO,
FREEDOM YES!
|
|
May of 2007
Alpha 66 has the
honor of being one more vehicle to bring to the public opinion
of the world, a full interview filled with anger and patriotism
that, received from Villa Clara, through Information Bridge Cuba
Miami and the Lawyer Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, director of
Cubanacán Press, was done to the prisoner of conscience Jorge
Luís García Pérez Antúnez, who in its long sentence in Castro’s
prison became to be known as “The Black Diamond.” Next this
document:
They
have to cut us because we won't break nor split".
An interview with Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez
 PLACETAS,
CUBA - April 27 (Lic. Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, Cubanacán
Press/Puenteinfocubamiami.org) - I dreamed of this interviewed
for the longest time, but it could not take place on April 22 of
2007, day when Antunez was released from prison. Several factors
interfered; the most important factor I did not take into
account was the "agoraphobia" syndrome, a psychological state of
mind that consists of the difficulty of a human being to adapt
to live in open spaces after spending many years in severe
confinement.
Finally, in my second visit to Placetas, I was able to interview
one of the most emblematic Cuban prisoners of conscience, Jorge
Luis García Perez Antúnez, also known as "The black diamond".
Guillermo Fariñas Hernández: Why do they call you Antunez?
Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez: Because I am the son of Ruben
Antunez Lavallet.
GFH: Is your father still alive?
JLGP: Yes, right now he is in this city of Placetas.
GFH: What is your mothers' name?
JLGP: My mother's name was Alejandra Garcia Perez; she is no
longer with us.
GFH: You don't want to talk about your mother, do you, it makes
you uncomfortable to talk about her.
JLGP: I would appreciate it if we don't talk about her because
it's a nostalgic subject for me, is a hard and cruel episode of
my life.
GFH: OK, let's change subjects. When were you born?
JLGP: I was born on October 10th, 1964, a glorious date for our
republic, the uprising of La Demajagua in 1868. I will turn 43
next October.
GFH: When were you imprisoned?
JLGP: On March 15, 1990. Another historic date in our Republic's
history, that of the Baragua Protest in 1878.
GFH: What were you accused of?
JLGP: I was accused of oral enemy propaganda; I was sentenced to
5 years in prison.
GFH: Were you innocent or guilty of the charges?
JLGP: Yes, and No.
GFH: Can you please elaborate?
JLGP: Yes, in the laws of the Cuban government, its citizens
cannot express openly different views than those of the
government and I did. But No, in civilized and democratic
societies this is not a crime. This type of punishment is
considered a judicial aberration; therefore, the
Castro-communist legal judicial system is an aberration.
GFH: Yes, but you served more than 5 years in prison, what
happened?
JLGP: I think it was due to my rebellious nature, when my mother
was dying they violated prison rules by not taking me to see her
and I had to escape from prison in order to see her one more
time before she died; I was charged and sentence for the crime
of " Evasion from Penal Institutions".
GFH: But, as I understand it you we charged with a third crime?
JLGP: That's right, they made up a charge of tentative sabotage
in order to discredit me so that I would loose my status of
prisoner of conscience before Amnesty International.
GFH: Antunez, how many years did you serve behind bars?
JLGP: To be exact, 17 years and 34 days.
GFH: Do you believe you spent your youth and part of your adult
life in jail?
JLGP: I don't believe so, because jail did not stop me from
speaking my mind, our homeland deserves that and much more, and
I never lost my principles and much less my dignity in prison.
GFH: Any regrets in this struggle?
JLGP: Yes, not starting younger my fight against this
totalitarism that's been a dark cloud over our country for
almost 50 years.
GFH: Antunez, you have published 2 books while in prison "Life
in Prison Kilo-8" and "Boitel Lives", we heard of a third book
now being printed, will you continue writing in liberty?
JLGP: I don't consider myself an intellectual; at least not my
vision of what an intellectual should be, I am simply a former
political prisoner who wrote about his living experiences in
jail. I don't have the formal education a writer should have.
GFH: That is your opinion, and I don't agree with it, but I
respect your point of view, your works speaks for itself, my
actual question was: will you continue writing?
JLGP: Yes, I plan to expose in writing all the cruelties, abuses
and genocides I witnessed and was subjected to at times.
GFH: Then will this be the beginning of a testimonial and
denouncement literary career, in this new phase of your life in
freedom?
JLGP: No, my main task will be defending the political
prisoners still inside Castro's jails, I will write when I have
the time, and if I can I will try to practice Independent
Journalism, if you are willing to teach me the ropes, but
everything will revolve around the defenseless prisoners I left
behind not long ago, in the hells of Castro's jails.
GFH: If this is the case, what will be your main responsibility
in the evolving Civil Society that opposes the Castro regime?
JLGP: Well, I will be the National Coordinator of "Presidio
Politico Cubano "Pedro Luis Boitel" out side the prisons.
GFH: Can you please define the Presidio Politico Cubano "Pedro
Luis Boitel" and its purpose?
JLGP: This organization of prisoners and former political
prisoners and that of conscience as well as those serving time
for violent acts against the dictatorship and those of common
causes who assume a position of defenders and denouncers of the
atrocities that are daily inflicted with impunity on the inmates
with harshness and cynicisms.
GFH: Will you be a part of one of the most important coalitions
of the pacific opposition interacting at this time.
JLGP: El Presidio Politico Cubano "Pedro Luis Boitel" is part of
all the coalitions and at the same time is part of none in
specific, due to the affiliation characteristic of our members
whom have different positions and attitudes of fighting this
communist government, and as a consequence, in order for us to
sign and support any posture or document, it has to be approved
and supported by the entire opposition to Castro, otherwise we
will abstain.
GFH: Have you ever considered the possibility of leaving the
country and continue fighting this regime from the exile?
JLGP: The thought has never entered my mind. I will fight
communism in my homeland because I subscribe to the phrase that
"The Homeland Belongs to All", this in no way criticizes those
who cannot withstand the pressures and leave to free societies,
they'll always have my respect, consideration and admiration as
long as they don't forget those of us left behind fighting and
suffering.
GFH: Can you tell me, how is your physical condition?
JLGP: I will have a medical checkup soon, but my health is not
the most important thing now, I am out already, at this time we
have to worry about the health of those who are still in prison,
which is why I never get tired of repeating time and time again
that Cuban prisons are extermination factories of men and women
locked in them.
GFH: Is there any person in particular that you consider
responsible for the fact that a simple sugarcane reaper as
yourself, who never studied journalism, today is one of the most
famous political prisoners in the world?
JLGP: First and foremost my paternal sister Berta Antunez Pernet,
president of the "Pedro Luis Boitel" Civic Resistance Movement,
her husband Alejandro Gracia Sardiñas my sacrificed and
unconditional brother in law, my niece Damaris Garcia Antunez
and my nephew Sergio Garcia Antunez, because their support cost
them their right to go to school.
GFH: Why have you earned the nickname "The Black Diamond"?
JLGP: Well, black because I am of the black race, and as to the
diamond part must be because like all precious stones are very
hard, hence we don't break nor split, in another words we never
surrender and jewelers are the only ones that can cut us, in
other words kill us, because we never give up.
GFH: Well, thank you very much for giving us this interview
Antunez, is there anything else you would like to add?
JLGP: No, maybe in another occasion but not now.
Information given from
Villa Clara to the Information Bridge Cuba Miami by Dr.
Guillermo Farinas Hernández, director of Cubanacá Press. Given
on the 6th day of April of 2007.
|
November 2006
FAREWELL
TO AN UNBURIED CORPSE
By: Ernesto
Díaz Rodríguez
Secretary
General of ALPHA 66
Vice-president of UNIDAD CUBANA
 |
The recent
images of a Fidel Castro as a crumbling shell of a man
trying to pretend that he is more than just an unburied
cadaver are so pathetic as to be ridiculous. The aging
dictator does not want to accept the bitter reality of his
destiny. Accustomed to imposing his will with a steel fist,
he surely must feel humiliated when the mirror he faces
shows him the mortal remains of a nauseating skeleton
conveniently anchored in the anteroom of hell.
No longer does
the diabolical “caudillo” of the Sierra Maestra represent
anything. Destiny has condemned him to a sad past in
the present, forcing him to be a witness to his own arid
future, without throne or glory like a bleak
wilderness. At his feet is now
|
the carpet where his mentors Joseph Stalin and
Adolph Hitler passed on their way to the garbage heap of
history. All indications are that the voyage of the tyrant
to the immensity of nothingness, so desired by the Cuban
people, is almost at hand. With not much pity, even if some
find this hurtful, we are seeing how the Cuban dictator
turns into a human blob. Incapable of putting a sentence
together his thoughts get clogged in his viscous tongue.
His somnambulist eyes accentuate the look of a mad man.
Not only is the
grotesque figure of this sinister character beginning to
fade, but also those that supported him for many years and
leaned on his shoulders and are beginning to slip away with
the fear of death in their throat as they face the cracking
of their agonizing “Revolution”. The more realistic ones
are preparing to abandon the ship reminding us of that old
saying, probably by a Chinese philosopher, that “When you
see the rats jumping overboard you can be sure that the ship
is sinking”.
Yes, no one can
doubt that the ship is sinking for that macabre Revolution
that was first announced to be a clear crystal green. Green
like the palm trees and like mint that later began to change
at the convenience of the tyrant. Soon it turned the color
of blood and the prisons were dressed in black and black
also became the hopes, and the beaches, and the immense
cemetery of the ocean.
But the cry of
the mothers of those murdered is becoming a light in the
horizon of the captive homeland. Roses are germinating at
the bottom of the Florida Straits, white roses. And in the
sky the stars begin to dance and the rainbow can be seen
dressed in its seven colors because finally the tyrant of
Cuba has begun to disintegrate into the slow and chattering
death that destiny has determined. It is the price God is
making him pay for his stubborn arrogance, for his human
insensitivity, for the uncontained scorn he showed toward
his own people. A people that paid a high price for its
innocence by helping someone gain power that should have
instead been condemned to a guillotine. Had this been done
the Cuban people would have saved themselves from half a
century of pain and agony, half a century of dragging the
misery and humiliating chains of slavery.
Fidel Castro is
definitely dying.
(Poor old man! is what the owls
that croak in the night must be thinking. Only the owls and
perhaps a crow. No one else. No one else).
|
|
September
2006
THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT HAS TORTURED ME DURING EIGHT
YEARS. TRYING TO DRIVE ME INSANE."
Testimony of prisoner of conscience, Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet,
from the Prison of Combinado del Este in Havana, Cuba.
|
PRISON CONDITIONS
"The government of Cuba has tortured me during eight years; they
have done so trying to drive me insane though, thank God, I have
been able to preserve my sanity. in reality, they continue
torturing me because I live in a box with no windows or natural
light, no water.with a mattress that feels as if one were
sleeping on a plank, a stone. unfit for a human being.
surrounded by criminals and under the threat, as it has happened
on previous occasions, of being attacked by the government who
instigates these dangerous prisoners." |
"I believe that what the government is doing is torturing me to
humiliate me so that I abandon the struggle on behalf of the
freedom of my country but, thank God, I have been able to keep
up my stance and will continue doing so with God's help."
SYMBOLIC FAST AS OF JULY 13, 2006
We began this fast (in prison) because I believe we should pray
to God and demand our rights before the government, the right to
be free which belongs to every person just for being a citizen.
Our country has lived so long without any rights, under a
dictatorship.I believe that we must demand rights that belong to
us and, in everyone's interest, these liberties must be
observed... In order to live a full life, it is essential to
live in freedom and the Cuban people are denied these rights.
that is why I'm initiating a fast along with other brothers (in
prison) to demand that the government sign the international
covenants of civil, political, economic, cultural and social
rights - the Cuban regime must sign them and abide by them so
that the Cuban people may live in freedom at last..
MESSAGE TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE
"The Cuban people must do their utmost in their struggle to win
their freedom and succeed in obtaining the international support
of all free and democratic countries. I trust that the Cuban
people prove their dignity as they have done so on other
occasions, so that we may enjoy FREEDOM.."
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, 45 years old, is an internal medicine
specialist of the black race who established and presides in
Cuba the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, an organization
that promotes universal human rights through non-violent civil
disobedience. He was released October 31, 2002, after serving a
three-year sentence at a maximum-security prison 700 km. away
from his home. He was violently arrested thirty-six days later
and remained in prison until March-April, 2003, when he was
included in a crackdown carried out by the Cuban regime against
the independent civil rights movement in the island. He was
tried summarily and sentenced to serve 25 years in prison,
accused of being "a mercenary at the service of a foreign
state". He continues to suffer the cruel prison conditions he
has been exposed to during eight years, which have seriously
deteriorated his physical health.
On July 17, 2006, Amado Gil, a journalist in Radio Martí, was
able to speak with Dr. Biscet in Cuba thanks to the intercession
of an independent journalist in Havana who, beyond governmental
control, used the limited time allotted to Dr. Biscet to make
telephone calls from prison.
(Listen audio - in Spanish - of the
entire interview: http://www.martinoticias.com/ocbstory.asp?MediaID=37276)
Received through LouPagani -Net for Cuba Network
|
A CALL FOR CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE
By Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet
President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights |
 |
Havana, Cuba, August 1, 2006
Combinado del Este Prisión
Building 1, 2nd Floor, Cell 1232
To the people of Cuba, fellow citizens, and persons fasting:
The people of Cuba have been suffering the scorn of a
totalitarian tyranny - in Communism -- for more than four
decades. Due to this inhumane treatment where the civility of a
people is violated, many indignant Cubans have risen to fast and
to pray to our God of the Bible and are demanding the government
adhere to international agreements on human rights (the
international agreement for civil and political rights and other
economic, social, and cultural rights) signed by the
international community at the United Nations.
As we have clearly explained, these demands are made to the
Cuban government, independent of who is at the head of such a
government, for we say as the people of Boston once said:
"Tyranny is tyranny, come from where it
may."
This is why we must continue to fast and to pray until we obtain
the government's signature, and expeditious adherence in the
practice of respecting the human rights of the Cuban people.
We must speed the acquisition of these basic human rights
through Civil Disobedience. We must use all methods until we
achieve our humanitarian end: "If
there is no fight, there is no progress. Power does not concede
anything without a demand, it never has, it never will." --
Frederick Douglas.
We have the right to be free and to make use of our sovereignty
as individuals and as a people.
"Liberty alone brings with it peace and riches." -- José Martí.
From this dark cell where I am forced to live, I will continue
to resist until the freedom of my people is achieved.
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet
(Message transmitted by La Nueva Cuba on August 20, 2006)
ALPHA 66 takes as its own this call by
Dr. Biscet and asks all those in exile to think about the best
way to support this call to Civil Disobedience that has come to
us from cell #1232 of the dreaded Cuban political prison system.
|
October
2005
THE TRUTH OF
ALPHA 66
By: Tania Díaz
Castro
La Habana,
Cuba—October (www.cubanet.
org)
We Cubans have
always asked ourselves why the government of Fidel Castro
calls Alpha 66 a terrorist organization when the tactics
used by this organization are the same as those that were
used to fight the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Founded 43
years ago and headquartered in Miami, Alpha 66 has claimed
responsibility for the military operations that it has
carried out on Cuban territory since 1962, the year it was
founded.
On December
31, 1964 ex commander and chief of operations of Alpha 66,
Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, landed in Baracoa with the purpose of
opening a guerrilla front just as Castro had done years
earlier. Menoyo and three of his men were captured near the
Moa River and served 22 years in prison after being
sentenced to 50 years. Since 2003 Menoyo lives in Havana
waiting for legal recognition of his pacifist organization,
Cambio Cubano.
It is curious
to note that almost all the founders of Alpha 66, including
its recently deceased general secretary, Andrés Nazario
Sargén, participated in the guerrilla struggle against
Batista as members of the Second National Front of Escambray.
It was during this time that they learned guerrilla tactics
like ambushes, the use of snipers, surprise explosions and
attacks against enemy installations and operations. They
used these tactics because they lacked the numbers and
necessary equipment to confront an established army.
The practice
of this type of violent war is very ancient. The Bible
relates how in this manner the Israelites under the command
of Joshua conquered Canaan. Simón Bolívar, Miguel Hidalgo,
Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are all examples
of guerrilla leaders.
The poet and
ex political prisoner (plantado) Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez is
the new leader of Alpha 66. He was captured in a rural area
of Pinar del Río on December 4, 1968 after landing with a
group of guerrilla fighters. He was given a prison sentence
of 45 years and served 22.
Díaz Rodríguez
denounces the regime of Fidel Castro and affirms that his
organization has never carried out terrorist acts that would
bring panic to the population. He says that “ I wish the
solution for Cuba could be through peaceful means” but he
states that Alpha 66 is an organization of combat with the
same strategy proposed by José Martí, Máximo Gómez and
Antonio Maceo during the struggle for independence.
He further
states that Alpha 66 “defends the right of Cubans to fight
for the liberation of Cuba”. This is why they have a
military training camp named Rumbo Sur where they train on
shooting, karate, judo and other activities that are all
legal in the United States.
Vicente
Méndez, an ex commander in the fight against Batista, is one
of Alpha 66 most respected martyr. He landed in Cuba on
Abril 17, 1970 and died in combat. Other martyrs of this
organization died by firing squad. These are the true
heroes that are fighting Castro’s totalitarianism and who
the Cuban government calls terrorists. This is a lie that
has been repeated for many years and it has yet to be proven
true.
|
Castro
Spies Get Reprieve
Humberto Fontova
Tuesday, Aug.
20, 2005
On September 14, 1998, the FBI
uncovered a Castro spy ring in Miami and arrested ten of them.
Four others managed to scoot back to Cuba. These became known as
the "Wasp Network."
According to the FBI's affidavit, these Castro agents were
engaged in, among other acts:
Gathering intelligence against the
Boca Chica Air Naval Station in Key West, the McDill Air Force
Base in Tampa and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command
in Homestead, Florida.
Compiling the names, home addresses
and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command's top officers,
along with those of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca
Chica.
Infiltrating the headquarters of
the U.S. Southern Command.
Sending letter bombs to
Cuban-Americans.
Spying on McDill Air Force Base,
the U.S. armed forces' worldwide headquarters for fighting
"low-intensity" conflicts.
Locating entry points into Florida
for smuggling explosive material.
At the bail hearings, Assistant U.S.
District Attorney Carolyn Heck Miller said the urgency to act on
the case was because "the defendant has made allusions to the
prospect of sabotage against buildings and airplanes in the
Southern District of Florida."
These Castro agents also infiltrated
the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue. From them, Castro
got the flight plan for one of their flights over the Florida
straits, also known as "the cemetery without crosses." The
estimates of the number of Cubans dying horribly in the
"cemetery without crosses" run from 50,000 to 85,000.
Brothers to the Rescue risked their
lives almost daily, flying over the straits, alerting and
guiding the Coast Guard to any balseros, and saving
thousands of these desperate people from joining that terrible
tally.
By February of 1996 they'd flown
1,800 of these humanitarian missions and helped rescue 4,200
men, women and children. That month Castro's Wasp spies passed a
Brothers flight plan to Havana. This allowed Castro and his
military to ambush and shoot down (in international air space)
two unarmed Brothers' planes. Four members of Brothers to the
Rescue met a fiery death from the gallant Castro's MiGs. Three
of these men were U.S. citizens, the other a legal U.S.
resident.
Armando Alejandre Jr. came to the
U.S. at age 10 in 1960. His first order of business when he
reached the age of 18 was fulfilling his dream of becoming a
U.S. citizen. His next was joining the United States Marine
Corps and volunteering for service in Vietnam. He returned with
several decorations.
As a member of Brothers to the
Rescue, he often dropped flowers over the sea in memory of the
thousands they'd been unable to rescue in time.
A man with a weapon or with both
hands free to fight has always palsied Castro with fright. The
notion of Fidel Castro facing a United States Marine in combat
mode is simply laughable, in a pathetic way. So Castro waited
for Armando and his Brothers to be carrying flowers -– and made
his move, murdering them in cold blood. MiGs against Cessnas,
cannon and rockets against flowers.
This is a Castro specialty. In high
school Fidel got into an argument over a debt (he was always a
deadbeat) with a schoolmate named Ramon Mestre, who pounded him
like a gong. Fidel cried uncle and slunk away whimpering that
he'd go fetch the money he owed Ramon.
Instead he came back with a cocked
pistol, hoping to surprise and murder the unarmed Mestre, who'd
already gone home. There's your genuine Fidel in all his macho
splendor. He does have a long memory, however. Six months after
he grabbed power, Castro had his goons grab Senor Mestre, who
then suffered 20 years in Castro's dungeons.
The premeditated atrocity against
Alejandre and his Brothers is what added the "manslaughter" and
"conspiracy to commit murder" charges (on top of the ones listed
above, 26 charges total) against the Wasp Network spies.
Came the trial, and lawyers for
Castro's agents' all ranted and raved that "no Cuban-Americans
should be on the jury!" Interestingly, Leonard Weinglass, who
represents Gerardo Hernandez, the Brothers to the Rescue
infiltrator/spy charged with manslaughter, has represented Jane
Fonda, Pentagon Papers defendant Anthony Russo, Angela Davis,
the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Chicago Seven, Amy Carter
and Mumia Abu-Jamal. He's known as a specialist in 'civil
rights' and 'human rights.'
But ah! When it came to
Cuban-Americans? Now Weinglass argued vehemently against
their right to serve on a jury based simply on their ethnicity.
The U.S. Supreme Court itself
supposedly prohibits this: "The Equal Protection Clause
guarantees that the State will not exclude from the jury venire
anyone on account of race, or on the false assumption that
members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as
jurors." This from a case titled Batson v. Kentucky (1986.) "By
denying a person participation in jury service on account of his
race, the State also unconstitutionally discriminates against
the excluded juror," the Court decision continues.
Apparently not when it comes to
Cuban-Americans. As we all know by now, none of the usual
liberal bugaboos and standards apply to a minority that votes
overwhelmingly Republican. During the Elian circus the New York
press ran an article by Stalinist Alexander Cockburn urging the
"nuking" of Little Havana. OK, so it was in jest.
But the same jesting with regard to
Harlem, the Bronx or East Los Angles would have sent Cockburn to
the unemployment office, mandatory "sensitivity training" or
maybe to Weinglass himself to defend him against a "hate-speech"
rap.
At any rate, not a peep was heard
from the usual "civil rights watchdogs" (the Miami Herald, for
instance) about the expressly racist request by the "civil
rights" attorney and "activist" Weinglass –- and one that
violated a decision by the Supreme Court itself.
And no objection by the judges
either. They agreed with Weinglass and the rest of the defense
and excluded Cuban-Americans from the jury like the very plague.
"The case would be infected with prejudice," argued
another defense lawyer, Paul McKenna. And again, after the
judges' decision in agreement with Weinglass and McKenna, nary a
peep from "civil rights" mongers.
Well, came June of 2001 and that
jury -– utterly free from "infection" by a single Cuban-American
–- found all five of the Castro spies guilty as charged on all
26 counts. The evidence against them was absolutely overwhelming
and devastating. The jury concluded that these five were
patently agents of America's most hate-filled enemy, and bent on
damaging their country. It didn't take a Cuban-American to see
this.
Last week, the 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals in Atlanta (the same one that ruled Elian Gonzalez could
not apply for political asylum even though the very INS manual
has examples of 6-year-olds applying for asylum –
"Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant,"
p. 169) overturned the conviction of the Castro spies. The
93-page opinion states that seating an impartial jury (even one
thoroughly disinfected against Cuban- Americans) was an
"unreasonable probability because of pervasive community
prejudice."
"Never before in the history of the
United States has a federal circuit court of appeals reversed a
trial court's finding with respect to venue. This is a first!"
crowed a triumphant Leonard Weinglass from atop his dunghill of
cases.
Apparently, just having
Cuban-Americans in the same community as other jurors
infects them! By the way, Cuban-Americans make up only 1/4 of
the community in which the trial was held. You really gotta hand
it to us. We are one influential bunch! It's starting to
go to my head.
We make up a minuscule 1/300 of the
U.S. population, yet -– from all I keep hearing and reading in
the MSM (mainstream media) -– we not only decide jury verdicts
through some form of telepathy, osmosis or bribery, we also
control U.S. foreign policy with a firm testicular grip.
"Cuba policy isn't made in
Washington," harrumphed Bill Press in a CNN column. "It's made
in Miami by former Batista supporters who think they can reverse
history!"
"A small number of powerful exiles
in South Florida cow our politicians into keeping the crazy
Cuban policy!" snapped media baron Al Neuharth in a USA Today
column.
"Man, we BAD!" I finally started
shouting, while strutting around like Gene Wilder and Richard
Pryor in the movie "Stir Crazy."
There are others besides Weinglass
and McKenna simply delighted by last week's decision. "This
Atlanta court decision was demonstrative of the dignity, decorum
and professionalism of the three judges, who merit all our
respect." That ode comes from none other than Ricardo Alarcon,
the eunuch who serves as Castro's "President" of Cuba's
"National Assembly," which is to say: the representative of a
regime whose first order of business on January 9, 1959, was
abolishing habeas corpus and introducing the death penalty to
apply retroactively.
This is the same regime whose main
executioner and magistrate at the time, Che Guevara, took a
brief breather from murdering hundreds of men (and boys, some as
young as 15) without trial to declare: "To send men to the
firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. Judicial evidence
is an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute
from revolutionary conviction!"
The three Atlanta judges should feel
very proud of their accolades by such august adherents of
civilized jurisprudence.
Humberto Fontova is author of
"Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant,"
described as "absolutely devastating. An enlightening read
you'll never forget" by David Limbaugh. "A remarkable book,"
says Phil Brennan. "An eye-opener. Fontova explodes myth after
myth." David Horowitz says: "Humberto Fontova has performed a
valuable service to the cause of decency and human freedom.
Every American should read this book."
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
|
June 2005
"THEY WANT TO DEPRIVE ME OF MY HOMELAND, BUT I ACCEPT NO
MASTER."
By Juan Carlos Herrera
(Condemned to 20 years in prison during the repressive wave of
March 2003 -
Actually at PRISION KILO 7, Camaguey. Cuba.)
Sixteen years ago (March of 1988), I began to experiment changes
in my perspective on Cuba's reality and all that was in my
surroundings. I perceived that living beneath the supposed
socialism were only government parasites, specifically within
the upper echelons of power--in other words, those who are in
power today. I understood the falseness of the blurted slogans,
the wasted five-year plans, of the total backwardness, and of
the hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing the abstractions,
the imposition,
and the supposed uniformity.
The Florida Straits and the perimeter bordering on the
Guantanamo Base became large cemeteries. During the almost
thirty years of "Revolution" that had passed, I understood that
a Cuban only carried to the grave hopelessness and pain, in
addition to a life plagued
with uncertainty. We march to other lands under a supposed
proletarian internationalism in the midst of an economy more
inefficient by the day. Almost suddenly, I found myself in the
middle of a tunnel. I managed to see the light and my neurons
began to act independently of the induced political
manipulations, for they no longer found a handle to hold onto in
a single atom of my body.
The collapse of the system that made so many promises regarding
a "new man" and a luminous future, totally evaporated. Radical
changes were taking place in what were formerly our
"protectors"--their societies and their citizens were claiming
freedoms suppressed and trampled upon. I finished by proving
that I lived under a political sequestration and, without
realizing it, I was simply a victim of a macabre socio-political
experiment. It was then that I opened my eyes, and although I
found myself trapped within a monster, I needed to express
myself with total freedom.
The day arrived which marked a radical change in the history of
humanity. Soviet Socialism fell and with it the strings that
held dozens of European nations--and almost like a magic act, so
did the subsidies that had supported the Cuban dictatorship.
With all my being, I yelled, "Eureka!!"
I already knew that I lived under a degrading police state, so I
took the just course. After experimenting with unbiased,
uncensored literature (of course, in a clandestine manner), I
carried out comparisons to prove that I was right--that I should
reclaim my rights which had been usurped and amputated.
How many lies in the speeches of the Cuban Cesar? I managed to
publicly classify him as a "Czar", and in spite of my youth, I
began to have contact with dignified Cubans in Havana and in my
native Guantanamo who themselves were detested by the
dictator-in-chief. I did not know the true history of Cuba. It's
all distorted. What I previously saw as a system of "justice"
was nothing more than a great farce, a constitution elaborated
only to represent the interests of those in power, while the
people of Cuba lived totally oppressed by the state. A nation of
brave men and women ended up bound hand and feet by a vile and
conniving political betrayal. The biggest lunatic had curtailed
rights and planted the seeds of terror in the face of popular
discontent.
The new constitution of the Republic (1976) is a dishonor, where
the citizens are declared as "non-persons'. In opposition to the
Great Chief emerged what is today the great movement for human
rights composed of noble Cubans. The ruler, heartless and
resentful, viciously attacked back. Many faced filthy dungeons
and many more saw
themselves forced into exile. But for those brave Cubans there
remains in their hearts the hope of recuperating a homeland once
lost and decimated, enslaved in the midst of total chaos. We do
not resign ourselves to live on our knees even though prison or
death may be our destiny.
Ever since I was able to glance at the horizon of the national
reality, and listen to the many redundant speeches plagued with
lies that pictured a "paradise" today unattainable, I decided to
say enough to so many injustices and cruelties. No more rights
infringed
upon in the midst of an inexorable fundamentalism that obliges
millions of citizens to coexist under an induced mutism of
subtle methods degrading to all.
It's been 45 years of political, economic, and social immobility
under the aegis of an illegitimate, egocentric personality that
stirs and divides his own people. Personally, I suffer the
vindictive political shrapnel of the Great Dictator, but I do
not resign myself to let freedom die. Twice the tyrant-in-chief
has sent me to prison. The crime? Not being in agreement with
the omnipresent power that causes such pain to the nation. I
don't regret being behind bars because it fills me with pride to
know that I am not one of the double-thinkers, and that I follow
the ideas of the greatest and most distinguished of
Cubans, Jose Marti. The Apostle once declared: "I want the
highest law of the land to be the Cuban people's tribute to the
dignity of man". I follow his lessons along with many other
courageous compatriots who suffer, and not a single lament is
heard.
Today, the ideas are imprisoned, but they will not die. We are
tortured physically and psychologically, but we do not bow our
heads, and we resist from the depths of the gut of the Castroite
monster that makes up his inhospitable dungeons. Not only are we
enclosed and confined, but also we lack the most inherent
necessities. We are treated like non-persons and within the
prisons we cannot even aspire to adequate medical treatment,
amongst hundreds of other violations.
Hundreds of Cubans today are proudly behind iron bars, but they
are not defeated. They want to deprive us from being a part of
the nation. They confine us, but hope lives on because one day
the longed for freedom will arrive, although the price to be
paid has been high. That day, not too distant, a monument will
be erected for all the victims of the black Castroism, to the
ones who have fled from terror, to the ones who gave their lives
in prisons, but who never accepted the despicable boots of a
master. I live proud to be one of the 75 victims of the black
spring of 2003 because I know that the ideas will flourish in
the midst of a Free Nation, clean, and with an open heart for
all. Although today they want to deprive me of my homeland, I do
not accept a master.
This information received from
Cuba through Cuba Net is a valiant and masterful exposition of
the tragedy suffered by the youth in Cuba......Alpha 66
|
ALPHA
66: THE TRUTH COMES OUT
Tania Díaz Castro
Havana, December (www.cubanet.org)
The strategies used by the government of Fidel Castro against
its opponents have been so varied over these 45 years that a
simple look will discover the lies in that history.
The judicial process that took place in the Cabaña Prison on
October 9, 1974 against various members of the anti-Castro
organization Alpha 66, like many other trials, is absolute proof
that the Cuban regime has done whatever it has wanted against
its opposition. It has used the judicial process to its
advantage every time.
During the trial Alpha 66 was labeled a counter-revolutionary
organization. It was not labeled terrorist as the government
began calling it soon after, even though by 1974 this
organization had been in existence for thirteen years.
But the biggest surprise was received in 1995 when Eloy
Gutierrez Menoyo, ex commander in the struggle against Batista
and ex head of military operations for Alpha 66 visited Havana
with his family. It was revealed at this time, and not through
the national press but by the voice of the people that he had
dialogued with Fidel Castro. This even after the regime had
labeled Menoyo's old organization, terrorist.
However, the only terrorist acts that the Cuban people in our
streets remember are those committed by the 26 of July Movement
and the Revolutionary Directorate. These were armed attacks
against military garrisons, police stations, and the
Presidential Palace. They were also sabotages against public
services like telephones and places like movie theaters, night
clubs, etc. These were all referenced by the daily Granma this
past November 30.
Recently Nazario Sargen, secretary general of Alpha 66 and ex
commander of the Second Front of the Escambray during the
struggle against Batista passed away. From his exile, Nazario
Sargen was completely dedicated to the cause of freedom for his
homeland.
The poet and ex political prisoner, Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez, a
man whom the Castro political police could not break during the
22 years he spent in prison is replacing Nazario Sargen.
Díaz Rodríguez was imprisoned after an armed confrontation in
the Province of Pinar del Río on December 4, 1968. He was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. For continuing the activities
of his organization inside prison he was given a sentence of 25
years at a trial that he has described as a gross farce and
something very typical in the island of Fidel Castro.
The history of Alpha 66 remains to be written. Only then will
the entire truth be revealed.
|
September 2002
SPEAKING FOR THE CUBAN PEOPLE
By: Miguel L. Talleda
The Congress of the United States is poised to pressure the Bush
Administration to end the embargo imposed by President Kennedy
thatprevents any trade or credit agreements with the Communist
government of Fidel Castro. If this craziness succeeds it would
be an enormous historical black mark in the politics of this
country.
Why? First, it would give the tyrannical government of Fidel
Castro breathing room by opening the doors to credit that is
controlled by the U.S. at a time when his world standing is
totally discredited. Second, it would create a open door for
American tourists that would help financially to consolidate the
economy of the Communist system in Cuba to the detriment of the
Cuban people. The Cuban people would see their suffering
prolonged under a cruel system at a time when their own pressure
against the government has Castro on the verge of a collapse.
So then, why? Because members of Congress are being pressured
by special interests that for years have been “friends” of Fidel
Castro and have begun a campaign to convince the American people
that “selling to Cuba would help the agricultural industry in
the U.S.” Can one conceive such stupidity? They also say that
ending the embargo will help the Cuban people. Is it possible
that at this stage they still don’t know how Fidel Castro
works? Don’t they realize that by lifting the embargo they will
HELP CREATE A PERMANENT COMMUNIST PROTECTORATE in our
unfortunate island?
But actually the Cuban people think differently and this is good
to know. Alpha 66 also thinks differently and it is well worth
repeating one more time. See the following declaration received
via the internet from Matanzas, Cuba.
Pro Democracy Party Pedro Luis
Boitel
Calle Peatonal C No. 6, Las Canteras Perico
Matanzas, Cuba, Tel/Fax 534-58-2845
WE WISH TO INFORM:
The Cuban people find the Cuban government (1959-present)
responsible for the total economic bankruptcy and the current
external debt of Cuba. Any individual, institution,
corporation, or government that has cooperated or plans to
cooperate in any way with the current Cuban government is only
helping to prolong a totalitarian government that does not and
never has represented the interests of the Cuban people.
The Cuban people will exercise its legal rights when the moment
arrives to recover its national heritage and be compensated for
the damages incurred since 1959 to the present.
Cuba will be free by the efforts of its own people.
To this we swear before God and the Cuban nation today,
September 12, 2002, in the city of Matanzas, Cuba.
Félix Navarro Rodriguez, President; Tomás Fernández Tiher,
Vice-President; Emilio Bringas Dévora, National Coordinator
(The above was received from www.payolibre.com/presos.htm)
There is no doubt that the voices
coming from Cuba as well as our own from exile speak for the
Cuban people.
|
|
|
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
1:29 PM
ACULISTA | Extensive rebutal to a "confused" Canadian, by a Cuban named
Jesús Chao
11/24/2002
Dear Mr. Akins:
In
your reply to my first e.mail you gave as a proven “fact is that the living
standard, education level, abilitity to access health care, and the quality
of that care for the numerical majority of Cubans increased when the
government changed hands from military dictatorship (Batista) to socialist
revolutionaries (Castro),” although in due course I will prove that was not
so. For the sake of the argument, lets accept it, and let us analyze if
those portrayed advances were worthy of the sacrifices and blood bath
carried out during the 43 years of Castro’s tyrannical rule.
It is completely baseless to maintain that the living standard for most
Cubans improved after the revolution. Today, (Sunday, Nov. 24th) on Cspan,
Castro’s biographer Georgie Anne Geyer, answered a question from a caller,
and according to her: ”Cuba was at the top of this hemisphere, just behind
United States and Argentina, when Castro took power, today Cuba is at the
bottom along with Bolivia and Haiti.” (I wonder what place was Canada in
1959?). Georgie A. Geyer is the foremost foreign expert among the American
journalists and his book “The Guerrilla Prince” is one of the best written
about Castro. She also commented that Castro has a very intelligent and
diabolical mind, and although it is true that Cuba has chemical and
biological weapons, she thinks that Castro will not use it against U.S. in
spite of his pathological hatred towards the United States. In Geyer’s
opinion, he is neither crazy nor suicidal.
According to the best world authority in Cuba’s History, English scholar
Hugh Thomas, referring to the Cuban tragedy, (The Spectator, 7/12/1986) he
affirmed that: “The comparison must be with the account of Nazi
concentration camps. Although there are yet no gas chambers in Cuba, there
have been experiments of a criminal biological type designed to see how far
an individual can survive starvation, beating, solitary confinement, and
many various kinds of ill treatment. Valladares’ account of working in a
stone quarry is not dissimilar to, and no more humane than, the many
accounts extant of ‘life’ in Manthausen. Nor should one forget that the
brutalities in Nazi Germany lasted at most 12 years and the gross cruelties
in the Auschwitz camp continued for four years.”
The brutal violations of human rights in Castro’s Cuba has been proven
beyond any doubts and denounced by all the international human rights
organizations, form the United Nations in Geneva to Amnesty International.
It defies logic that a person who lives in Canada with access to a free
press, is not aware of these undisputed facts and nevertheless accept as
fact, Castro’s propaganda. This proves that the Canadian press is as a
sycophant of Castro as CNN and most Western media. Ideological prejudices
against the United States blind the objectivity, professionalism and honesty
of the media when dealing with Castro and the Cuban revolution. So, people
who has been brain washed by the media, when confronted with proven facts,
tend to find them biased.
It is incomprehensible to me that to this day, while tens of thousands of
Cubans were assassinated by Castro’s henchmen, and the fact that over
300,000 men, women and children have been tortured inside Castro’s dungeons,
many people in the world still look the other way in an attitude of deceit
and indifference. As it happened during the Jewish Holocaust, nobody wanted
to listen. And, when we denounce those atrocities, we are portrayed as
emotional, but how could not those factual histories of horror bring strong
emotions into the hearts of those whose families and friends were victimized
by Castro’s henchmen?
In Paris, on April 11 and 12, 1986, Resistance International organized a
Nuremberg type tribunal composed by world renowned personalities, mostly
European socialists, some of them sympathizers of the Cuban Revolution, to
judge Castro’s alleged crimes. The members of the tribunal were: Jorge
Semprún, Spanish writer, communist ex-prisoner of Buchenwald and the
Minister of Culture in the Spanish Socialist government; René Tavernier,
President of the French “Pen Club”; Paul-Loup Sulitzer, international
specialist in finance; Bernard Stasi, member of the French Parliament;
Philippe Sollers, writer; Fernando Sanchez Dragó, Spanish writer; Haing Ngor,
Cambodian actor, winner of the “Oscar” for the “Killing Fields”; Bernard
Henri Levi, French philosopher and writer; Marie Madeleine Fourcade,
Heroine of the French Resistance; Leon Boubien, jurist; Monique Garnier
Laocon, Vice-President of the European Security Institute; Martin Gray,
writer and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinca; Osmund Faremo,
member of the Norwegian Parliament and President of the Inter-Parliamentary
Caucus of Norway; Pascal Bruckner, writer; Yves Montand, French actor; Jean
Francois Revel, French writer and philosopher. The witnesses were twelve
former Cuban political prisoners of Castro.
The tribunal reached the conclusion that “the common practice in Cuba is:
arbitrary arrests, sentences by military tribunals without public audience
or defense, interrogations lasting for several days with beatings, woundings,
tortures, internment in forced labor camps without enough food, without
dress and without medical care, suffering promiscuity from common
prisoners. The imprisonment of boys as young as nine years old and young
adolescents exposed to the worst tortures and the promiscuity of prisons was
considered very grave. Furthermore, as it was proven by certain
testimonies, the methods used to obtain confessions bring to our minds the
methods used by Hitler in the German concentration camps: suffocation by
submergence, mutilations, etc..., in addition to methods of intellectual
terrorism used to force the prisoners to abandon their principles.
Particularly grave is the practice of biological experiments on prisoners by
Russian physicians.” (“Lumiere Sur
Cuba”)
They concluded: “The crime of ignoring the reality of the Nazi
concentrations camps, as it happened during the Second World War, should not
be repeated. To do it again will be to become accomplices of those crimes.”
You can ask in French or English the full process: Lumiere Sur
Cuba,
Internationale de la Resistance, 102 Avenue de Champs Elysées, 75088 Paris,
France.
This was the turning point for the European socialist intellectual
establishment. Castro’s myth was destroyed and the real brutal and
tyrannical character of his regime was exposed to the world. Even in this
hemisphere many former Castro sympathizers began to express their discomfort
with the regime of terror reigning in Cuba. Tad Szulc, Castro’s friend and
biographer, affirmed in 1986: “A gulag south exist in Cuba under the
socialist revolution launched by Fidel Castro over 27 years ago, and in
terms of prisons networks, it appears to rank high along with the Soviet
Union and South African gulags… years of supreme brutality against tens of
thousands of human beings.” (Washington Post, Book World, July 20)
The findings of the Paris Tribunal were reported by the European Western
media, and Latin America but almost ignored by the American elite media.
From reading your e.mails, I have to assume that the Canadians ignored it
completely, how otherwise could you in conscience maintain that there is not
“evidence to suggest that he (Castro) is not a (bloody) dictator” even when
I proved the point with Ambassador Valladares’ address to the United Nations
Human Rights Commission which, in front of the proven facts, reached a
condemnatory verdict against Castro’s regimen.
In the book “The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba” by scholars
Charles J. Brown and Armando M. Lago you will find well documented, the use
in Cuba of mental wards as torture chambers against Castro’s political
dissidents. Vladimir Bukovsky, a leading member of the democratic movement
in the Soviet Union during the 60 and 70s who live in Cambridge, England,
wrote the Preface of the book and commented in 1991: “Cuba has covered in
thirty-two years what the Soviet Union achieved in seventy-three. Within a
single generation, Cuba advanced from ‘revolutionary justice’ to ‘socialist
legality,’ from liquidation of ‘class enemies’ to ‘political re-education
and psychiatric treatment of those ‘apathetic to socialism.”
Peter Reddaway, co-author of the book “Russia’s Political Hospitals: Abuse
of Psychiatry in the USSR: commented about the Brown-Lago’s book: “Not
until now has the subject been so systematically investigated and
documented. Brown and Lago’s carefully researched book reveals a picture of
cooperation between an oppressive, cruel regime and morally corrupt doctors…
These crimes will go into the history of medicine along side of the Nazi
doctor Mengele.”
On
the other hand, you are convinced that the United States government: “is
also rather obsessesedly bound to overtaking
Cuba,
since it participated in the battle for independance from Spain.” Which was
true at the end of the XIX Century, but, judging by the accompliced silence
of the Canadian media and government, hiding Castro’s crimes against
humanity, isn’t the fact that they might be trying to protect the spurious
interest of Canadian companies who are exploiting Cuban slave labor in
cahoots and partnership with the Cuban Tyrant in a modern version of
colonialism?
Canadians, Spaniards, Mexicans, British, French, and investors of other
countries went to Cuba attracted by Castro’s offer of cheap slave labor, a
country without labor problems where workers do not have even the right to
strike. In fact, whoever invests in Cuba cannot hire a single worker.
I am sure that a person of your sensibility would find it outrageous that
the Canadian companies must pay up front to Castro $300 dollars per worker
every month, and the Cuban regime pays the worker 300 Cuban pesos, the
equivalent of $15 dollars a month. That means that in order to be able to
hire a worker, a foreign investor has to give Castro a bribe of 2,000% up
front, that goes to finance the repressive apparatus that keeps the Cuban
people under feudal bondage conditions. I am afraid that you had not been
aware that Canadians were among the worst exploiters and that the Cuban
people repudiate all those investors and tourists that have exploited them
in partnership with the Cuban tyrant. Greed is not an exclusive
characteristic of the American ethos. In fact, American companies were the
ones paying the highest salaries and benefits to their workers in Cuba
before Castro. Greed is a sin of human nature regardless of the country of
origin. In fact, as with the companies involved during the Nazi era in the
slave labor exploitation, those that have been involved in Cuba during
Castro’s regimen will have to pay dearly once Cuba recovers its freedom.
In the 1987-1988 Freedom in the World, Political and Civil Liberties’,
annual report assessing in an unbiased way, the conditions of freedom in
the world, by Freedom House, reported the conditions in Cuba at the bottom
of all countries in this Continent. In Cuba ”writing or speaking against
the system, even in private, is severely repressed". There are reports of
psychiatric institutions also being for incarceration. Independent human
rights organizations are not allowed to function in Cuba. Freedom to choose
work, education, or residence is greatly restricted. It is generally
illegal to leave Cuba, but some have been forced to leave. Comparatively:
Cuba is as free as Gabon, and less free than Guyana.” Cuba has held the
same awful record from 1973- to 1987, the worst in Latin America including
Haiti (Freedom of the World, 1987-1988, Raymonf D. Gastil, Freedom
House, pages 298,299, 56)
The Freedom House’s annual summary on the status of freedom in the world is
based on the reports made by more than 50 of the most respected human rights
organizations in the world. A rating is made in three categories: Political
Rights and Civil Liberties, giving a rating 1 to the best to 7 for the
worst. The third category is Status: Free, Partly free, and Not free. Cuba
in the 1987-1988 report was classified as 6 in Political Rights, 6 in Civil
Rights, and Status, Not Free. In the 1993-1994 report Cuba fared even
worse: “Political Rights 7, Civil Rights 7, and Status: NOT FREE. Cuba was
among the “20 worst rated countries”, a shameful distinction that was only
shared by Haiti in this Continent. “Since 1990 the International Committee
of the Red Cross has been denied access to prisoners.” (Freedom in the
World, 1993-1994, pages 220, 222, 5)
Dear Ms. Akins, let us assume for a moment that you made an exhaustive
research and found that all theses facts I have been presenting are true,
and let us assume that the accomplishments you think the revolution reached
were also true. Would you still think that it was worth it?
Jesus
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