Cuban Hip-Hop Artists Arrested along with other activists

Activists marching at Río Verde. Photo courtesy of Hablemos Press.

Cuban hip-hop artists Julio León Fonseca (Julito) and Rodolfo Ramírez Hernández (El Primario) were arrested last Monday during a protest at Río Verde, Boyeros, Havana.

They were beaten and arrested along with other activists, including Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, Yaimara Pérez Mesa, Donaida Pérez Paseiro, René Ramón González Bonelli, Rances Camejo Miranda, Rodolfo Ramírez Cardoso and Yoani García Martínez, when they attempted to march to demand the release of Sara Martha Fonseca, her husband, Julio Ignacio León, and another activist arrested on Saturday.

Video of the protest in Río Verde

El Primario and Julito NO INTENTEN

El Primario y Julito Website

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Why we're not seeing a "Cuban Autumn"

A dissident signs the letter "L" for the Spanish word "libertad" or freedom as he is detained by police during a procession celebrating Cuba's patron saint in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Sept. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano).

Dissidents took heart at the successes of the Arab Spring, but pro-democracy protests aren't gaining traction.

The uprisings that have rocked the Middle East this year appear to be inspiring a new wave of protests on this island.

But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a "Cuban Autumn."

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and "Freedom!" until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government's move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba's one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

Now activists are once more testing Raul Castro's tolerance for public protest -- and whether the tactics used by tweeting insurgents in the Middle East could spread anti-government sentiment here.

So far: not so much.

One disadvantage often cited by Cuban activists is that they operate at a significant technology deficit. The island is one of the least-connected countries in the world, and though many young people have mobile phones, most lack access to Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites because of internet restrictions and scarce bandwidth.

Anti-Castro activists on the island are also viewed suspiciously or with outright hostility by many Cubans, even those who have lost faith in Cuba's socialist model. State media broadcasts frequently show them meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials, depicting them as "counterrevolutionaries," "mercenaries" and "opportunists" who are out to make a buck or get political asylum abroad.

Many others here remain committed to Cuba's system and its revolutionary ideals, even as the free health care, education and other benefits the government provides continue to diminish.

But dissidents also say Cuban authorities are escalating their attacks to intimidate others from joining their pro-democracy efforts. In August, police violence against peaceful protesters reached its highest level in recent years, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, an anti-Castro group that the tracks political arrests and detentions. Nearly twice as many activists have been detained so far this year compared to the same period in 2010, the group said, including 130 short-term detentions over the weekend.

The Cuban government has challenged those charges, accusing the group of padding its lists with fake names.

Castro opponents do not claim the Cuban government stoops to the type of methods that have been used by regimes in the Arab world, where activists are raped, tortured and murdered, and where protests are commonly met by volleys of police gunfire.

But state-security officials can plainly be seen coordinating counter-protests by government loyalists, who often surround dissidents and shout epithets at them for hours on end, sometimes accosting them physically. Security agents typically stand between the two sides to keep things from getting too rough.

When Cubans protest in public spontaneously, as some of the recent videos show, police quickly swoop in to arrest the demonstrators and haul them away, though the activists are often released several hours later.

Cuba's Catholic church, which played a central role in securing the release of more than 100 jailed activists over the past year, issued a carefully worded statement last week that condemned violence against "defenseless" people.

But Church spokesman Orlando Marquez also said in the statement that the Cuban government told the church "no one at the national level" had ordered attacks on protesters.

Cuban state television has aired footage of the protests, claiming the incidents were part of a "media campaign" against the island. It called the demonstrations acts of "public disorder" that were organized by U.S.-supported "mercenaries" and planned in coordination with American officials.

"The goal is to create a climate of tension that will justify aggressions against Cuba," the report said.

While Cuba's economy continues to struggle, there has not been the kind of broader unrest on the island that sparked street protests during the post-Soviet crisis of the 1990s.

Raul Castro has eased state control over the economy since taking over for his older brother in 2006, allowing for new private businesses and pending reforms that would permit Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in half a century.

Castro has also encouraged Cubans to vent their frustrations -- within limits -- through established channels like workplace forums and neighborhood meetings. Criticizing state institutions and government bureaucracy is no longer taboo, but organized opposition and public protests -- like the recent demonstrations -- remain out of bounds.

Since most of the dissidents freed over the past year opted to leave Cuba for Spain as part of an arrangement with the Madrid government, the latest rounds of protests may also be an effort by activists to remain visible, particularly to supporters abroad.

Cuba's most famous online anti-government activist, Yoani Sanchez, sends out cascades of tweets from her mobile phone, including information about protests. Her blog, Generation Y, is no longer blocked on the island by the government, but many young Cubans who manage to get online aren't necessarily inclined to use their precious bytes on political sites.

A high-speed undersea data link to Venezuela completed this summer with much fanfare is supposed to come online in the next few months, increasing Cuba's bandwidth by a factor of 3,000. Its debut has been repeatedly delayed, adding to perceptions that Cuban authorities are wary of its power, even though they have already announced it will not be used to deliver private internet access to Cuban homes.

U.S. officials appear to view communication technology as the key to sparking political change on the island. In a leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable that recently surfaced, the top American official in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, urged the lifting of restrictions on software downloads in Cuba, where Microsoft and other American companies have blocked access to comply with anti-terrorism statutes. Such restrictions, Farrar argued, work "directly against U.S. goals to advance people-to-people interaction."

Bringing more technology, wrote Farrar at the time, could "help facilitate Iran-style democratic ferment in Cuba."

By Nick Miroff

Source: GlobalPost

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Castro sics dogs on flower-carrying women

Among the bravest and most persistent protesters against dictatorial regimes have been, for years, the Ladies in White of Cuba. With Fidel presumably sidelined, his brother Raul carries on the brutish family tradition of crushing dissent, as seen in his attacks against this non-violent group.

Ladies in White members are comprised of relatives of caged political prisoners, as well as unyielding Cuban human-rights activists. For an ongoing account of what they have to endure while much of the world – including America – now largely ignores the victims of this ruthless "Revolution," read the account below:

On Aug. 7, 20 Ladies in White bearing flowers (never weapons) began their march on the streets of the city of Santiago de Cuba after leaving its cathedral.

Government-organized mobs battered the women and pushed them into buses headed for an unknown destination. More of these hoodlums, also assembled by the Ministry of the Interior, also beat up Ladies in White that day in the city of Palmarito del Cauto. ("Activists With Fractures Are Hospitalized After Brutal Attack," Aug. 7, netforcuba.org).

For their "disloyalty" to the Castro regime, six Ladies in White and other human-rights dissidents were hospitalized. And dig this if you have been led to believe that Cuba's rulers have been "humanized" in recent years:

"By orders of the political police, doctors refused to provide these wounded activists with a medical certificate, which they need in order to accuse Cuban authorities of the violence perpetrated against them." (Raul seems to be becoming more meticulous in denying charges of cruelty.)

Trapped in Castro's gulag and lived to tell about it – check out Armando Valladares' story of 20 years under dictator's thumb: Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag

One of the few U.S. newspapers still covering the Stalinist beat in Cuba is the Miami Herald ("Cuban dissidents say cops again beat women," miamiherald.com, Aug. 16). These violently enforced gag rules "marked the fourth weekend in a row that authorities have used physical force and even violence to break up the women's attempt to establish their right to protest in eastern Cuba."

And this is how utterly insistent on squashing dissent the Castro administration remains after all these bloody decades, as reported by the Miami Herald:

"Police also detained another seven Ladies in White supporters before they could get to the cathedral (in Santiago), including three who tried to sneak out of their homes around 2 a.m. in hopes of evading the security forces," said Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, a recently freed political prisoner. "One of the women fainted when confronted with a police guard dog."

Is Raul Castro, shown enlisting combative dogs, becoming insecure?

Another rare U.S. news source staying on the Castro brothers' revolutionary crusade against free speech is the Wall Street Journal ("On Cuba's Capital Steps," Aug. 27). The week before, there were four Cubans "who took to the steps of the Capitol in Havana ... chanting 'liberty' for 40 minutes" – until dragged into patrol cars by uniformed Castro state security thugs.

One of them, Sara Marta Fonseca – a member of Cuba's Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights – in a telephone interview with Diario de Cuba, a Spain-based online newspaper, said she was pleased with the results of her arrest "because she heard the crowd crying 'abuser, leave them alone, they are peaceful and they are telling the truth.'"

Fonseca explained: "I am very happy because in spite of being beaten and dragged, we could see that the people were ready to join us."

However, she does admit: "Realistically, we do not have the strength and the power to defeat the dictatorship. The strength and the power are to be found in the unity of the people. In this we put all our faith, in that this people will cross the barrier of fear and join the opposition to reclaim freedom."

These Cuban forces of freedom, however, will continue to get no support from, gosh, the American Library Association (ALA), despite its mantra "The Freedom to Read." The ALA resolutely will not condemn the Castros' attacks on Cuban independent librarians.

Because I've long reported on this shame of the ALA, the world's largest organization of librarians – by contrast with library associations in other countries rebuking Cuba – I've been scorned by Eliades Costa, the director of the Cuban National Library, where biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. are banned.

Said Costa: "What does Mr. Hentoff know of the real Cuba?"

My public answer (The Friends of Cuban Libraries, "Defenders of Intellectual Freedom," Aug. 28, 2011): "I know that if I were a Cuban, I'd be in prison."

I also damn well know that I'm right about the ALA's silence on Castro courts ordering the burning of books seized from arrested Cuban independent librarians – and that these raids continue. From Friends of Cuban Libraries late-breaking news section, on April 9: "Jose Ramon Rivera, the director of an independent library in Pinar del Rio Province, complains that a State Security major named Rafael and two police agents entered his house at #655 Garmendia St. and, without showing a warrant, took away four boxes of books."

Now hear this: On April 30, in New York, ALA activist Rhonda Neugebauer, when asked why in 20 years of visits to Cuba she hasn't been able to find any censorship of books, said: "The question does not deserve an answer."

Fortunately, Americans still find public libraries essential. Next time you're in one, ask the librarian to insist that the American Library Association help Cubans gain their right of freedom to read by speaking the truth about the Castros!

And why has so much of our online, print and electronic media let the ALA get away with this naked hypocrisy? I can only imagine that the smiling Castro brothers approve of the august ALA's silence.

by Nat Hentoff

Source: WND

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Cuba's brave "Ladies in White"

The Ladies in White walk in 5ta Avenida, Miramar, Havana, the last Sunday 28. Photo Roberto Guerra, Hablemos Press.

Raul Castro, Cuba's successor to brother Fidel, has recently unleashed his thugs on women peacefully protesting Cuban human rights abuses. The brutal attacks completely undermine Mr. Castro's attempt to appear moderate and will set back his carefully cultivated relationship with the European Union. Ultimately it could lead to a popular uprising.

The attacks are unconscionable, and betray a realistic fear that the Cuban public is fed up with Castroism and only lacks a spark to rise up against the geriatric dictatorship. The Cuban women's protest movement could supply that needed spark.

Members and supporters of the "Ladies in White" human rights movement attempting to assemble for protests after church services in Santiago de Cuba have been physically attacked by Cuban government agents every Sunday from July 24 through Aug. 28.

The women are expected to exercise their right of peaceful protest again this Sunday.

But don't expect eyewitness reports from the foreign press in Cuba. They are being kept away.

The most detailed account of the beatings is a report by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights on what happened Sunday, Aug. 7, in the vicinity of Santiago. It said state security officials and "Castro supporters" attacked women assembling for a protest march using "sticks and other blunt objects" causing "injuries, some considerable," according to The Wall Street Journal.

The women were forcibly taken by bus to the city outskirts and forced to walk back.

When some attempted another protest march the same afternoon they were again attacked.

Government bullies also broke into two homes of recently freed political activists who refused to be sent into exile as a condition of their freedom. The wife and daughter of former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and four other people were sent to the hospital with contusions and broken bones, the Federation report said.

According to Cuban dissidents, similar harassments, arrests, beatings and home invasions have been experienced by demonstrators on each of the past six Sundays.

In Havana on Aug. 18, a government-inspired mob punched, slapped and kicked members of a Ladies in White march, spit on them, pulled their hair and ripped clothes. Several of the 42 marchers reported bruises, according to their spokeswoman, Berta Soler, who spoke with the Miami Herald.

The Ladies in White harassed by the mob last August the 18th.

The government tactics could quickly backfire. On Aug. 23, a crowd of Cubans gathered in front of the steps of the capitol building in Havana was recorded on video as it booed, hissed and insulted government agents forcibly dragging away four women protesters.

One of the women, Sara Marta Fonseca, a member of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights, told a Spanish newspaper her hope is that "people will cross the barrier of fear and join the opposition to reclaim freedom."

Thanks to the Ladies in White and their supporters, the Cuban people are one step closer to realizing that hope.

Source: The Post and Courier

Cuba's "Ladies in White" ask Church to help stop violence

 

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Ladies in White brutally attacked once more

This is the fourth Sunday in Eastern Cuba since July 24, 2011, that numerous “Ladies in White” accompanied by female supporters in white attire are arrested after suffering violent physical and verbal assaults by forces of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior. Government sponsored mobs besieged the homes of human rights defenders in different towns of the province of Santiago de Cuba to curtail any acts of solidarity with the Cuban women.

According to Belkis Cantillo, wife of Cuban ex-political prisoner of conscience, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, she and all the women traveling with her to attend mass at the Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba were forced down with punches from a truck in the city of “El Cristo” where authorities had set up a control point. More than 50 women dressed in military uniforms beat and pushed them into police cars where Cantillo says she was beaten once more and her hair was pulled.

Around twenty women were arrested. Advocates of the Ladies in White: Maria Elena Matos, Annia Alegre and Adriana Nunez were threatened with German shepherd dogs during their detention. Ms. Nunez had to be hospitalized due to the ill treatment she suffered. The police cars eventually abandoned the women in the outskirts of their home towns.

Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia informed that the home of Rene Hierrezuelo Arafe in the town of ‘El Caney’ was attacked while ‘Palma Soriano’ and ‘Palmarito de Cauto’ were militarized by Rapid Response Brigades. Some of the activists besieged in El Caney were: Agustin Magdariaga, Reinier Arocha Tellez, Eliecer Consuegra Velazquez, Pavel Arcias Cespedes, Guillermo Cobas Reyes, Yimmy Eduardo Arocha Montoya, Henry Perales Elias.

In ‘Palma Soriano’ the home of Marino Antomarchy was surrounded by mobs with sticks, stones, and metal rods. Rolando Reyes and Miguel R. Cabrera were arrested and Jose Antonio Zulueta was injured when authorities slammed him against a wall.

As the Ladies in White in Cuba vow to continue their peaceful struggle on behalf of the freedom of all Cuban political prisoners, and as long as the human rights activists continue to defend fundamental rights in the island, the Coalition of Cuban-American Women will persist in demanding international solidarity for the leaders of the civil resistance in Cuba. We make an urgent call to women in positions of leadership in religious, political, educational, social, and cultural institutions, in NGO’s, and in the press to denounce the increase of these cruel and degrading acts committed by the Cuban government against their own people.


Source: Canada Free Press

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The Cuban Way

Part I: More Government, Less Food

A Cuban beggar.

When was the last time you wondered if you would be able to feed your family?

Fortunately, for the majority of Americans, that thought never occurs, or is rarely a problem. If mom can’t cook the meal, there is always the local grocery store, fast food joint, or sit-down restaurant. Not so in Cuba.

Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger and author, has dedicated herself to shedding light on the day-to-day trials and tribulations in Cuba. Her newest book, Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth about Cuba Today, lifts the veil on everyday life in Havana, painting a vivid picture of the hardships of life under the Castro regime.

One of the biggest struggles in Cuba is the government-inflicted food shortage. According to Sanchez, Cubans have an obsession with food. Not like America—where people can eat three hamburgers in a sitting or an entire pizza in one meal. Nor does this obsession include fine wine and perfectly seared steak. Instead, it is merely the dire necessity to have something to eat.

Sanchez says that a Cuban meal often consists of rice with a beef or chicken bouillon cube. One little cube, she reflects, “make[s] me believe that my rice contains a tasty rib or a piece of chicken.” This simple bouillon cube is almost a delicacy in a market where spices and meats frequently run out.

Why the shortage in food? The Cuban government promises to take care of every social need—including food. From cradle to grave, the Cuban government rations out food to its people, allowing only miniscule portions per family. Sanchez noted, “[I]f the 66 million pounds of rice they distribute every month, through the ration, were available to the free market, prices in the latter would go down.” But the government monopoly leaves prices high and food out of reach of hungry Cubans.

In fact, the government-issued wages rise in accordance with increases in food prices. Since both prices and wages are set by the State, an increase in wages is generally offset by an increase in food prices.

The state micromanagement of the Cuban agricultural sector causes the island to import 80 percent of the food it rations. Government rationing has been in place since 1962, and, “Contrary to popular belief, the Cuban ration system does not provide Cubans with ‘free’ food…Rations are limited to a paltry amount of a meager number of pathetic food-stuffs.” This forces many Cubans to find roundabout ways to acquire food.

Another fact of Cuban life under socialism: Everyone except the upper echelon of the government heads for the black market.

Purchasing from the Cuban black market is not done out of a desire to buck the system, but out of pure necessity. Sanchez wrote, “I can’t live a day without the black market.” Since the government refuses to provide certain services, such as repairing a washing machine or fixing the oven or shower, Cubans are forced to use or become underground workers. Sanchez noted that obtaining products as basic as eggs, milk, or cooking oil require a visit to the black market.

A popular joke says Cuban communism has solved all but three problems: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In reality, this is no joke. Life in Cuba is not easy, and it forces many to take extreme measures just to maintain their existence. But the Castro regime holds its citizens in the jaws of a dilemma where they “cannot both survive and comply with [Cuban] law, at the same time.”

Want to see a government that promises to care for your every need? You don’t need to look farther than 90 miles south of the Florida Keys.


Part II: Big Brother’s Repressive Hand

Castro often uses thugs to repress the opposition.

Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984 still lives, and he’s right in our backyard. Yoani Sanchez has documented how Big Brother works through her depiction of the Cuban government in her new book Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth about Cuba Today.

Cuban repression often takes the form of a group of thugs rather than the organized police. It targets people who are outspoken and harbor anti-regime opinions. Even Sanchez and her friends were kidnapped and beaten because of their blogging and their opposition to the Castro regime.

Sanchez wrote, “How can I describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car [or] their visible enjoyment as they beat us.” Bruised and in pain, Yoani and her companions emerged from the kidnapping with emotional and mental wounds. The message is clear: Against us you have no rights; our power is limitless.

Beyond kidnappings, Cubans are frequently imprisoned without warrant:

Over the years, hundreds of prisoners of conscience have been imprisoned in Cuba for the peaceful expression of their views.… Harassment, intimidation, arbitrary detention and criminal prosecutions, all continue to be used to restrict the expression of views critical of the government.

Government regulation of the Internet has severely limited Cubans’ ability to communicate with each other and the outside world. Twitter, Facebook, and even Sanchez’s blog, Generation Y, are blocked by Cuban authorities. Access is highly restricted as well. In Havana, many native Cubans must resort to dressing as tourists or speaking foreign languages just to get past the guards in Internet cafes.

So what does Big Brother want? He wants a cadre of true believers who will run the party, the state, and the army as organs of repression. He wants worker bees who will labor for the glory of the hive. He wants other Cubans to remain apathetic and fatalistic.

As Sanchez notes, “The person who complains or demands his rights is seen as ‘some kind of weirdo.’” Sanchez further observes a general malaise that can be seen through the Cuban choice of language. She says that phrases like “Don’t sweat it,” “You’ll give yourself a heart attack,” “Just ignore it,” and “That’s not going to accomplish anything” are sayings frequently heard in Cuban culture. Reflected in the language of many in Cuba is a worn-out spirit that has lost its will to fight for what truly matters: freedom.

This the way the Castro brothers want it.

By Olivia Snow

Source: The Foundry

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Cuba Detains Over 20 Christians In New Crackdown, Activists Say

Baptist Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso and his wife, Yoaxis, were part of the 23 Christians detained by Cuban police in Santa Clara, said Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a major religious rights group.

They were picked up by police Sunday morning, June 26, and released five hours later, after the service had ended, CSW told Worthy News. The worship service at the Santa Clara Methodist Church was held in support of Pastor Toranzo, who was reportedly removed from his position by the Methodist Bishop Ricardo Pereira Dias, because of his refusal to deny pastoral support to human rights activists and members of the political opposition.

Pastor Toranzo is the second high-profile pastor in Santa Clara to step down or be removed this year because of government pressure in the Communist-run island, according to church observers.

GOVERNMENT PRESSURE

Baptist Pastor Homero Carbonell issued a statement at the start of 2011 saying that he and his church had come under “severe government pressure” because of his refusal to expel families of political prisoners from the church, CSW said.

Pastors Carbonell and Toranzo were reportedly also involved in a cross-denominational citywide march on Easter Sunday in 2010 which drew thousands and angered the authorities. “We strongly condemn the official pressure on church leaders in Cuba to deny pastoral support to certain members of their congregations because of their political affiliations,” added CSW’s Advocacy Director Andrew Johnston.

“We call on the Cuban government to cease their interference in the internal affairs of religious organizations and in particular to uphold the right of religious leaders to minister to all regardless of their political beliefs,” he said.

The Santa Clara Methodist Church has publicly urged the bishop to reverse his decision and church leaders of all denominations in Santa Clara have reportedly appealed to the Methodist hierarchy in support of Pastor Toranzo. There is general agreement among church leaders in Santa Clara that the Bishop’s decision was made because of intense government pressure, CSW said.

The group claimed that it has received reports from sources in Cuba confirming similar pressure on leaders in other denominations. “There have also been reports that the authorities are making increased use of short-term detentions as opposed to long spells in prison, a tactic which CSW believes is being deployed to deflect international attention from the ongoing harassment of pastors.”

NO COMMENT

Cuban officials have not yet commented on the latest developments. This year Cuba released the last of 75 dissidents, including Christians, who were detained in the 2003 crackdown.

The move following a ground-breaking deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church in which Cuba’s President Raul Castro agreed to free the remaining 52 inmates.

The Cuban government denies however that it as ever hold political prisoners and considers dissidents as “mercenaries financed by the U.S.”to destabilize the government.

Source: Worthy News

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Winds of Change in Cuba

Winds of change are opening doors that have been closed in oppressed countries for half a century, not only in the near East but also in the Caribbean.  In central Cuba, one recent day seemed like any other until those winds blew through the main entrance at government-run Radio Placetas. The station is owned and operated by the Castro regime, as are all radio stations in Cuba. Consequently, the station transmits only programming approved by Cuba’s ruling Communist Party, broadcasting a predictable and monotonous replication of life under a totalitarian regime.

The fresh winds this time took the human form of three young black Cuban women, who opened the doors and demanded to be heard: Yaimara Reyes Mesa, Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera and Donaida Perez Paseiro.  Miriam, the station director, rushed to confront them. It is rare for citizens to demand air time in Castroite Cuba. In a calm and respectful voice, the three women insisted that the station air an opinion different from the government’s official line about the recent death of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, who perished at the hands of police in the nearby city of Santa Clara a few days before.

“We are Cuban citizens, we live in this city. Don’t we have a right to be heard?” said Yris.  “This station only transmits the policies of the Party and the government,” replied Miriam, the director, shocked that anyone would dare try to access the microphones of a “public” radio station for any unapproved message. “Then we will remain here until we are heard,” countered the dissident Donaida.

Whipped into a fury by the station’s ever-present Communist Party delegate, employees surrounded the three protesters with hostile shouts of “Whatever you tell us to do, Fidel, we will do…” (Pa’ lo que sea, Fidel, pa’ lo que sea). The unlikely heroines were unmoved;  “We will not leave until the public knows that Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia was beaten to death by police.” And remain they did, until police arrested them.

Yaimara, 29, Yris, 35, and Donaida, 39, are members of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement, a nonviolent protest organization that advocates for the re-establishment of civil rights for all Cubans. They were protesting the death of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, a 46-year old activist and former political prisoner who died after being beaten by police in a park in the provincial capital of Santa Clara on May 8 of this year. The beating took place after dictator Raul Castro sternly warned the illegal but increasingly active opposition groups during the April closing of the Cuban Communist Party Congress: “...it is necessary for us to clarify that we will never deny the people the right to defend their Revolution, since the defense of independence, of the conquests of socialism and of our plazas and streets will continue to be the first duty of all Cuban citizens.”

This was Castro’s order, in Orwellian doublespeak, to police and paramilitary forces to attack freedom activists anywhere and anytime they saw fit.

After long imprisonments of peaceful dissidents led to international condemnation of the bankrupt, half-century-old Castro dictatorship, and failed to stem the rising tide ofpublic defiance, brutal street violence seems to be the regime’s principal recourse to stem a rising tide of popular resistance. The regime has reason to fear: Yris, Donaida and Yaimara are said to be the tip of an iceberg of grassroots opposition to the dictatorship. Young, black and from impoverished provinces, they are representative of the 93.1 percent of young Cubans who, according to a recent public opinion poll commissioned by the International Republican Institute,would vote in favor of changing Cuba from “the current political system to a democratic system with multi-party elections, freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

Shortly after being released from her arrest for the Radio Placetas sit-in, Yris joined other civic activists in a public march in her city. Violently intercepted by Regime police, Yris was thrown to the ground and beaten unconscious. After her release, before the pain of her injuries had begun to fade, she cried: “I will not renounce the struggle for Cuban freedom.”  The march concluded a twelve-day cycle of protests organized across Cuba by the National Civic Resistance Front (FNRC).

Street protests like those by the FNRC were unheard of in a country where fear has ruled for decades. Their newfound frequency indicates that discontent against the Castro regime is overtaking fear, and motivating veteran activists to find freedom through nonviolent resistance. As distracted journalists and academics focus on Raul Castro and his purported plans of pseudo-reform, they would do well not to ignore Cuba’s growing Resistance and its will to bring about democratic change.  At this time of year the winds in the tropics can be unpredictable and strong.  And after 52 years of abuse, old and weak doors may not stand for long.


By Otto Reich and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat

Source: NewsMax

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A conversation with a Cuban telecommunication engineer

I asked for input and test runs from people in Cuba in a recent post, and I've had an interesting email conversation with a telecommunication engineer who says he has never worked in that field. He asked me not to share his name or email address.

We talked about Internet access. He says only foreign people with permanent resident visas, foreign students, and business with foreign capital can get Internet accounts, and that those dial up accounts have all ports open.

Enterprises throughout the country can get DSL connections, but they are limited to Web (HTTP) applications. He has also heard rumors that pro-government bloggers get DSL connections.

He told me that Cubans are not allowed to connect to the Internet from their homes so they pay an illegal fee of 1.50 to 2.00 CUC per hour to buy time from foreign students and others who have dial-up accounts. (One CUC = US$1.08 and the average wage is 20 CUC per month).

It is legal to buy a WiFi card (if you can find one in stock) and connect at one of a few hotels in Havana or Varadero with WiFi connectivity. They charge 8 CUC per hour for access to a 128 kb/s link that is shared by all of the hotel users at the time. The second legal option is to go to a Cyber-Café or hotel which charges 2 CUC for 15 minutes of access to PC with "veeery slow" connectivity.

Education centers like universities and medical schools are connected by fiber. Within the organizations they have 100 mb/s LANs behind NATs. He recalls a time when the university he attended (I won't say which one) had only 512 kb/s connectivity for approximately 1,000 PCs. That was eventually stepped up to 2 mb/s.

He is on point-to-point Ethernet connection to enet.cu, and is able to trace the route from his dial-up connection to Google via a Newcom International satellite link. Average ping time to Google was 683 ms. Ping times to other machines at enet.cu averaged 110 ms.

He did not want to run many tests, because he feared surveillance by CuCERT. Like their counterparts in other nations, CuCERT is charged with responding to network security incidents, but he characterizes them as being like "cyber-cops, who can enter your house, pick up your HDs and walk away without previous notification."

(I tried to reach cucert.cu, but could not from the US -- not sure if it is blocked or down or both).

He gave me the IP address of a university server that was running network monitoring software. I could see graphs of traffic on the links to the university, the internal Ethernet LAN, temperature, and disk utilization on several servers. I could also reach the help desk, but resisted the urge to submit a help desk ticket request :-). You see a sample traffic graph above (click on it to enlarge it). The green line is incoming traffic and the blue outgoing. As you see, the 2 mb/s link is pretty well saturated -- surfing must be slow.

It feels cool to see the graphs, and I bet they would be upset to know that they were visible, but they are not of much practical value except to the network administrators at that university. If one could get similar statistics from all Cuban universities, one could begin to stitch together a picture of the backbone networks.

He also confirmed that bootleg satellite TV from the US is common and found in almost all parts of the country. People buy a satellite receiver from a local supplier who gets an account from the US. Some of those people sell service to their neighbors using coaxial cable, although he thinks that activity is decreasing after several antenna seizures. The service costs around 10 CUC per month, and the viewers cannot change channels themselves.

There are "muyyyy" few people with HughesNet Internet links, and they are heavily prosecuted and can go to jail if caught. He said WiFi is everywhere, and is mainly used to share music and videos and play games. He said the government is concerned about that, but I don't understand why since WiFi is local, and I doubt that they are concerned with copyright violation on the music and video :-).

We talked a bit about the Alan Gross case. He thinks the trial and sentence were for political reasons, and the government hopes to do a prisoner exchange. Gross got a long sentence, but a Cuban could get 3-5 years for having a satellite link to the Internet. He said there are some people with satellite connection who provide service to others using WiFi access points and repeaters and homemade antennae, but, as mentioned above, that is risky business.

If you are in Cuba, how does your experience compare to what I've just described?

Larry Press
 
From: The Internet in Cuba

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Cuba: “Police Brutality” or “Natural Causes” in Dissident's Death?”

Cuban bloggers continue their outcry over the death of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto, especially in light of an official statement which suggests that Soto, popularly known by his nickname “The Student”, died “of natural causes”.

On hearing the position of the Cuban government, Uncommon Sense quips:

That could be true, of course, because in Cuba under Castro, the police beating a dissident is as natural as it comes.

Then his tone becomes serious, saying:

But the party line has been undermined by witnesses who have stepped forward to tell what they know about Soto's death. The party line is being undermined by the truth.

For instance, there is Mario Lleonart Barroso who says he spoke to Soto after he was beaten and before he was readmitted to a hospital in severe pain.

The blogger also speaks of “other witnesses ready to testify not to what they saw but ready to risk their own lives to ensure that justice prevails in Soto's death” as well as “numerous dissidents ready to go on hunger strike if by July 26, 2011, the dictatorship does not properly investigate what happened to Soto.” One dissident has reportedly already begun [es] his hunger strike.

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia.

 
The two accounts of Soto's death could not be more contradictory, with local dissidents insisting that he had been beaten by police and officials maintaining that his “acute pancreatitis…led to multiple organ failure” and calling the allegations of police brutality a “'smear campaign' aimed at weakening the Cuban revolution.”
Babalu does not accept the official line, saying:

Apparently, a vicious and brutal beating by State Security is considered a natural cause of death in Cuba.

The blog also takes issue with this post, saying:

Once again we have a ‘Cuba Expert' blaming the victim instead of the assailant. Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia is dead not because Cuban security agents beat him to death, but because Soto Garcia ‘resisted their entreaties to leave the area.'

Meanwhile, Pedazos de la Isla spares a thought for Soto's mother, who “must accept the harsh reality of no longer being able to see her son just because chose to defend human rights in a country where all that is just is considered illegal.” The blogger goes on to question the position of the Cuban government:

The only thing that is clear is that they have responded with fear, quickly asserting that it was all a lie. Now we must wait and see if the international media will repeat the absurd fallacies created by the Castro government, as many did with Orlando Zapata.

Octavo Cerco offers a more personal perspective on the situation:

The last image I have of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia is at my side running around under the Santa Clara’s relentless sun. We tried to get permission from the Bishop so that Padre Dominico–who had come halfway around the world to get to Cuba–could go see Guillermo Fariñas in Intensive Care at the scheduled visiting hours.

Now I look at the photo in Penultimos Dias of the Student and I don’t recognize him. It must be that I refuse to accept that they beat him to death. It must be that I can’t admit that this time of horror has come to this Island. And I ask myself–is it the obvious uncertainty of rationalism–how many Wilfredos have there already been and how many are still to come? While sitting in a park, an incomprehensible crime, the massive weight of half a century of police impunity falling on his body.

Finally, the blogger goes on to say of the Cuban police, whom she calls “anonymous faces in blue”:

For a long time people have feared them more than the thieves, scammers and criminals. “Call the police” has become the last card in the deck. Because justice does not come with them. Because they are not here to protect us, but to control us at any price.

Written by Janine Mendes-Franco

From: Global Voices

Video of one of the few testimonies of police violence in Cuba. To film or photograph the police in Cuba it's a crime punished by the "law".  The "press" and the "tribunals" work for the dictatorship. So there's no way the citizens could defend themselves against the state.  

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Juan Wilfredo Soto, Cuban dissident, dies after detention

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia.

He was allegedly beaten by police days earlier.

A Cuban dissident, Juan Wilfredo Soto, died Sunday, days after allegedly being beaten by police and detained.

Three days before he died, Soto, 46, was beaten by police while being arrested in a park and then detained, human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez told AFP.

"There is not the slightest doubt that there was a cause and effect, and that Soto's death was related to the beating he was given," another dissident, Guillermo Farinas, said.

Soto died in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. An official at the Arnaldo Milian Hospital told CNN that Soto died of pancreatitis.

About 80 people, including other prominent dissidents, attended his funeral Sunday, Reuters reports.

Relatives and other dissidents at the funeral of Juan Wilfredo Soto.

 

Anti-government activist Lizet Zamora told CNN she saw the beating of Soto on a cell phone.

Soto had previously served 12 years behind bars as a political dissident.

President Raul Castro said in April that dissidents are not welcome in Cuba.

"If we do not do something, so that the government changes its stand toward peaceful protestors, we are going to be reporting even more deaths," Farinas told AFP.
 
The Cuban government did not comment on the death.

Source:  Global Post

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Cuba intensifies campaign against dissidents

The Ladies in White surrounded by the "spontaneous" mob.

Cuba stepped up its campaign against the island's small dissident community on Sunday, with pro-government demonstrators screaming insults at the "Ladies in White" opposition group a day after state-television aired a program denouncing them as agents of Washington.

About 100 pro-government demonstrators surrounded the Ladies as they marched in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, shouting slogans like "Down with the Worms!" and "This Street Belongs to Fidel!" as well as some sexually offensive slogans.

The Ladies, mostly middle-aged wives and mothers of political prisoners jailed in a 2003 sweep against intellectuals and opposition figures, wore sweat shirts bearing the image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a political prisoner who died last year after an 83-day hunger strike.

They stood in the middle of the street and refused to move, until security agents moved in and loaded them onto government buses. It was not clear where they were taken, though in the past the dissidents are usually brought back to their homes.

The ugliness, known as an "Act of Repudiation," is an oft-repeated spectacle in Cuba. The government contends the screaming crowd turns out spontaneously to denounce the opposition, though little is done to conceal coordination with state security agents who are also on the scene.

In past demonstrations, state agents have waved for supporters to come forward once it became clear the Ladies would not heed warnings to halt their march.

The women began their march outside a church in the leafy Miramar section of town at midday, as they have done every Sunday since 2003. The demonstration went off quietly, but when the Ladies showed up later in the day in Vedado, the crowds were waiting.

The incident came a day after Cuban television broadcast a program about the Ladies it said showed they were interested in getting money from the United States. Cuba maintains the relationship shows them to be mercenaries and common criminals.

The program, which included taped phone conversations and grainy images of opposition figures meeting with U.S. officials, also revealed that a man thought to be allied with the dissidents, Carlos Serpa, was really a state security agent.

Serpa even allowed himself to be filmed calling in a false report of mistreatment to the U.S. government backed Radio Marti in Miami, then showed how the false report went out on the air a short time later. The program said it was an example of how disinformation is spread.

Cuba is in the midst of releasing the last of the dissidents arrested in 2003, with just five remaining in jail. While most accepted exile in Spain, those released more recently have refused to go and been allowed to return to their homes. Many have vowed to continue fighting for political change, a direct challenge to a government ruled since 1959 by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro.

Tension has been particularly high in the past week because Wednesday was the anniversary of Zapata's death. Dissidents and a human rights official say some 46 opposition figures were detained in the days surrounding the anniversary, though were quickly released. The Ladies in White did not march on the anniversary, but a pro-government crowd showed up outside the home of one of the group's leaders nonetheless, shouting and throwing eggs at 17 women who were gathered inside.

By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA and PAUL HAVEN
From: Chron

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In Cuba, would soldiers pull the trigger on protesters?

Cuban police.

Nineteen eighty-nine was a good year for freedom. Only in China did the Communist Party crush the protesters who slowly took possession of Tiananmen Square from April 14 on. When the tanks and soldiers rolled in on June 3-4, there was hardly any concrete to be seen on the square. Up to 1,500 people were massacred.

Even so, Tiananmen left us an image of hope: the man who repeatedly blocked a tank while the soldier driving it never ran him over. Internet searches for “tank man” in China come up empty. One here will get you nearly nine million results. The man’s defiance and the soldier’s refusal to kill him still threaten the Chinese leadership.

In Eastern Europe, communist regimes fell like dominoes. Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Sinatra Doctrine” — Moscow would no longer intervene to prop them up — left the region’s communist leaders to fend for themselves. When citizens took to the streets, all but Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu blinked rather than give the order to fire.

Cuba had its own 1989. In June, a group of military and state-security officers were arrested and tried for drug trafficking. Four were brought before firing squads. Perhaps these men were also involved in reform efforts. No matter, it is still crystal clear that the scandal bared a regime predicament.

Fidel Castro’s demand for unconditional elite loyalty required a high degree of tolerance for wide-ranging elite behavior. Whether or not he knew about the officers’ activities, full responsibility fell on his governance style. Havana, however, blamed a few bad apples even if two of the men executed — Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and Colonel Antonio de la Guardia — had long been close to Castro.

Today we are witnessing young people in the Middle East march for freedom. Unlike Eastern Europe, however, Middle Eastern regimes sprung from within and, in that sense, are more akin to China. Autocracies in Egypt and Tunisia withered away with little bloodshed. Not so in Libya where Moammar Gadhafi has unleashed loyal troops, foreign mercenaries and air strikes against the people. Hundreds have already died and the regime no longer controls eastern Libya.

After 1989, Cuba was thought to be next. Bumper stickers proclaiming En el noventa, Fidel revienta! (In 1990, Fidel will burst!) were widely seen in Miami. George H.W. Bush thought freedom would come to Cuba under his watch. Castro, however, stood fast and survived to transfer power to Raúl in 2006.

Be that as it may, the elder Castro’s leadership style is still the heart of the matter. Fidel always preferred governing on his own than through even undemocratic institutions. It took Raúl Castro a while to put the house in order. Now he and his elderly cohorts are trapped.

On the one hand, the thought that they would be the ones to lose power keeps them awake at night. On the other, they are committed to saving Fidel’s legacy which is also their own. Still, Castro’s unwillingness to put the interests of ordinary Cubans at the center of his rule has made Raúl’s task all the harder. Too much time has been lost and the costs now are even steeper.

Cubans are facing layoffs to the tune of 1.8 million over four years. Though there are conflicting reports on whether the first round of 500,000 has even started in earnest, the mere announcement of layoffs suggests a new social contract. “You’re on your own,” the leadership is, in effect, saying.

What’s happening in Libya might be especially troubling for the Cuban leadership. Fidel Castro and Gadhafi once had close relations. We don’t know how much Cubans know about Libyan developments. Elites in the military, the state and the party, however, are well aware of the defections among their Libyan counterparts.

Would young Cubans be willing to risk the regime’s wrath by taking to the streets? Would the regime give the order to fire on them? Would the officers and soldiers pull the trigger? These aren’t idle questions. Incipient reforms are already shaking up Cuban society, and that’s the place to look for change.


Marifeli Perez-Stable

From: KansaCityStar

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"Totally unprecedented" unrest in Cuba

Hundreds of students protesting outside the movie theater "Camilo Cienfuegos" in Santa Clara.

Strikes and student protests have broken out in Cuba in what one exiled democracy advocate calls a “totally unprecedented” spate of unrest.

The regime faces the prospect of further discontent in the run-up to April’s Communist Party congress, the first since 1997, as the authorities need to reform a stagnant economy and bloated public sector without undermining the austere security that underpins the ruling party’s base of support.

The streets of the eastern city of Bayamo have been blocked for two days by horse-drawn carriage drivers protesting against tax increases. Hundreds of students in Santa Clara reacted violently when the communist authorities broadcast a documentary instead of the Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer game they had paid to see.

The unrest is “totally unprecedented,” says Orlando Gutierrez, national secretary of the Directorio Democratico Cubano, who notes that while the strikers and students’ actions were provoked by specific grievances, they soon became politicized.

The students initially protested over the switch in program, but “by the end they were calling for the downfall of Castro and the end of the regime,” he said, and some of the strikers in Bayamo have reportedly claimed to be inspired by Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prominent dissident who died following a hunger strike earlier this year.

Bayamo is politically symbolic as the city in which Cuba’s wars of independence started in 1868.

The current ferment began on 30th November 3o, says Gutierrez, when the National Civic Resistance Front, led by Jorge Luis Garcia Pérez – aka “Antúnez” (left) organized a banging of pots and pans to mark the anniversary of the abortive 1956 uprising against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship. The protest reportedly spread across the island to six main cities.

The unrest “could become a critical threat to the Raúl Castro regime, which fears spontaneous protest far more than organized activism,” The Miami Herald notes. “While few Cubans are interested in politics, issues over transportation and food could serve as a lightning rod for a fed-up populace eager for change.”

Bayamo is politically symbolic as the city in which Cuba’s wars of independence started in 1868. Some strikers have reportedly claimed to be inspired by Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prominent dissident who died following a hunger strike earlier this year.

Antúnez

The communist regime recently announced a range of modest economic reforms, allowing Cuban citizens to start small businesses in certain professions, while also dismissing 500,000 state employees.

The authorities appear to have concerned at the prospect of political unrest arising from the system’s inability to deliver either the economic growth associated with market-based reform or maintain the traditional security of state-subsided employment.

“The future of the nation is at stake,” said an editorial in Granma, the official news daily.

Fidel Castro himself recently conceded that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Revolutionary movements often start when citizens suddenly feel orphaned by a paternalistic government, sociologist Bronislaw Misztal tells The Miami Herald.

“If it reaches a critical mass, then it may be a process that’s very difficult for the authorities to stop,” he says. “The question is: What will make the Cubans tick? It may be something that surprises us, and then it will be like fire in a bush.”

Jorge Luis Garcia Pérez (aka “Antúnez”) was one of five Cuban dissidents honored by the National Endowment for Democracy., the Washington-based democracy assistance group. Addressing the meeting by phone from central Cuba, he accepted the NED’s 2009 Democracy Award as an indication of the “prestige and recognition which the political opposition has gained.”

“As long as human rights are violated and as long as there are political prisoners in Cuba, there will continue to be resistance,” he said, until the island “returns to the fold of free nations.”

From: Democracy Diggest

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