From a Cuban youth movement, to journalism, to jail

I joined the political civilist youth movement in 1991. Curiously, what I remember most from that period is how my apprehensions led me to disguise myself with a hat and glasses when traveling from my town of Artemisa to Havana to meet with other activists. These feelings of fear, defenselessness, and even blame, are common to those who live in Cuba, stifled by oppression and numbed by endless totalitarian propaganda.

Three years later, in 1994, I joined the independent press when I covered for Radio Martí the Artemisa arrest of opposition members, among them the local hero of days past, Domingo René García Collazo, ex-commander of the Rebel Army, whose rank was given to him in 1959 by the then-venerable leader, Fidel Castro.

This first report was followed by others and, around 1995, a group of us activists founded the freedom desk of the Cuban Independent Press Bureau, under my direction. Afterward, we created other desks that promoted media, human rights, and union activities in the region. The state security presence in our lives swelled to the point that in the early hours of February 24, 1996, state security-equipped paramilitary groups visited my house along with those of other journalists, human rights groups, and unions to intimidate us using terrorist language.

From this date forward, the majority of the city's activists worked together to coordinate press activities with those of the trade unionism and human rights movements. In this context, I took on the task of creating the country's first school for the teaching of these rights. Educating myself from literature provided by the Spanish Embassy and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, I created a manual on which the curriculum was based and founded the Felix Varela Program for Human Rights Education. I gave classes until I was arrested in 2003 and I published (in 1999 and 2001) various reports on the subject in the magazine, Vitral de la Iglesia Catolica of Pinar del Rio.

State Security responded to the expansion of my civilist activities, particularly those related to education and the press, with more arbitrary detentions, searches, confiscations, warnings, threats, and, eventually, imprisonments. To suffocate freedom of information and of the press becomes a question of life or death for dictatorships. Accordingly, the regime used Orwelian artifices to falsify the past and distort the present, which is a crucial to the manipulation of information and the creation of propaganda. For this reason, Cuba is the only country in the Western hemisphere where foreign newspapers are not available and also why Fidel Castro has called journalists "a unit of the Revolution." That is how the despot states it. He knows that repression alone is not enough to conquer the people; instead he must rely on apologetic, incessant, crazy-making, and chauvinist propaganda that acts as a spiritual sleeping pill and is worth more than his army of police officers.

But the creative force of the freedom instinct and the idea of democracy are contagious and won't be contained. This force always overcomes obstacles in its way and, for more than 20 years, Castro has not been alone on the Cuban political stage. A contingent of men and women decided to stand up to him in the realm of the word, the mind, and the spirit, in support of a State of Rights for Cuba. And in spite of the enormous disadvantages and repression, we arrived with much more than before as of March 2003, when, faced with the push of the powerful discourse on human rights, the Varela Project [which advocated for democratic reforms], the force of the trade unionism, and the fearlessness of the independent press, Castro was angry, got worked up, and committed a serious mistake: the Cuban Black Spring and its extrajudicial summary trials, without warrants or defense, that yielded savage sentences of up to 28 years imprisonment.

And his mistake was so massive that from it, armed with nothing but gladiolas, our magnificent Ladies in White emerged. Castro was then forced to face our wives, who, backed by a formidable international solidarity campaign, dealt the tyrant his most costly and deathly political defeat: he bowed, for the first time, to mounting pressure from the people themselves, from the internal opposition, not from the exterior; and although we had to go into exile, he had to release us. This fact constitutes a unique case in a half a century of communism in Cuba, and becomes the supreme example that can fertilize the social and spiritual womb of our nation.

Faced with the liberating fertility of this paradigm and the social and economic failure of the regime, Castro, looking to reduce internal pressure, found himself forced to "concede" to the people some of the economic rights that for more than 50 years he violated.

In the first days of our imprisonment we were held in State Security general barracks. There, in cells intended for four prisoners, it was so narrow and overcrowded that there was a mere half a square meter per person. These intensely claustrophobic and oppressive quarters, in which the lights were permanently turned on, constituted a psychic torment that was applied to the 36 days prior to being interrogated before the judge.

Under these tortuous conditions and deprived of pencil, paper, and a lawyer, it was impossible for me to prepare my defense before the tribunal, where the very principles of independence and judge impartiality are lacking anyway.

That is where I more fully understood the terms "defenselessness" and "abuse of power" in that both were employed to sentence me to an unjust and brutal 26 years in jail. And paradoxically, on page eight of my sentence, I'm described as a "person of good and respectful relations with the rest of the citizens in the social order and lacking criminal antecedents," an obligatory and cynical acknowledgement that contradicts the brutal sanction which included the torturous "extra" year spent in a minute, damp, windowless punishment cell filled with rats and other creatures, and given horrible nourishment, imposed on someone who was only fulfilling civic duties and exercising his inalienable rights.

I don't know what made me deserving of so much hatred. And I'm unable to express here what I felt in those cells, those tombs. I can, however, and want to unmask those who abuse power, lie, and offend my dignity by accusing me of being a conspirator and mercenary.

After a torturous period in the punishment cells, they integrated me with the general criminal population and together we shared in the risks, the injustice, and the miserable physical conditions of the Cuban prison system.

Despite all this, I should acknowledge that existing within these repressive forces is a growing number of men and women that silently support us and reject the policies of the regime. They, too, can contribute to democratic transformations and the national reconciliation of our people.

And today in exile, when I recall my seven and a half years in prison, writing you with the new perspective of a future in freedom feels like a chimera. From this future, my main objective is to stay faithful to Christian values, to my honor and to my own law: to fight always as the only dignified attitude before life. My objectives, also very beloved are:

• To work for a free press outlet where I can continue on my path as a civilist in support of democratic ideas in Cuba and elsewhere.
• To complete the book of essays I began in prison.

Finally, I'd like to pay my respects to the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who discovered how to die as an act of rebellion against oppression, and to the heroism of Guillermo Fariñas: protagonists, along with the Ladies in White, of the unpublished and forceful victory over Castro.

By Alfredo Felipe Fuentes

(Translated by Karen Phillips)

This entry is part of an ongoing series of first-person stories by Cuban journalists who were imprisoned in a massive roundup of dissidents that has become known as the Black Spring of 2003. All of the reporters and editors were convicted in one-day trials, accused of acting against the "integrity and sovereignty of the state" or of collaborating with foreign media for the purpose of "destabilizing the country."

Source: CPJ

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A Transformational Year For Cuba Policy

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, currently in prison, is one of the faces of the pro-democracy movement in Cuba.

Since Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006 and transferred power to his brother Raul, members of Congress have been weighing possible options in U.S. policy toward Cuba, partially by raising the fundamental question: “is there a viable pro-democracy movement in Cuba?”

The uncertainty is not surprising. For years much of the foreign policy establishment in New York and Washington, and advocates of “normalizing” relations with Cuba, have argued there are no viable alternatives to Cuba’s totalitarian dictatorship. The only answer is to “throw in the towel,” unilaterally lift U.S. sanctions and engage the Castros. Somehow this engagement is supposed to alter their ruthless behavior.

That position had been music to the Castros’ ears. But on February 23, 2010, it was permanently debunked. That tragic morning, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a forty-two year old afro-Cuban plumber and pro-democracy activist, died after an eighty-five day hunger strike. He was protesting the abuses of the Castro regime, his unjust imprisonment and denial of medical care.

Literally overnight, the international community's focus dramatically shifted. All of a sudden, there was undoubtedly a concrete pro-democracy movement in Cuba, noted for its courage and resilience. Since then, there is hardly a news story about Cuba that does not mention the opposition movement. While qualifiers such as “small,” “fractional,” and “divided” are frequently used by foreign news bureaus in Havana as they describe the pro-democracy movement—likely to avoid being booted from the island by the Castro regime—foreign reports no longer ignore the fact that a movement exists.

These accounts highlight a highly diverse group, challenging the Cuban state in a multitude of ways. There are the quixotic efforts of the wives, sisters, and daughters of Cuba's political prisoners, known as the Ladies in White, who dress in white and parade through public plazas. New regional bases of popular support are being carved out by leaders such as Jorge Luis Perez Garcia “Antunez” in the central province of Matanzas, by Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother and siblings in the eastern province of Holguin, and by the Rodriguez Lobaina brothers in the Castros’ home province of Santiago de Cuba. These follow the historic trend of Cuba’s most prevalent revolutionary movements—against Spanish colonialism in the nineteenth century and against the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s—both of which originated in the eastern provinces and expanded westward to Havana. And then there is the stinging critique of the island's ever-growing blogger movement, led by Generation Y's Yoani Sanchez.

Cuba’s pro-democracy movement is becoming an increasingly difficult force to ignore. And for better or worse, everyone knows it.

The Castro regime knows it.

It is no coincidence that Fidel and Raul have spent the better part of 2010 doing back-flips to divert attention from the opposition. They have brought Fidel "back from the dead"—as he himself now boasts—for an ongoing series of speeches and interviews in which he has neurotically predicted nuclear holocaust and admitted the failings of Cuba’s socialist model (though he later recanted). The Castros have extended land-leases for foreigners to build sailing marinas and golf courses—for the use of foreigners only, of course. And most importantly, they began a crisis management campaign to clean up their image by announcing the release of dozens of political prisoners to Spain, although they will never be allowed to return to Cuba. Throughout the world, the Castro regime is now seen as making concessions in order to draw attention away from the pro-democracy movement.

The Catholic Church knows it.

At the peak of a summer standoff led by the Ladies in White and a hunger strike by a former political prisoner, Guillermo Farinas, the Catholic Church quickly saw an opportunity to become relevant, after decades of religious oppression and institutional silence. Catholic leaders volunteered themselves to intercede with the Castro regime to negotiate the release of political prisoners. What remains to be seen is whether the Church's intervention strengthened or weakened the pro-democracy movement by downplaying their role in the negotiations. Regardless, it represented an acknowledgment of the movement’s existence—and the potential power to be derived from it—by the Church.

The Spanish government knows it.

Just as the Catholic Church moved to intercede, the Spanish government weighed in as well. But unlike the Church, it was not motivated by its waning influence. Instead, it intervened as part of its ongoing effort to protect billions in investments on the island. Nothing is worse for business than instability and unpredictability. Again, this is a nod to the power of the opposition to disrupt business as usual.

Now finally, the U.S. Congress also appears to recognize it.

Instead of asking: is there a viable pro-democracy movement, members of Congress are asking: how can the United States support it?

In a July 14 letter to the U.S. Congress, some 500 pro-democracy leaders in Cuba explained how the United States might help, or at least avoid setting the movement back:

“At a moment such as this, to be benevolent with the dictatorship would mean solidarity with the oppressors of the Cuban nation. [We] believe that the freedom of Cuba will not arrive by means of the pocket-book or the lips of libidinous tourists, who are aseptic to the pain of the Cuban family. Rather, it will come through the efforts of those who, from within and abroad, fight for democratic change in Cuba.”

Plainly stated, the message of these pro-democracy leaders is simple: we are here, we are strong, and there is no reason to bail out the Castro regime.

by: Mauricio Claver-Carone

From: Yale Journal of International Affairs

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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, Castro Marks an Anniversary By Unleashing the Hounds

As Muammar al-Qaddafi clings to power by ordering his troops to shoot on their Libyan compatriots, across the globe in the Caribbean one of his last remaining global buddies is doing his best to keep the lid on his own victims. Fidel Castro, presiding over the wreckage of what was once the thriving island of Cuba, stepped up repression today, the first anniversary of the hunger-strike death of a dissident leader, lest others take to the streets.

Castro’s political police are imprisoning Cuban dissidents to prevent them from marking the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a simple bricklayer who was sent to prison on March 20, 2003, for “disobedience” (yes, an adult person can be so charged in Castro’s Socialist paradise for speaking his mind) and died on Feb. 23, 2010 -- after two months on hunger strike.

Blogger Yoani Sanchez, one of a handful of dissidents in Cuba to have access to Twitter, has been sending Tweets all day detailing who has been held under house arrest.

According to Sanchez, such opposition figures as Jose Urbino, Zaldivar Maria Antonia Hidalgo, Caridad Caballer and Luis Felipe Rojas have been surrounded by government goons in the city of Holguin.

Even the “Ladies in White,” a group of spouses of political prisoners who meet and march through the streets, their dignity held high in the face of heckles and punching by government goons, are being blocked from meeting today, according to Sanchez. She quotes Lady in White Berta Soler as saying that 13 of her fellow Ladies are being held by police inside a house and that other dissidents have had their ID papers taken away by police.

In an afternoon tweet, Sanchez described how she had called blogger Katia Sonia and could overhear a government-organized crowd sent to Miss Sonia’s home in order to intimidate her. But don’t let anyone think that Cubans have even the few rights their Middle Eastern counterparts have.

Indeed, the differences are telling. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, Twitter, Facebook and mobile phones played a key role in organizing the protests, but in Cuba the vast majority of people are denied access to these modern-day means of communication. Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali and Qaddafi were in power for three decades, an obscene length of time by democratic standards. But they’re pikers when it comes to Cuba’s self-described Maximum Leader, who has clocked five decades and counting. And, of course, while Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans have lived in political oppression, they at least have private property and the right to sell and buy it. Cubans, however, live in totalitarian communism, with no right to own anything.

“Leftist tyrannies are the worst of all tyrannies,” the dissident journalist Jose Antonio Fornaris Ramos told The Heritage Foundation on the telephone. “They own your house, all your goods, your place of employment and all you’re given to eat. They’re absolute. Everyone is afraid, and they’re right to be afraid.”

Wednesday’s house arrests, he said, “are a violation of our constitution, which says very clearly that only courts can hold you under house arrest.”

Commenting on the protest in the Middle East, he said: “What it shows is that democracy is man’s best invention. The real statesmen left power voluntarily, like George Washington and Nelson Mandela. Those who hang on to power are dictators.”

By Michael Gonzalez

From: Fox News

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PRESS STATEMENT FROM "POR EL LEVANTAMIENTO POPULAR EN CUBA" ("FOR THE POPULAR UPRISING IN CUBA")

Please note that during the days of 21 to 26 February, will be performed a variety of individual and collective manifestations throughout the world (see list here: >http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=156452414409238

Throughout these days will be displayed in a peaceful manner, the support of Cuban exile to the protests to be held in Cuba around the same time, through this week, and namely on the 23rd - one-year anniversary of the death of the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

The initiative "For the popular uprising in Cuba" appeared in FACEBOOK http://www.facebook.com/pages/Por-el-levantamiento-popular-en-Cuba/173839132658920 and has more than 3900 followers (by February 20) in several countries and has resulted in the organization of a wave of protests in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Santiago de Compostela, Sevilla, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Berlin, Milan, Stockholm, Paris, Portland, Washington, Miami, Tampa, Los Angeles, Alberta Canada and several other countries, including Cuban cities we for obvious reasons did not quote, except Havana, where we have received confirmation of time and place for the protests against the Cuban dictatorship, in sharp challenge to the regime's repressive forces.

We insist on the entirely peaceful nature of the protests although it is likely to produce violent reactions from Cuban officials used to suppress with force any activity for the freedom of Cuba and they have demonstrated this on several occasions at the consulates in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Norway; last year the Cuban Vice Consul bit a young demonstrator in Sweden.

We inform you our determination to exercise our right to manifest for the end of the oldest dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, which consistently violates human rights and keep in prison journalists and dissidents, despite the best efforts of the EU to help to bring democracy to Cuba.

We ask everybody to cover these activities and help us to follow these days of protests.

Here are video links and links with the media impact of this initiative in various publications throughout the world.

CNN
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv9FBdXeyLw
TELEMUNDO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-ayUAWpnCg
BAYNEWS 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rptI-42njXM
Diario “El Mundo”
http://www.elmundo.es/america/2011/02/02/cuba/1296604782.html
Diario “Nuevo Herald”
http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2011/02/03/880321/grupo-de-facebook-trata-de-alentar.html
Radio Nederland Internacional
http://www.rnw.nl/espanol/bulletin/crean-el-sitio-del-movimiento-popular-en-cuba
ANTENA 3
http://www.antena3.com/videos-online/noticias/mundo/cuba-quiere-evitar-levantamiento-ciberdisidentes_2011021600007.html

From “Por el Levantamiento Popular en Cuba”.
Contact: levantamientoencuba@yahoo.com
Twitter: @levanta_cuba

Note from the Admin: Please, forgive the English mistakes, this statement appears this way on the group's page.

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Two dissidents start hunger strike in Cuba

Two dissidents refusing to be forced into exile took on the Cuba's Communist government anew, launching hunger strikes to press their demand to be freed in their own country. The two are among 11 high-profile political dissidents who rejected a deal for foreign exile as pushed by Havana. Their move was rain on the political parade of the Americas' only one-party Communist regime, which -- by releasing prisoners to church officials -- is trying to portray itself as making progress on human rights even as it forces its opponents to emigrate. President Raul Castro's government, in desperate economic straits and seeking international cooperation, faced embarrassment and international outrage last year after a prominent dissident died following his hunger strike. Hunger strikers seem to be particularly noisome for Havana. Cuba maintains it has no dissidents, and calls most political opponents pawns in the pay of the United States. But more than 100 political prisoners remain in the Caribbean nation -- down from 201 in January 2010 -- according to Elizardo Sanchez, who leads the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. And the strikers' move Wednesday came just as the local Roman Catholic Church said Cuba would release four other prisoners charged with piracy and send them to Spain. Pedro Arguell The hunger strikers are part of a group of 52 political detainees who were to be freed in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church with Castro in July. Of the group, 40 agreed to emigrate to Spain with their families and one stayed in Cuba, but the remaining 11 are still in jail and refuse to be exiled. The agreed-upon deadline for their release expired on November 7. Sanchez identified the hunger strikers as Diosdado Gonzalez and Pedro Arguelles -- both considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. The pair, who began a hunger strike Tuesday, has turned down the offer to move to Spain and is demanding to be released in Cuba. Gonzalez and Arguelles's protest is in solidarity with Gonzalez's wife Alejandrina Garcia, who has only been drinking water since Friday. "I will not stop this hunger strike until he is released," Garcia told AFP in a phone call from her home in central Cuba. Diosdado Gonzale "The government has made a mockery of these 11 men." Laura Pollan, leader of the Ladies in White -- a group of relatives of the jailed dissidents -- visited Garcia, a 44 year-old agronomist, on Wednesday. She said she failed to dissuade her from continuing the hunger strike. "The government has raised false expectations, because it said that everyone in the group would be released, including those who reject leaving the country, but that has all been a lie," said Pollan. Pollan's husband Hector Maseda is one of the jailed dissidents. The four prisoners heading to Spain face piracy charges and do not belong to the original group of 52, according to a note from the office of the Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Sanchez says the men are accused of using violence to hijack vessels in failed attempts to flee Cuba, as well as other acts of violence. "We are happy about to learn about the prison releases, but the government is using Spain's open door to get rid of prisoners that it does not want, while 11 prisoners of conscience remain in prison," Sanchez argued. Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov prize in October after his latest hunger strike, following the February death of fellow dissident Orlando Zapata. Zapata's mother charged government officials with allowing her son to die, which the Cuban government took the unusual step of denying repeatedly, and detailing the medical care he received. Farinas, who ended his latest hunger strike, was not allowed to travel to pick up the prestigious Sakharov prize. From: Capital News

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Cuban dissident wins Sakharov prize

Guillermo farinas during his 135-day hunger strike earlier this year

The European parliament has awarded its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas, parliamentary sources told AFP.

"The Sakharov winner is Guillermo Farinas," a source said on condition of anonymity.

The 48-year-old journalist and psychologist has often used hunger strikes, putting his own health at risk, as a means of protest to achieve greater freedoms in the Communist island of Cuba.

Farinas is the third Cuban to receive the prize, after Oswaldo Paya in 2002 and the Ladies in White group of women whose husbands are jailed in Cuba, which received the award in 2005.

European parliament president Jerzy Buzek will officially announce Farinas as the winner of the Sakharov Prize later on Thursday. The award will be presented to the winner on December 15.

The 22nd Sakharov Prize, named after late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, comes with a cash award of E50,000 ($A70,932).

Ethiopian opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa and Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence had also been on the shortlist for this year's award.

The decision to give this year's award to Farinas came four days before European Union foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss the 27-nation bloc's relations with Cuba.

Spain's Socialist government wants the EU to normalise relations with Cuba, a position opposed by the Czech Republic and Slovakia, former communist bloc countries.

The EU's "common position" at present is to insist that Cuba make progress on human rights and democracy before ties are normalised.

Farinas held a 135-day hunger strike earlier this year that left him near death but compelled the Cuban government to agree to release 52 political prisoners.

Another fast between 1995 and 1997 brought attention to his allegations of corruption at the hospital where he worked.

He also carried out a six-month hunger strike in 2006, but that time he failed to force the government to allow freer access to the Internet.

From: World News Australia

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Lincoln Center Sponsors Jazz for Castro-Stalinism

30 years ago the Jazz was still "an instrument of the U.S. imperialism" in Castro's Cuba, together with other "capitalist" music genres. In the picture, the Jazz Band Sagua from the 1920s, one of the first Cuban Jazz Bands

Multi-Grammy winner Wynton Marsalis, who serves as artistic director for jazz at the Lincoln Center, also serves as an official "United Nations Messenger of Peace."  On Martin Luther King Day 2006, Mr Marsalis addressed Tulane University, quoting Dr King's words and hailing his deeds. "Dr. King's actions made his dream our reality," Marsalis beamed.

In 2004 The Lincoln Center, with Wynton Marsalis as top act, held a concert titled the "Celebration of Human Rights and Social Justice."

Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra spent all of last week as a grateful guest of a Stalinist/Apartheid regime that murdered more political prisoners in its first three years in power than Hitler's murdered in its first six and that  jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin. Among these victims were the longest-suffering black political prisoners in modern history. Within walking distance of where Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center jazz luminaries hob-knobbed with Castro officials at Havana's Teatro Mella,  black political prisoners were being tortured for the crime of publicly quoting the works of Marin Luther King and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Among these prisoners is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, an Amnesty international prisoner of conscience who was awarded (obviously in absentia) The Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush in 2008.

Many Cuban blacks suffered longer incarceration in Castro's dungeons and torture chambers than Nelson Mandela suffered in South Africa's. In fact, they qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history. Eusebio Penalver, Ignacio Cuesta Valle, Antonio Lopez Munoz, Ricardo Valdes Cancio and many other Cuban blacks suffered almost 30 years in Castro's prisons. These men were bloodied in their fight against the Lincoln Center's partners but remained unbowed for almost 30 years in its dungeons.   Castro's KGB-trained torturers called these black prisoners "plantados" -- defiant ones, unbreakable ones.  

"Stalin tortured," wrote Arthur Koestler, "not to force you to reveal a fact, but to force you to collude in a fiction."

"The worst part of Communism," wrote Solzhenitsyn, "is being forced to live a lie."

These Cuban blacks refused to collude in this lie. They spit in the face of Wynton Marsalis' hosts.  They scorned any "re-education" by the Lincoln Center's Stalinist partners.  They knew it was they who desperately needed it. They refused to wear the uniform of common criminals. They knew it was Marsalis' hosts who should don them. Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson, Danny Glover, Jeremiah Wright and the Congressional Black Caucus  all toast the Stalinist torturer, and the Lincoln Center seems delighted with his partnership, but many of the Blacks cursed by fate to live under Fidel Castro stood tall, proud and defiant against his regime's  tortures.

Shortly before the former Cuban political prisoner's death in 2006, this writer had the honor of interviewing Eusebio Penalver. "For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell," Eusebio recalled. "That's 4 feet high, so you couldn't stand. But I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide."  Sr Penalver served several months of this 30 year sentence naked in a "punishment cell" barely big enough to stand in, where he languished naked and in complete darkness.

"N**ger!" taunted his jailers between tortures. "We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!" "Castro's apologists, those who excuse or downplay his crimes," said Mr Penalver.  "These people be they ignorant, stupid, mendacious whatever--they are accomplices in the bloody tyrant's crimes, accomplices in the most brutal and murderous regime in the hemisphere."

But have you ever heard of Eusebio Penalver or any of the other black Cuban heroes?   Ever see a CNN interview with them? Ever see any of them on "60 Minutes"? Ever read about them in The New York Times? The Washington Post?  Ever hear them on NPR during Black History Month? Ever seen anything on them on the History Channel or A&E? Ever hear the NAACP or Congressional Black Caucus mention him?

Why do I bother asking?  They were victims of the Left's premier pin-up boys, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. 'Nuff said.

Only six months before the Castroites invited Wynton Marsalis, they murdered Black human rights activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo. This black Cuban had endured an 83-day hunger strike seeking (vainly, as usual) to alert the world to the Castro regime's cowardly Stalinism and racism. Then in February of this year a series of savage beatings by his Communist jailers finished him off.  Naturally the MSM was no more revelatory of his death than they'd been of his jailing or hunger strike.

Samizdats smuggled out of Cuba by eye-witnesses report that while gleefully kicking and bludgeoning Tamayo, his Castroite jailers yelled: "Worthless Ni**er!"

Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 80% black while only 9% of the ruling Stalinist party is black. Many of a certain age well remember many of Wynton Marsalis' musical colleagues mounting a campaign called "Artists United Against Apartheid," aimed at boycotting South Africa, reviling any musicians who played there, and showcasing the human rights abuses suffered by South African Blacks.

Should we hold our breath for the same bunch to organize, "Artists United Against Castro-Stalinism?" 

To top it all, for this heart-warming "Cultural Exchange" the Lincoln Center partnered with Castro's Secret Police. Leftists, kindly stifle the shrieks of "Mc Carthyism  at American Thinker!" and instead read the following :

Here's the Wall Street Journal's report on this "Cultural Exchange" with Stalinist Cuba: "(Wynton Marsalis') invitation came under the auspices of the Cuban Institute of Music, an agency of the Cuban Ministry of Culture."

Now here's what Cuban Intelligence defector Jesus Perez-Mendes,  during a de-briefing in 1983,  disclosed to the FBI  about the Cuban Ministry of Culture: "the Circulo de Cultura Cubana (Cuban Ministry of Culture) is controlled by the Cuban DGI (Castro's KGB -trained Directorio General de Intelligencia.)  

By Humberto Fontova

From: American Thinker

Check this video for more information about Castro's regime:

Cuba: Winds of Change, Part 1

 

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Cuba Video: The “Ladies in White” Steadfast Until Every Political Prisoner is Free

NEW YORK (September 1, 2010) – In order to provide an accurate backdrop with regard to the announcement of the Cuban government’s release and forced exile of 52 political prisoners, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) releases an exclusive video documentary short of the “Ladies in White,” a civil society group inside Cuba that organizes peaceful Sunday marches for freedom and human rights.

The world-renowned group is formed by the wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and supporters of political prisoners who were arrested during the “Black Spring” government crackdown on Cuban dissidents. During the four-day period that occurred in March 2003, 75 independent journalists, librarians, and democracy and human rights advocates were arrested and ultimately convicted with sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years.

Currently, 26 of the prisoners have been released and exiled to Spain, while another prisoner was released to the United States for medical treatment. At least five of the prisoners have refused to accept exile, meaning they choose to remain in prison unless they are granted unconditional release and allowed to stay in Cuba.

"The release of these innocent individuals is a welcome development and cause for celebration, but we must remember that the mechanism of repression remains firmly entrenched in Cuba. None of these arrests should ever have been made in the first place,” said Thor Halvorssen, president of HRF. “It should be made clear that their release does not indicate a reversal of conviction or pardon. These men are still considered treacherous criminals by the Cuban government. If they are allowed to stay in Cuba it shall be with the specter of certain and continuous political persecution and harassment,” he continued.

The Ladies in White have declared that they will continue protesting every Sunday until all of the Black Spring prisoners have been released. In the video, Laura Pollan, spokeswoman for the Ladies in White, relates the history of how the group formed following the Black Spring and discusses recent events that have brought international attention to Cuba’s political prisoners.

"The government states that there's a lot of freedom in Cuba, that it's a paradise,” said Pollan. “I'd invite those people who believe that Cuba is free to come and live here; to come and live here like a regular citizen, without bringing dollars; to come to work, and make what a regular worker makes; to come and live in a humble house, buy their food with a ration book, and express themselves here as much as they do in their own countries against their governments and other individuals, so that they see what the outcome is in Cuba,” she continued.

The Cuban government has been under pressure to release its political prisoners following the February death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a political prisoner who went on a hunger strike to protest Cuba’s treatment of its prisoners. The death of Zapata prompted another dissident, Guillermo Fariñas, to launch his own hunger strike.

"The whole world is awakening and removing its blindfold with regards to Cuba,” said Pollan.

"The prisoners should be allowed to choose for themselves whether to remain in Cuba or leave the country. Those prisoners who have refused a forced exile are courageously willing to sacrifice their own freedom and stand up for freedom of expression for all,” said Halvorssen. “This is a powerful threat to a regime that has held power for 51 years and ruthlessly persecutes its opponents.”

With the release of the 52 political prisoners, Cuba’s criminal code—which allows the “pre-emptive” arrest of an individual before committing any crime—remains unchanged, as do laws allowing for the arrest of anyone writing anything critical of the Cuban government.

"The cyclical release of political prisoners in Cuba is usually followed by the arrest of more dissidents who have committed some kind of ‘thoughtcrime’ or who have done nothing but exercise their right to free speech. Further, there are still an untold number of political prisoners in Cuba’s jails, and Raúl Castro could simply replace these 52 prisoners with another crackdown on Cuba’s opposition voices tomorrow,” said Halvorssen. “Any significant reform involves more than window dressing to obtain European credits or editorial kudos from the foreign media. Why not a full transition to democracy and the respect of basic civil rights and civil liberties?” he added.

In May 2010, HRF also released videos of former prisoner of conscience Armando Valladares and world-renowned blogger Yoani Sánchez in honor of Global Cuba Solidarity Day. The videos were filmed exclusively for the 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum and are now available on YouTube.

Contact: Thor Halvorssen, Human Rights Foundation, (212) 246.8486 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 246.8486      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, info@thehrf.org

From: HRF

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Mother of Cuban Dissident Died in Hunger Strike Pays Respects to Her Son

Mother of Orlando Zapata, a dissident who died in February after an 85-day hunger strike, Reina Luisa Tamayo pays respects to her son at local cemetery after weeks of being blocked by government supporters. Her son, Orlando Zapata, died on February 23 during his hunger strike for better prison conditions, bringing widespread international condemnation.

Tamayo said that she has been harassed by Cuban police in an effort to prevent her from marching.

However, Tamayo was allowed to march on Sunday after weeks of encounters with pro-government crowds who thwarted her previous attempts.

Reina Luisa Tamayo vowed to continue her protests in honor of her son.

Although Tamayo is not a member of the organization, the Cuban dissident group the Ladies in White held a protest in Havana to show support for her, and to demand the release of all remaining political prisoners on the island.

Laura Pollan, a member of the Ladies in White and the wife of Hector Maceda, a political prisoner, thanked governments and non-government organizations for their support of Tamayo.

So far, 26 of 52 political prisoners have been released, along with their relatives, into exile in Spain.

Most of them were arrested in March 2003 during a crackdown on opposition to the communist regime. 

From: TAN Network

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Cuba: mother of dead hunger striker banned from marking son's death

Amnesty International has called on the Cuban authorities to end the ongoing harassment of the mother of a prisoner of conscience who died following a hunger strike.
Reina Luisa Tamayo, whose son Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in February this year, has been repeatedly harassed by authorities and government supporters during the regular marches she carries out in the town of Banes, in memory of her son.
Reina Luisa Tamayo told Amnesty how on Sunday 15 August government supporters arrived early in the morning and surrounded her house, preventing her and her relatives and friends from marching and attending mass at the church.
Ahead of the march Cuban security forces also allegedly detained some of the women due to attend in their homes for up to 48 hours, without providing any explanation.
Amnesty International’s Deputy Americas Director, Kerrie Howard said:
“Reina Luisa Tamayo is simply paying tribute to her son who died in tragic circumstances, and that must be respected by the authorities.
Every Sunday Reina Luisa Tamayo, who is usually accompanied by relatives and friends, walks from her home to the church of Nuestra Señora de la Caridad, to attend mass, from where they march to the cemetery, where Orlando is buried.
Reina Luisa also told Amnesty that six loudspeakers were installed near her house and were used to shout slogans against her and the Ladies in White, an organisation of female relatives of prisoners of conscience campaigning for their release.
Amnesty International has also expressed its concern at a series of recent detentions by the police of independent journalists and dissidents.  Writer Luis Felipe Rojas Rozabal was detained by the police at 7am on 16 August, at his home in the town of San Germán, province of Holguín.
Luis Felipe’s family is unaware of the reasons of his arrest, but they have said they suspect this might be related to his criticism of the government. He has been arbitrarily detained on several previous occasions in similar circumstances.
Several members of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, a network of political dissident organisations, have also been detained.
Kerrie Howard continued:

“At a time when the Cuban government has begun to release prisoners of conscience, the campaign of harassment against Reina Luisa Tamayo and the arbitrary detention of journalists and dissident figures shows that the authorities are yet to make significant progress on human rights.”

Background
In March 2003, Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arrested and, a year later, sentenced to three years in prison for “disrespect”, “public disorder” and “resistance”. This was the first of a series of convictions for “disobedience” and “disorder in a penal establishment”.
Orlando was one of dozens of prisoners of conscience adopted by Amnesty International in Cuba at the time. The majority were among the 75 people arrested as part of the massive March 2003 crackdown by authorities against political activists.
In early December 2009, Orlando started a hunger strike to campaign for the release of prisoners of conscience held in Cuba. He died on 23 February 2010.
Currently there are at least 30 prisoners of conscience in Cuba’s jails.  Last month following talks held between Cuban authorities and Roman Catholic Church officials in Havana, the Cuban government agreed to release 52 of the 53 prisoners of conscience which remained in Cuba’s jails. So far 23 have been released.
Amnesty International calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience currently held in Cuba, including lawyer Rolando Jiménez Posada who is serving a 12-year prison sentence and who is not as yet scheduled for release.

From: Amnesty International UK

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Cuban hunger striker Fariñas leaves hospital

Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, whose long hunger strike helped pressure the Cuban government into releasing political prisoners, left the hospital, not fully recovered, but ready to resume his life of opposition. Three weeks after ending his 135-day fast, Fariñas said in a telphone interview he felt "diminished" and still cannot walk well.
He stopped eating and drinking on Feb. 24 and ended the strike on July 8, a day after the government pledged to release 52 jailed dissidents in a deal with the Catholic Church.
His hunger strike added to international criticism of the Cuban government that followed the Feb. 23 death of imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the harassment of the opposition group "Ladies in White" during protest marches.
The 48-year-old psychologist and writer collapsed on March 11 and from then on received nutrients and liquids intravenously in a hospital in his hometown of Santa Clara, 168 miles (270 km) east of Havana.
Fariñas, speaking from Santa Clara, told reporters he is eating "small quantities" of food and remains under treatment for a blood clot in his neck that doctors had described as life-threatening.
He said he would spend his first week out of the hospital giving interviews to the international press, then resume his work of editing and writing for a dissident blog.
So far, 20 of the promised 52 prisoners have been released in a process the church said could take four months.
Fariñas said he is prepared to re-launch his hunger strike if the prisoners are not all freed by Nov. 7.
"We're going to wait until the 7th of November to see if the government honours the word it gave to the Catholic Church and to national and international public opinion," he said.
Fariñas had conducted 22 previous hunger strikes, including a seven-month strike seeking improved Internet access.
Cuban officials consider dissidents to be US-backed mercenaries working to subvert the island's communist-led government.

From: Buenos Aires Herald 

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