Castro's regime battles WiFi

Cuba recently accused the United States of enabling illegal Internet connections in its territory and said several people were arrested in April for profiting from the wireless networks. Granma newspaper said that those arrested, who were not identified, “had for some time and without any legal authorization, been installing wireless networks for profit.”
 
Using satellite connections to the Internet and equipment that was either stolen or brought to the island illegally, they set up a service to receive international telephone calls that bypassed the state telephone monopoly ETECSA. “This activity is financed by the United States, which is where the necessary means and tools come from, evading the established controls,” the newspaper charged. Cuba has restricted access to the Internet, giving priority to universities, research centers, state entities and professionals like doctors and journalists.

Because of the US embargo, Cuba cannot connect to the underwater fiber optic cables that pass near the island, leaving satellite connections with high rates and narrow bandwidths as the main option available to Cuban Internet users. To overcome those limitations, a Cuban-Venezuelan company laid an underwater cable between the two countries in February. It was supposed to have been activated in July, but it has been delayed for reasons the government has yet to explain.

Cuban authorities have previously accused the United States of illegally introducing technology in the island to enable the creation of wireless networks outside state control. One such case was that of US government contractor Alan Gross, who was arrested in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years prison for bringing IT equipment into the country and delivering it to various people.

“Cuba has every right to safeguard its radio-electronic sovereignty. Those who try to evade it will bear the weight of the corresponding administrative rules and criminal law,” Granma said.

Source: Repeating Islands

Go to Home Page

The Unreported Tragedy of Cuba’s Repressive Communist Regime

Cuba—to listen to, watch or read some of the media—is a place that has remained unbowed in the face of impoverishment by the U.S. embargo. Lately what you hear is that it is attempting to make bold reforms not just in the economy, but socially as well (it just allowed gays to marry!) The people still dance.

Only that the reality of Cuba bears little resemblance to the plucky little island narrative. Cuba’s penury has nothing to do with the U.S. decision not to trade with the communist island, but with the fact that the island is communist in the first place. If communism produced misery in Europe and Asia (where one half of Germany and Korea stagnated under repression while the capitalist halves of those countries thrived in economic and political freedom) why would the result be different in the Caribbean?

Communism is a human tragedy, enslaving the soul while failing to produce enough goods for the people trudging under it. Communist countries are large prisons; the borders must be closed lest the people escape. And within that hell there are smaller circles where the repression is intensified. It’s the Gulag, the re-education camp or, in Cuba’s case today, public beatings by government mobs for who speak up their minds.

One would think a journalist would want report on that, especially when—as is the case in Cuba today—the people have finally decided to risk it all and take to the streets to voice their opposition. Reality, however, is again otherwise.

In Cuba today there’s a growing and vibrant protestor movement, headed by a group of women called Las Damas de Blanco (The Ladies in White). Originally organized by the wives of political prisoners, it has now galvanized others to lose their fear and voice their anti-communist sentiments in public.

Their acts are dignified.  They march to Mass on Sunday bearing flowers; sometimes they stand in squares and chant slogans or meet in each other’s houses.

The repression that Cuba’s communist regime has unleashed against these poor ladies is anything but dignified. They have been seized by government goons bused in for the occasion, pushed, scratched and beaten. In one case, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, these ladies were stripped to their waist and dragged through the streets.  In another instance they were bitten. The founder of the movement, 63-year-old Laura Pollan, died last month and her remains were returned to her family only after she was cremated..

We understand—though it still rankles—why journalists posted in Havana are reluctant file stories or broadcast on these events or on the overall mind-numbing reality of communism. If they do, they will be put on the next plane out (a fate any Cuban would relish, of course). As blogger Yoani Sanchez—a rare Cuban allowed to speak her mind, with only the occasional beating—posted last month at Foreign Policy:

“The dilemma of foreign correspondents — popularly called ‘foreign collaborators’ — is whether to make concessions in reporting in order to stay in the country, or to narrate the reality and face expulsion. The major international media want to be here when the long-awaited ‘zero day’ arrives — the day the Castro regime finally makes its exit from history. For years, journalists have worked to keep their positions so they will be here to file their reports with two pages of photos, testimonies from emotional people, and reports of colored flags flapping all over the place.

“But the elusive day has been postponed time and again. Meanwhile, the same news agencies that reported on the events of Tahrir Square or the fighting in Libya downplay the impacts of specific events in Cuba or simply keep quiet to preserve their permission to reside in the country. This gag is most dramatic among those foreign journalists with family on the island, whom they would have to leave or uproot if their accreditation were revoked. The grim officials of the CPI understand well the delicate strings of emotional blackmail and play them over and over again.”

It’s unfair to single out the press, however. The Obama Administration has failed, too, to bring the plight of Cubans to the forefront, even during the current wave of repression against the Ladies in White.

Two reasons are given for the soft approach. President Obama may not want to complicate the case of Alan Gross, a Marylander Cuba has taken hostage. Gross was sent to Cuba in 2009 by the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up internet connectivity for Cuba’s dwindling Jewish community.  He was arrested in December of 2009 and has been sentenced to 15 years for the crime of bringing satellite phones and laptops into Cuba. President Obama also wants to reach out to the Castro brothers.

We at The Heritage Foundation agree with Churchill and Reagan that tyranny cannot be appeased. We have a proud record of standing up to communism, including its Caribbean variety, an effort led by decades by such giants as Lee Edward, the chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

That’s why next week, on Tuesday, Nov. 15, we will have two events on these subjects; the first devoted to Cuba and the second to communism.

At the first event, at 10 am, we will feature a key note address by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., FLA), the Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as a panel on the latest from Cuba.

In the second event, which follows at 11 am, we’ll look back at the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the USSR, Cuba’s former patron, in a panel featuring Heritage experts and the distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union, Professor Richard Pipes.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a tremendous victory, but the survival of the Castro regime, and the rising tide of authoritarianism in Russia, should remind us that not all the achievements of 1991 are secure. So in addition to celebrating the return of freedom to Eastern Europe, we’ll look at how the lessons and concerns of two decades ago are relevant to today.

By Mike Gonzalez

Source:  The Foundry

Go to Home Page

For Cuban Women, Sundays Are for Protest Marches

The Ladies in White march in Havana, Cuba

Relatives of political prisoners in Cuba--many of them women--are fighting to curb abuses they say family members suffer during incarceration. One of the most prominent opposition groups, Ladies in White, meets on Sundays.

Four women stood with anti-government signs in a well-trafficked square in Havana.

They were members of Ladies in White, a group that formed in 2003 after 75 political dissidents were jailed.

Dressed in white--the color of peace--they march to Catholic mass to pray for human rights and the release of relatives and loved ones in prison.

The group has been meeting on Sundays across Cuba for years. But this particular small demonstration a couple of months ago--on Aug. 23 in Havana--proved momentous. When a plain-clothes police officer came to break up the women, some nearby people defended the women and forced the officer to leave in search of backup.

It wasn't the first time bystanders had aided the women, but because it was in such a busy area, it was the first time such an action was caught on video with cell-phone cameras and uploaded to YouTube the very next day.

"It was visible proof, released to an international audience over YouTube, that there is an increasing support for the resistance movement," said Aramis Perez, a leader of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, based in Miami, Fla.

Often, he said, reports filed from Havana are censored or written by government supporters and describe activist groups as "small and fragmented."

Two days later Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, published a call to stop the repression of the Ladies in White.

Police and government officials have violently attacked individuals and groups of female political dissidents on at least 25 occasions this year--sometimes while the women were engaged in nonviolent protest, and other times while they were with their families at home--according to a report released by the Assembly of Cuban Resistance in August. The report, "Cuba: Violent Aggressions Against Women, Human Rights Defenders," was based on daily communication with activist groups in Cuba.

'A Leading Role'

The resistance movement is carried out by a wide cross-section of Cuban citizens--urban, rural, farmers, students--but "women have been playing a leading role," said Perez.

One of those women is Laura Pollan, the leader of Women and White and the recipient of the European Parliament's 2005 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Pollan died on Oct.14 at age 63.

Another is Bertha Antunez who lives in exile in Florida.

She spoke at a meeting last month on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly along with other human rights activists, including Marina Nemat, Iranian author and former political prisoner; Jacqueline Kasha, Ugandan LGBT rights activist and winner of Martin Ennals 2011 Human Rights Defenders Prize; and Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghur dissident and former political prisoner.

Antunez used the podium to urge the international community to help women in Cuba who are working for human rights.

"These women, today, at this moment, risk their lives, put their bodies before the police violence," she told a roomful of people at the forum, organized by a coalition of international nongovernmental groups. "Their voices shout for freedom while they are brutally beaten and they continue to take to the streets."

Antunez said her activism was fueled by prison visits to her brother, released in 2007, after 17 years of incarceration in various prisons, making him one of the longest serving political prisoners in Cuba.

"Soldiers from the prison savagely beat my brother in my presence and in the presence of two children from our family. We were beaten too. On various occasions I had to resort to a hunger strike to save my brother's life," she told the human rights activists, advocates and supporters.

Motivational Visits

In an interview with Women's eNews, Antunez expanded on how those prison visits had motivated her.

"I got firsthand testimony from many prisoners and there were things I couldn't believe" she said. "I never thought these abuses were taking place in my country. I knew there were injustices outside the prison because we are all victims of those; but this was torture."

A Cuban dissident group, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, based in Hialeah, Fla., reports that Antunez's brother, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, was arrested during a demonstration for yelling that communism was "an error and a utopia." His speech was considered "oral enemy propaganda," the report says. His sentence was extended several times for speaking back to guards and continuing to vocalize his political beliefs.

Antunez and relatives of other family members of political prisoners founded the National Movement of Civic Resistance "Pedro Luis Boitel" to fight abuse in prisons.

The group remains active and continues to organize peaceful protests, sit-ins and hunger strikes at prisons across the island.

This year, the incarceration of two of the group's members and other recent crackdowns on dissidents spurred Human Rights Watch to issue statement in June saying that Cuban laws "criminalize virtually all forms of dissent, and grant officials extraordinary authority to penalize people who try to exercise their basic rights."

By Maura Ewing

Source: Women's eNews

Go to Home Page

Hey Castro! Free Them Now!

The worrying situation of the recently detained Cuban dissidents remains the same. Of the women arrested after a peaceful march through the streets of Rio Verde, Havana, very little is known, except that they have been severely beaten and the majority of them are disappeared, with unknown whereabouts.

Among them, one of the most worrying cases is that of Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera, who has various serious health complications. According to her husband, prominent dissident leader Jorge Luis Garcia ‘Antunez’, “various activists who witnessed the repression last weekend on September 24th (during the march marking the Day of the Resistance, held every 24th of the month) have affirmed that my wife Yris received a brutal beating and many kicks all over her arms and head“. The same occurred to Donaida Perez Paceiro and Yaimara Reyes Mesa, both of whom together with Yris are part of the Rosa Parks Movement for Civil Rights. “I am denouncing that these women are still arrested/disappeared and I am directly accusing the Castro dictatorship and its political police of this brutal repression and of everything that could occur“, declares Antunez, adding that, “the authorities of the country have been incapable of even informing the relatives of those jailed about their condition or their whereabouts“.

Yris Tamara Aguilera

Antunez took the moment to also express gratitude for all the “signs of solidarity received from different parts of the world” and also emphasized that many dissidents within the island have also joined in solidarity. He mentioned protests which demanded the release of these dissidents in places like Palmarito de Cauto, Palma Soriano, and a hunger strike “being carried out right now by members of the Central Cuban Coalition, a group headed by Idania Yanez Contreras“. Up to the moment, the hunger strikers are Guillermo del Sol Perez, Michel Oliva López, Rolando Ferrer Espinosa, Alcides Rivera Rodríguez, and Julio Columbie Batista.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September 29th it was also reported that Eriberto Liranza Romero (detained on the previous day and released that same night) was once again arrested while he demanded to know the situation of Sara Marta Fonseca and her husband Julio Ignacio Leon, both detained. During night hours of that same day, Antunez published a Twitter message in which he informed that ‘Julito’ Leon Fonseca, son of Sara and Julio Ignacio, was finally able to see his mother for a few minutes after he protested for hours in the 4th Police Unit of El Cerro. According to Antunez, ‘Julito’ denounced that his mother has clear marks of a severe beating and was in a poor state of health. He also learned that his father had been checked in to the Carlos Finlay Hospital of Marianao in the Prisoners Unit. The information comes from an audio accompanying Antunez’s Tweet, which can be heard in Spanish here.

Source: Pedazos de la Isla

Go to Home Page

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

Go to Home Page

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

Go to Home Page

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

Go to Home Page

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

 

Go to Home Page

Activists, Bloggers on the Cuba Money Project Vimeo Channel

For anyone interested in United States (US) policy, human rights activism, or the problem of free expression in Cuba, there is a new must-see channel on Vimeo. It belongs to the Cuba Money Project.

Last December, journalist, blogger, and Flagler College professor Tracey Eaton began the Cuba Money Project (CMP), a non-profit research and reporting initiative that aims to investigate and bring greater transparency and accountability to US federal spending on “pro-democracy” programs in Cuba. With the help of a grant from the Washington-based Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Eaton has employed a blend of traditional and new media techniques in his work.

In addition to an active newsfeed and blog, the CMP website includes data visualizations of spending details, a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) tracker, and spaces where readers can contribute their own knowledge.

US funding in Cuba: ‘Pro-democracy’ or anti-government?

Despite sanctions against spending US dollars in Cuba, the US government has spent millions of dollars over the last five decades on an interventionist policy towards Cuba. Since 2007, Congress has allocated between 13 and 45 million USD per year to be spent on “pro-democracy” programs in the country.

These programs have grown out of a US-Cuba policy framework that once sought to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. US ire for Cuban leadership began decades ago with Fidel Castro’s declaration of the socialist character of the revolution, and his refusal of economic aid from the US, and Cuba’s subsequent alliance with the Soviet Union.

Today, the rhetoric has shifted: the stated goal of US policy in Cuba is no longer to bring the downfall of the government, but rather to support Cuban citizens’ efforts to improve their lives through the restoration of human, civic, and economic rights. Yet regardless of how the US chooses to represent its efforts, the “pro-democracy” programs that it supports are, by nature, anti-government, or at least fall in opposition to some part of the Cuban system as it currently stands.

Diverse opposition

The 24 interviews on CMP’s Vimeo channel feature Cuban human rights activists, traditional dissidents, bloggers, and government workers and supporters, along with policymakers from Cuba, England, and the US. I recently had the chance to interview Eaton about this impressive archive.

Eaton’s goal is to get representative views from across the spectrum of opinion and influence on these issues:

People have passionate views. I want to help them tell their story without taking sides. Letting them talk into the camera is a great way to do that. […] Video [allows] people to speak directly to the [viewers] without any intervention from me. I ask questions, but I don’t filter what people say. I try to let them tell their story. I edit the videos very lightly, if at all.

He says that the archive is far from complete, and that he is determined to get more Cuban government supporters and workers to participate.

The videos do not form a cohesive narrative about activism and US involvement in Cuba; rather, they show the truly diverse range of ideas and goals espoused by Cuban political activists and by those in the US who influence US-Cuba policy. As dissident leader Martha Beatríz Roque says:

[l]a ideología dentro de la opposición es diversa. […] No somos partido único—partido único es el partido comunista.

Ideology within the opposition is diverse. […] We are not one sole party—the communist party is a sole party.

One important difference between activist groups that is all but indecipherable in mainstream coverage of Cuba is that which separates “old guard” dissidents, whose primary aim is to bring about the downfall of the Castro regime and the Cuban socialist project at large, and those who advocate for human rights in Cuba.

While leaders like Roque, who is connected with anti-Castrist leaders in Miami, believe that more US government money could make a meaningful change in dissident work on the island, Oswaldo Payá, leader of the famed 1990s Varela Project, is not so sure of this:

El dinero de los Estados Unidos no va a decidir el cambio en Cuba. […] La esencia del problema es que el gobierno cubano no reconoce los derechos de los ciudadanos cubanos en Cuba. […] El problema está en Cuba, y la solución está en Cuba, y entre cubanos.

Money from the United States is not going to drive change in Cuba. […] The essence of the problem is that the Cuban government does not recognize the rights of Cuban citizens in Cuba. […] The problem is in Cuba, and the solution is in Cuba, between Cubans.

Unemployment among opposition activists

Eaton has interviewed several members of the women’s opposition group, Las Damas de Apoyo, who advocate for the end of politically-motivated incarceration in Cuba. They work in support of the Damas de Blanco, a coalition of women whose husbands and sons have been imprisoned for political reasons. Each of the women interviewed described how she had lost her job, and was unable to find work, because of her political beliefs:

Unemployment and underemployment among members of Cuba’s political opposition is widespread…[They] are in a difficult spot…They have to do something to get by. I can understand why a dissident might accept help from a non-governmental organization.

But, he says, “It’s a risky proposition. Accepting support from a US-financed NGO can set them up for possible arrest or jail time.” And doing political work costs money:

If dissidents from Havana need to travel to another town to meet with other dissidents, it costs money…Internet access and phone calls are extraordinarily expensive…Simple things can be tough to accomplish in Cuba, especially if you are strapped for cash. You can’t just walk to a Kinko’s on the corner to make copies.

Opposition leaders in various camps described the problems that money can create for their cause, particularly when coming from the US. Aleida Godinez, a state security agent, believes that when US money stops coming in, the dissident movement will end. When asked about US support for pro-democracy initiatives in Cuba, Godinez notes an important problem that many Cubans perceive within this paradigm:

Los promotores de los valores de la democracia, de la libertad, son norteamericanos. No entiendo por que razón no permiten que un país como Cuba no puede elegir su propio sistema social. […] [Demuestra] una falta de respeto para el pueblo cubano.

The people who promote the virtues of democracy and freedom are North Americans. I don’t understand why they cannot allow a country like Cuba to elect its own social system. […] It [shows] a lack of respect for the Cuban people.

 

“Dissident bloggers” or just bloggers?

Eaton has interviewed three of Cuba’s most prominent anti-government bloggers, Claudia Cadelo [es], Laritza Diversent [es], and Yoani Sánchez [es]. I asked him what he thought of their involvement with opposition initiatives, and how he saw them fitting into the larger landscape of pro-democracy activism that CMP seeks to better understand.

Eaton calls Cuba’s bloggers a “diverse bunch.” “[T]hey shouldn't be lumped together with political dissidents,” he told me. “Some Cuban bloggers support the socialist system. Others rebel against it, but don't consider themselves to be dissidents.”

“Many bloggers want change, but steer clear of politics,” he told me:

When I talked to blogger Claudia Cadelo last year, she…didn't seem too interested in politics. She wants change. She wants an expansion of basic freedoms. But I wouldn't consider her to be a political dissident.
[…]
Some bloggers purposely avoid the U.S. Interests Section in Havana because they don't want to be linked to American efforts to undermine the Cuban government.

Indeed, many of the island’s most widely read bloggers advocate for change, but do not engage directly with politics. Even Yoani Sánchez did not begin blogging with a particular political agenda, though unlike many, she has since become a vociferous advocate for particular political changes in Cuba.

If there were a political platform for bloggers, Eaton says it would be advocacy for free expression and open Internet access for all Cubans:

My impression is that a key issue for many Cuban bloggers is freedom of expression. They want Internet access for all. They want it to be affordable. They want to network with other people and they want the freedom to use technology without someone looking over their shoulder. […] Outside Cuba, there are many bloggers and democracy activists who are eager to see change on the island. Many are Cuban exiles who have no plans to return to Cuba while the Castro brothers are in power. They are quick to support many of the bloggers, and sometimes pull them into the swirling currents of the U.S.-Cuba grudge match whether the bloggers want that or not.

Projects like Eaton's might well serve as a counterbalance to the common assumption by many activists groups that all Cubans who criticize their government are alike. No matter what side they're on, anyone interested in the complex political world of Cuba today should check out the Cuba Money Project Vimeo channel.

Written by Ellery Roberts Biddle 

Source: Global Voices

Go to Home Page