The Protests in Cuba Are As Feared As in Egypt

One of the posters calling for the uprising in Cuba.

Protests in Egypt and the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak has raised concerns that Cuba would follow suit, which has moved the government of the Caribbean nation to increase the repression, according to a report released last week. The report of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS by its initials in English), from the University of Miami, says that in recent weeks the security forces of Raúl Castro's regime have increased arrests and repressive actions against the Cuban people.

Titled “Increased repression in Cuba” the report quotes arrests, temporary detentions, beatings and intimidation of at least 34 activists and independent journalists, and also fines and jail therms for those who build or trade antennas and satellite television receivers. Among the cases is the dissident Lobaina Nestor Rodriguez, leader of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy (MCJD, initials in Spanish), who fears for his life and was placed with ordinary prisoners in the prison of  El Combinado de Guantanamo, where he is intimidated and threatened, reported his wife Daneysi Galvez Pereira.

Black Spring Independent journalist, Adolfo Paul Borraz, was arrested for 10 hours at his home in Centro Habana, interrogated and threatened for his journalistic activities. Jorge Luis Antunez reported that more than 12 members of the Central Opposition Coalition were beaten by members of  the Castro's repressive apparatus in the city of Placetas and arrested later.

Stirring to start a social media revolution in Cuba, organizers of a Facebook group calling for a popular uprising on the island have called for Cubans to gather for a demonstration on Feb. 21 in Havana.

The protest will be to "demand the freedom and democracy that have been taken from us," states a message on the group's Facebook page.

The message calls for Cubans to gather at 5 p.m. outside the old presidential palace in Havana, which is now the "Museum of the Revolution."

In Cuba, as in Egypt, Iran and elsewhere where this kind of activity is not well received by the autocrats in power, this is a dangerous business, making it vital for those of us who share the same ideals of freedom, do our part to support them.

Facebook page for the popular uprising in Cuba







Pamphlet guide to revolution in Egypt: How to protest intelligently

The San Francisco Indymedia site (www.indybay.org) has published a translated nine page Guide to intelligent protesting, which was distributed widely on the streets of Egypt. The guide shows how to non-violently defend yourself from riot police. As this Blog article states, we shouldn't just be cheering on the Egyptian revolution but learning from it. This was one of the biggest non-violent uprising's in history and given that we are all facing the same neo-liberal policies and all governments inevitably turn to batons and beatings to keep us down, these tips will definitely come in handy. 

From the Egyptian Revolutionary Guide

Below is an excerpt from the article Tactical Gems from the Egyptian Revolution outlining some creative democratic ways of operating with mass crowds.

"How to make demands from a giant crowd: Now that Tahrir Square has proclaimed itself an “autonomous republic,” and demands are flying from every corner of Egyptian society, not to mention every foreign government, the crowds whose effort has made change possible are trying to articulate their demands. Here’s how:

In Tahrir, the square that has become the focal point for the nationwide struggle against Mubarak’s three-decade dictatorship, groups of protesters have been debating what their precise goals should be in the face of their president’s continuing refusal to stand down.

The Guardian has learned that delegates from these mini-gatherings then come together to discuss the prevailing mood, before potential demands are read out over the square’s makeshift speaker system. The adoption of each proposal is based on the proportion of cheers or boos it receives from the crowd at large.

Delegates have arrived in Tahrir from other parts of the country that have declared themselves liberated from Mubarak’s rule, including the major cities of Alexandria and Suez, and are also providing input into the decisions.

“When the government shut down the web, politics moved on to the street, and that’s where it has stayed,” said one youth involved in the process. “It’s impossible to construct a perfect decision-making mechanism in such a fast-moving environment, but this is as democratic as we can possibly be.” (“Cairo’s biggest protest yet demands Mubarak’s immediate departure,” Guardian, February 5)

The article has some other good tips too. Check it out. Bring on the GLOBAL revolutions. Down with all the tyrants who only serve the big business, the IMF and Washington. Don't forget that Wikileaks showed us recently that our politicians take orders straight from Washington too!

Source: CoffeToday and The Wire

Pictures from Egypt showing some protester's "equipment" for self protection.

The plastic bottle helmet.

Brick-hat, very strong.

Bucket-helmet.

Cooking armor.

The box-helmet. Not very strong, but light.

The pita helmet. Wonderful!

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Cuba "fears Internet, social media"

Cuba fears the United States is encouraging dissent through social media such as Facebook and Twitter with the goal of toppling the government, according to the video of what appears a meeting of Cuban officials posted on websites this week.

The 50-minute video apparently is a presentation given by an Internet expert to officials of Cuba's Interior Ministry last June.

A link to the video at http://vimeo.com/19402730 was posted on several blogs, including that of Cuban anti-government blogger Yoani Sanchez, and on the website of the Miami Herald. It is not known how the video was obtained.

The expert, whose identity is not disclosed, told the officials the United States is promoting use of Facebook and Twitter to foment dissent similar to ways it was used in insurrections in the Ukraine in 2004 and in Iran in 2010.

He also said the US government is financing the introduction into Cuba of satellite communications equipment to create secret points of WiFi access.

In communist-led Cuba, Internet access is limited and content largely controlled by the government.

The lecturer mentioned US aid contractor Alan Gross, who has been detained since December 2009 on suspicions he illegally supplied satellite phones to Jewish groups for Internet access. Gross is described in the video as a “mercenary.”

“The idea is to create a technological platform away from control of Cuban authorities that permits the free flow of communication between Cuban citizens selected by (Cuban enemies) and the world,” he said.

Cuba said on Friday that Gross, 61, will face trial soon on charges of crimes against the security of the state and that prosecutors would seek a 20-year sentence in the case that has been a stumbling block for US-Cuba relations.

The lecturer said the US-supplied satellite equipment seeks to spread the voice of a new wave of anti-government bloggers such as Sanchez.

“A virtual network of mercenaries is organizing that are not the traditional counter-revolution. We are talking about young people, people who can have an attractive discourse, young people who hang out with our children and our brothers,” the expert said.

He said the United States is dedicating more money to finance “cyber dissidents” than to the island's traditional opponents.

According to a US State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks and published in December, Washington is losing confidence in the older dissidents and giving more credence to bloggers and intellectuals.

In the video, the expert said Cuba should try to neutralise the dissident bloggers by countering with its own.

“Being a blogger is not bad. They have their bloggers and we have ours. We're going to fight to see which of the two turns out stronger,” he said.

by Esteban Israel

From: Independent Online

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The Tunisian Revolution As Seen By Cuba

Game over for Ali. Who's next?

The Tunisian Revolution did not echo only in the Arab world, but also in Latin America. After the fall of the former Tunisian President Ben Ali, the Mexican paper "La Mañana" wrote that this was a "clear message to the other authoritarian leaders in the world: a dictator fell and sooner or later the other dictators will also follow the same fate. The op-ed stresses that regimes such as the one in La Havana are now feeling uncertain, and anxious that similar protests could also explode in their countries. Cuban dissidents, too, see many similarities, especially between the Castro regime, in power for more the fifty years, and the dictatorship in Tunisia, which for 23 years had been pillaging the country.

In Tunisia, as in Cuba, there are more than a million exiled people, and a frustrated youth with high-education, but no employment. In Tunisia, there are pockets of real poverty, particularly in the interior regions, such as Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, where the revolt started. The unemployment rate is 14.7%, for a population of ten and a half million. Further, salaries for manual labor are unbearably low: having a job does not always avoid having a miserable life.

In Cuba, with a population similar to Tunisia's -- around 11 million, -- an administrative chaos reigns. Even though, as the Associated Press reports, unemployment is minuscule -- it has not risen above 3% in eight years -- the official data ignore "thousands of Cubans who are not looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average."

Tunisia was a police state, as Cuba still is. During Ben Ali's regime, policemen in plain clothes and network of spies were everywhere. Outside a supermarket in Tunis, you could even see a shoeshine pull out a big walkie-talkie, like those in use with the police, and talk to somebody clearly not his wife. After a while, in Tunisia, you are under the impression that Big Brother is always watching you.

In Cuba, it is the same. As reported on the State Department website: "Cuba is a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods include intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Cuban citizens and foreign visitors."

Further, in Tunisia, as in any dictatorship, public order was implemented with force -- all too often excessive force - without taking into account torture practices used behind closed doors and in prisons, as many witnesses have recounted during the last few days. Once, you could even seen a beggar without legs being harshly taken away, and the person who accompanied him being repeatedly punched in the head. Such unnecessary violence was a standard practice.

In Cuba, Human Rights Watch reports, conditions in prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. The dissident website Cubanet writes that "day and night, the screams of tormented women [in prison] in panic and desperation who cry for God's mercy fall upon the deaf ears of prison authorities. They are confined to narrow cells with no sunlight called 'drawers' that have cement beds, a hole on the ground for their bodily needs, and are infested with a multitude of rodents, roaches, and other insects".

Tunisia, like Cuba, was also a country with no freedom of press. One of the main dailies, in French, La Presse, contained only a list of presidential activities and praise and applauses for the regime's personalities. Even the foreign press was kept under control. There was also the problem of corruption -- that does not exempt the Socialist Cuba. In Tunisia, not only there was a rampant corruption from the members of the government-for-life, but even the President's family was one of the main actors in robbing the country. The President's wife, Leila Trabelsi, fled Tunisia after having taken 1.5 tons of gold from the Central Bank; and her family had been borrowing money from the bank at an interest of 0.25 per thousand (not per cent, which would already be negligible, but per thousand).

The only difference from Cuba is that Tunisia was considered by many Western governments as a "moderate" country, seen as a buttress against Islamism. Although Ben Ali himself used religion to give credibility to his regime, under his dictatorship Islamism grew as it represented the only real and strong opposition. Cuba instead lives under an embargo.

In the meantime, while the Tunisians are still fighting for their freedoms, hoping that the future will not be uncertain, in Cuba the opponents to the regime write that the "Jasmine Revolution" has renewed their hopes.

This new hope is why the Cuban government pretends that almost nothing has happened in Tunisia: it fears similar protests. The media outlet, Diario de Cuba, writes that every year Ben Ali would send messages to La Havana to congratulate it for the anniversary of its triumphant Revolución. Even this year, in the midst of the protests, on January 6, Ben Ali expressed his desire to serve the interests of these two friendly countries. However, "there was not even one line in the Cuban press on the fall of the 'friend' Ben Ali. And until now, we could not enjoy one of those farsighted 'reflections'[1] by Fidel Castro illustrating the subject. What a pity!"

[1] Op-eds that the Cuban leader writes almost weekly, under the title Reflexiones de Fidel

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

From: Hudson New York

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