Category — dissidents

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady | Wall Street Journal

Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike inflicted misery on millions of Cubans. But when the Castro dictatorship looks at the devastation, it sees opportunity.

Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, who took over as head of state in February, for years have been calling for an end to the U.S. embargo, which they say is starving Cuba. But Cuba can already buy from U.S. producers all the food and medicine it can pay cash for. What the totalitarian tag-team really wants is an end to the ban on private-sector credit to the Cuban government.

Their demand has gone nowhere in Washington, both because of moral objections to doing business with tyrants, and because the Castro brothers are world-class deadbeats. They have defaulted on billions of dollars in debt to the rest of the world, and want credit from the “empire” (i.e., the U.S.) only because their options for borrowing elsewhere have narrowed significantly.

Now they are using the latest Cuban tragedy to ratchet up the pressure on Washington through the international press. Rather than accept an offer of $5 million in humanitarian assistance from the U.S., the regime is demanding that the credit ban be lifted. [Read more →]

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The Wall Street Journal tells the story of  Armando Valladares, author of Against All Hope which details his harrowing twenty-two year imprisonment as a political prisoner of the Cuban government:

In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.

At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read “If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He’s got the right idea.”

Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that “the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism.”

Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn’t want that sign on his desk. “Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother’s room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple.”

The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.

Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced “no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state.” Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.

[Read more →]

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Via BBC:

The number of political prisoners in Cuba has fallen in the past six months, according to a new report by the island’s main human rights group.

[...]

But the report also says that the authorities are continuing to take a tough line against dissidents.

It says that any change in the human rights situation remains “unlikely”.

There are an estimated 219 political prisoners currently held in Cuban jails, 15 fewer than in January this year.

But according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCHRNR) this does not represent a fundamental change in the treatment of dissidents under Raul Castro.

Instead, the latest half yearly report by this illegal but tolerated organisation points to a change in tactics, with a marked increase in what it calls arbitrary systematic detentions.

Instead of high profile arrests and imprisonment, opponents are picked up by police, often prior to planned meetings or rallies.

They are then released without charge, usually within 24 hours.

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The Christian Science Monitor reports on why women now lead dissident fight in Cuba.

Only a handful of dissidents, such as Rivero, are willing to take on the risk of fighting for basic freedoms. While these spirited few – many of whom are now women – don’t wield much clout, they insist that more people are quietly asking them how to get involved.

See my post about the success of nonviolent resistance.

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