An open letter to General Raul Castro from a Cuban opposition leader (Part 1)

 On August 20, 2014 Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" made public an open letter to Raul Castro in which he denounced fraudulent reforms, and the murders of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero in Cuba and declared that national reconciliation necessitates justice, freedom and democracy. In the video below Antúnez read aloud the letter. Below is the first part of Antúnez's letter titled: "No, no and no Raul Castro." Antúnez is a former political prisoner and currently a national opposition leader based in Placetas, Cuba.

OPEN LETTER OF ANTÚNEZ TO GENERAL RAUL CASTRO

No, no, and no Raul Castro 

This, I think is the second or third time I write you, and as always without the slightest thought or desire that you would answer me, for the utter contempt and disgust emanating from your person does not let me do otherwise.

Mr. genocidal dictator,

Today marks 24 years and five months that with only 25 years, five months and 15 days of age I dared to oppose you. Surely your sycophants in the high command of the political police and the party commented on it. Remember dictator, that night you spoke in the city of Santiago de Cuba that appeal to the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, and as always a speech like so many of his brother that only a few paid him attention. I recall that I was in the square that you all call Revolution, where huge loudspeakers transmitted to people who were voiceless, hungry and above all deaf to your tiresome verbiage. It was a Thursday, March 15, 1990, Stalinist Europe had collapsed, the former Soviet empire was about to disintegrate and here in the Caribbean a senile caste clung to power and refused to implement reforms. For demanding them that late afternoon, your arrogant forces savagely beat me, their instruction corps tortured me and issued orders so that months later your lackey judicial system sanctioned me to imprisonment for the famous crime of "oral enemy propaganda."

Mr. dictator, believe that I should confess to you that at the time of my arrest I still did not know of the long and proven track record of crime and terror established by your brother and you: forced labor, UMAP concentration camps, the sad history of the captive peoples, without taking into account Castro’s interference into the internal affairs of other countries and international conflicts. Perhaps due to this ignorance, I only asked for reforms and shouted that communism was an error and a utopia. Today, after learning more about your system, I ask for your overthrow and catalog communism as an aberration and crime: the social plague of the twentieth century.

That day it was enough that as a Cuban and a youth, I was not free; that as a social entity something was lacking to be able to breathe and walk. I felt that I was forbidden to speak and that I should, either continue to use the mask, "to not look for trouble", or remove it and act and live in accordance with myself even if it meant suffering the most horrible repression. And that is what I did; I challenged you, General (without battles). I did it in spite of your known reputation as a cruel and bloodthirsty man. I did it, General and my only regret is not having had the courage, the opportunity, or perhaps the possibility of doing it long before then.

On the other hand, I also have to confess that it never occurred to me the idea that so much sick fury of hatred and harassment was to be applied against my person. That in the year 1993, three years after the arrest and serving my unjust imprisonment in case # 4 of 1990, the famous hall of crimes against State Security in the dark Santa Clara Provincial People's Court sentenced me, now in case # 5 of that year for alleged acts against your socialist revolution for which I had to spend 17 years and 38 days of uninterrupted political prison that gave me the opportunity to learn in the flesh the use of torture and humiliation as weapons of political repression.

Raul Castro, my case is known to you since it was you and not another who ordered the multiple raids and looting of which I have been a victim in my home during the past few weeks, where in the grossest show of force and impunity you sent your cowardly and opportunistic assault troops partially destroyed my home and stole more than once:  articles, appliances, office supplies, medicines, foods during these known actions that in Cuban slang are known as acts of thievery. After all, everyone does what they are taught.