Sunday, March 10, 2024

72 Years without Democracy in Cuba: Seven Years of authoritarianism with Batista and 65+ Years of totalitarianism with the Castros

 From bad (authoritarian dictatorship) to worse (totalitarian dictatorship)

#TheyAreContinuity #TheyAreDictators ( #SomosContinuidad #SonDictadores)

Democracy ended in Cuba seventy two years ago on March 10, 1952. It was ended by General Fulgencio Batista who carried out a military coup against the legitimately elected democratic government. The last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio, and his first lady went into exile, and over the next seven years, an authoritarian dictatorship ruled Cuba, becoming increasingly unpopular.  

The refusal of Batista to give up power through a process of dialogue opened the path for Fidel and Raul Castro to violently seize it, but they did not do it alone.


They had the help of the Communist InternationalThe New York Times, an arms embargo placed on Batista in March 1958 by the United States, and pressure from the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba in December 1958, the authoritarian dictator fled Cuba in the early morning hours of January 1, 1959.



Presidents of Cuba from 1902 to 1952 and dictator Batista

 

This put an end to a half century of democratic Cuban governments, and within nine years the Castro regime seized Cuban's private sector and centralized economic control under Havana's totalitarian communist dictatorship. Cuba's official motto was changed from Homeland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad) by the new communist regime to Homeland or Death, We Shall Triumph (¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!).

Since the beginning of their struggle in 1953, the Castro brothers pledged a democratic restoration in Cuba, but all along planned a Marxist-Leninist takeover and the imposition of a totalitarian communist dictatorship, killing tens of thousands of Cubans. They systematically denied human rights to all Cubans while exporting their repressive model to Africa and Latin America, creating misery for millions.

Firing squads in Cuba ordered by the Castro brother 

The Communist regime rewrote Cuban history, creating myths to justify its tyrannical rule. The reality was that between 1902 and 1952, there existed in Cuba a system that had overseen rising living standards for five decades and had been on the cutting edge of human rights. The Marxist-Leninist dictatorship would declare war on human rights at home and abroad. 

Generations of Cubans resisted this communist dictatorship from 1959 to the present. 

Tens of thousands of Cubans risked everything in July 2021, taking to the streets in peaceful protests demanding an end to the dictatorship. The Castro regime responded by firing on unarmed protesters, imprisoning hundreds, and condemning many of them to 20 and 30 year prison sentences over the Christmas holidays for exercising their right to peaceful assembly.

 

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

On this March 10th, as Cubans observe 70 years without democracy and pledge to redouble their efforts to achieve a democratic restoration in Cuba it is a good moment to condemn the Castro dictatorship for its 63-year betrayal of the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people.  It is a good day to remember President Carlos Prio Socarrás and his wife Mary Tarrero de Prio.

President Carlos Prio Socarrás and his wife Mary Tarrero de Prio
 

 Communists lie when they say that the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s was backed by the United States.

Professor Jaime Suchlicki, of the Cuban Studies Institute analyzed the conditions and circumstances that led to the 1952 Batista dictatorship.

In a Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Cuba (Beaulac) with Dr. Miguel Angel de la Campa, Minister of State datelined Habana, March 22, 1952 and marked secret the U.S. Ambassador indicated that according to Dr. Campa:
“ Cuba intended to restore normal relations with countries toward which the former Cuban Government had had an attitude of hostility. He mentioned Spain and the Dominican Republic in particular. He said he thought the United States should recognize promptly; that it was in our interest that the situation should develop in an orderly way. I reminded Dr. Campa that our Government had not been consulted about the coup d'etat and that Cuba could not expect automatic recognition from us.” 
On March 24, 1952 in a memorandum by the Secretary of State Dean Acheson to President Harry S. Truman expressed surprise and " deplore[d] the way in which the Batista coup was brought about and is apprehensive that this kind of thing may occur in other countries of Latin America where elections are being held this year."

Secretary of State Dean Acheson and President Harry S. Truman

The U.S. eventually recognized the Batista regime, but the ambivalence remained. On May 20, 1957 Fidel Castro requested that the United State stop sending arms to Batista. The United States complied with an arms embargo imposed on the Batista regime less than a year later.

In January of 1958 the United States was pressuring Batista to restore Constitutional guarantees in exchange for the sale of arms.

On March 14, 1958 the State Department in a telegram to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba  requested that the export license for 1,950 M-1 rifles for the Cuban Army awaiting shipment be suspended. This was done because the State Department felt that the Cuban government had failed to "create conditions for fair elections." 



Manuel Urrutia

On March 17, 1958 Fidel Castro's future candidate for provisional president, Manuel Urrutia, along with a delegation of other supporters in exile of the July 26th movement, met with officials at the State Department. They lobbied the U.S. government and argued that arms shipments to Cuba were for hemispheric defense, and they claimed that Batista using them against Cuban nationals was in violation of the conditions agreed to between the two countries. On the same day the Cuban Government presented to the U.S. Embassy in Havana a formal note protesting the delay in the shipment of M-1 rifles to the Cuban Army, and warned that it would weaken  the Cuban government and lead to its possible downfall.  

On March 26, 1958 in another telegram from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Havana the view was expressed how the arms embargo could lead to the fall of Batista's regime:
“Department has considered possibility its actions could have an adverse psychological effect GOC and could unintentionally contribute to or accelerate eventual Batista downfall. On other hand, shipment US combat arms at this time would probably invite increased resentment against US and associate it with Batista strong arm methods, especially following so closely on heels of following developments:
  1. Government publicly desisted from peace efforts.
  2. Government suspended guarantees again.
  3. Batista expressed confidence Government will win elections with his candidate and insists they will be held despite suspension guarantees but has made no real effort to satisfy public opinion on their fairness and effectiveness as possible means achieve fair and acceptable solution.
  4. Batista announced would increase size arms and informed you he would again undertake mass population shift Oriente, and otherwise acted in manner to discourage those who supported or could be brought to support peaceful settlement by constructive negotiations.
The United States would continue to pressure Batista to hold free elections and leave office for the remainder of 1958. Earl E. T. Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba, on December 17, 1958 delivered a message from the State Department to Fulgencio Batista that the United States viewed "with skepticism any plan on his part, or any intention on his part, to remain in Cuba indefinitely."
 
Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith

The U.S. government had dealt Batista a mortal blow, and fourteen days later the Cuban dictatorship fell, and the Castro era had started. This was not a U.S. backed dictatorship.

March 10th: Cuba and Tibet's shared day of tragedy

 We remember

Tibetan national uprising crushed, Cuban democracy destroyed.

Notwithstanding our dissimilar histories and religious practices, Cubans and Tibetans have two things in common which unite us in our misery. For both countries, March 10th is a somber day. March 10th is a day for sad reflection despite being seven years apart.

Since the early 1950s, both peoples have endured oppression, and more than 70 years later, they are still fighting for the restoration of freedom. In 1949, China adopted a communist government and soon started claiming Tibet as its own. In 1950, Communist China invaded and occupied Tibet.  

   

Up until March 10, 1952, when Fulgencio Batista ousted the democracy in a coup d'état against the last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio Socarras, within days of free elections, Cuba was a free and independent nation with a constitutional democracy. Hence, the last free election in Cuba was held in 1950.

The irony is that Fulgencio Batista's destruction of Cuba's democracy set the stage for Fidel Castro to seize power seven years later, despite Batista's claims that he staged the coup to avert a severe dictatorship.  

Both Cubans and Tibetans saw 1959 as a chance to restore democracy and achieve freedom. Instead, despotism consolidated its power.

 
The Cuban nightmare began amidst the hope on January 1, 1959 that the departure of Fulgencio Batista into exile would mean a democratic restoration and an end to authoritarian tyranny instead it was the beginning of a new totalitarian communist tyranny headed by Fidel Castro. 

Cloaking itself in the legitimacy of nationalism and anti-Americanism it justified the systematic denial of human rights in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism and the “Yankee threat.”

Tibetan hopes that a national uprising that erupted in Lhasa on March 10, 1959 would drive the Chinese occupiers out of their homeland. Instead His Holiness the Dalai Lama had to flee to India to avoid imprisonment or assassination as the Chinese communists crushed the uprising.

 
The Castro regime claim of "anti-imperialism" proved hollow and history demonstrated that it was conditioned upon ideology. This was witnessed with the Castro regime’s support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 are high profile examples.

The same holds true for Tibet. Fidel Castro in his March 31, 2008 “reflection” titled “The Chinese Victory” denies that Tibet was ever independent justifying and defending the Chinese occupation of that small country. It is a shameful rewriting of history.
 
On July 1, 2020 the Cuban dictatorship introduced the  resolution at the UN Human Rights Council praising China for the passing of the Hong Kong National Security Law that ended freedom in Hong Kong
 
With Russia's ongoing aggression against its neighbors, the Castro dictatorship has carried on this tradition to the present day.

Vladimir Putin's attacks against Georgia in 2008Crimea in 2014 and the eight years long low intensity war in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, and the February 24, 2022, multi-pronged Russian invasion of Ukraine were all acts of aggression in violation of international law.

The Russian dictator's repeated aggressions were all backed by Cuba.

Both the Castro regime and the Chinese communists must be held accountable for their many crimes, their hypocrisy on the issue of imperialism, and the historical facts they have sought to disappear must be shared widely.

Tibetans, today, March 10th, reflect on the 65th anniversary of their national uprising against the occupation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China, and recommit to their struggle for freedom.


At the same time, today, March 10, is a significant day for Cubans to recall the ways in which Fulgencio Batista destroyed their democracy and the ways in which those effects continue to impact Cuba today.

#TheyAreContinuity #TheyAreDictators ( #SomosContinuidad #SonDictadores)
 

Therefore on this day let us call for Freedom for Cuba and Tibet!

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

We Remember: 84 years ago today the order that led to the Katyn Massacre was signed by Josef Stalin

 To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

 

Josef Stalin in the foreground, and Lavrentiy Beria seated behind him.

On March 5, 1940 the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union passed a resolution to shoot Polish prisoners of war held in the camps in Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov and those detained by the NKVD in prisons in Western Belarus and Ukraine. 

Eighty four years ago today Josef Stalin signed Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria's order, condemning 22,000 Polish POWs and civilians to death. Beria was Stalin's  head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 until 1945. He was the head of the secret police in the Soviet Union.

Beria's March 5, 1940 note requested that the cases of the Polish POWs and those arrested in a special manner should be dealt the highest penalty - by shooting and without a formal trial.

This crime would forever be linked to the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered. This dark anniversary was observed four years ago in a conference titled "Generations of Memory - Testimonies."

This mass execution was carried out while Communist Russia and Nazi Germany were allies that divided Poland and the rest of Central Europe between the two totalitarian powers in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

During this one year 10 month "honeymoon" between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin's regime also handed over Jewish refugees to the Nazi Gestapo. 

The crimes of Katyn and the Soviet Union's aiding of Nazi Germany's crimes against the Polish and Jewish peoples between September 1939 and June 1941 must not be forgotten at a time that Russia's Vladimir Putin is trying to rewrite history in an Orwellian fashion, while he writes new chapters of infamy in Ukraine.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas born 72 years ago: Honoring Cuba's Consistent Human Rights Defender

"In Cuba we are being prohibited from preparing that future, working now at night for the following morning, because someone has said that the night will not end. But the night will not be eternal, it is ending." - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas


 
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas was born 72 years ago on February 29, 1952 and was extrajudicially executed in Cuba by Castro's secret police on July 22, 2012 along with Harold Cepero.

Ten years ago Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights petitioned the  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to examine the evidence around the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold on July 22, 2012.

On June 12, 2023 the IACHR published their report on the merits that found Cuban government agents responsible for the deaths of the two pro-democracy leaders and Christian Liberation Movement leaders

Twenty two years earlier, Oswaldo Payá along with other members of the Christian Liberation Movement in May 2002 turned in thousands of signatures from the Varela Project, a petition that called for human rights to be respected in Cuba, and that the matter be debated before the National Assembly. 

In December of 2002, thanks to lobbying and pressure from Spain, Oswaldo Payá was able to travel to Strasbourg, France to receive the European Union's Sakharov Prize and address the chamber. 

In 2011, seven Norwegian members of parliament nominated Oswaldo Payá for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Václav Havel had also twice nominated Oswaldo Payá ).
 


 Following the untimely deaths of Oswaldo and Harold, the Cuban opposition leader's family was subjected to death threats and heightened surveillance by state security.   

On June 21, 2022 David Hoffman's book on Oswaldo Payá, "Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba" was made available for purchase. You can purchase it here.


Today on his birth anniversary, let us also remember and pray for the soul of this good man, who sacrificed all for the freedom of the Cuban people.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

The Brothers to the Rescue shootdown 28 years later: Continuing the struggle for truth, justice, and memory

 #TruthJusticeMemory


On February 24, 1996, at 3:21 and 3:27 PM, heat-seeking air-to-air missiles fired from a MiG-29 UB piloted by Lorenzo Alberto Peréz Peréz that destroyed the two planes the men were onboard, and killed Mario de la Peña, age 24; Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, both 30, and Armando Alejandre Jr., 45. Mario, Carlos,Pablo and Armando were members of the humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue.

This was a premeditated act of state terrorism carried out by Mr. Peréz Peréz on the orders of both Fidel and Raul Castro and through the chain of command issuing the unlawful order that murdered these four men.

Cuban spies learned the flight schedules and were instructed not to fly on February 24 and, if they had to, to alert the MiGs with a motion while in flight to save them from suffering the same fate as the other planes.

Ana Belen Montes, a Cuban spy working in the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, carried out an influence operation to shift responsibility from the Cuban dictatorship, to its victims in Brothers the Rescue. 

Twenty eight years later, and we are just learning that Ambassador Manuel Roche, a high level spy for Havana, who in 1996 was the principal deputy of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and may have played a role in assisting the Cuban dictatorship minimize its accountability in this act of terrorism it committed against U.S. civilians in international airspace.

This was a premeditated killing over international airspace. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) concluded that the two planes "were shot down miles away from Cuba’s boundary having never entered or touched it on that day and the planes had been in contact with the Cuban tower throughout the flight."

They failed to destroy a third plane with Sylvia Iriondo, Andrés Iriondo, Jose Basulto, and Arnaldo Iglesias on board. 

There is no statue of limitations on murder and state terrorism.  There is much more in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.

Over the past 28 years friends, and family have continued to demand truth, respect memory and demand justice through protests, petitions, and law suits


Family members held a silent vigil for their loved ones on February 23rd, gathering at 3:15 pm at Florida International University, with the vigil starting at 3:21pm and ending at 3:27pm. On February 22nd a vigil was held in Washington DC outside of the Embassy of Cuba.

Today at 10:30am at Opa-locka airport, where Brothers to the Rescue had their hangar, Jose Basulto, and other survivors of the February 24, 1996 shoot down will gather together to hold a vigil.