"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Aymara Nieto Muñoz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aymara Nieto Muñoz. Show all posts
Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, was born 75 years ago on February 13, 1948. She had been a school teacher, before her husband, Héctor Fernando Maseda Gutiérrez, was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Amnesty International recognized them as prisoners of conscience.
Claudia Márquez (izq) , Blanca Reyes (centro) y Miriam Leiva (der), al salir el 7 de abril de 2003 del Tribunal Provincial de La Habana tras conocer las sentencias dictadas contra sus respectivos esposos (Foto: Radio Televisión Martí)
This drove her break with the regime, and the formation of a dissident movement that marked a before and after in Cuban history. Claudia Márquez (izq) , Blanca Reyes (centro) y Miriam Leiva, who had been long time activists, and also had their husbands jailed were founding leaders in the new movement.
Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March 2003, which included her husband and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after eight years obtained the freedom of their loved ones. The first group was released in November 2010, and the last of the group of 75 were freed in March 2011.
Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of Cuba for founding the Ladies in White movement after the Black Cuban Spring of 2003. She, and the group of women she led, nonviolently challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Havana initially, and eventually across the island.
She did not disband the Ladies in White when her husband returned home
in February 2011. Laura recognized that the laws had not changed, that
prisoners of conscience remained behind bars.
Laura Pollán and Héctor Maseda reunited in February 2011
Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal on October 24, 2011 reported that Pollán instead of disbanding sought to expand "the movement across the country and promised to convert it to a human rights organization open to all women. Speaking from the Guanajay prison as her condition was deteriorating, jailed former Cuban counterintelligence officer Ernesto Borges Pérez told the Hablemos Press that making public those objectives likely sealed her fate." Laura Pollán died on October 14, 2011 and was cremated shortly afterwards.
Following her death, her husband Héctor Fernando Maseda mourned and through tears observed that "the toll on our private lives has been that after eight years of forced separation, we didn't even get eight months together. So I had one month of happiness for every year of separation."
Héctor Fernando Maseda marches with the Ladies in White following Laura's death in October 2011
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet MD, who was a first degree medical specialist in internal medicine, before being fired from his post by the government for his dissident views, examined the circumstances surrounding the death of Laura Pollán and wrote an analysis in November 2011 titled "A MEDICAL ANALYSIS OF LAURA POLLAN'S PAINFUL, TRAGIC AND UNNECESSARY DEATH." He concluded that " There is concrete evidence that the closest relatives, friends and dissidents expressed suspicions about a possible assassination by the communist regime's political police. Now, what has been proven over and over again is the stubborn nature of the regime at this sad, tragic and unnecessary death."
U.S. journalist Tracey Eaton interviewed Laura's widower Héctor Maseda on Dec. 15, 2011, about three months after her death, and he held the Castro regime responsible for her death, but admitted that he did not have the evidence to back up his allegation.
Twelve years later, and the wisdom of her analysis is reflected in over a
thousand prisoners of conscience, and a dictatorship that changed the
penal code to increase punishments for exercising freedom of expression.
Belarus, Cuba, and Vietnam have jailed thousands of prisoners of conscience in recent years.
On
April 18, 2022, Ms. Sayli Navarro Alvares began serving an eight-year sentence for crimes of public disorder, contempt,
and assault related to her participation in the July 11 protests.
Ms. Sissi Abascal Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison
for participating in the 11J protests in the town of Carlos Rojas, in
the municipality of Jovellanos, in the province of Matanzas.The 23-year-old activist and member of the Party for Democracy Pedro Luis Boitel has ten business days to appeal.Reports
are that a bus full of women dressed as civilians arrived where Sissi
was peacefully demonstrating with others on July 11, 2021, and proceeded
to beat her and others up, and a bottle was broken over Ms. Abascal
Zamora's head requiring that she receive stitches.
"In March 2015, political and security analyst Dardo López-Dolz, a former Peruvian vice minister of the interior, laid out the threat before a U.S. House subcommittee. He said Iran and Hezbollah came to his attention in 2011, when “a connection was forming between the Islamic Republic and other activist movements in Peru controlled by Havana, Caracas and La Paz.” The Cuban and Venezuelan “political/social organizations aimed at subverting and weakening our democratic institutions and spreading socialist ideology,” he said, had been operating in Peru “since at least 2005.”
Currently jailed and victims of beatings by prison officials.
Today in Cuba, Black Cuban men and women are being brutalized for their independence of thought, and refusal to obey the dictates of a white minority government that has ruled the island for 61 years.
Please let others know of their plight and raise your voice in solidarity with them.
Prisoner of Conscience: Silverio Portal Contreras
Silverio Portal Contreras is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, a former activist with the Ladies
in White, who is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public
disorder." Amnesty provided the following description of his plight.
"According to a court document, Silverio was
arrested on the 20 June 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel
Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that the behavior of the
accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a tourist area. The document further describes the accused as having “bad social
and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in
pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his
arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings
in Havana."
Silverio was the victim of a sever beating in mid-May 2020 that has cost him his sight in one eye, according to a report from his wife.
Political prisoner in Cuba today: Aymara Nieto Muñoz
Aymara Nieto Muñoz is a black woman, a dissident, and today a political prisoner. She was beaten up by prison officials two days ago. Aymara's family fears for her life, and they have every reason to be concerned. She is also being denied contact with her family. Black Cubans killed by Castro regime agents
The stakes are life and death, and other Black Cubans did not survive the encounter with the Castro regime. Here is a very partial listing of some recent high profile cases. Sadly, there are many more that stretch back over the decades to 1959.
It was ten years ago at 3:00pm on February 23, 2010 that it was
announced that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died. This humble bricklayer
who became a human rights defender, spent nearly seven years being
mistreated and tortured by the Castro regime.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arbitrarily detained by the secret police on
December 6, 2002 together with other activists, including Dr. Biscet, to
stop them participating in a human rights workshop at the home of human
rights defender Raúl Arencibia Fajardo. Three months later on March 8,
2003 Orlando was released.
Orlando Zapata photographed with prominent dissidents
Twelve days later on March 20, 2003 Orlando Zapata was re-arrested in
the midst of the Black Cuban Spring when over 75 activists and
independent journalists were jailed during a crackdown and sentenced to
long prison terms. He had been taken part in a fast and vigil demanding
the freedom of Dr. Biscet, who had remained jailed since the December 6,
2002 arrest.
"My
dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to
say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I
hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro
dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that
are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*
This did not silence him. When prison officials chose to attack his
human dignity, and engaged in acts of physical and psychological
torture, Orlando Zapata would respond with nonviolent defiance. He
carried out hunger strikes within the prisons he was transferred to. The
regime's response to his nonviolent defiance was to pile on prison
years to his sentence. Between May 2004 and December 2009 they carried
out nine trials without due process guarantees for a total sentence of
25 years and six months.
Reina Luisa Tamayo, with her son's blood stained shirt
What we know is a partial accounting of what he suffered. On July 26,
2008 in the Holguin Provincial Prison he was brutally beaten, on the
orders of the prison director, Major Orelvis Miraldea, and Orlando's
body was covered in bruises, but especially suffered blows to the head
that caused a intracranial hematoma in the lower part of his brain, and a
year later he needed to be operated on for this brain injury.
Despite this, because of his refusal to be re-educated and silenced, the
beatings continued on August 29, 2009, September 24, 2009, and a more
severe beating on November 26, 2009.
On December 3, 2009 he is transferred to Kilo 8 in Camaguey, a maximum
security prison. Upon his arrival the food that his mother had turned
into him the day before was confiscated, and they wanted to force him to
wear the uniform of a common prisoner. Orlando refused and begins his
last hunger strike.
Major Filiberto Hernandez Luis, director of Kilo 8 prison, retaliates
placing him in isolation without clothes and sleeping on the floor. Over
18 days they deny him water in an effort force him to end his hunger
strike, and break his spirit. On January 3rd and again on January 6th
he is taken to Amalia Simoni Hospital and undergoes intravenous
rehydration and is returned to his isolation cell.
On January 21, 2010 he is transferred to the Amalia Simoni Hospital
prison ward where he is kept under strong air conditioning unit with a
thin blanket that causes him to develop pneumonia, aggravating his
health situation. At the same time on several occasions members of the
political police film Orlando Zapata in his hospital bed.
On February 16, 2010 he is transferred to Havana in a military
operation, and his mother is not allowed to accompany him in the
ambulance. This is the last time that she sees her sons conscious.
On February 20, 2010 after strong protests by his mother to the secret
police, she is able to see Orlando at the Combinado del Este prison
ward, but he unconscious and intubated.
On February 22, 2010 she is called to a late night meeting with doctors,
where she is filmed without her knowledge. There she is told for the
first and only time that her son is alive thanks to an artificial
respirator. ( However, in a later article in the official newspaper
Granma it is reported that he had been on a respirator for days.)
On February 23, 2010 around mid-day, the secret police and military
doctors in form Reina Luisa Tamayo, Orlando's mother, that he is being
transferred to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in a critical state. He dies
three hours later at 3:00pm according to the information by the
political police to his mother.
Castro regime book “The
Dissidents” mentioned OZT as an opponent.
Following his death the Castro regime sought to destroy Orlando's reputation
and went as far as to deny that he had been a dissident. This campaign
failed, because even the dictatorship's own propaganda had recognized
his activism, published a picture of him with other activists and
attacked him years earlier.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Before and after Castro's imprisonment
They killed his body, but they did not obtain his obedience, and his spirit of defiance lives on.
However, one need not be a black political opponent to be killed.
Angel Izquierdo Medina, a 14-year old child was shot and killed by Amado
Interian, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from State Security, in
Mantilla, Cuba in 2011 because he stole some mamoncillos. When 400 friends, family members and neighbors decided
to attend the dead child's wake they were subjected to Cuban state security agents
laying siege to the dead child's wake.
Mother, Raiza Medina, and Ismael Suarez Herc, cousin of the victim
Raiza Medina demanded justice for her son Ángel Izquierdo Medina, who was killed on July 15, 2011. Pictured with Ángel's cousin, Ismael Suarez Herc, 17, who was an eyewitness to the crime.
The reaction by the dictatorship's
security forces no longer made this a simple indictment of one retired
state security agent but of an unjust system with a total disregard for
human life.
14 year old shot and killed in Cuba for stealing Mamoncillos in 2011
Three Black Cubans were shot by firing squad following a speedy "trial" in 2003 for trying to flee Cuba. On April 2, 2003 eleven Cubans
hijacked a ferry traveling to Regla from Havana with 40 people on board
with the intention of traveling to the United States of America but ran
out of fuel 28 miles off the Cuban coast and were towed back to the
island.
Despite verbal threats made against the safety of the
passengers to maintain control of the vessel, the situation, according
to the authorities, ended without violence and that “all of those who had been on board were rescued and saved without so much as a shot or a scratch.” The hijackers were tried by the "Court
for Crimes against State Security of the People’s Court of Havana. The
Court had applied the specially expedited summary proceeding
contemplated in Articles 479 and 480 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The
petitioners add that the trials took place from April 5 to 8, 2003." At
the "end of the expedited summary trial, the alleged victims were
sentenced to death for violating the 'Cuban Law against Acts of
Terrorism,' of December 2001.
Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez
Although the legally defined offenses
committed by the hijackers, the law prescribes imprisonment, not the
death penalty. The three Black Cubans sentenced to death, Lorenzo
Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis
Martínez Isaac, appealed against their death sentences to the Supreme People’s Court. The
Court ratified the sentences in less than a day. In keeping with
current laws in Cuba, these death sentences were submitted for
consideration by the Council of State, which proceeded to ratify them,
condemning them to death. In the early morning of April 11, 2003, following the decision handed down by the Council of State, the sentences were carried out and Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad. Nine days after the hijacking and three days after the trial.
"They came to my home at 6 in the morning and knocked on the door and told me to go to the cemetery at 10:00. He was already dead and buried. Go to the cemetery at 10 (am) so we can tell you where your relative is buried."
"That was it. He was already buried, he was covered. I asked and implored and even kneeled so they would let me see his face. Since they are liars, I couldn't believe it was him. I uncovered the crypt. I uncovered it because I wanted to see if it was really him, but I couldn't see his face because the security and police arrived and so I didn't get to see his face. I'm not sure if it's my son or a dog buried there."
Lorenzo Enrique Copello
Lorenzo Enrique Copello had a daughter, Yanisleydis Copello, she was 11 when her dad was killed, but she is now a dissident and demands justice for her father:
They executed her dad by firing squad when she was 11.
"I was only 11 years old when my father was shot, because he tried to leave Cuba in a boat, at all times we were deceived, I say we, because my dad was also deceived, my father was a worker at the Reina Polyclinic, he had no criminal record."
"At that time they told us that they guaranteed his life, however he was shot at dawn on April 11, 2003. After being buried they informed the relatives;I suffered a trauma from which I never recovered, with medical treatment and when I became an adult I demanded JUSTICE for my father's murderers."
The
executions created a firestorm of international criticism in
quarters that usually backed Castro's regime. The dictatorship demanded tacit support in a statement titled "LETTER OF CUBAN INTELLECTUALS AGAINST THE ATTACKS TO THE REVOLUTION" signed by
prominent Cuban figures asking their usual allies on the Left criticizing the summary executions of these three young
black men to be silent. The list of signers are a who's who of Cuban arts and culture: Alicia
Alonso, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Miguel Barnet, Julio García
Espinosa, Leo Brouwer, Fina García Marruz, Abelardo Estorino, Harold
Gramatges, Roberto Fabelo, Alfredo Guevara, Pablo Armando Fernández,
Eusebio Leal, Octavio Cortázar, José Loyola, Carlos Martí, Raquel
Revuelta, Nancy Morejón, Silvio Rodríguez, Senel Paz, Humberto Solás,
Amaury Pérez, Marta Valdés, Graziella Pogolotti, Chucho Valdés, César
Portillo de la Luz, Cintio Vitier, and Omara Portuondo. Some of them, like Cuban singer and dancer Omara Portuondo, and Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés were Black Cubans themselves, but had to sign off on three young black
men, who had not physically harmed anyone, being tried
and executed by firing squad in the space of nine days for reasons of
national security, despite it not being punishment that should have been applied by the laws on the books. The question of anti-black racism was raised because of the executions. “By
executing [three young black Cubans], Castro was sending a clear message to
the Afro-Cuban population” that dissent will not be tolerated, observed Dr. Jaime Suchlicki, director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami,
in a report on Cuban racism in June of 2003.
Systemic racism under the Castro regime documented, despite dictatorship's denials
The New York Times on January 25, 2020 published an opinion piece by French journalist and essayist Jean François Fogel that reports that
Cuba under the Castro dictatorship is "a segregated society: 70 percent
of black and mixed-race Cubans said they didn’t have access to the
internet, compared with 25 percent of white Cubans. The racial wealth
gap was also vast: While 50 percent of white Cubans had a banking
account, only 11 percent of black Cubans said they had one. Moreover,
white Cubans received 78 percent of remittances to Cuba, and they
controlled 98 percent of private companies."
On August 16, 2018 the Castro regime "categorically denied the existence of racial discrimination in Cuba to the group of independent experts of the United
Nations (UN) that form the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD)
during the review of Cuba under the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination," reported the non-governmental organization Race and Equality.
The purpose of the
review was for the Castro regime to present information on how it had implemented
action plans to combat racial discrimination in Cuba.
Juan Antonio Madrazo barred by Castro regime from talking about racism in Cuba
Voices from the island with a different point of view, that could have attended the gathering, were barred by the dictatorship from traveling. Juan Antonio Madrazo, Coordinator of the Citizen’s Committee for Racial
Integration (Comité Ciudadano por la Integración Racial), was prevented
from leaving Cuba to participate in the review, and Roberto Mesa,
Coordinator of the Black Brotherhood (Cofradia de la Negritud) was
arbitrarily detained a few days before he was scheduled to travel.
Roberto Mesa blocked by Castro regime from testifying on racism in Cuba.
In 2015 when a group of black Cuban human rights defenders were protesting for human rights that was video recorded, a woman was shouting about them in racist terms:"They’re a bunch of blacks who had no rights before and now want everything handed to them!"
Dissatisfaction by Black Cubans with the Castro regime became self-evident in 1980 when about half of the Mariel Exodus was made up of Cubans of African descent.
Cuba has a complicated history with regards to race relations that involves centuries of brutal slavery, and a plantation system centered around sugar and tobacco production. While at the same time long wars of independence from Spain that brought together slave owners and slaves in wars of liberation that changed relations, but following independence led to profound tensions in society that in the early days of the Republic led to blood shed, but in later years forged a new national identity.
Despite this history Castro regime officials try to jump on Black Lives Matter bandwagon
Castro regime officials, Comandante Ramiro
Valdes Menendez and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez are both playing a
dangerous game highlighting the problems of racism in the United
States. Bruno Rodriguez tweeted a 44 second excerpt of the video of the killing of George Floyd, and wrote: "George Floyd did not "pass away".He was brutally murdered.Unfortunately it's a story that African Americans know. He was unarmed.He shouted "I can't breath", but it was not enough to prevent an injustice. The color of the skin should not define us. #BlackLivesMatter"
Ramiro Valdes Menendez retweeted the Cuban Foreign Minister adding the observation: "That is the democracy and human rights that the empire defends: The oppression of the powerful, the hatred between the races.The
most basic human right, life, is trampled on in the United States and
its president remains silent in the face of such injustice."
They are inviting an examination of their own record, which has its own horrors, but highlighting what is happening in the United States in official Cuban media may boomerang as Black Cubans reflect on their own plight, and take matters into their own hands.
On Friday, June 5, 2020 news broke that a police station may have been assaulted and two policemen killed and a third seriously injured by assailants that had grievances with the police over poor treatment when making a complaint and harassment. We are still waiting to get additional confirmation.
Mother of three sentenced to four years in prison for her nonviolent political activism
Aymara Nieto Muñoz: Political prisoner and mom of three girls
The Municipal Court of Boyeros, in Havana, Cuba on April 25, 2019 confirmed a sentence of four years in prison for Aymara Nieto Muñoz. This mother of three young daughters is a member of the Ladies in White, a human rights movement that seeks freedom for all political prisoners in Cuba.
Aymara Nieto with her family back in September 2016
The first time I heard of Aymara Nieto was on September 20, 2015 when she along with three other activists risked everything to reach Pope Francis and receive his blessing. Scores of activists had been rounded up by the secret police to prevent them attending mass, but Aymara and three other activists managed to evade capture and one of them was able to reach His Holiness.
In April 2016 she was interviewed in the Sun Herald and spoke of what she was thinking on September 20, 2015 when she joined three others shouting freedom and sought the Pope's blessing. “In my heart, I was hurting,” Nieto said in an interview last week. “I was hurting watching my neighbors who didn’t have food for their children to eat. There is too much pain to see.”
Text of decision by Cuban court that reveals political nature of the trial
She was arbitrarily detained on July 12, 2016 and would not see her family in freedom again until July 12, 2017. She had been the victim of a political prosecution that punished her for speaking critically of the socialist system and passing out information.
Aymara Nieto with her mom when she returned home in July 2017
The next time Aymara was taken by the secret police she was beaten and tortured. Her crime: trying to be a poll watcher during a regime run vote on March 11, 2018. The
effort to stop the poll watchers, although poll watching is permitted
under current electoral law in Cuba, is an outrage.
Ladies in White leader Berta Soler tweeted that Cuban State Security "tortured Lady in White Aymara Nieto [placing
her] under the sun, handcuffed inside a patrol car." Targeting independent poll watchers was also repeated by the secret police in 2019 during the so-called constitutional referendum.
On May 6, 2018 the secret police raided Aymara's home, beat her up and took her. Aymara by that time had joined the Cuba Decide Campaign initiative, was active in both UNPACU and the Ladies in White. She would remain in prison and be subjected to a political show trial and a sentence of four years imposed on this courageous woman. She is not alone.
Five members of the Ladies in White are now unjustly imprisoned.
There are currently five members of the Ladies in White in prison in Cuba. They are Marta Sánchez, Nieves Matamoros, Yolanda Santana, Xiomara Cruz Miranda and Aymara Nieto. It is also important to remember that their founding leader, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, died under suspicious circumstances on October 14, 2011.
Below is video from 2017 when Aymara went back home and was reunited with her family. Let us work together to see a second reunion. Please let others know of her plight and share the hashtag #FreeAymaraNieto.
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