The UN Secretary General's Regrettable Return to Cuba

The moral bankrupting of international institutions continues

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Nicolas Maduro in Havana

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon returned to Havana, Cuba for the signing of the peace accords in the Colombian Peace Process and met with Venezuelan strong man Nicolas Maduro on June 23, 2016. Regrettably during his visit the Secretary General praised Maduro who has plunged Venezuela into a humanitarian crisis that includes hunger riots and prisoners of conscience. 

The Secretary-General met today in Havana, Cuba, with Nicolas Maduro Moros, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The Secretary-General commended Venezuela for its support to the Colombian peace process, saying that the example of Colombia sent a great message to the region and the world. He also thanked Venezuela for its important international role as current member of the Security Council and of the Human Rights Council, as well as Chair of the Committee on Decolonization (C24).

One day later the Venezuelan representative to the UN Human Rights Council sought to shut down discussion on the plight of prisoners of conscience from around the world. UN Watch reported on the episode as follows:

Venezuela was overruled by the chair of the UN human rights council today, when its delegate interrupted a UN speech (see below) in a failed bid to stop the reading of an appeal for council members to release political prisoners on the occasion of the council’s 10th anniversary. The appeal, signed by family members of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Venezuela, Vietnam and Cuba, was read out today in the plenary of the council by Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights group. Venezuela’s delegate interrupted as soon as Neuer mentioned the name of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. “We do not think it is appropriate to raise specific countries,” he said, even though virtually all of the previous 15 NGO speeches had done exactly that. However, the objection was shot down with uncommon firmness by the session chair, who strongly defended UN Watch’s right to speak. “I have the impression that the speaker was perfectly in the context of this agenda item. We are all in favor of participation of civil society, and this was just a civil society group expressing itself,” he said. Many UN diplomats who chair session are leery of siding with activists when it could upset country delegates.

This is not the first time that the Secretary General has engaged in an Orwellian rewrite of history.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a previous visit to Cuba in January of 2014 whitewashed the Castro regime's human rights atrocities against Cuban women when he praised the dictatorship for its work on violence against women. In the aftermath of his visit the violence against women by the Castro regime worsened with at least one murder and an attempted murder documented.

UNSG Ban Ki-moon applauds Colombian peace process in Cuba

Peace in our time in Colombia?

Castro regime mediating conflict it sustained for decades.

Castro backed guerrillas continue to wreak havoc in Colombia 52 years later

News that peace may finally come to Colombia after fifty two years of continuous conflict should be cause for celebration, but there are reasons to be concerned that it may not be achieved. First of all having the negotiations between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) held in Cuba with the Castro regime as mediator is a bit surprising when one considers the surrounding history.

Colombia has been gripped in a protracted violent conflict since 1948 that in 1964, after a brief respite, returned to bloodshed with the Castro regime providing weapons, training, and financial assistance to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Castro regime continued funding FARC through the 1970s and 1980s. The rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 led to the FARC reportedly being supplied with up to $300 million by Venezuela with the Chavez regime trading arms and oil with the terrorist group.

In the same year a another guerrilla movement would also emerge plunging Colombia into further violence. The National Liberation Army (ELN), after the FARC, is Colombia’s second largest leftist guerrilla group, also formed in 1964 whose founding members were not only inspired by the Communist Revolution in Cuba and Che Guevarra but were also trained in Cuba when they attended "a Cuban scholarship program known as the Brigada Pro Liberación Nacional." ELN sought to overthrow the Colombian government in favor of one following the Castro model in Cuba.

According to Stanford University's Mapping Militant Organizations the April 19 Movement (M-19) guerilla group in Colombia founded in 1974 was also inspired and aided by the Castro regime. M-19 members "attended military training camps in Cuban military academies where they learned both urban and rural forms of guerilla warfare."

On March 1, 1982 the Castro dictatorship was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism less than three months after the U.S. State Department confirmed that the Castro regime was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government.

FARC, ELN and M-19 were all designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department and would also be granted safe haven in Cuba by the Castro regime for decades. These guerrilla groups in addition to terrorism also became heavily involved in narcotics trafficking to fund their violence.

Peace in our time: Reboot with Juan Manuel Santos as Chamberlain?

The Economist explains the ambivalence by many in Colombia:

For Colombians, the agreement involves “swallowing toads”, in a local metaphor. The FARC claim to have fought a just war against unequal land ownership. In that cause the country suffered bombings, firefights, murders, kidnapping and extortion. Many people find it hard to accept that FARC leaders accused of crimes against humanity will not go to jail provided they confess. [...]

Nobody knows how much money the FARC has invested from its criminal businesses. Many distrust the sincerity of the FARC’s conversion to democracy. And partly because the peace negotiations have taken so long and missed so many deadlines, Colombians have no love for Mr Santos. In a recent poll his approval rating was just 20%, lower than that of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

 Now there appears to be a difference between the guerillas and the Colombian government about where the final peace signing will take place. The Colombian government had announced that it would take place in Colombia and the guerillas are insisting that the signing take place in Cuba. Let us hope that this process full of irregularities manages to achieve a lasting peace and not be remembered as the 1938 Munich Agreement, a betrayal in the service of peace that ended in war. 

Prelude to peace in our time in Colombia or something else?

How the UN Secretary General's trip to Cuba exposed his failings on human rights

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Pollan, human rights defender who died under suspicious circumstances on October 14, 2011

Ban Ki-moon visited Castro regime, praised it's treatment of women

 On March 15, 2016 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the United Nations Human Rights Council to increase its impact on the ground over its second decade. However the actions of the Secretary General during his visit to Cuba in January of 2014 demonstrates the challenges faced by the United Nations.  Ban Ki-moon whitewashed the Castro regime's human rights atrocities, met with Castro regime oppressors including Fidel and Raul Castro and praised them for their work on violence against women:

Cuba is a leader on many development issues, including expanding opportunity for women and girls.  It has battled stereotypes and worked through its institutions to advance equality and prevent and end all forms of violence. [...] Since this threat is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior – and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

The Secretary General ignored the well documented beatings and extreme acts of violence visited on Cuban women who dissent from the official government line by Castro regime agents. Sadly, eight months after Secretary Ki-moon legitimized the dictatorship in Cuba and praised its treatment of women Yudisledy López, age 23 with two young children, was stabbed 18 times and murdered on September 26, 2014. She was killed after having warned months earlier Cuban human rights defender Sirley Avila Leon that an ex-convict had told the young mother of two that he was promised benefits for harming or killing Sirley. The warning took place after human rights defender's bed was set on fire and home vandalized.

23 year old murdered in 2014 after warning human rights defender

Another attempt on the life of Cuban human rights defender, Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was carried out in Cuba on May 24, 2015 during which she was gravely wounded in a machete attack. Osmany Carrión and his wife, both of whom had been sent by state security agents to kill her, carried out the brutal attack. Sirley lost her left hand while raising it to block a machete blow to the head. She suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and the machete cut through the bone of her right humerus that left her arm dangling. This was an escalation of previous machete attacks against other opposition activists.

Cuban state security engineered machete attack against Sirley Ávila León

On September 27, 2015 Lady in White Daisy Cuello Basulto reported that her 21 year old daughter was arrested, violently stripped and forced to urinate in front of police officers in a police station in Cotorro in Cuba. The 21 year old was arrested along with her mom and other family while on their way to attend the Sunday march of the Ladies in White. In the police station "she was humiliated," although she refused to urinate in front of the agents, who constantly jeered at her, explained her mother in an interview with Radio República. The young woman was locked in a cell with a strong smell of hydrochloric acid and afterwards suffered from a sore throat, according to her mother who added: "She has a fever and feels very bad."

Marina Montes Piñón age 60 beaten by regime agents. UNSG meets their bosses

If this is the leadership that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon celebrated in Cuba when he met with the men who give the orders to humiliate, brutalize and murder Cuban women then maybe he shouldn't be the one measuring the impact of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council already has enough problems.

UN Human Rights Council at Ten: Cause for Celebration?

"I believe that when the new Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize postpones receiving the Dalai Lama until after he has accomplished his visit to China, he makes a small compromise, a compromise which actually has some logic to it. However, there arises a question as to whether those large, serious compromises do not have their origin and roots in precisely these tiny and very often more or less logical compromises." Václav Havel, Forum 2000, October 12, 2009 

Ten years ago the United Nations Human Rights Council was founded on a small moral compromise that sacrificed human rights oversight in Belarus and Cuba in what U.N. officials called the dawn of a new era. Special rapporteurs with mandates to specifically monitor the human rights situation in those two countries were formally gotten rid of in 2007 and a code of conduct established that undermined the independence of all special rapporteurs.

At the same time the worse human rights violators continued to be elected to the Human Rights Council. Consider for a moment that in 2004, in the old UN Human Rights Commission, after losing a vote, a young Cuban diplomat physically assaulted a 60 year old man - who was part of the American delegation - attacking him from behind in front of numerous eyewitnesses. Despite this the Cuban dictatorship was elected as a member on the new UN Human Rights Council.

There are consequences to giving the worse human rights violators free reign. Human rights and democracy have been in retreat worldwide for the past decade coinciding with the tenure of the new United Nations Human Rights Council. Between 2006 and 2016 there has been a steady decline in global liberty and human rights.

The big claim to fame of the new Council was the Universal Periodic Review which provided oversight to all countries once every four years.  The Universal Periodic Review has one feature that is a threat to dictatorships and that is that anyone who produces a report can submit it for consideration to the Office of the High Commissioner and free Cubans in the island did just that to try to break through the communist regime's information monopoly.

UN Watch in their report "Massive Fraud: The Corruption of the 2013 UPR Review of Cuba" exposed how the Cuban government has corrupted and abused the Universal Periodic Review process. One of the regime's tactics was to flood the NGO process with front groups to drown out critical reports. In its summary, UN Watch described how:

Cuba used hundreds of front groups to hijack the United Nations compilation of NGO submissions and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the Castro Communist regime. While critiques of genuine NGOs do appear, they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent “NGOs” that, if they do exist, are mere puppets of Cuba and its allies abroad. UN Watch examined 28 recent UPR country reviews. There were 9 NGO submissions on Turkmenistan, 12 on Romania, 23 on Germany, 32 on Russia, and, the highest, 48 on Canada. For Cuba, however, the number soars to an incredible 454.

 Unfortunately the communist regime in Cuba did not limit its assault on human rights to the island nation but has had a negative impact worldwide on human rights standards and for victims of repression including at the UN Human Rights Council.

• On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation together with the Organization of Islamic Congress (OIC) successfully passed resolutions undermining international freedom of expression standards at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
• On February 2, 2009 during the Universal Periodic Review of China the Cuban Ambassador, Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios encouraged the Chinese regime to repress human rights defenders in China with more firmness.
• On May 28, 2009 amidst a human rights crisis in Sri Lanka the Cuban government's diplomats took the lead and successfully blocked efforts to address the wholesale slaughter there and in 2011 opposed efforts to reopen the case.
• On August 23, 2011 the Cuban government along with China, Russia and Ecuador voted against investigating gross and systematic human rights violations in Syria. 
• On March 17, 2014 the UN Human Rights Council “was divided” in its discussion of the atrocities in North Korea between those who want the case to be elevated to the International Criminal Court and those who reject outright the existence of a commission of inquiry and conclusions. The Castro regime vigorously defended the North Korean regime and denounced the inquiry.  
• On March 21, 2014 at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Castro dictatorship again applauded the human rights record of the People's Republic of China, and voted to block the effort of human rights defenders to hold a moment of silence for Cao Shunli. She was an activist who had tried to participate in China’s Universal Periodic Review, but was detained at the airport trying to get on a flight to attend the current session  and accused of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles." Within three months in detention and being denied medical care Cao Shunli died on March 14, 2014. 

The end result is that the Castro regime, along with other systematic human rights violators, have made a mockery of the United Nations Human Rights Council. During Cuba's first Universal Periodic Review in 2009 a Castro regime diplomat in the UN Human Rights Council twice threatened to beat me down if I crossed an imaginary line that he had set. A formal complaint was lodged at the time and nothing came of it. In 2014 while addressing the horrific human rights situations in Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela the worse of the worse tried through points of order to shut down the two minutes I had to speak.

Now on the tenth anniversary of the UN Human Rights Council, a member of the Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF) received a death threat electronically from a "diplomat" working for the Russian Federation. Florian Irminger, Head of Advocacy for HRHF on March 24, 2016 received a graphic image with an accompanying written threat against his life over twitter. The account was traced to a Russian diplomat.

Regime agents regularly beat up Cuban women and UNSG celebrates their treatment of women

 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for the United Nations Human Rights Council to increase its impact on the ground over its second decade. However the Secretary General, who visited Cuba in 2014, and whitewashed the Castro regime's human rights atrocities is a prime example of what is wrong. Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, met with Castro regime oppressors and praised them for their work on violence against women.

Cuba is a leader on many development issues, including expanding opportunity for women and girls.  It has battled stereotypes and worked through its institutions to advance equality and prevent and end all forms of violence. [...] Since this threat is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior – and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

The Secretary General ignored the well documented regular beatings visited on Cuban women who dissent from the official government line such as the Ladies in White and the Rosa Parks Women's Movement. On July 9, 2013 two dissident Cuban attorneys, Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent presented their report to Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, as it examined Cuba, that touched on the institutional violence against women:

The brutality of the police and state security agents, including women members of these bodies, against women dissidents, is supported by the state, which exemplifies the institutionalized violence as a means to repress women opposition activists. Arbitrary detention is one of the methods to prevent them from exercising their rights to speak, associate and demonstrate. In detention centers agents use violence, sexual assault and insults as means of repression. The cells enclosed in unsanitary and sometimes sanitary services have no privacy or are not appropriate for women, even having them share prison cells with men. In some cases, they forced to strip naked or forcibly stripped, obliging them to squat to see if they have items in their genitals and claims that have been reported that they have introduced a pen into the vagina, under the justification of seeking recording objects.

At the time Amnesty International condemned an ongoing crackdown against nonviolent activists, including many women, by the Cuban government and called on the UN Secretary General and other dignitaries to address it:

It is outrageous that those who disagree with the Cuban government are not allowed to express themselves in a public and collective manner.  The heads of state of the CELAC member countries and the high officials of regional and international organizations, such as UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, should not ignore the fact that as they arrive in Havana to participate in the summit, Cuban activists are being repressed by their government.

Instead UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon failed to address the crackdown publicly but instead met with Raul Castro to discuss in part how the US embargo impacts on human rights in Cuba and later his daughter, Mariela, where he celebrated the regime's treatment of women and finally met with Fidel Castro for 55 minutes.  

UN Secretary General in Havana, Cuba with murderous tyrants in 2014

In March of 2009, addressing the opening of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy the shortcomings of the UN Human Rights Council were outlined and remain relevant today.

Regrettably, the chief international body charged with protecting human rights is failing to live up to its mission to stop these and other abuses. The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council—as acknowledged in a recent report by 17 of its 47 member states, supported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists—falls short in its handling of country situations, in the efficiency of the process involved in highlighting violations, and in its reactivity to crisis situations. Strong politicization of the Council, driven by bloc-based voting patterns, has led to inaction in face of atrocity and abuse. We saw this sad spectacle last week within the Council, first with the secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights denying the documented and rampant instances of torture, executions, and mass detentions of Iranians followed by the Cuban Foreign Minister’s speech who echoing his Iranian colleague also denied Cuba’s horrible human rights record and to add insult to injury went on to blame the United States for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo as well as slander the deceased Cuban prisoner of conscience as a criminal.

 If UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon wants the UN Human Rights Council to have a bigger impact then he should lead by example and not remain silent in the face of glaring injustices.  As Katrina Lantos Swett citing Adlai Stevenson in reference to the UN Human Rights Council observed: "Solutions begin by telling the truth." Many do not take the UN Human Rights Council seriously not only due it lacks of an enforcement mechanism, but also because it is not telling the truth preferring all too often to remain silent. Truth telling is important and powerful. The failure on too many occasions of the UN Human Rights Council and UN officials to speak truth to power is why they now risk irrelevance.

The Fruits of CELAC: Cuba's Comfortable Dictatorship and Suffering Dissidents

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” and Yris Perez Aguilera

 Both opposition activists Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” and Yris Perez Aguilera were detained today and badly beaten up. The odyssey began at 9:00am with their home invaded and ransacked by State Security Agents and members of the political police. 

Yris had already left home at 6:00am to take part in a vigil elsewhere and was not present for the raid. She learned about it through a phone call with her sister-in-law in Miami. At the time she made the following statement:

"I'm denouncing that today, February 5, 2014, I went out in the early morning hours from my home on Calle Séptima del Sur #5, between Paseo Martí and Primera del Este, and at the outskirts of Placetas I saw patrol cars , command cars , special brigades , patrol cars, police motor cycles , and I told Xiomara Martín Jiménez who was with me , I have a feeling they are going towards my house . I directed myself to the house of Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya to participate today in the vigil and at this very moment I learn from my sister in law, Bertha Antunez Pernet, that my husband was arrested, my home had been robbed by State Security. I am at this moment in Aguada de Pasajeros. I 'm heading to State Security to find out the status of my husband. I'm holding responsible the Castro regime for whatever may happen to my husband, or to any of the activists and even the activist Xiomara Martín Jiménez and to me as of this moment."  

Antúnez, his brother (Loreto Hernández García), and Donaida Pérez Paseiro were arrested. His brother was released soon after and Loreto said that a high ranking state security official told him that it was possible that Antúnez would not be returning. 

Antúnez over twitter: "Traces of mistreatment against my wife"

 Yris was arrested in the early afternoon while on her way to State Security headquarters to find out the status of her husband. She was beaten up and arrested by government agents. Both Antúnez and Yris have been badly beaten up, and in Yris's case she was not only beaten up but also subjected to sexual threats and harassment by regime officials. When she got home in the evening Yris made the following statement:

"I was arrested with violence. I was beaten, I have my mouth busted. They put a rag bathed in gasoline, with grease in my mouth. They squeezed it into my face. The officer wearing the badge 115025 touched my face, breasts, would get on top of me. They had me handcuffed with my arms behind my back. [...] They were beating on me from near the badly named Ernesto Che Guevara Square all the way to Police Instruction. There I continued demanding my rights. I have cramped hands, I have a lot of pain in the lower abdomen, swollen hands and face because they hit me a lot."

Jorge Luis explained what took place on Tuesday morning when he got back home later that same evening:

"I have just been released after being arrested when my home was vandalized, robbed and plundered by the high command of the political police who presented himself in the morning hours with a search warrant. And they told me 'Antúnez we have come to erase all the posters you have on the front of your house and to take everything you have that is of a counter-revolutionary character.' [...] when I open the gate they enter violently and they handcuff me with my hands behind my back and introduced me violently in a patrol car [.. .] they took me quickly to the headquarters of Santa Clara Police Instruction of State Security."

This is Cuba under the Castro brothers in 2014. 

One can't help but think that the silence of José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, who said that he did not want to "create problems or inconveniences"for the Cuban government, and of Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who praised the regime's treatment of women while ignoring how they beat them down regularly, while attending the CELAC Summit contributed to this. Additionally, the fact that both remained silent regarding the nation wide crackdown on dissidents during the Summit they were attending is also contributing to this repression today in Cuba. 

When you worry about making dictators uncomfortable the ones who suffer are the innocent.

Thankfully, victims of repression do not have to only rely on these organizations, but also a vibrant civil society that is able to "create problems and inconveniences" for dictators thus contributing to save lives and may well have done so with these activists.

Thanks to friends at UN Watch getting the news out quickly to the media about one of their speakers being arrested today probably contributed to both human rights defenders being released later that same night. 

Another opportunity for the power of international solidarity to demonstrate itself arrives on Tuesday, February 11, 2014 when the dictatorship plans to hold a summary trial and send Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco to prison for ten years on trumped up charges. There is a petition circulating demanding his release. Please let others know about it.

International call on UN Secretary General to address Cuba

The United Nations and Cuba

As scores of non-violent Cuban dissidents were harassed, threatened and arbitrarily detained the UNSG Ban Ki-Moon got a haircut in Havana

International organizations, activists and parliamentarians call on the UN Secretary General about Cuba

Geneva, January 27, 2014.

We, the undersigned human rights organizations,

Whereas:

Having listened to the Secretary General's January 27th remarks upon arrival in Havana where he stated that he looked "forward to hearing views on key issues from peace and security to sustainable development and human rights" and that he looked forward to his "meetings with Cuban officials, including His Excellency President Raul Castro and many ministers" but made no mention of meeting with Cuba's democratic opposition or human rights defenders,

Recognizing that the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights says the United Nations must address human rights abuses "whenever and wherever they appear."

Disappointed that coinciding with the Secretary General's visit and CELAC Summit scores of opposition activists and human rights defenders have been, and continue to be, threatened, harassed, their homes laid siege, and detained since the 23rd of January to prevent independent civil society organizing meetings and events around the CELAC Summit.

Observing that despite the Cuban government's claim that Cubans are free to travel, Cubans inside of Cuba are denied the right to travel freely in their own country. For example, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez" is unable to travel to the Geneva Summit for Human Rights because his home is surrounded by state security agents blocking him from leaving his house.

Concerned about the human rights situation in Cuba in general: the increasing number of human rights defenders’ arbitrary arrests, suspicious deaths, beatings on the streets of Cuban citizens, and other repressive measures taken by the Cuban government,

Recalling that according to news reports a team of United Nations experts in September of 2013 concluded that a shipment of Cuban arms, that included MIGs and rockets, interdicted by the Panamanian authorities in July en route to North Korea, were in violation of UN sanctions on North Korea.

Also recalling the election of Cuba to both the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Executive Board of  the United Nations Democracy Fund whose stated aim is building democratic societies is troubling. Cuba is a dictatorship hostile to democracy in its own country that has also undermined and continues to undermine democratic institutions in other countries.

Further disappointed by the United Nations inaction on investigating the circumstances surrounding deaths of democratic opposition leaders Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012 despite direct requests made by his daughter and over 125 world leaders and nongovernmental organizations, among them Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu.

Extremely concerned that the Secretary General's visit to Cuba may be seen as legitimizing a government that systematically violates human rights, collaborates with outlaw regimes and is itself a state sponsor of terrorism.

Therefore

We call on the Secretary General to:

Address both the human rights situation in Cuba and the ongoing crackdown coinciding with his visit to Cuba

Address the violations of international sanctions on North Korea by the Cuban government through the smuggling of weapons.

Address where the United Nations investigation in to the deaths of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero stands.

Meet with Cuba's democratic opposition and human rights defenders to obtain a more complete vision of the challenges facing Cuba.

Sincerely,

1.       Ana Maria Stame Cervone, President, Centrist Democratic Women International (Italy)
2.       Martin Elgue, parliamentarian, Partido Nacional, Montevideo  (Uruguay)
3.       Micaela Hierro Dori, President, Centro de Investigación y Capacitación de Emprendedores Sociales (CICES Asociación Civil) (Argentina)
4.       Nazly Escalona, Coordinator, Red Latinoamericana de Jóvenes por la Democracia en Cuba
5.       Regis Iglesias, spokesman, Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (Cuba)
6.       Edil Christian Núñez (PartidoNacional) Montevideo (Uruguay)
7.       Jose Luis Guerrero Martínez,  Ecuatorian dissident (Ecuador)
8.       Hillel C. Neuer, executive director, UN Watch (Switzerland)
9.       Janisset Rivero, Cuban Democratic Directorate (Cuba)
10.    Tomasz Pisula, Chairman, Freedom and Democracy Foundation (Poland)
11.    Dmitry Makarov, Chair of the Board, International Youth Human Rights Movement, (Russia)
12.    Gabriel Salvia, Director, Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina (Argentina)
13.    Laida Carro, Coalition of Cuban-American Women (Cuba)
14.    Ana Rosa Quintana, The Heritage Foundation (USA)

Taken from the website of the Cuban Democratic Directorate

Amnesty International calls on UNSG Ban Ki-moon not to overlook Cuba crackdown

International leaders that are supposed to uphold human rights standards have either remained silent or praised the dictatorship in Cuba while ignoring the ongoing crackdown that Amnesty International is denouncing.

Cuba steps up repression on the eve of the CELAC summit

January 27, 2014

The Cuban authorities must halt their campaign of repression against opponents and dissidents and allow peaceful activities to take place during the second summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Amnesty International said today.

The meeting will be held on 28 and 29 January in Havana.

“The attitude of the Cuban authorities is an outrageous attack on freedom of expression and assembly which should not go unnoticed by the many leaders now gathering in Havana,” Amnesty International’s Special Advisor for Regional Programmes, Javier Zúñiga, said.

“It is a futile attempt to silence those who speak out about the systematic violation of the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and demonstration in Cuba. The government may stop dissidents from getting near the conference but their voices will get through. There is nothing that can silence human rights.”

Last weekend in many parts of the island dozens of dissidents were arbitrarily detained or pressurized not to participate in private events scheduled to run parallel to the summit which begins tomorrow in Havana.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN, Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional) has recorded 43 cases of people held for short periods between 23 and 26 January. Another five have been put under house arrest. At least 18 were warned by the authorities not to travel to Havana.

As a result of these arrests and the wave of intimidation, various meetings that were due to be held in parallel to the summit have been cancelled.

Among the activists arrested over the weekend were José Daniel Ferrer García, President of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU, Unión Patriótica de Cuba), and Yusmila Reina Ferrera, a member of the same organization. Both were held for almost 48 hours in different police stations across the country.

José Daniel Ferrer told Amnesty International that he and his colleague were intercepted by men in civilian clothes at about 1pm on 24 January as they were walking to the office of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Ferrer asked them to identify themselves, which they refused to do. They were then pushed into a car and taken to a police station on the boundary between the provinces of Havana and Mayabeque from where they were transferred to separate police stations in Havana where they spent the night.

On 25 January they were taken in the direction of Santiago de Cuba, but they spent the night in a police station in Camagüey. They were eventually released at about midday on 26 January in the province of Santiago de Cuba.

José Daniel Ferrer told Amnesty International that police officers were currently watching his house and it was impossible for him to return to the capital.

“It is an outrage that those who disagree with the Cuban government are unable to say so publicly and collectively. The heads of State from the member countries of CELAC and senior officials from regional and international organizations such as the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, should not overlook the fact that, as they carry on arriving in Havana to participate in the summit, Cuban activists are being clamped down on by their government,” Javier Zúñiga said.

“The leaders of an organization that has full respect for democracy and human rights amongst its principles should speak out in support of freedom of expression and assembly for Cuba citizens,” he added.

The arrest and coercion of dissidents and opponents is a tactic routinely used by the Cuban authorities. During 2013, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported 6,424 arrests of government critics. In December 2013 alone there were 1,123 arbitrary arrests on “political grounds”, the highest monthly figure since the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in March 2012.

AI Index: PRE01/048/2014

Also available in Spanish.

CELAC 2014: What would José Martí do?

"I am especially pleased to be visiting Cuba as you mark the anniversary of the great Cuban and Latin American hero, José Martí." - Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, January 27, 2014

To witness a crime in silence is to commit it. - José Martí  

CELAC is underway today in Havana, Cuba on the birthday of José Martí and it is taking place in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on nonviolent dissidents. Furthermore, Gabriel Salvia, an Argentine national was stopped at the airport upon his arrival in Cuba and declared "persona non grata." He had planned to attend a parallel summit organized by dissidents. The main organizer of the gathering Cuesta Morua has been detained since Sunday and held by the political police. Dozens of other activists have been detained and others have had their homes laid siege and are effectively under house arrest.

From Cuba, the opposition activist Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina tweeted blindly: "The day of Marti for Cubans ends up an affront to the wave of repression unleashed by the regime against the peaceful resistance."

Regime agents beat Cuban woman with blunt object in 2012. UNSG Ki-Moon meets regime officials now

Unfortunately, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, met with the oppressors and praised them for their work on violence against women.

Cuba is a leader on many development issues, including expanding opportunity for women and girls.  It has battled stereotypes and worked through its institutions to advance equality and prevent and end all forms of violence. [...] Since this threat is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior – and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

The Secretary General is ignoring the well documented regular beatings visited on Cuban women who dissent from the official government line such as the Ladies in White and the Rosa Parks Women's Movement. On July 9, 2013 two dissident Cuban attorneys, Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent presented their report to Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, as it examined Cuba, that touches on the institutional violence against women:

The brutality of the police and state security agents, including women members of these bodies, against women dissidents, is supported by the state, which exemplifies the institutionalized violence as a means to repress women opposition activists. Arbitrary detention is one of the methods to prevent them from exercising their rights to speak, associate and demonstrate. In detention centers agents use violence, sexual assault and insults as means of repression. The cells enclosed in unsanitary and sometimes sanitary services have no privacy or are not appropriate for women, even having them share prison cells with men. In some cases, they forced to strip naked or forcibly stripped, obliging them to squat to see if they have items in their genitals and claims that have been reported that they have introduced a pen into the vagina, under the justification of seeking recording objects.
The government organizes in workplaces the so called Rapid Response Brigades (BRR) to suppress even with the use of violence women dissidents. It is the absolute government inaction regarding those involved in rallies of repudiation against the Ladies in White and other women opposition activists, acts against the public order, groups that gather to promote hatred against opponents of the government and advocate for socialist revolution, to which are added the media with smear campaigns against these women, who have no opportunity to exercise their right to reply.

This is not the vision of Cuba José Martí had in mind when he fought for Cuban independence over a century ago. In his work "Nuestra América" he warned against the rise of caudillo governments in Latin America that would perpetuate autocratic regimes in Latin America. Nor is the passive and silent acquiescence of international figures and Latin American leaders before massive human rights violations and a decades old tyranny perversely called a democracy the vision that the Cuban national hero had of Latin American unity.


José Julián Martí Pérez was born in Cuba 161 years ago today on January 28, 1853.  Fifty five years into a Stalinist dictatorship installed by the Castro brothers. Ironically, the Castros, who claim José Julián Martí as a revolutionary inspiration, are sons of a Spanish peninsular who came to Cuba to fight to preserve colonial rule, and later became a rich landowner.

If José Martí had been born and grown up under the Castro regime then he'd either be a martyr, such as Pedro Luis Boitel or Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died on hunger strike defending human dignity or an opposition leader murdered under suspicious circumstances such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas or Laura Inés Pollán. José Martí with his passion for freedom, justice and human dignity would have been a dissident protesting the totalitarian regime in Cuba. As a writer, poet, and orator who could appeal to large numbers of people who would have been perceived by the Castro brothers as a threat. 

His vision of the Cuba and the Americas he wanted to see and the critique of the CELAC Summit that he would have made are reflected in the words of Yoani Sanchez: An important challenge for the CELAC Summit is that respect for diversity not be "tolerance for authoritarians or human rights violations."

He would not remain silent. José Martí understood the importance of speaking out and the complicity of remaining silent before a crime. 

Amnesty International condemned the ongoing crackdown against nonviolent activists, including many women, by the Cuban government and called on the UN Secretary General and other dignitaries to address it:

It is outrageous that those who disagree with the Cuban government are not allowed to express themselves in a public and collective manner.  The heads of state of the CELAC member countries and the high officials of regional and international organizations, such as UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, should not ignore the fact that as they arrive in Havana to participate in the summit, Cuban activists are being repressed by their government.

Like Amnesty International Martí would've called on leaders to hold tyrants and dictators accountable and to make them uncomfortable in their repression.

 Instead UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon failed to address the crackdown publicly but instead met with Raul Castro to discuss in part how the US embargo impacts on human rights in Cuba and later his daughter, Mariela, where he celebrated the regime's treatment of women and finally met with Fidel Castro for 55 minutes.

Its enough, that if he were alive, it would bring José Martí  to tears.

CELAC 2014: Human rights violations in Cuba and silent friends

“Ver un crimen en silencio, es cometerlo” - José Martí

 "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

These are sad days for democracy and human rights around the world. Two representatives of international organizations charged with defending human rights and democracy are not only remaining silent before wholesale human rights violations but in the case of the United Nations placing some of the enemies of human rights and democracy in charge of a fund supposedly dedicated to promote democracy. 

 As world leaders gather in Havana, Cuba the state security apparatus across the island has rounded up dozens of activists, laid siege to the homes of many more. Over the past four years activists have died on hunger strikes, others have been beaten to death, and two prominent opposition leaders died under suspicious circumstances that point to state security.

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, expected to be visiting Cuba to attend the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the regional grouping created by Hugo Chavez, the late authoritarian president of Venezuela, with the aim of doing away with the OAS that is currently led by Cuban dictator Raul Castro had this to say about meeting Cuban democrats and human rights defenders:

"I don't want to provoke any problem or situation that can be uncomfortable for anyone, for I don't think it corresponds to me. When one travels as an observer to a meeting, one does not do it to seek protagonism."

Last week the world observed the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who was born on January 15, 1929 but all too often this remembrance is superficial. Secretary Insulza in his above statement is providing the anti-thesis of what Reverend King advocated. The late civil rights leader spoke of the need to create uncomfortable situations to expose injustice that he described as creative tension:

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue…I must confess that I am not afraid of the word, tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth… the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

The statement made by Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations raises concerns:

Remarks by the UN Secretary General upon arriving in Havana, Cuba

Despite the regime in Cuba:  violating United Nations sanctions smuggling weapons to North Korea hidden under bags of sugar through the Panama Canal where they were intercepted; systematically violating human rights in Cuba and working to undermine human rights internationally; and a petition to the United Nations to investigate the murders of Cuban democrats, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante the Secretary General has decided to visit Cuba to discuss peace, security, sustainable development, and human rights with the dictatorship that has ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 55 years. During these years the Castro regime has murdered thousands of Cubans and imprisoned tens of thousands more for their political and religious beliefs.

The United Nations (UN) claims democracy as a core value, and both the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) require states to be democracies to be members. Nevertheless, the OAS has welcomed the dictatorship of Cuba back into the fold and currently the Cuban dictatorship is heading CELAC.

George Orwell would have had a field day. Meanwhile Cubans continue to suffer systematic human rights violations and those who should be their friends remain silent while breaking bread with their oppressors.