"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 Bruno Rodriguez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruno Rodriguez. Show all posts
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” - Mohandas Gandhi
Yesterday, Cuba’s communist dictatorship in New York City at the United Nations demonstrated that one can win a vote, and still lose.
The United States, together with 18 other democracies, distanced
themselves from the Cuban dictatorship and its falsehoods about the U.S.
embargo. The total vote was 165 in favor of the resolution, seven
against, 12 abstentions, and eight non votes. The dictatorship, and
their allies tried to spin this non-binding resolution, a propaganda
exercise, repeated annually since 1992, but this time was different.
It was a fiasco.
First, on October 28, 2025 Ambassador Mike Waltz, U.S. Representative to the United Nations factually and truthfully outlined the moral case for U.S. sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship,
and rebutted the distortions, and lies circulated by Havana. Ambassador
Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister for the Cuban dictatorship,
interrupted Ambassador Waltz’s address to the UN, but came away from the
encounter small, and diminished. Watch it for yourself here.
Secondly, Havana has been denying their involvement in Vladimir Putin’s
war in Ukraine, but that is a lie that was called out yesteday by
Ambassador Melnyk Andrii. Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the
United Nations. His excellency explained that the reason for Ukraine’s
vote against the resolution condemning the US embargo on Cuba was
Havana’s complicity in Moscow’s recruitment of thousands of Cuban
soldiers now fighting in Ukraine. You can watch his presentation below.
These are the reasons why Argentina,
Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, Paraguay, and Ukraine joined with the
United States to vote against the resolution. These are also the
reasons why Albania, Bosnia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Ecuador,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldavia, Morocco, and Romania
abstained this time.
In addition there were eight
countries that did not vote for whatever reason and they are: Bulgaria,
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Madagascar, Myanmar, Naura, Syria, and
Venezuela.
The so-called “high point” in these non-binding votes
was in 2016 when both the United States, and Israel abstained, and no
one voted against the resolution. The vote was 191 in favor, 0 against,
and 2 abstentions. This was during the Obama thaw with Havana.
This
time was different, but not only due to the vote itself, but also the
debate, and the action that took place on the same day.
Today,
while the World was focused on Havana’s non-binding propaganda exercise,
Kyiv took concrete action in protest to Cuban soldiers waging war on
Ukraine for Putin.
It was not a good day for Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez, and the dictatorship in Havana.
Today, Vaclav Havel’s maxim uttered in his important essay, The Power of the Powerless,
was seen in action. “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,
then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in
truth.”
Truth and facts exposed the Cuban dictatorship before the international community, and left it shaken.
It was a bad day for the Cuban dictatorship, but a great day for Cuban dissidents, and for freedom in New York City.
The People's Forum
warmly welcomes the Cuban dictatorship’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Eduardo
Rodríguez Parrilla in New York City, but should be celebrating the life and legacy of
Celia Cruz instead.
Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain.” – Celia Cruz
The centennial of Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso's
birth will be celebrated on October 21, 2025. She is better known by her
stage name Celia Cruz.
Celia had agency and she decided not to
bend the knee to the dictatorship. She wanted to live and perform in
freedom, which meant leaving Cuba after 1959.
Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage, but Celia refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site
founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa
and tropical music, provides a more comprehensive and accurate history
than the Smithsonian Institution.
The following is an account of Celia Cruz’s first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In
the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist
at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo
owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had
supported the revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement
with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the
beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great
popularity for “Yebero Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had
recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio
Martinez’s group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other
contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different
radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru.
Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically
seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking:
‘The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly,
prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.’ For the
Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her
country. The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing
standing next to the pianist, when suddenly the guests started to run
to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived. Neither she
nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo
approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in
his
guerrilla days, when he cleaned his
rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been
hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted
to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not
do that.”
Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Since
Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue
to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba on July 15,
1960. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.
Regime
apologists and their agents of influence have attempted to pretend that
things have changed with regards to artistic freedom.
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported
that Cuba’s ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on
August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists
by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on
anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión
(ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue
to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: “All those who had allied with
the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio ”
Celia
is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music
banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito
D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Israel Cachao López, Ramón “Mongo”
Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria
Estefan.
Cuban cultural genocide
According to the 2004 book Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today edited by Marie Korpe,
there is growing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are
growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia
Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above. This could lead to a loss
of Cuban identity in future generations. This approach has been referred
to as a Cuban cultural genocide, denying generations of Cubans their
history.
Communists are celebrating the centenary of the
birth of Fidel Castro with a series of propaganda stunts over the next
year. They should be called out and fact checked.
One of these stunts was carried out by the People's Forum in New York City on September 21, 2025, and was an effort to whitewash the racist legacy of the Cuban dictatorship.
This was known by 1961 when Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay, "Castro and the Cuban Negro", published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.
“Of
the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and
others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without
the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the
hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical
impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of
censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously
exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer
America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule.
It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite
allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while
criticizing racism in the United States.
For decades, the Castro
regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes.
The elimination of Afro-Cubans from this dynamic by the new communist revolutionary elite turned racism into a political tool outside of Cuba
to advance the Castro regime's communist agenda, but turned it into a
taboo topic by ungrateful blacks, labeled counter-revolutionaries by the
dictatorship.
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.
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.
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.
65 years ago today, the Tibetan people rose up
Thanks to their bravery, the Tibetan cause is alive & strong to this day
On this #TibetanUprisingDay, we honor the resistance & resilience of the Tibetan people
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.
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.
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 later its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
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.
With Russia's ongoing aggressions against its neighbors, the Castro dictatorship has carried on this tradition to the present day.
The Russian dictator's repeated aggressions were backed by Cuba in 2008, 2014 and now in 2022. The Castro regime's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez on Putin's latest invasion of Ukraine said that Russia “has the right to defend itself.
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.
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.
Tibetan national uprising crushed by Mao, Cuban democracy destroyed by Batista
Cubans and Tibetans share two
things in common despite our profoundly different histories and
religious traditions that bring us together in shared misery. March 10th is a tragic day for both nations. Although separated by seven years, March 10th is a day for somber reflection.
Both
peoples suffered under tyranny since the early 1950s and seven decades later continue to struggle for freedom's restoration.
China became a communist regime in 1949 and immediately began asserting
territorial designs on Tibet. Communist China invaded and occupied Tibet in 1950.
Cuba was a free and independent republic with a constitutional
democracy until March 10, 1952 when Fulgencio Batista overthrew the
democracy in a coup d'état against the last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio Socarras within days of free elections. This meant that Cuba's last free election was in 1950. Batista claimed that he carried out the coup to prevent an extreme dictatorship from taking over, but the irony is that the destruction of Cuban democracy by him created the conditions for Fidel Castro to take over seven years later.
Both
Cubans and Tibetans looked to 1959 as an opportunity for democratic
restoration and liberation. Instead tyranny entrenched itself.
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 later its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
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.
The Castro regime has continued this practice to the present day with Russia's repeated aggressions against its neighbors.
The Russian dictator's repeated aggressions were backed by Cuba in 2008, 2014 and now in 2022. The Castro regime's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez on Putin's latest invasion of Ukraine said that Russia “has the right to defend itself.
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.
At the same time, today, March 10th is an important day for Cubans to remember the destruction of Cuba's democracy by Fulgencio Batista, and the consequences of that coup against the democratic order that still impact Cuba today.
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.
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