CELAC bears fruit in Cuba and Venezuela

^"16 You will know them by their fruits. ... A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ So then, you will know them by their fruits." - Matthew 7:16-20 NAS Bible

Less than a month following the gathering in Havana of members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), in attendance were also the Secretary Generals of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. One can already see some of the many fruits borne out of the Second CELAC Summit held January 28 - 29, 2014. Days prior to the Summit, and in the case of Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez and Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera beginning on January 24, 2014, state security laid siege to the homes of scores of activists effectively placing them under house arrest. At the same time many more who had wanted to organize activities parallel to CELAC Summit were arbitrarily detained and an Argentine national detained upon arrival at the airport in Cuba was declared persona non grata and sent back. 

Manuel Cuesta Morua, a social democrat ,who was the chief organizer of a planned parallel summit with a human rights focus was arbitrarily detained on the eve of the CELAC Summit and held for five days and has now been charged with "disseminating false news against international peace," and is no longer allowed to travel.

While all of this was taking place the Secretary Generals of the OAS and the United Nations refused to publicly criticize the nationwide crackdown and wholesale human rights violations occurring during their visit to the island. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised how the Cuban government treat women in Cuba ignoring the documented evidence that the dictatorship organizes mobs to physically assault and terrorize women who dissent. Add to that the hypocrisy of Raul Castro heading a regional body that claims to be democratic when he is the continuation of a 55 year old dictatorship inherited from his older brother. 

Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez on Hunger and Thirst Strike

 CUBA

The Castro regime felt emboldened by the CELAC Summit and on January 27, 2014 Gorki Águila, received a summons to attend his own summary trial where he faced a 10 year prison sentence for "possession of illicit drugs" in reality he is a dissident musician who is also an epileptic with a prescription for the "drugs" they want to use to imprison him.

On February 5, 2014 at 9:00am state security agents and members of the political police arrived with fire trucks, six patrol cars , five trucks , approximately four skid trailers arrived at the home of Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” in Placetas knocked on the door and automatically detained and handcuffed Antúnez and took him away whe he opened the door. The agents then entered the house and took whatever they wanted including: laptops, television, a compact disc player, cell phones, down to pots and pans and painted the front of the house blue to cover up slogans. Later that same day Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera was also arrested and beaten up while on her way to State Security headquarters to learn of her husband's plight and sexually harassed and molested by the state security agents who touched her inappropriately. 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."

 On February 10, 2014 at  8:00am Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" began a hunger and thirst strike demanding that the security cordon erected around his house be withdrawn and the properties taken by state security and the political police returned.

The regime's response to the hunger strike came a day later on February 11, 2014 when they knocked down the front door without knocking, beat up and detained both "Antúnez" and his wife Yris. Once again the house was ransacked. No warrant or confiscation order was presented.  The agents of the dictatorship have toughened up the security cordon around the home and even Yris is unable to obtain food.

This has led the human rights defender to maintain the hunger and thirst strike through its fourth day. Some articles online indicate that a healthy human being can die within 8 days of starting that kind of strike and most if not all are expected to pass away by the 14th day others place it as few as 5 to 6 days.  On February 13, the fourth day of the strike, the political police and state security agents again, for the third time since February 5th, invaded Antúnez's home, detaining him nd his wife Yris then ransacked his home again. It has also been reported that all this is taking place with the possibility that his wife is pregnant.

On Valentine's Day the human rights defender will be beginning his fifth day on a hunger and thirst strike and his life is in mortal danger. The public silence of democrats and of men who supposedly represent organizations that defend international human rights standards have emboldened the dictatorship and repression and violence are on the rise.

Let me be clear I do not generally approve of hunger strikes unless it is an extreme situation and under particular circumstances. However the mistreatment, violations of human rights are outrageous and the demands made by the Cuban activist are just and can and should be campaigned for by people of good will.

Basil Alejandro Da Costa Frías, 24, (shot in the head)

VENEZUELA 

In Venezuela, where the Cuban government has been training defense and state security as well as taking over a number of security functions over the last two days have witnessed students shot, wounded and killed. Images have appeared of government agents using brass knuckles to beat down students. Mass arrests and disappearances to crush nonviolent protests and parents burying their children is becoming all too common in Venezuela. Terror and death as tools of state control to subdue and control a population. The Cuban general in charge of implementing this is named Ramiro Valdez and is also the same man who imposed totalitarianism in Cuba 55 years ago on Fidel and Raul Castro's orders.

In Venezuela nonviolent public protests are being criminalized and government agents directing armed pro-government groups known as "colectivos" or what are known in Cuba as "rapid response brigades" have been set up to terrorize public demonstrators critical of the government. On February 11, 2014 Roderick Navarro and Guido Mercado reported over twitter the names of a few of the students wounded by gunshots that same day who had been identified: Jorge Monsalve 20 years old, Franco Perez 15 years old (Thorax), Pedro Alison 24 years old (Left arm), Anny Paredes 36 years old (Abdomen).

A day later the repressive apparatus escalated and two students had been shot to death: Basil Alejandro Da Costa Frías, 24, (shot in the head) and Juan Montoya, 40, (shot in the head and chest). Both extra-judicially executed by shooting produced by collectives and officials of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin) against the student march which arrived at the Attorney General Office. Sebin agents are trained by the Cubans. Roberto Redman, 31, was shot at his head in another location, also in government clashes. Not as clear who was the shooter.

These are the fruits of the 2014 CELAC Summit and of the silence of the OAS and UN Secretary Generals. The lesson is clear one cannot rely on this regional institutions and citizens need to organize, be vigilant and scrutinize what their government is doing. Thanks to the international mobilization around the Gorki show trial it has been delayed for the time being. Their is little time to save Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" but we have to try. There also needs to be mobilization on behalf of the Venezuelan students nonviolently protesting for their freedom in their homeland.

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: 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.