CNN's Jake Tapper is right "Fidel Castro was a murderous despot who oppressed the LGBTQ community and many others" but there is more.

Giving credit when credit is due.

CNN journalist Jake Tapper spoke the truth when observed that "Fidel Castro was a murderous despot who oppressed the LGBTQ community and many others and pointing that out is actually part of being a news anchor."

He was responding to Afghan American filmmaker, musician, and activist, Ariana Delawari who was making a number of claims that do not stand up to scrutiny about Fidel Castro and his regime.

Mauvaise Conduite (Improper Conduct) is a 1984 documentary film directed by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal that explores the oppression of the LGBTQ community in Cuba, and is required viewing.  

Fidel Castro declared in 1965 that “[w]e would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” 

Castro apologists claimed that the Cuban dictatorship had changed since then, but the events of May 11, 2019 demonstrated just the opposite.

Pride March shut down by Castro regime on May 11, 2019

The hostility to Gays began early and from the top. On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”

In 1964 the Cuban government began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms, what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior," were taken to these camps.

This history should be taken into account when considering the Cuban quarantine of HIV positive Cubans from 1986 to 1997. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic it was associated with the Gay community. Furthermore the claim that HIV rates are lower in Cuba should also be taken with a grain of salt when considering the failure to report on other outbreaks.This is motivated by their need to justify the existence of the dictatorship with supposed successes in health care.

 

Cuban government officials inoculated him with HIV in 2018.

 

Cuban biologist, environmental activist, and Gay man, Dr. Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, documented his case to the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Frankfurt, Germany, where he denounced how agents of the Castro regime purposefully infected him with HIV in 2018.

After a staged assault of two policemen Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was arrested on May 3rd, 2018 and sentenced to prison for twelve months by a kangaroo tribunal. He was remanded in jail on May 8th, 2018 and protested from June 16th to July 2nd with a successful hunger strike which led to an early release from prison on July 3rd, 2018. On June 16th, 2019 he got informed that he is HIV positive. He eliminates a natural infection strictly. He believes that he had been infected with the HI virus on purpose in prison.

According to a statement of Dr. Ruiz Urquiola the doctor’s reports show that he got infected during his imprisonment. The lab results also confirm an infection on purpose. That’s how the short time between hospitalization and illness with a high inoculum (infective material or one as an antigen acting part of a germ), e.g. from a lab virus, can be explained.

The Castro regime is also a murderous regime. Glenn Garvin wrote an important essay in the Miami Herald on December 1, 2016 titled "Red Ink: The high human cost of the Cuban Revolution" and in it addresses the question of how many extrajudicial executions have taken place in Cuba and cites an authoritative source.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

The killings have continued to the present day under Fidel Castro's replacement, his brother Raul Castro, who has head of the Cuban Communist Party remains the maximum authority in Cuba in 2020.

Inner power circle of the Castro regime (Cuban Studies Institute)

Ironically, some who attacked Mr. Tapper's claims raised the issue of racism. It is the Castro regime that has exercised white supremacy when the dictatorship's inner circle of power are old white men that have ruled over a majority black country for 61 years silencing black voices.

Black voices silenced by the Castro regime are numerous and many remain unknown. Others such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a brick layer and human rights activist tortured and taunted with racial insults for eight years until his death on hunger strike on February 23, 2010 became known worldwide.

Others such as Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike, but due to a lack of international solidarity passed on in anonymity.

Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros

It remains a sad reality that as the world begins to pay attention to extrajudicial killings of black men by the police. There is one place that when a police man shoots a young unarmed black man in the back those who would normally speak out if it was the United States are a European country, remain quiet. 

Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano shot in back and killed

Castro's Revolutionary National Police shot Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano (age 27) in the back on June 24, 2020, but there was little or no protest outside of dissidents in Cuba, who were rounded up and roughed up for attempting to protest the killing. 

Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano killed at age 27

Even the Castro regime's propaganda apparatus launched blue lives style campaign to rehabilitate the image of their murderous police that they called "Heroes of the Blue",  the usual suspects remained silent and continued to claim that Cuba was an example to follow.

Heroes of the Blue (Heroes de Azul) campaign by the Castro regime

On the broader front, Racist attitudes persist in Cuba under the Castros and is reflected in rates of interracial marriage being lower in Cuba than in Brazil that has a much higher level of inequality, and has not undergone a communist revolution.

On the economic front the glaring differences between black and white Cubans are shocking with 95% of Afro-Cubans having the lowest incomes compared to 58% of white Cubans.

Annual income by race in Cuba.

It is too late to help Orlando, Yosvany and Hansel, but it is not too late to help Silverio Portal Contreras, but time is running out for him.

Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience Silverio Portal Contreras

Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 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 touristic 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 recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International on August 26, 2019. He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.

Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.”

Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu review troops in Ethiopia

Castro apologists in their push back against Jake Tapper's criticism of Fidel Castro, cited the Cuban tyrant's relationship with Nelson Mandela, but ignored the Cuban autocrat's relationship with Ethio­pian dictator, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Castro's involvement in the genocide in that African country.

Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia

These apologists also ignored that Mandela also had friendships with both war criminals Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, and Charles Taylor of Liberia. Both men are responsible for the murder of many Africans in their respective countries. That Mandela would be friends with Fidel Castro,
Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Charles Taylor is dark corner of an otherwise bright legacy.

 Mandela was friends with Charles Taylor and Mengistu Haile Mariam

The second President of the United States, John Adams, when defending British soldiers in a court of law, who had fired on a crowd during the Boston Massacre, stated: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." This holds true today for Castro apologists, the facts are against them in their defense of the Castro dictatorship.

IACHR's Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression condemns closure of more than 50 media outlets in Venezuela

The slow death of freedom of expression in Venezuela nears the end point.

 

 

The Office of the Special Rapporteur condemns the closure of more than 50 media outlets in Venezuela without legal guarantees and for reasons related to their editorial line

 

September 6, 2017

Washington, DC- The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemns the closure of more than 50 media outlets in Venezuela under procedures that depart from the principles that guarantee freedom of expression, and urges the State to urgently adopt the necessary measures to ensure that the media outlets -both domestic and foreign- can operate in the country with legal guarantees and without any distinction based on their editorial line.

According to information received by the Office of the Special Rapporteur, on August 24, subscription television providers in Venezuela withdrew from the programming grid the Colombian channels Caracol TV and RCN, on orders from the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel). William Castillo, vice minister for International Communication of the Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs, stated in an interview with an official outlet "RCN and Canal Caracol are instruments of a media war who have behaved, in Venezuela, as a machinery of aggression against Venezuelanity and legitimate authorities." The minister accused Caracol TV of committing "a series of very serious crimes, offenses against Venezuela, its authorities, and our laws." A similar criterion would have been used previously to order the suppression of CNN and NTN 24 signals.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur also received information that in the evening hours of Friday August 25, Conatel representatives entered the radio stations 92.9 FM and Mágica 99.1 FM in the city of Caracas and ordered the definitive termination of their transmissions. It was reported that minutes after both media went off air their frequencies were taken by two new stations linked to the official party. The signal of the Caracas radio station 92.9 FM, which had a large audience news programming, was replaced that night by Radio Corazón Llanero, operated by a foundation under the control of an army Captain, ​​the aide-de-camp of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and current member of the National Constituent Assembly. The signal of the Mágica 99.1 FM station was replaced by the station Vinotinto FM, whose owner is until now unknown. On September 5, Conatel reportedly ordered the radio station 88.1 FM, operated by the emblematic educational radio network Fe y Alegria in Maracaibo, to cease its operations. Hours later the decision was revoked without any explanation.

On July 16, ULA TV, the television channel of the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, had also been closed by Conatel, invoking a lack of documents.

According to the information provided by several organizations, during 2017 at least 49 national radios have been shut down and 5 international television channels have reportedly been withdrawn from national subscription television, by government orders. As the Office of the Special Rapporteur has expressed in previous statements, most of the media operates in Venezuela with their licenses expired and the regulatory body does not have procedures with guarantees for the adjudication and / or renewal of these frequencies.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur reminds the Venezuelan State that any restriction on the right to freedom of expression must be based on a law and be proportionate and strictly necessary to protect legitimate ends in a democratic society. The closure of media outlets as punishment for maintaining a critical editorial line of a government arbitrarily suppresses the right that assists all Venezuelans to express themselves without fear of reprisals and receive plural and diverse information, and it is also a form of indirect censorship under international law.

Although the State has the power of administering the radio spectrum, this must be done in accordance with the basic principles of international human rights law that prohibit the restriction of the right to freedom of expression through abuse of the power to regulate and manage the radio frequencies.

According to these principles, the processes of adjudication, revocation, and renewal of licenses must be strictly regulated by a law and be guided by objective, clear, impartial, public, and compatible criteria with a democratic society; the process must be transparent; the decision granting or denying the request must be duly substantiated; and be subject to proper judicial control. The administration of the radio spectrum must also be guided by the principles of equality and non-discrimination, and should never be used to pressure, reward, or punish a media outlet according to its editorial line or its position concerning the government in charge.

Venezuela had already been condemned by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in June 2015 for breaching these principles when it decided not to renew the concession of the RCTV television channel on May 27, 2007. In the Inter-American Court opinion’s, RCTV's closure involved "a misuse of power, since a State faculty was used with the objective of editorially aligning the media outlet with the government."

The Court also pointed out that the misuse of power in that case "had an impact on the exercise of freedom of expression, not only in the workers and managers of RCTV, but also in the social dimension of that right." In effect, the Court stated "the real purpose was to silence critical voices against the government, which together with pluralism, tolerance, and the spirit of openness, constitute the demand of a democratic debate which, rightly, freedom of expression seeks to protect."

The Office of the Special Rapporteur urgently calls for the reestablishment of the radio stations and television stations that have been shut down, as well as the restoration of all the necessary guarantees for the full exercise of the right to freedom of expression in Venezuela.
 

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Contact details:
Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression
Tel. (+1) 202 370 0816
cidhexpresion@oas.org
 

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Our mailing address is:

CIDH / IACHR

Sede / Headquarters

1889 F Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20006

Fact Checking the Romney Campaign's Chávez For Obama Ad

President Barack Obama and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez

The Chavez for Obama political advertisement released by the Romney Campaign links together Hugo Chavez, Mariela Castro, and the image of Che Guevara in a thirty second spot which states the following (translation below courtesy of The Miami Herald):

NARRATOR: Who supports Barack Obama?
CHAVEZ: “If I were American, I’d vote for Obama.”
NARRATOR: Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, would vote for Obama.
CASTRO: “I would vote for President Obama.”
NARRATOR: And to top it off, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.
CHAVEZ: “If Obama were from Barlovento (a Venezuelan town), he’d vote for Chávez.”
ROMNEY: I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.

Below is the actual advertisement:


Supporters of the President have attacked it and the media has reported on the debate over the advertisement describing its content as controversial and incendiary, but the question remains, is it accurate? Is it true?

Three claims are made:

1) Hugo Chavez would vote for Obama if he were an American citizen.

Reuters reported on September 30, 2012 that Hugo Chavez had endorsed President Obama quoting the Venezuelan strongman saying: "I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama,"  ... "Obama is a good guy ... I think that if Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he'd vote for Chavez". The video in the advert does not represent or take out of context what Hugo Chavez is saying. The claim is accurate and true.

2) Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro said as a citizen of the world she would vote for Obama.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on June 4, 2012, Mariela Castro: "As a citizen of the world, I would like him to win," Castro told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview set to air Monday. "Seeing the candidates, I prefer Obama." ... "If Obama counted on the full support of the American people, then we can normalize the relationships; we can have better relations than what we had under President Carter". The claim is accurate and true.

3)  President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.

The Washington Post reported on September 14, 2012 that the EPA sent an e-mail out that "contained passages about Hispanic culture apparently copied word-for-word from Buzzle.com. And as icing on the oopsie-cake, it also featured a photo of a horse and buggy — no doubt meant to illustrate the picturesque elements of the culture — passing a painted billboard of Che Guevara." It was widely covered in the media. The claim is accurate and true.

The claims made in the advertisement are accurate and not taken out of context. It is not the advertisement that is incendiary or controversial but the affinity of a authoritarian despot, and the daughter of a dictator for President Obama and EPA circulating an image of Che Guevara, a mass murdering advocate for totalitarian dictatorship and a symbol for violent political action.