Canadian Cuban woman denied entry to Cuba due to critical social media posts

Glenda Corella Cespedes refused entry to Cuba due to critical social media posts.

Taken from CubaBrief 

Another example of how the Castro regime continues to deny Cubans their right to enter and exit their homeland as a tool to silence dissent and criticism both inside and outside of Cuba was reported in the Canadian press on April 20, 2022. 

It is a perverse irony that although "1.3 million Canadians visit Cuba in an average year",  Canadian citizens born in Cuba are still treated as second class citizens by their native homeland. CBC news reported on the most recent, and egregious example against Glenda Corella Cespedes.

"Cuban-born Toronto resident Glenda Corella Cespedes told CBC News she was travelling with her non-Cuban friend Mary Guaragna to attend her brother's wedding. She said she was carrying suitcases filled with medications and supplies for her mother, who recently underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer, and for a sick family friend. Corella Cespedes said she had her Canadian passport with her but knew that, as a Cuban citizen, she was required to enter Cuba on a Cuban passport. Cuba charges its citizens $360 for the passport and another $160 every two years. Corella Cespedes said she had paid her fees recently and had her documents in order."

...

"And then I saw five immigration officers come on the plane and they said everyone could get off except Glenda Corella Cespedes." Her friend Mary Guaragna told CBC that "at that point, we both sort of looked at each other and became quite concerned. I mean, I was as white as a ghost and Glenda more so than myself. "Canadians that were exiting the plane were just kind of looking at us as though, you know, we could have been terrorists. We felt awful." The women said one of the officers took Corella Cespedes's passport and left them on the plane for about 20 minutes as cleaners boarded and worked around them. A man who appeared to be a more senior immigration officer then boarded, Guaragna said, and "presented Glenda with a piece of paper saying 'denial.' With no explanation at all. "And I said to this man, who spoke English quite well, 'What seems to be the problem?' In my mind, as a Canadian, [I was] thinking we could debark, go somewhere, speak to them, perhaps even pay a fine and allow my friend to continue on with her vacation. "And he just said, 'She knows what she did, she knows what she did.' And at that point I kind of looked over at Glenda and Glenda sort of gave me a signal to not say anything further."

...

"Corella Cespedes said her problems began when she liked a Facebook comment that criticized a well-connected Communist Party supporter in Gibara who works as a doctor in the local hospital where Corella Cespedes once worked as a nurse.The doctor is part of a three-woman musical group who performed for Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero when he visited earlier this year. After posting video of the performance, the doctor was criticized on social media for serenading Marrero rather than pressing him on the hospital's state of neglect and a lack of medicines and food for patients. A number of critical comments came from former residents of Gibara now living outside of Cuba. The original video has since been deleted. Corella Cespedes said her parents soon began to receive warnings from local Communist Party members to tell their daughter to stop commenting and posting."

The Castro regime blocks Cubans from delivering aid to family members in order to impose its ideological litmus test.  This is another example of the expansive internal blockade imposed by the Castro regime that exists in Cuba.

This is another reason to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council. 

Call for Help: Canadian prisoner in Cuba denied medical care for months despite begging Cuban prison officials to let him see a doctor

 Sister asks "what is the Canadian government waiting for? body bags?"

Canadian born citizen Benjamin Tomlin not receiving adequate care.

Canadian born citizen Benjamin Tomlin jailed in Cuba was able to make a call out of prison begging for medical care denied him by Cuban prison officials.  His sister Caroline Simpson who has been campaigning for his release made it available and in the e-mail with the audio declared: "This is appalling,  my brother has been begging to see a doctor for months,  why isn’t the Canadian government doing anything to bring the prisoners home while they will be safe. What are they waiting for? Body bags?"

Ms. Simpson added that "this has become a humanitarian cause now, these Canadians need to be returned home before it is too late. We can no longer wait for political niceties and formalities we need to save these men’s lives NOW because they are in serious danger." 

 

"The Cuban government is not respecting the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) that under rule 24 states:"The provision of health care for prisoners is a State responsibility. Prisoners should enjoy the same standards of health care that are available in the community, and should have access to necessary health-care services free of charge without discrimination on the grounds of their legal status," in the case of Benjamin Tomlin, who is suffering great pain, cysts, and deteriorating health. Friends and family are concerned about his health and fear for his life, because he has not been provided adequate medical care for months.

Benjamin Tomlin has been detained in Cuba since August 2018 when he was charged with sexual misconduct. On March 29, 2019, following a trial which stripped the defendant of his basic human right – the right to fair and equitable hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal – he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

On August 28th, 2019, the Supreme Court of Cuba rejected his appeal, the same day that various Canadian newspapers and media, including CBC News, published articles about Mr. Tomlin’s incarceration in Cuba.

Beginning with his arrest through to his trial and sentencing, Benjamin Tomlin’s case has been plagued with judicial irregularities. Tomlin's rights have been consistently violated since his arrest: he was prevented from speaking to his lawyer; refused consular assistance; and was forced to sign documents, under duress, that he did not understand.  Benjamin Tomlin continues to maintain his innocence and claims to be the victim of people who robbed him.

Benjamin Tomlin’s Chronic Pain and Lack of Proper Health care in a Cuban Prison

In 2005, Benjamin was in an accident from which he was expected to be a quadriplegic. To the surprise of his doctors, he was able to regain movement in his limbs but continues to this day to experience severe chronic pain and transient paralysis for which he had stayed medicated following the accident. In addition, Mr. Tomlin was also diagnosed with poly cystic kidney disease in his mid-twenties.

Mr. Tomlin is presently in excruciating pain as the required medication is not being provided to him. His physical health is deteriorating, not to mention his mental health. Although friends and family do what is in their power to ensure that the medication gets to his Cuban prison, it is being stolen by the prison guards thus it rarely gets to him.

Most recently friends and family have been informed that in addition to chronic pain from his accident and his worsening mental health, Benjamin Tomlin is now experiencing symptoms of his poly cystic kidney disease. He has been extremely ill and was unable to move from his bed for several days due to excruciating pain. He requested medical attention but was told it was unavailable due to the current fuel crisis in Cuba.

Furthermore, he was subject to a disciplinary hearing before the prison colonel for “disrespect” for having insisted that he receive medical attention.

Video of audio received on September 15, 2020: https://youtu.be/8xTAkQjUs_Y

 

The Sounds of Crickets: The long silence when Canadian and U.S. diplomats were being harmed in Cuba

Governments waited too long to warn their diplomats, and the lawsuits are now flying.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the State Department for how it handled an Accountability Review Board (ARB) following the harm done to U.S. diplomats in Havana, Cuba. The reports were downplayed, and did not become public until eight months later, because impacted diplomats were complaining. The same process has played out over in even longer span of time with Canadian diplomats and their foreign service.

Their respective governments waited to long, and underestimated the harm done. Perhaps their mistake was listening to the assurances of the Cuban government.

Twenty six (26) American diplomats and their family members were harmed in Havana, but Cuban officials claimed that the diplomats had preexisting conditions.

In the Canadian case it has been reported that "nine adults and five children from diplomatic families have developed unusual illnesses in Havana, with symptoms including nausea, dizziness, headaches and trouble concentrating." These are the same symptoms reported by the Americans.

If the warning had gone out earlier, and family and essential personal been recalled, perhaps five children would not have been impacted.

The Castro regime has tried to claim that no harm has been done to diplomats in Cuba. The dictatorship claimed they are victims of mass stress and the sounds that they are hearing are crickets.  These charges have been echoed by others that should know better.  Canadian and U.S. diplomats have been harmed in Havana.

We have filed 1st lawsuit involving US #diplomats injured in #Cuba. @MarkSZaidPC reps 8 victims from @StateDept. Tonight we filed #FOIA lawsuit for @JMadisonProject & @adamentous of @NewYorker for docs pertaining to ARB Report (internal investigation).https://t.co/zqGkEwQwcq

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) February 8, 2019

These attacks began in November of 2016 and were reported on to official channels in December of 2016. The State Department knew that diplomats were suffering brain trauma in Havana in February of 2017 and evacuated 40 Americans over the next two months.  On January 29, 2018 the news broke that 19 U.S. tourists had also suffered brain trauma in Cuba.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a preliminary report on February 15, 2018 and an accompanying editorial studying health impacts on 21 U.S. government employees in Havana between December 2016 and August 2017. These individuals had severe injuries and the bottom line on medical findings are that:

Concussion-like symptoms were observed in U.S. government personnel in Cuba after they reported hearing intensely loud sounds in their homes and hotel rooms and feeling changes in air pressure caused by an unknown source. The symptoms were consistent with brain injury although there was no history of head trauma.

Castro regime officials on October of 2017 said talk of acoustic strikes was “science fiction” and accused Washington of “slander.” investigating U.S. complaints of attacks that sickened American diplomats in Havana.  Denials continued later in October 2017 but now their narrative was that the alleged noise behind the “sonic attacks” was coming from cicadas and crickets. Cuban scientists convened by the government argued that the symptoms were the product of a "mass psychogenic illness"(MPI). However the JAMA report said MPI was unlikely because some of the individuals had no idea others had been affected and it "is often associated with transient, benign symptoms with rapid onset and recovery often beginning with older individuals.”

Diplomats file $28M suit against Canada over injuries suffered in Cuba https://t.co/aIHHBLxoOs pic.twitter.com/cE0KQhcWhE

— National Post (@nationalpost) February 7, 2019

Canada and the United States waited too long to warn their diplomats, and the lawsuits are now flying. Meanwhile  the State Department is contracting a team of scientists and medical doctors to try and find out what happened.

Wonder when someone will be able to sue the Cuban government for failing to protect diplomats on their soil, and discounting the threat not only to the diplomats, but also their families? Waiting for an answer one can expect to hear crickets.

Copying the existing healthcare system in Cuba in the United States would lead to more deaths

Don't buy the hype or the lies.

Cholera patients in Cuba (CNN)

Nicholas Kristof's January 18, 2019 OpEd in The New York Times, "Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba" is an irresponsible work of fiction that reproduces false statistics provided by the Cuban dictatorship to justify its 60 year old dictatorship.This is but the latest chapter in a long romance with the Cuban dictatorship by the Gray Lady.

Kristof cites the questions about Cuban government statistics and dismisses them by citing that the World Health Organization and the United Nations have praised the Cuban health care system. He fails to mention that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is being sued for conspiring "with the Cuban government to collect millions of dollars by unlawfully trafficking Cuban doctors to Brazil." (PAHO is the Regional Office for the Americas for the World Health Organization [WHO], and is recognized internationally as a part of the United Nations system.) According to a November 29, 2018 article by Frances Robles, in The New York Times, PAHO "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." 

The Cuban doctors were also separated from their families. The Castro regime feared that if they went to work abroad with their families, the doctors would be less likely to return to Cuba.

Kristof is trying to make the case for a "free, universal health care system", but a question arises: Why look at Cuba's with its questionable data and repressive dictatorship? There are other Latin American countries with universal healthcare such as Costa Rica, and Chile. Their infant mortality rates are good, but not better than the United States. Although, Chile's is almost equal to the U.S. Incidentally, if you believe Cuba's infant mortality rate numbers, than a lecture needs to be made to Canada, because America's neighbor to the North also has a higher infant mortality rate then Cuba's (despite Canada having a free, universal health care system.)  The World Bank 2017 infant mortality rates for the following countries are: Canada (5), Chile (6), Costa Rica (8), the United States (6), and Cuba (4).

Not mentioned by Kristof is the study by economist Roberto Gonzalez at the University of Chapel Hill who provides an analysis that explains in detail how the numbers are fudged. The actual estimate of the IMR in Cuba has a median estimate of 9.04 and a range that begins at 5.79 and extends up to 11.16. There is a policy in Cuba to do away with problem pregnancies, which is also a factor for the IMR rate in Cuba and the high rates of abortions. According to sources used by Kristof the IMR in the United States is 5.9.  

However one should take a serious look at the Cuban healthcare system overall.

The real deal on Cuban healthcare

Public health

New Scientist reported on January 8, 2019 in an exclusive report that "thousands of Zika virus cases went unreported in Cuba in 2017, according to an analysis of data on travelers to the Caribbean island. Veiling them may have led to many other cases that year." The Cuban government has also failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat. Founded in 1956, New Scientist is the world’s most popular weekly science and technology magazine.

In 1997 when a Dengue epidemic broke out in Cuba the dictatorship tried to cover it up. When a courageous doctor spoke out he was locked up on June 25, 1997 and later sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero as a prisoner of conscience. He was released from prison under condition he go into exile in December of 1998. The regime eventually had to recognize that there had been a dengue epidemic.   

Three of the victims of exposure and hypothermia at Mazorra in 2010

 On January 15, 2010 The New York Times reported the confirmed deaths of at least 20 mental patients at the Psychiatric Hospital in Cuba, known as Mazorra, due to "criminal negligence by a government characterized by its general inefficiency," a day later the Cuban government confirmed that 26 patients had died due to “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees.”

The 2012 cholera outbreak in Cuba offered another opportunity to see how the Cuban public health system operates. The well being of Cubans is not the first item on their agenda. This was demonstrated in it's response. News of the outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to the reporting of the outlawed independent press in the island. Calixto Martinez, the independent Cuban journalist who broke the story was jailed.  The state controlled media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. The BBC reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with Cholera in Havana. The dictatorship stated that it had it under control and on August 28, 2012 said the outbreak was over. A year later on August 22, 2013 Reuters reported that "Cuba was"still struggling with outbreaks in various provinces.

In July 2013 an Italian tourist returned from Cuba with severe renal failure due to Cholera. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists have been identified who have contracted cholera in Cuba.  

Cuba's two tiered and politicized healthcare system

Cuba has a two tiered health care system one tier for the nomenklatura and foreign tourists with hard currency that offers care with modern equipment and fully stocked pharmacies, then there is a second tier which is for the rest  with broken down equipment, run down buildings and rooms, scarce supplies, a lack of hygiene, the denial of certain services and lengthy wait times. Healthcare professionals are poorly paid and lack food.

On December 28, 2017 the Spanish news service EFE reported that the Castro regime had dismantled a network of medical officials and workers who'd adulterated a medicine for children made at the laboratories of the state-owned drug company BioCubaFarma. They replaced the active substance methylphenidate with a placebo substance in the manufacture of the drug marketed as "Ritalin." The active substance was sold on the black market. Nevertheless, The Miami Herald had an article touting the importance of importing drugs from Cuba on December 14th.

The statistics and numbers that the international community has access to with relation to the Cuban healthcare system have been manipulated by the dictatorship. Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 describes how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' she observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights. 

The importance of public health transparency
 Sherri L. Porcelain is an adjunct professor who has taught Global Public Health in World Affairs at the University of Miami for more than 30 years. She wrote an important analysis titled U.S. & Cuba: A Question of Indifference? I could not find this article on the ICCAS web site, found it initially at Professor Suchlicki's Cuba Studies Institute, but it is no longer online. This is troubling and what Dr. Porcelain's analysis reveals is disturbing.

"Investment in the health of people includes protecting human rights. This means allowing the health community to speak out and not to be jailed for releasing information about a dengue epidemic considered a state secret, or not sharing timely data on a cholera outbreak until laboratory confirmation of travelers returning from Cuba arrive home with a surprising diagnosis. This causes me to reflect upon my personal interviews where the remaining vigor of public health actions in Cuba exists to fight vector and water borne diseases. Sadly, however, health professionals are directed to euphemistically use the vague terms of febrile illness in place of dengue and gastrointestinal upset for cholera, in contradiction to promoting public health transparency."

Let us hope that this myth of the Castro regime being a health care super power be debunked before any more foreign patients or tourists are negatively impacted or that policy makers in other countries seek to follow Nicholas Kristof's advice and copy the disastrous system in the island. 

Copying the existing healthcare system in Cuba in the United States would lead to more deaths of both infants and adults, but we would never hear about it, because the bureaucracy would cover it up with inflated numbers of how great the healthcare system is. Dissatisfied patients and family members would fear retaliation if they questioned their health outcomes.

The fruits of impunity: Canadian and American diplomats seriously harmed in Cuba

"The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity."- Cicero

Canada's embassy in Havana, Cuba. 

Canadian diplomats who were stationed in Cuba suffered permanent harm, including brain injuries and are complaining that they have been abandoned by Ottawa.  A dozen embassy staff and their family members, including eight adults and four children were harmed. According to The Globe and Mail this represents a third of the embassy staff. 

Twenty-five US embassy workers in Cuba were affected by mysterious health incidents that began in the autumn of 2016 along with their Canadian counterparts.

There is a question if the Castro regime is behind the attacks, but there is no question that the Cuban government is supposed to guarantee the safety of diplomats on their territory. They have failed, and with their elaborate secret police network, their claim of ignorance as to what is taking place is met with skepticism. 

Over the past decade the Cuban government has not been held accountable before an international human rights body since the independent human rights expert on Cuba was removed in a Faustian deal to "save" the UN Human Rights Council in 2007.

Since then the human rights situation in Cuba has worsened and the dictatorship acts with impunity. Opposition dissident leaders have been murdered.

Now diplomats at two embassies have suffered serious injuries, and Cuban diplomats organized an act of repudiation at the United Nations to shut down a parallel event organized by United States diplomats.

Journal of the American Medical Association: 21 U.S. Embassy Staff in Cuba had concussion-like symptoms

The mystery deepens and the injuries are serious.

U.S. Embassy in Havana

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a preliminary report on February 15, 2018 and an accompanying editorial studying health impacts on 21 U.S. government employees in Havana between December 2016 and August 2017. These individuals had severe injuries and the bottom line on medical findings are that:

Concussion-like symptoms were observed in U.S. government personnel in Cuba after they reported hearing intensely loud sounds in their homes and hotel rooms and feeling changes in air pressure caused by an unknown source. The symptoms were consistent with brain injury although there was no history of head trauma.

Castro regime officials on October of 2017 said talk of acoustic strikes was “science fiction” and accused Washington of “slander.” investigating U.S. complaints of attacks that sickened American diplomats in Havana. Denials later in October and their narrative was that the alleged noise behind the “sonic attacks” was coming from cicadas and crickets. Cuban scientists convened by the government argued that the symptoms were the product of a "mass psychogenic illness"(MPI). However the JAMA report said MPI was unlikely because some of the individuals had no idea others had been affected and it "is often associated with transient, benign symptoms with rapid onset and recovery often beginning with older individuals.”

Last month on January 9, 2018 the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the subject of the 2016-2017 attacks on U.S. diplomats and dependents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Senator Menendez asked when officials became aware that brain trauma was involved and Dr. Charles Rosenfarb, of the Medical Director for the Bureau of Medical Services, responded that the first patient was medically evacuated on February 6, 2017 and over the next two months evacuated 40 people.

Some Canadian diplomats were also impacted. The regime in Cuba has a long track record of outlaw behavior against foreign diplomats, but this would be an escalation. This also raises the question if concessions towards the Castro regime between 2014 and 2017 worsen the dictatorship's behavior?

The Journal of the American Medical Association

JAMA concludes that "[t]he unique circumstances of these patients and the clinical manifestations detailed in this report raise concern about a new mechanism for possible acquired brain injury from an exposure of unknown origin."

This is not to be taken lightly.

Senate Subcommittee to hold hearing on 24 U.S. government officials and spouses attacked in Havana, Cuba in 2016-2017

The mystery continues and answers are needed.

U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba

 Senator Marco Rubio will be presiding over a public hearing titled "Attacks on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba: Response and Oversight" at the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues on January 9, 2018 at 10:00am. There are numerous questions that have not been answered but there is one fact that has been established that is disturbing. Twenty four U.S. government officials and their spouses based in Havana were the victims of 50 attacks between November of 2016 and September of 2017 that caused serious harm.

It’s a documented FACT that 24 U.S. govt officials & spouses were victims of some sort of sophisticated attack while stationed in Havana 1/3

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 7, 2018

 It is also known that Canadian diplomats were also impacted and their diplomatic cables were describing the incidents as attacks, months before the U.S. publicly acknowledged them, on April 26, 2017. CBS News reported on these newly declassified cables on January 6, 2018.

This is bad timing for Senator Jeff Flake, who has worked for years in pushing normalized relations with the Castro regime, who on January 5, 2018 tried to spin that there was "no evidence of  a sonic attack." Whether sonic or not, the fact remains that two dozen American government officials and their dependents have been harmed.

The Associated Press reported on January 5, 2018 in an interview with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the danger to diplomats is not over in Havana:

Tillerson said he's not convinced that what he calls the "deliberate attacks" are over. He defended his September decision to order most U.S. personnel and their relatives to leave Cuba and said he won't reverse course until Cuba's government assures they'll be safe.
"I'd be intentionally putting them back in harm's way. Why in the world would I do that when I have no means whatsoever to protect them?" Tillerson told the AP on Jan. 5. "I will push back on anybody who wants to force me to do that."

Four months earlier on October 12, 2017 White House Chief of Staff John Kelly stated, "[w]e believe that the Cuban government could stop the attacks on our diplomats."

How did we get to this dismal point in U.S. - Cuba relations?

On December 17, 2014 President Barack Obama claimed that the previous U.S. - Cuba policy of containment had been static and not achieved anything, but the new policy not only coincided with a rise in repression in Cuba, the deaths of high profile dissidents, but also this insidious attack on U.S. diplomats.

News reporting indicates that beginning in November 2016 U.S. diplomats suffered injuries to their health following odd sounds being directed at them. The story did not go public until August 9, 2017 when CBS Radio was going to break the story leaked by angry victims, who believed that not enough had been done, and that the State Department was ignoring their suffering.

Last year on January 2, 2017 Cuban troops marched in a parade over which Castro presided chanting that they would repeatedly shoot President Obama, the first African-American president, in the head so many times that they would make a “hat of lead to the head.”  

In September of 2017, it was announced that non-essential U.S. personnel would be evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Prior to December 2014, a fully staffed U.S. Interests Section (an embassy all but in name) in Havana had been doing a lot of good work in Cuba since 1977. There is now a skeleton crew.



 

Did State Department downplaying attacks on diplomats in Cuba endanger others?

The plot thickens... U.S. and Canadian diplomats harmed. French now testing their diplomats in Havana to see if they have also suffered injuries.

Diplomat woke up in a Havana hotel to a grinding, blaring cacophony. Moved a few feet noise stopped

 The Daily Mail headline today declared "Damning evidence Cuba's launched a sci-fi sonic weapon at America: How 21 US diplomats were hit by hearing and memory loss - and even mild brain damage - after suspicious attack." More disturbing is the allegation raised by CBS News that the U.S. State Department hid what was going on from Congress and the American people. In the fall of 2016 U.S. diplomats began to complain of "mild" traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing and/or memory loss. In May of 2017 two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States over the matter, but it was not made known until August 9, 2017.

Now CBS says that the State Department "only admitted the attacks were occurring after CBS News Radio first reported them August 9." According to the news agency an "internal Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs document obtained by CBS News shows the State Department was fully aware of the extent of the attacks on its diplomats in Havana, Cuba, long before it was forced to acknowledge them." Now the number of American diplomats and dependents injured stands at 21. Five Canadian diplomats and their families were also harmed. Now France has tested its own diplomatic staff in Havana for potential sonic injuries.

Worse yet "experts" such as Fulton Armstrong with a track record of "minimizing Cuba’s ability to threaten U.S. interests and its continued support to terrorists" are engaged in downplaying this latest outrage. What goes unmentioned is that under international law as described below by the International Court of Justice put it in the case of US Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran (paras 38-40):

[t]here is no more fundamental prerequisite for the conduct of relations between States than the inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies . . . [T]he institution of diplomacy, with its concomitant privileges and immunities, has withstood the test of centuries and proved to be an instrument essential for effective co-operation in the international community, and for enabling States, irrespective of their differing constitutional and social systems, to achieve mutual understanding and to resolve their differences by peaceful means . . . [and] the inviolability of consular premises and archives, are similarly principles deep-rooted in international law…

The Castro regime has failed to maintain the "inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies" in this matter but also has a decades long history of engaging in the wholesale violation of this international norm.  Former Canadian ambassador to Cuba James Bartleman described events that occurred midway during his  (1981 – 1983) posting: “[h]is family dog was poisoned, a trade officer had a dead rat nailed to their door and the embassy started receiving threatening phone calls.”  U.S. diplomat Robin Meyers was subjected to cars being used against her as weapons in Cuba in February of 1996. In 2006 The Miami Herald reported how a high-ranking member of the U.S. mission found his mouthwash replaced with urine. In another case, after one diplomat’s family privately discussed their daughter’s susceptibility to mosquito bites, “they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes.”  American diplomats, like their Canadian counterparts, have also had pets poisoned while stationed in Cuba. 

This is an outlaw regime with a track record that should not be ignored, especially when doing so is leading to diplomats and their families being seriously physically harmed.   The logical question that arises is a disturbing one: Did State Department lack of response and downplaying of attacks on US diplomats and their families in Cuba lead to more being harmed?

The State Department knew since November 2016 that American diplomats were being harmed in these attacks, but didn't make it public until August 9, 2017 when CBS News broke the story. On December 7, 2016 the United States and Cuba held their fifth Bilateral Commission meeting where they celebrated progress on U.S.-Cuba relations, and according to the Miami Herald signed "11 non-binding agreements on health, the environment, counter-narcotics, and other areas of cooperation." No word on attacks against diplomats. They would continue until August 2017. Cuban officials say they don't know whats going on. This matter should have been raised earlier.
 

Why possibility of Castro regime harming U.S. and Canadian diplomats should not be a surprise

The Castro regime is an outlaw regime. 

Canadian Embassy in Havana, Cuba

Today, another shoe dropped, the Associated Press reported that Canadian government said that at least one Canadian diplomat in Cuba has also been treated for hearing loss. "Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Brianne Maxwell said Canadian officials 'are aware of unusual symptoms affecting Canadian and US diplomatic personnel and their families in Havana.'" Spokesperson Heather Nauert in a State Department briefing yesterday revealed that two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States on May 23, 2017 in response to "incidents in Cuba." According to U.S. officials five U.S. diplomats were targeted by a "sonic weapon" that led to "severe hearing loss" that led to some of them canceling their tours and returning early to the United States.

Cuban state security agents have "pilfered car parts, slashed tires and smashed car windows" of U.S. diplomats in Havana and left "unwelcome 'messages' like urine and feces deposited in their homes." The reaction of disbelief and surprise in the media to this news story is shocking and reflected in the tweet below:

The State Dept made no sense at all on this today. But if the source quoted in this AP story is right, this is nuts:https://t.co/30oCqLnWc5

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) August 9, 2017

The government of Cuba is an outlaw regime that has a record of not only mistreating Cubans but also engaging in actions against others that should also raise concerns. The use of a "sonic weapon" would be something new, but attempting to harm a diplomat is not. U.S. diplomat Robin Meyers was subjected to cars being used against her as weapons in Cuba on February 23-24, 1996. Former Canadian ambassador to Cuba James Bartleman told The Globe and Mail today that he was "not surprised by this week’s reports, given his experience as envoy from 1981 to 1983. Halfway through his posting, a series of strange events occurred: His family dog was poisoned, a trade officer had a dead rat nailed to their door and the embassy started receiving threatening phone calls. Fed up, he called out the Cuban government."

Consider some of what the Castro regime has been doing in recent years:

• In 2012 there were reports in the media of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials meeting in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States 
• Caught smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition in violation of UN international sanctions to North Korea on July 15, 2013. A 2014 United Nations report revealed that 240 tons of weapons hidden under bags of sugar in 25 standard shipping containers (16 forty-foot and 9 twenty-foot) and 6 trailers that included surface to air missile systems, dismantled Cuban MiGs, and "some of the ... parts could also meet the criteria defined in the list of ... technology related to ballistic missile programmes."
• The Castro regime was again linked to international drug trafficking this time with client state Venezuela on January 27, 2015.  The Cuban dictatorship has been engaged with drug trafficking rings for at least four decades. 
• The Cuban government also helps orchestrate an immigration fraud network through Venezuela that has smuggled radical Islamists into North America, reported in the Center for a Secure Free Society’s “Canada on Guard” report.
• In 2014 an inert US Hellfire missile sent to Europe for a training exercise ended up in Cuba. At the time in secret negotiations, to normalize relations, the United States repeatedly asked the Cuban dictatorship to return the missile but did not until a month after it became public in January of 2016.  
• Castro was again caught smuggling heavy weapons and ammunition through Colombia that are the same kind used by communist guerrillas in that country on February 28, 2015. 
• In April of 2016 the Castro regime was caught "red handed" by Panamanian officials with 882 pounds of cocaine on a Cuban freighter bound for Belgium.
• Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials are assisting the Maduro regime to further consolidate power to entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. The OAS Secretary General described it last month as "being like an occupation army." 

Cuban intelligence agents who have murdered nonviolent dissidents and engaged in promoting terrorism abroad are more than capable of harming diplomats and should not be a surprise. What is shocking is that many journalists are and should know better. Then again looking at what has happened with the shuttering of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami to get along with the Castro regime we should also not be surprised at the ignorance about the nature of the dictatorship in Cuba.

Castro regime releases Canadian executive but keeps $100 million in company assets

Profits for me and high risks for you

Cy Tokmakjian: Left Canadian taxpayers holding a 100 million tab

Reuters, AP, and CBC are reporting that Canadian automobile executive Cy Tokmakjian is back home in Canada after spending three years unjustly imprisoned in Cuba and following a show trial on September 28, 2014 in which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. (He is not the only Western executive to undergo the experience). 

Reuters also reported that:

[the Castro regime] seized about $100 million worth of company assets including bank accounts, inventory and office supplies, a ruling the company was challenging in international arbitration.
No immediate reason was given for the sudden release of Tokmakjian, whom Cuba had previously hailed as a model business partner over 20 years for supplying crucial transportation equipment during a severe economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 According to the Associated Press:

Tokmakjian family says his prosecution was an excuse to seize his Ontario-based Tokmakjian Group's $100 million in assets in Cuba.

Taxpayer dollars underwrite Canada's trade with Cuba. Peter Foster in The Financial Post on September 30, 2014 concluded his OpEd stating, "let’s also stop taxpayer backing for Cuban trade and investment. And let’s hope all those Canadian tourists who flock to Cuba every year give a passing thought to what their dollars are supporting."

The Tokmakjian reaped took the risk and reaped the benefits for 20 years and when the Castro regime pulled the plug, its Canadian taxpayers assuming the risk and left holding the bag.

This is the formula agri-business and the Chamber of Commerce want for US companies involved in US-Cuba trade but prefer that US taxpayers learn about it after the fact.

What the Associated Press left out of its story on Cuba Trade and the US Embargo

What Agribusiness and the Castro regime prefer you did not know: 1. How American agri-business and members of Congress signed "advocacy contracts" in exchange for the purchase of exports and became lobbyists for the dictatorship. 2. How Castro dictatorship stopped making payments to trading partners of what they owed in order to buy billions in U.S. exports during the Bush years.

Associated Press coverage of Cuba over the past few years has been a source of controversy with well founded claims of bias. On January 5, 2014 a new episode unfolded with the article by Michael Weissenstein "Figures show US-Cuba trade hit decade low last year." The first paragraph blames "long standing barriers to trade" but the second paragraph states:

The statistics from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council show that U.S. farmers sold slightly more than $253 million worth of food and agricultural products to Cuba in the first 10 months of 2014. If the last two months of the year reflect similar sales levels, 2014 could be the worst year for U.S. exports to Cuba since 2004.

What is not mentioned in the article is that the peak years of the Castro regime purchasing U.S. food and agricultural products was during the Bush Administration. In August of 2008 the Cuban dictatorship said that the United States was its fifth leading trade partner. With the entrance of the Obama Administration in 2009 and its policy of loosening Bush era restrictions trade between the two countries has been consistently lower.

Furthermore it should come as know surprise that the collapse in trade coincided with the secret negotiations between the Obama Administration and the Castro dictatorship because it no longer needed to buy influence.  For the regime in Cuba trade is a political instrument that answers to the interests of the dictatorship and this also applies to the companies doing business with it.

The Castro regime used openings in trade from the Clinton era (medical products in 1992 and agricultural products in 2000)  to build up a pro-Castro lobby and to target congressional districts in agricultural states to advance its interests. The dictatorship accomplished this by purchasing American exports and requiring U.S. corporations and members of Congress to sign "advocacy contracts" that turned them into lobbyists for the dictatorship as a condition of the Castro regime buying their goods. News of this practice broke a decade ago in USA Today and in The Miami Herald but goes unmentioned in the Associated Press article. The Miami Herald in a October 5, 2004 editorial described this practice as "peddling influence for a communist state" and said that those engaged in the practice "should be required to register as agents of a foreign government."

John Kavulich, who was the head of the above mentioned U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council until 2005 explained in 2003 the significance of these "advocacy agreements" stating: ''These agreements are a corruption of the commercial process,'' ... ``Once you include an advocacy clause, they're no longer commercial agreements; they're political documents.''

In the current Associated Press piece Paul Johnson, vice-chairman of the newly formed U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba is quoted saying: "Our products can't compete with Brazil, Argentina, the EU and China because of the credit issue."

However at the same time the Associated Press makes no mention of Argentina seeking repayment in the past of 1.3 billion dollars it is owned by the Castro regime or the dictatorship's call for 75% of its debt with Argentina to be written off. No mention that in 2013 Mexico waived 70% of the 487 million dollar debt it is owed by the Castro regime. No mention that Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, France, Romania, Brazil, and Italy are owed billions of dollars. No mention that Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it. No mention that Canadians have had to pursue Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts. No mention that on April 23, 2014 Moody's Investor Service downgraded Cuba's already poor credit rating to Caa2 from Caa1 which Nasdaq defines as follows: "Obligations rated Caa2 are judged to be of poor standing and are subject to very high credit risk." 

How is it that all these countries have "normal" commercial relations  with Cuba and extended the Castro regime credit are owed billions while the United States over this period has been paid in cash five billion dollars? The answer is simple and one that should caution American taxpayers: it was a political consideration by the Castro regime.

James Prevor, President and Editor in Chief of the publication Produce Business in October of 2002 in the article, Cuba Caution, reported on how Cuba "had exhausted all its credit lines and, at best, was simply rotating the accounts. When the opportunity came to buy from the United States, Cuba simply abandoned all those suppliers who supported the country for 40 years and began buying from us."  The suppliers were not the ones impacted by Cuba's failure to pay its debts, the taxpayers of the suppliers' home countries were the one's left holding the tab. The reason $5 billion dollars entered the coffers of American agribusiness while costing other countries billions is the existence of the US embargo.

Darío Fernández-Morera an associate professor at North Western University in the May 1, 2014 issue of Chronicles in the article The Cost of Normalization reports that the Small Business Exporters Association announced 

"since March 2009, a select group of commercial banks now will be able to offer terms of 180 days to five years on federally-guaranteed loans to the foreign buyers of U.S. exports without having to obtain prior federal approval.  ... Because of the foreign risks involved  in export lending, most commercial banks through-out the world do not make these loans without government guarantees. In the U.S., the guarantees are provided by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), a federal agency.

Twelve years ago Prevor predicted where things have now arrived in the Cuba policy debate as far as Agro-business is concerned:

But what the really big grain traders want is to sell to Cuba on credit - and get those credits provided or guaranteed by various federal loan programs. In effect, these agribusiness behemoths want to sell to Cuba and have the U.S. tax- payer pick up the tab. And their bet is that once produce shippers have gotten a taste of the business, they will become a kind of Amen corner for the Cuban lobby, pushing Congress to approve whatever laws will be to the liking of the Cuban government. This really brings to the forefront why trade with a communist country poses unique dangers to a democratic society.

The decline in the Castro regime's purchase of American exports during the Obama Administration is a sign of what is to come if agribusiness gets its way and the US government lifts sanctions and provides credits for trading with the Castro dictatorship. The United States will be just like everyone else subsidizing the Castro regime through its export import bank and trying to figure how to recover what it is owed. It is easy to understand why so many countries are upset about the U.S. embargo on Cuba. It has protected U.S. taxpayers while leading the Castro regime to ignore its obligations with other countries while buying up US agricultural exports in an effort to influence US politics.