Protests in Cuba: A tale of tyranny in three acts.

Hotel Santa Clara Libre on Oct 2nd at 8:33pm only bldg with electricity. Source: Yad

Act I: The storm hits, and Cuban hotels quickly recover power and return to business as normal. Rest of the island in darkness. Protests break out in Cuba. 

Hurricane Ian over Cuba on September 26, 2022

 

Category 3 Hurricane Ian battered the west of Cuba on September 26th, and an already crumbling national electrical grid collapsed leaving Cubans without electricity. 

The entire island of Cuba went black without electricity. Not just the Western part that was impacted by Hurricane Ian.  

Cuba seen from space on September 27, 2022 after Hurricane Ian.

However GAESA's hotels continued to have electricity and were promoting tourism to the island in the aftermath of the storm on September 29th.

The Hotel Nacional of Cuba reported on September 29th over Twitter that all services were "available to our guests." They added that "some of the clients have even joined in cleaning and tidying up the outdoor areas."

Diaz-Canel prior to fleeing from Cubans.

Reports of protests emerged across Cuba on September 29th. Diaz-Canel fled from an encounter with Cuban citizens in Batabanó. Cubans repudiated the selected Cuban President, and his convoy sped out of the area. 

Why are Cubans upset? Whereas hotels across the island are already operating normally, most Cubans are still in the dark without electricity. Food has already been hard to come by due to the Cuban dictatorship's internal blockade, and whatever meager amounts they have are rotting. 

Yes, Cubans are protesting the incompetence of the regime. They are protesting the failure to maintain the infrastructure, and provide proper maintenance to the electrical grid. However, they are also calling for an end to the dictatorship and for freedom.

Act II: Protests expand across Cuba, and secret police, paramilitaries mobilize and travel to crackdown on demonstrations. 

The Wall Street Journal reporters Vivian Salama and José de Córdoba broke the story that the Biden Administration had “received a rare request from Cuba’s government  to provide emergency assistance” and that “the U.S. was still trying to determine  whether the government in Havana would supplement the request as it  works to determine the extent of the damage, according to the email communications.”

Civil society groups expressed concern that the Castro regime had a record of seizing and reselling humanitarian assistance, and called on the Biden Administration to provide humanitarian assistance directly to the Cuban people, or through independent civil society organizations and religious groups. 

On September 30, 2022 the Center received reports of an expanded military presence in the streets in the neighborhoods of Arroyo, Cerro, and Guinera in Havana. Cubalex, the Cuban human rights NGO that provides legal assistance to Cubans, shared an image of a street lined with police cars.

Andrea Rodriguez, the AP correspondent in Cuba, reported  that "an Associated Press journalist saw a total of about 400 people gathered in at least two spots in the Cerro neighborhood shouting, “We
want light, we want light,” and banging pots and pans."

14ymedio reported on September 30th that the Castro regime had "cut off internet access on the evening of September 29th after protests continued in some parts of the capital. Demonstrations continued in Cerro and Arroyo Naranjo, another protest began in San Francisco de Paula, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padron." 

Newsweek journalist Jack Dutton reported at 4:10am on September 30th that "people in Cuba have been protesting for 48 hours, according to multiple media reports, after the power went out due to Hurricane Ian and the internet has also reportedly been cut. Early on Friday, internet shutdown monitor NetBlocks.org posted on Twitter, showing a near total collapse of internet traffic from the Caribbean island."

The Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in a Twitter thread called on the international community to support the Cuban people and called on the Cuban government to respect the rights of Cuban protesters. "There must not be a repeat of police and paramilitaries firing on unarmed civilians to terrorize populace as was done in July 2021," admonished CFC. 

⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show internet has been cut in #Cuba for the second evening in a row; metrics show a collapse in connectivity after 8 p.m. local time amid protests over poor conditions and power cuts worsened by Hurricane Ian 📉 #CubaPaLaCalle pic.twitter.com/YDJ6ZsTjwX

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) October 1, 2022

Cubans continued to protest over the next three nights, despite the internet being shut down by the dictatorship the past two nights across the island while regime agents were mobilized in large numbers, and cracked down on demonstrators. Human rights organizations are trying to compile lists of those arrested and/or disappeared.

Act III:  Reports emerge of Cubans beaten bloody by government agents in regime dress. Mass arrests, and international press claims that protests have diminished, but reports from Havana say different.

Military in civilian dress knocks down black Cuban woman protester.

Reports emerge, along with images and video of regime agents carrying baseball bats, and clubs that protesters have been badly beaten: faces smashed in, broken noses. 

"Explicit testimony about repression in Calle Línea (Havana). Mentions several people badly beaten, [Justicia11J] has only been able to identify among them José Adalberto Fernández Cañizares, who needed care at the Calixto García hosp before being transferred to a detention center."

Video also emerges of regime agents carrying clubs and chanting "I am Fidel" through city streets to intimidate Cubans. 

 Other videos appear of what appear to be the unconscious bodies of demonstrators carried away by regime agents. It is also learned that Cubans video taping protests, and repressive acts are being rounded up and arbitrarily detained.

Coda: Hotels could have opened their doors to Cubans in need, and defused a volatile situation.

The Miami Herald reported on September 27th that "on Monday [September 26th], several prominent Cubans and Cuban Americans signed a petition asking the heads of Meliá Hotels International, Iberostar, Kempinski, NH Hotel Group and other foreign hotel chains operating in Cuba to 'make room for Cuban families, most of them with children, who will be left destitute and homeless as a result of Ian.' During natural disasters in the United States, when public shelters have been overwhelmed, hotels have been used as a temporary housing solution.

Cuban activist Rosa María Payá, musician Paquito de Rivera, Modesto Maidique, former president of Florida International University, and the Reverend Jose Conrado of the Parish of Trinidad in Cuba, led the appeal."

Seven days later, and no response has been received from these hotels.

Cubans and Cuban Americans have requested a humanitarian corridor to get assistance directly to Cubans in need on the island, and circumvent profiteering by Castro's military junta.

 

Will Castro regime use new internet censorship law to target Cuban doctors who spoke out on public health system collapse in Cuba?

 Providing some context to a troubling question.

Castro's PM Marrero tried to scapegoat Cuban doctors, but they pushed back

Earlier version found here.

Frances Robles reporting in The New York Times described how "after Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, said that Cubans were complaining more about doctors and their poor service than they were about the shortages ... nearly two dozen young physicians and medical students took to social media to state, one by one: “I am publicly declaring that doctors are not to blame for the collapse of the public health system.”

Sarah Marsh of Reuters described it as a "rare public denunciation of conditions in the island's hallowed health care system" and made reference to consequences for speaking out critically, but did not provide a specific example. 

There are more than one. Here are three well documented cases of doctors who spoke out. The first being abroad didn't suffer consequences. Two others were not so lucky.

Ernesto Londoño reported on September 29, 2017 in The New York Times that "scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a 'form of slave labor.'" Further on in the same article appears the following powerful quote. “When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” said Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez, one of the doctors who filed suit. “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.” 

Dr. Omar del Pozo

Dr Omar del Pozo, a 47-year-old physician and prisoner of conscience, was imprisoned in 1992 and sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence in Combinado del Este Prison for “revealing state secrets”. Amnesty International in 1997 expressed "concern that according to the latest reports his health has deteriorated and in addition to suffering from high blood pressure, apical abscesses, a stomach ulcer and heart and kidney problems, he is also suffering from malnutrition. He is reported to have received harsh treatment and lack of medical treatment in prison."  

Desi Mendoza Rivero, a 43-year-old doctor and father of four children, was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in connection with his critique of the authorities' handling of a dengue fever epidemic in Cuba in 1997. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience, and eventually he was able to leave prison for forced exile in Spain.

Doctors speaking out today, like Dr. del Pozo, and Dr. Mendoza Rivero in the past, risk prison sentences for what they have done.  

Giving voice to "fake news" in Cuba, disseminating it, publishing offensive messages or defamations that harm "the prestige of the country" are now a crime. The Castro regime with its own history of propagating fake news decides who is "guilty" of it over social media. This new decree issued by the dictatorship entered into force today, Wednesday, August 18, 2021. Decree-Law 35 penalizes "ethical and social" harm done "or incidents of aggression " on social media, reported 14ymedio yesterday. The text entering into force was approved back on April 13, 2021, but the content was not known until Tuesday, August 17, 2021 noted 14ymedio.

Among its novelties, this ministerial decree contains the "classification of incidents of cybersecurity and their level of dangerousness", such as the "dissemination of false news, offensive messages, defamation with an impact on the prestige of the country." The level of dangerousness is classified as "high" in Annex II taken from the regime's Gaceta Oficial and reproduced below.

The claims made in the media that Decree-Law 35 is the first cybersecurity law passed in Cuba are wrong. This is the latest Decree passed to restrict speech on the internet, with some new elements but not the first. Decree 370 issued by the Cuban government on July 4, 2019 threatens fines and imprisonment for any Cubans expressing themselves over the internet in a manner that the authorities find objectionable. The decree also prohibits foreign web hosting while law existing prior to Decree 370 already prohibited critical content on domestic servers. Less than a year later on May 6, 2020 over forty national and international NGOs signed a joint statement denouncing the consequences of Decree 370.

Although repression of freedom of expression and freedom of press has been long-standing and systematic, the current wave of repression has been intensified by the application of Legal Decree 370 “ON THE COMPUTERIZATION OF CUBAN SOCIETY,” in force since July 4, 2019. At least 30 people have been subjected to interrogation, threats, and seizure of work equipment (especially that of journalists) for broadcasting their opinions on social media, 20 have been victims of 3,000-peso fines (120 US dollars), an amount triple the average monthly salary. Failure to pay these fines constitutes a crime punishable by six months in prison, a systematic approach that has enabled the Cuban State to sentence 7 civil society actors who are currently in prison.

The totalitarian nature of repression in Cuba has not changed in decades nor the efforts of the dictatorship to ever perfect their panopticon on a national scale. What changed was the spontaneous protest of tens of thousands of Cubans across more than 50 cities and towns, knowing what awaited them, shouting that they were not afraid, down with the dictatorship, down with communism and homeland and life. The brutal and violent response by the dictatorship that still continues and is reflected in this new legislation is not new, but the widespread resistance to it is.

The future of these Cuban doctors who spoke out will depend in large part to the vigilance of the international community, and the response of Cubans on the island.

Repression is not new, but the refusal of Cubans to continue tolerating it is. Witnessing the events across Cuba that began on July 11, 2021 with a national cry of defiance that brought to mind the words of Frederick Douglass: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Exposing the Castro regime's record of not reporting epidemics, and when an attack backfires

Engaging in the conversation over the human rights situation in Cuba leads to ad hominem attacks against ones character, in order to avoid a substantive conversation of the facts presented and the arguments put forward. 

Yesterday, The Washington Post published a letter to the editor on the important topic of the regime in Cuba covering up past epidemics and punishing whistleblowers with prison, and tweeted it out upsetting some folks. The letter is reproduced below.

The Washington Post, April 5, 2021

Letters to the Editor

Opinion: Cuba’s powerhouse status comes through repression

April 5, 2021 at 4:35 p.m. EDT

Patient receives Sputnik V vaccine dose against Covid-19 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)

The March 31 news article “Cuba could become a vaccine powerhouse” pointed out that Havana wants to soften its image as a “broadly authoritarian country” that has done “some pretty bad things.” Cuban doctors and journalists who raised the alarm in prior outbreaks on the island were locked up and punished.

Desi Mendoza Rivero was arrested on June 25, 1997, for warning about a dengue epidemic in Cuba. On Nov. 24, 1997, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for “enemy propaganda.” Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience and campaigned for his freedom. Dr. Rivero’s claims were eventually confirmed, and he was forcibly exiled.

On Sept. 2, 2016, the Associated Press reported that Cuba had “remarkable success in containing Zika virus.” On Jan. 8, 2019, New Scientist reported the whole story when the facts became known: “Cuba failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases in 2017.”

Repression patterns during this pandemic in Cuba indicate officials seek to downplay covid-19’s severity on the island. According to Duane Gubler at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, “Cuba has a history of not reporting epidemics until they become obvious,” and that is pretty bad.

John Suarez, Falls Church

The writer is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/cubas-powerhouse-status-comes-through-repression/2021/04/05/5956ab80-93c6-11eb-aadc-af78701a30ca_story.html

 

Cuba’s powerhouse status comes through repression, writes @johnjsuarez https://t.co/YZsDVTx84U #PostLetters

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) April 6, 2021

This led to attacks against the author, including for being formerly of Freedom House, raising questions about the organization because it has received public funds. It is a ridiculous argument, because the organization has also been critical of the U.S. government and human rights deficits in the United States.

Anti-Nazi, Anti-Communist, Pro-Freedom org founded 1941

On May 30, 2006, The New York Times announced the death of one of the founders of Freedom House, George Field, and in the obituary revealed the pedigree of this human rights and pro-democracy organization.

"George Field, who fought isolationism, Fascism, Communism, racism, McCarthyism, anti-Semitism and other extremisms for three decades as the guiding spirit behind Freedom House, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to democracy and human rights, died Friday in Kennett Square, Pa. He was 101."

It is ironic that Castro regime apologists question the bonafides of Freedom House, but not surprising because they have done the same to Amnesty International in the past. Meanwhile conservatives are upset with Freedom House because it has also viewed with a critical eye Western Democracies, including the United States.

Civil rights icon Bayard Rustin was called by some "the unknown hero" of the civil rights movement. He was a "tireless crusader for justice, a disciple of [Mohandas] Gandhi, a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and the architect of the legendary [1963] March on Washington." Rustin debated Malcolm X in 1962 from both a principled and strategic nonviolent position and would go on to play an important role at Freedom House.

It is doubly ironic because of Soviet Communism's and Castroism's alliances with Nazism and embrace of antisemitism and other extremisms to create new levels of misery for those unlikely enough to fall under their rule.

Sorry, but the fight against tyranny, racism, and other bigotries over the past 80 years beginning in 1941, the same year that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union began still allied together to conquer the rest of the world imposing the perpetual darkness of totalitarianism, and Freedom House came into existence to resist both of them, and their ideologies on October 31, 1941.

Being linked to Freedom House is high praise, now defending the Castro regime on the other hand is shameful.

 

 

 

 

What the Castro regime has been covering up about brain damaged diplomats in Havana

 This letter to the editor was published in The Washington Post on October 30, 2020.

 

Letters to the Editor

 

Opinion

Cuba has a long history of using sonic weapons

 The U.S. flag at the U. S. Embassy in Havana on Aug. 14, 2014. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

October 30, 2020

The Oct. 26 editorial “Another invisible enemy” was correct when it called for the perpetrators of sonic attacks on Americans in Cuba to be identified, Americans protected and a proper response delivered, but too many are quick to believe the claims from Cuban officials that nothing happened and that they had no knowledge of what caused the injuries.

The Castro regime has a history, stretching back decades, of harassing American diplomats such as: killing their pets, trying to run them down or crash into their vehicle and switching out mouthwash with urine. 

Furthermore, on Oct. 18, dissident Cuban artist Tania Bruguera described and recorded a sonic attack that caused her a headache and ear ache that she found difficult to tolerate. Two former Cuban political prisoners, Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez and Luis Zuniga, described at a forum held on Capitol Hill in November 2017 how prison officials used high-pitched sound to cause them physiological harm in 1979. This history and the recent attack against Ms. Bruguera using the same kind of sonic weapon with similar symptoms that had been visited on U.S. diplomats should invite greater scrutiny of Havana.

John Suarez, Falls Church

The writer is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/cuba-has-a-long-history-of-using-sonic-weapons/2020/10/29/ab3155d6-1946-11eb-8bda-814ca56e138b_story.html

 

Rosa María Payá on "Pan con Podcast" interviewed in depth by Chef Michael Beltrán, including the Castro regime's blocking of humanitarian aid

Setting the record straight from the perspective of a new generation.

Rosa María Payá interviewed on Pan con Podcast

Back in June had an article published in Dade magazine on the revolutionary program being advanced today in the United States, and its dangerous history. Today, learned that the same magazine and its podcast, Pan con Podcast, conducted an extensive interview with Cuban pro-democracy activist Rosa María Payá Acevedo.

This is good timing because the Castro regime is pushing its victim narrative again, while hiding its brutal nature. They are complaining because the United States is cutting off currency flows to the Cuban military that is currently in Venezuela, playing a repressive role. In order to push back rather than end the military's involvement in profiting off remittance transfers by Cubans to their families in the island. They are doubling down and shutting down all the Western Union's across the country.

This should not be surprise when one considers that tons of humanitarian aide donated by the Cuban diaspora that arrived in Cuba in August 2020 has still not been released to the Cubans that desperately need this humanitarian assistance. Rosa María Payá Acevedo back in May 2020, together with the CubaDecide initiative, the Pan American Foundation for Democracy,and the City of Miami coordinated efforts for this drive to help Cubans on the island.

More than three months have passed and the communist dictatorship continues to deny this help to Cubans. Please listen to this full interview and share it with others.

Communist Party USA is spreading disinformation spread by the Castro Regime about COVID-19

Communists lie and people die.

Communist Party USA on October 7th was repeating and sharing disinformation spread by the Castro regime about COVID-19 over social media. Journalists in Cuba who attempt to counter the regime narrative with facts are being gagged. Early on in the pandemic in Pinar del Rio on April 13, 2020 video of a body with regime agents expressing concern that the corpse was contaminated with the coronavirus was uploaded to Facebook and was reported on in El Nuevo Herald. Since then the regime has cracked down on citizen journalists, and those uploading images and video that portray the Castro regime in a poor light. 

The statement repeated by CPUSA is false on multiple fronts. First, Castro regime numbers are false but even their number of current active cases, according to Havana, are 482 not 38. The number 38 is for number of new cases claimed by Havana on October 6, 2020. 

Second, there were 105 daily cases in Washington, DC on October 6th compared to 28 cases on the previous day. Overall active cases in DC are 2,671. Metro area population of Washington DC in 2020 is 5,322,000. These numbers are more reliable than what Havana is providing the international community. 

In February 2020 the Castro regime announced that there was a shortage of soap and detergent in Cuba that would not be alleviated until April 2020 or later, due to decisions made by the central planning authorities. This meant that Cubans did not have access to soap to wash their hands for months at the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of travelers from Europe, China, and other areas heavily impacted by the coronavirus had been entering Cuba throughout the early months of the outbreak. For an idea of the magnitude consider that at least 147,900 Italian tourists and 49,781 Chinese tourists traveled to Cuba in 2018 and Cuba's military run tourism industry sought to double the number of Chinese tourists.

SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19

Castro regime officials falsely claimed throughout February and March 2020 that Cuba was a safe harbour with effective treatments for (SARS-CoV-2) virus for visiting tourists.

Officials refused to close schools, or take other precautions, Cubans desperately began to take steps on their own against the pandemic, having learned about it on the internet. Teachers, ignoring the regime's orders, closed schools and sent children home. The Catholic church, aware of the danger presented by public gatherings, suspended religious services. 

Cuba’s independent journalists raised the alarm while the official media insisted that the country was prepared for the epidemic, that tourists were welcomed while the pandemic ran its course elsewhere. Officials said that Cuba’s sun was “a good antidote” and continued to advertise their false claims on social media targeting European and North American audiences.

The claim that Cuba did not have coronavirus in larger numbers under these circumstances was highly unlikely, but then North Korea continued to claim that they has no cases of coronavirus through July 2020, despite having a border with Communist China, where the virus outbreak occurred in Wuhan, and South Korea having 24,422 cases. 

Consider, recent history in Cuba on reporting outbreaks, and the consequences for healthcare professionals and journalists.

Dengue 1997

Dengue virus

In 1997 the Cuban government covered up a dengue outbreak, jailing a Cuban doctor who had gone public for “enemy propaganda.” Amnesty International provided additional detail on what had happened.

Dr  Desi  Mendoza  Rivero,  president of the Santiago  de  Cuba  Independent  Medical  Association, ... had been detained on 25 June 1997 in Santiago de Cuba, after making statements, which were disseminated by foreign media, about an epidemic of dengue fever in Santiago de Cuba  which,  according  to  him,  had  caused  several  deaths.  He  reportedly  accused  the authorities  of  covering  up  the  true  extent  of  the  epidemic  and  of  not  taking  sufficient measures to control it. He was brought to trial on 18 November 1997 and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, charged with "enemy propaganda."

First official report to the World Health Organization of the dengue outbreak was six months after initial identification made by the jailed and later forcibly exiled physician. Mendoza Rivero's reports were eventually confirmed. This episode would have a chilling effect on other doctors coming forward.

Cholera 2012

Cholera

Fifteen years later, news of a cholera outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to the reporting of an independent reporter 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 Cuban government stated that it had it under control and on August 28, 2012 said the outbreak was over.

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 were identified who had contracted cholera in Cuba. On August 22, 2013 Reuters reported that Cuba was still struggling with cholera outbreaks in various provinces.

Zika 2017

Zika virus

In the August 22, 2019 The New York Times article by Carl Zimmer, "Zika Was Soaring Across Cuba. Few Outside the Country Knew", the newspaper tries to shift the blame for an unreported outbreak of zika in Cuba in 2017 on a reporting glitch. This ignored a decades long government pattern of covering up epidemics.

"Until now, the Pan American Health Organization had no record of any Zika infection in Cuba in 2017, much less an outbreak. Following inquiries by The New York Times about the new study, published in the journal Cell, officials acknowledged that they had failed to tally 1,384 cases reported by Cuban officials that year. [...] Officials at P.A.H.O., an arm of the World Health Organization, blamed the failure to publish timely data on the Cuba outbreak on a “technical glitch.” The information was held in a database, they said, but not visible on the website. By Thursday afternoon, the website had been updated."

On August 2, 2017, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published the paper “Why Did Zika Not Explode in Cuba?” citing “Cuba’s early and successful response to Zika, grounded in the country’s long-standing dengue prevention and control program, serves as a model of rapid mobilization of intersectoral efforts.” It also ignored reports that Cuba had jailed doctors and covered up prior epidemics.

News stories of Zika transmissions with a Cuba link should have raised questions. The first case of sexually transmitted Zika reported to the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County on August 1, 2017 was by a person whose partner had returned from Cuba with Zika symptoms.

In January 2019, The New Scientist broke the news 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." 

Relying on Castro regime data on coronavirus cases in the current pandemic is a dangerous proposition both for one’s credibility and for the lives of Cubans and those visiting the island.

Conclusions and recommendations

When travel opens up again will these kind of screening measures be in place to limit the spread of COVID-19 from international travelers especially from governments such as China, North Korea, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba that can not be trusted to give accurate information on outbreaks? 

We are in a new world with the current pandemic and recent history has shown that it is better to be prepared than caught by surprise because other countries and international health agencies have not done their due diligence endangering millions.

Policymakers should look to what Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia have done to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and keep a wide berth from what the Castro regime is doing.  

If  you are interested in the truth then read Katherine Hirschfeld's Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898, to obtain a fresh perspective from an honest academic on the realities of healthcare in Communist Cuba.  

Steer away from communist propaganda. Remember when communists lie, people die. Thanks to the lies of communist China over 1,060,562 people have died of this disease around the world.

Castro regime in Cuba demonstrates the relationship between human rights and property rights

"Human rights are property rights." - Foundation for Economic Education

The decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title III of the LIBERTAD Act, that became effective on May 2, 2019, is good news. This has meant a chance for justice in the courts for property owners who had everything stolen from them by the Castro dictatorship. This is a triumph for human rights, a challenge to the erosion of private property rights, and a right ordering of human rights standards.

Human rights have a conservative pedigree that stretches back to the Middle Ages and to the Catholic Church. The first time in human history that a universal concept of human rights were applied to all living beings on the planet emerged out of a debate concerning the Spanish conquest of the Americas that took place in 1550-51 and is known as the Valladolid debate.

It is important to remember that property rights are human rights. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property."

Universal human rights, and the rule of law, exist in order to protect those without power from the abuse of those who have it and exercise it with impunity. The importance of the protection of private property rights can be seen in the December 29, 2019 OpED by Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal that provides a historical context that also looks at the present day in Cuba.

Thanks to the Trump administration, Americans whose property in Cuba was expropriated by the military dictatorship of Fidel Castro may finally have their day in court. New Year’s Day marks the 61st anniversary of the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. A week later, on Jan. 8, 1959, Castro triumphantly entered Havana. Many Cubans had risked all to unseat Batista with the goal of restoring constitutional government. But Castro sought absolute power. He refused to hold elections and instead launched a purge. There were firing squads, dungeons and exile. Whole communities of peasants in central Cuba—where resistance to the tyranny was strongest—were displaced and sent to concentration camps on the western end of the island. To lock down power, Castro stripped citizens and foreigners alike of their property. State terrorism explains how the regime has survived.

What began to take place in Cuba in 1959 and over the next six decades, was also predicted on a theoretical basis that same year. The end of private property rights coincided with the systematic violation of all human rights, ending in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being considered a subversive document by the Castro regime. Murray Rothbard in his 1959 essay "Human Rights are Property Rights" explained how rights would disappear in a society that did not respect private property rights.

"The human right of every man to his own life implies the right to find and transform resources: to produce that which sustains and advances life. That product is a man’s property. That is why prop­erty rights are foremost among human rights and why any loss of one endangers the others.
For ex­ample, how can the human right of freedom of the press be pre­served if the government owns all the newsprint and has the power to decide who may use it and how much? The human right of a free press depends on the human right of private property in newsprint and in the other es­sentials for newspaper production. In short, there is no conflict of rights here because property rights are themselves human rights. What is more, human rights are also property rights!"

Time, and the courts, will tell but the enforcement of Title III of the LIBERTAD Act will empower and provide those who were expropriated with a chance at justice and the restoration of their private property rights. However, if it does work it will be a game changer in Cuba.

This may turn out to be the most important story about Cuba in 2019.

UNHRC condemns Maduro regime, fact finding mission called for Venezuela, but wider context needed

“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.” - Elie Wiesel

UN Human Rights Council in Geneva condemns Maduro regime.

CubaBrief, September 28, 2019

Good news today from Geneva. The UN Human Rights Council by a vote of 19 in favor, 7 against, and 21 abstentions earlier this afternoon passed a resolution that strongly condemned human rights violations in Venezuela and called for the creation of a fact-finding mission to investigate human rights violations and crimes against humanity that are taking place in Venezuela. Non-governmental organizations had spent years advocating for these measures.

Amnesty calls for looking at Venezuela in a wider context. 

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International welcomed the passage of the resolution. Ms. Guevara-Rosas also urged that "the UN Fact-Finding mission will need to address the wider context in which the policy of state repression takes place."

However both the UN Human Rights Council resolution and the Amnesty International statement fail to mention the negative role Cuban authorities are playing in Venezuela, and this must be taken into account when addressing the "wider context" of what is taking place in Caracas, and in the wider region.

Angus Berwick in the August 22, 2019 Reuters, "Special Report: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent" reported that Havana and Caracas signed two agreements in May 2008, that gave Cuba’s armed forces and intelligence services wide latitude in the South American country to:

• Train soldiers in Venezuela 
• Review and restructure parts of the Venezuelan military 
• Train Venezuelan intelligence agents in Havana 
• And change the intelligence service’s mission from spying on foreign rivals to surveilling the country’s own soldiers, officers, and even senior commanders.

Havana Times reported on December 8, 2018 that the Organization of American States Secretary General, Luis Almagro, "assured that there has been a 'Cuban presence' in tortures committed in Venezuela. 'It is estimated that the Cuban presence in Venezuela is 46,000 people, an occupation force that teaches to torture, to repress, to do intelligence tasks, civil documentation, migration.'"

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro says Cubans in Venezuela are an occupation force.

One cannot analyze the "wider context" in Venezuela without taking the disproportionate and negative role of Havana into account. It is also important to take into consideration the practices of the Castro regime in Cuba with respect to human rights because those practices are being implemented in Venezuela.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists in their 2019 report, Cuba is the tenth most censored country in the world. Over the past sixty years the Castro dictatorship has had hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, and there are still prisoners of conscience in Cuba today. In six decades of absolute rule the communist regime only permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Cuban prisons over the course of a few months in 1988-1989. There have been no visits in the past thirty years.

The human rights crisis in Venezuela today is the result of the international community's tolerance,  of the Castro dictatorship, the grave human rights situation in Cuba, and the delusion that Havana can play a constructive role in resolving the crisis. Havana is not part of the solution in Venezuela, but has been deeply involved in creating the human rights crisis there. The international community should call for Cuban troops and spies to leave Venezuela as a positive step to resolving the situation.

Below is the debate over the resolution on Venezuela that was held at the UN Human Rights Council earlier today.

The New York Times, the Castro regime, and Fake News

"The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power." - William F. Buckley Jr.,  Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations

Yesterday, blogged about the latest example of The New York Times bending over backwards to present the Castro dictatorship in a positive light. However, it is important to provide some historical context.

Beginning in 1957 editorial staff member and journalist Herbert Matthews built up Fidel Castro's image both inside and outside of Cuba with a series of misleading articles in The New York Times. In July 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist." 

Anthony De Palma wrote an important book in 2006 on Herbert Matthews titled, "The Man Who Invented Fidel" that describes how Matthews's heroic portrayal of Fidel Castro influenced the fall of the Batista government and the consolidation of the future dictator as a national figure.

Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo on the Batista regime on March 14, 1958, and the old dictator seeing that Washington was siding with Castro made the decision to abandon power on December 31, 1958.
  
William F. Buckley Jr. in an article in the March 1961 issue of The American Legion magazine outlined the impact of Mr. Matthews on the imposition of communism in Cuba and placed it in a larger context: 

"The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power. It could be said - with a little license - that Matthews was to Castro what Owen Lattimore was to Red China, and that the New York Times was Matthews's Institute of Pacific Relations: stressing this important difference, that no one has publicly developed against Matthews anything like the evidence subsequently turned up against Lattimore tending to show, in the words of a Senate investigating committee, that Lattimore was 'a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy.'"

This was not the first time that The New York Times had a journalist who covered up communist crimes or attempted to portray a communist regime in a positive light.

Nearly ninety years ago Walter Duranty, an employee of The New York Times assisted in covering up the crimes of Josef Stalin. He was the newspaper's man in Moscow, and he repeated Stalinist propaganda and downplayed the atrocities taking place there. Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and decades later the world finally learned that more than 10 million people had died in a genocide in the Ukraine, despite the efforts of the New York Times reporter covering it up. Although Stalin's surviving victims sought to have the prize revoked, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to do it.

Over the next six decades, with a few notable exceptions, The New York Times would continue the tradition established with Herbert Matthews of giving positive coverage to the Castro dictatorship regardless what the facts are on the ground.

When one wonders why less people trust journalists the growing phenomenon of fake news should be looked at as a factor.