21 years without justice for Danish student gunned down in Havana by a soldier

"Why did the soldiers have to fire two shots, one to his body and one to his head, to murder him?" - Christian Løvschall speaking about his son Joachim at the UN Human Rights Council in 2007.

Joachim Løvschall: December 7, 1970 - March 29, 1997

Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty one years ago today on March 29, 1997. The identity of the soldier has never been revealed to Joachim''s family. No one has been brought to justice. Joachim's family is not satisfied with the official explanation.

The last time they saw Joachim 
 
On March 28, 1997 Joachim Løvschall ate his last dinner with white wine in a little restaurant called Aladin, located on 21st street in Havana. He went to the Revolutionary Plaza and bought a ticket to the Cuban National Theater. Following the performance he went to the theater's bar, Cafe Cantate, and met up with two Swedish friends. They each drank a couple of beers, but soon left because Joachim did not like the music. At 23:30, they said good bye to each other on the sidewalk in front of Cafe Cantate. 

Joachim was never seen alive again. 

Joachim Løvschall gunned down in Cuba in 1997

The Castro regime's version of what happened
On September 28, 1997 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an article by Kim Hundevadt titled "Dangerous Vacation" that outlined what happened to Joachim Løvschall and presented the Castro dictatorship's version of the events leading to this young man's death:

Around 23:30, a person matching Joachim Løvschall's description was in a bar named Segundo Dragon d'Oro. The bar lies in the hopeless part of town, around the Revolutionary Plaza which is dominated by ministry and other official buildings of harsh concrete architecture, and lies empty in at night.
At 2:45am he left the bar, after becoming intoxicated. Around 20 minutes later, he was walking down the Avenue Territorial, behind the Defense Ministry.
Joachim Løvschall walked, according to the Cuban authorities, first on the sidewalk that lies opposite the Ministry. Midway he crossed over to the other sidewalk, considered to be a military area, though it is not blocked off.
The Cubans have explained that Joachim Løvschall was shouted at by two armed guards, who in addition fired warning shots, which he did not react to. Therefore, one guard shot from the hip with an AK-47 rifle. The first shot hit Joachim in the stomach and got him to crumble down. The second shot hit slanting down the left side of the neck.

Eleven years ago
On June 12, 2007 Christian Løvschall, Joachim's father, at a parallel forum at the United Nations Human Rights Council spoke about his son's disappearance and the struggle to find out if Joachim was dead or alive:

"Although the killing took place on the 29th of March, we only came to know about it on the 6th of April - i.e. after 8 days were we had the feeling that the Cuban authorities were unwilling to inform anything about the incident. Only because of good relations with Spanish speaking friends in other Latin American countries did we succeed in getting into contact with the family with whom Joachim stayed and the repeated message from their side was that they could reveal nothing, but that the situation had turned out very bad and that we had to come to Cuba as soon as possible. At the same time all contacts to the responsible authorities turned out negatively... Only after continued pressure from our side on the Cuban embassy in Copenhagen, things suddenly changed and the sad information was given to us by our local police on the evening of the 6th of April. We are, however, 100% convinced that had we not made use of our own contact and had we not continued our pressure on the embassy in Copenhagen, we might have faced a situation where Joachim would have been declared a missing person, a way out the Cuban authorities have been accused of applying in similar cases."

 Eleven years later Christian Løvschall outlined what he knew concerning his son's untimely death:

We do feel we were (and still are) left with no answers except to maybe one of the following questions: Where, When, Who, Why Starting out with the where we were told that Joachim was killed by the soldiers outside the Ministry of Interior.

Where 
What we do not understand is why no fence or signs did inform that this is a restricted area? I have been on the spot myself, and the place appears exactly like a normal residential area. So you may question whether this in fact was the place of the killing? Contrary to this the authorities keep maintaining that the area was properly sealed off, and the relevant sign posts were in place.

When
As to when Joachim was killed we only have the information received from the police because of the delay informing one might believe that this is another forgery made up to cover the truth.

Who
The who was in our opinion has never been answered by the Cuban authorities. We understand that a private soldier on duty was made responsible for the killing, and also it has been rumored that his officer in charge has been kept responsible. This is of course the easy way out, but why can't we get to know the whole and true story?

Why
Why did the soldiers have to fire two shots, one to his body and one to his head, to murder him? Was Joachim violent and did he, an unarmed individual, attack the armed soldiers? Or is it simply that the instruction to Cuban soldiers are: first you shoot and then you ask? But again: Who can explain why two shots were needed?

Despite the claims made by the travel industry there have been other travelers to Cuba who have been killed or gone missing under suspicious circumstances.

Weimar Germany had hate speech laws and Antifa: Both helped fuel rise of the Nazis

Nonviolence was not even considered as an option in Germany in the 1930s and some would repeat the error again now in dealing with Nazis.

Burning of the German Parliament: Act of property destruction consolidated Nazi rule

On MSNBC on August 26, 2017 Professor Mark Bray, a historian and lecturer at Dartmouth, and author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, made the claim that fascism could only be defeated by violence and that Weimar Germany had practiced free expression against the Nazis and that passive acceptance of Hitler's movement fueled their rise to power, and that violence was the only way to defeat fascism. The historical record says otherwise.

First, Weimar Germany had modern like hate speech laws and vigorously enforced them but it did not have the desired effect. Making the Nazis hate speech illegal and outlawing their publications raised their profile and gathered more support. The New Yorker on February 14, 2015 in the article "Copenhagen, Speech and Violence" interviewed Flemming Rose, the foreign editor of the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten who set the record straight:

"Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences."

The outcome of silencing hate speech is not what those who advocate for it would expect as Rose continued to explain:

"Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor."

Antifa (Anti Fascist Action) arose for the first time in violent opposition to the Nazis in a united front in 1932. However the Communist Party (KPD) in Germany viewed the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the main center left party, as "fascists painted red" because they supported the existing market system.  The SPD believed that they could use the apparatus of the state to pursue the Nazis in the courts and through hate speech legislation. Meanwhile the Communists actively fought the Nazi brownshirts in the streets, and that they alone, with their violence, could dismantle the Nazi movement.

Anti Fascist Action conference in Germany (1932)

Both approaches raised the profile of the National Socialists (Nazis) and the physical violence, and destruction of property created uncertainty in the populace that played to the Nazis favor. Of course there were other factors two that are often highlighted are the humiliating terms for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 following their defeat in World War One, and the Great Depression in 1929 were major factors that also contributed to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

When Adolf Hitler enters office as Chancellor in January of 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) was burned to the ground on February 27, 1933, the Nazis were able to blame the Communists, and use this act of violence to justify the enabling laws that consolidated Hitler's dictatorial powers. Decades later and there is still controversy about who actually set the fire, but the violent record of Antifa in fighting the Nazis made claims by the Nazis that they had set the fire plausible. Add to this that the Soviet Union and international communist movement would ally with Nazi Germany on August 28, 1939 until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Meanwhile Gandhi's call for nonviolent resistance to the rising Nazi movement was rejected and ridiculed, and even as late as 1940  the Indian independence leaders was engaged in the conversation of applying nonviolence to resisting the National Socialists. In August 6, 1940 Mohandas Gandhi published a letter from “a Dutch friend” in which his friend argued that:

“Through Nazism, the German youth has lost all individuality of thought and feeling. The great mass of young people has lost its heart and is degraded to the level of a machine. … A friend of mine, whose work it is to cross-examine German prisoners of war in England, was deeply shocked by the spiritual narrowness and heartlessness of these young men, and agreed with me that non-violence could not be applied with any success against such robots...”

Gandhi responded to the letter pointing out that the author had sent his name and address but that he (Gandhi) withheld both out of fear that harm would come to him if they were made public. Gandhi responded:

“Non-violent action, if it is adequate, must influence Hitler and easily the duped Germans. No man can be turned into a permanent machine. Immediately the dead weight of authority is lifted from his head, he begins to function normally. To lay down any such general proposition as my friend has, betrays ignorance of the working of non-violence.”

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Professor Bray is wrong. Non-violence could and was carried out successfully against the Nazis on at least two occasions that are well documented. Between 1940 and 1945 under the Nazi occupation of Denmark many Danes were able to organize an effective and completely nonviolent resistance that undermined German war fighting capability and successfully blocked efforts to deport and exterminate its Jewish population to the Nazi death camps by first hiding Danish Jews then ferrying them out to neutral Sweden. An equally dramatic case took place in Germany in February and March of 1943 when German (non-Jewish) wives married to Jewish men and their relatives organized mass demonstrations in Rosenstrasse Street in Berlin to protest their husband’s arrest and deportation escalating until the men were released and returned home.

The idea that one could only resist the Nazis violently with guns, bombs and explosives because they were so evil led to two outcomes: 1) acts of violent resistance which the Nazis used to escalate their violence against those populations that resisted and 2) that millions who did not have a "weapon" cooperated believing they had no other choice and marched to their deaths.

This happened in part because a the third option was not considered: refusing to cooperate, nonviolent resistance as a realistic alternative to dealing with the fascists. Even more shocking that in 2017 the lie that only violence works against fascists is still being peddled in our news media when the examples of Denmark and Rosenstrasse are so well documented.

The Nazi threat today should not be underestimated and law enforcement agencies should remain vigilant in dealing with whatever violent actions they carry out and hold them accountable before the law. However history has demonstrated that Antifa, hate speech laws and labeling mainstream political parties fascist did not stop the Nazis but as a matter of fact helped fuel their rise to power and the later consolidation of Hitler's rule. Repeating those tactics today is madness.

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

19 years without justice for Joachim Løvschall, the Danish student gunned down in Cuba by one of Castro's soldiers

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

Joachim Løvschall: 1970 - 1997

Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba nineteen years ago today on March 29, 1997. The identity of the soldier has never been revealed to Joachim''s family. No one has been brought to justice. Joachim's family is not satisfied with the explanation offered by the Cuban dictatorship.

The killings and disappearances have continued but in Cuba over the past 19 years there is no independent press and a dictatorship that does not practice transparency. 

Alberto Romero 1976 - 2015

On January 8, 2015 Alberto Romero, a 39 year old Cuban American attorney from Tampa, Florida was found in Havana, Cuba dead, tied up with a family friend, beaten, stabbed and in Alberto's case one hand was severed.

Today, we remember Joachim and continue to demand justice for him and his family. Hopefully this information will assist others thinking of traveling to Cuba to take the proper precautions for themselves and their loved ones.

Dialogue on Nonviolence: Why did Jewish nonviolent resistance against Hitler not work?

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." - Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964 

Nonviolence Icons: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

The above quote posted on twitter led to a response from fellow human rights defender Maria Al-Masani who asked an important question: "So why did Jewish non violent resistance against Hitler not work?"

Mohandas Gandhi did call for the Jews of Germany to carry out a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Third Reich but it was rejected and he is still criticized for it today. The answer to Al-Masani's question is that it did not work because it was not tried.

Jewish resistance to the Nazis was violent and widespread.  David B. Kopel in the Journal of Firearms & Public Policy wrote a paper explaining that "Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust. They  shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule."

No one seems to ask "Why did Jewish violent resistance against Hitler not work?" Koppel concludes with a counter-intuitive argument calling for more weapons and defending the morality of violence:

"The experience of the Holocaust shows why Jews, and all people of good will, should support the right of potential genocide victims to possess defensive arms, and refutes the notion that violence is necessarily immoral."

At the same time holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim described the other phenomenon that took place:

The unique feature of the extermination camps is not that the Germans exterminated millions of people—that this is possible has been accepted in our picture of man, though not for centuries has it happened on that scale, and perhaps never with such callousness. What was new, unique, terrifying, was that millions, like lemmings, marched themselves to their own death. That is what is incredible; this we must come to understand.

The idea that one could only resist the Nazis violently with guns, bombs and explosives because they were so evil led to two outcomes: 1) acts of violent resistance which the Nazis used to escalate their violence against those populations that resisted and 2) that millions who did not have a "weapon" cooperated believing they had no choice and marched to their deaths.

This tragedy is the result of an outlook that does not see the third option: nonviolent resistance as a realistic alternative to dealing with harsh totalitarian regimes. Other groups did try nonviolent resistance to Hitler and history reports that even the Nazis could be stopped in particular instances with nonviolence. In Denmark for example under Nazi occupation the Danes disobeyed under penalty of death and saved between 70% -90% of the Jewish population between 1940 and 1945 first hiding them and then smuggling approximately 7,500 Jews out of the country. 

In Germany in February and March of 1943 German (non-Jewish) wives married to Jewish men and their relatives organized mass demonstrations in Rosenstrasse Street in Berlin to protest their husband’s being sent to concentration camps and escalated the protests until their men were released and returned home which they were.

Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" analyzed the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns between 1900 to 2006. The data showed that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. 

There study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” This depends on the nonviolent opposition movement having a strategic vision and maintaining its non-violent posture even under the worse repression. However the more brutal the regime the better the results with nonviolent resistance and the worse the results with violent resistance.

The latest example of this can be seen in Syria. The uprising against Assad in 2011 was initially nonviolent and despite the brutal repression of the Syrian regime the nonviolent opposition registered great victories until elements of the Syrian military defected  and the resistance abandoned its nonviolent posture in the mistaken belief that violent resistance would achieve change faster. The end result was that rather than undermine the Assad regime it changed the entire dynamic of the struggle and the body count of the opposition skyrocketed. Assad remains in power and does not appear to be going any where soon and a Christian genocide is underway in that part of the world.

Lastly the conceit that nonviolence is more successful against "civilized regimes" isn't true. If by civilized regime one means "free societies" then one finds that these societies can handle mass protests and demonstrations without shaking the foundations of their political systems. Meanwhile dictatorships of all sorts are much more fragile and vulnerable to civic nonviolent actions that open societies can easily resist. This is why nonviolent resistance is more effective against regimes that are more brutal and despotic.  What the tyrants and dictators need are violent opponents to justify their brutal repression. This is why violent resistance is less effective paradoxically when confronting brutal regimes.

The Case of Joachim Løvschall: Danish Student Gunned Down by Soldier in Cuba

Joachim Løvschall, a Danish student studying Spanish at the University of Havana gunned down by an AK-47 wielding Cuban guard as he walked home on the evening of March 29,1997. The body remained hidden for days. The shooter was never identified. Ten years after his son's extrajudicial execution, Christian Løvschall spoke at a parallel forum in Geneva Switzerland about what had happened. Below is the statement he made in 2007 at the United Nations.

 Joachim Løvschall

The Case of Joachim

Ladies and Gentlemen.

First of all thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you at this meeting here today, where I shall be talking to you about the terrible loss of our son Joachim on the 29th of March 1997, when you have listened to what I have to say I trust you will realize that 1997 will always stay as an "Annus Horibili" in the mind of our family.

To give you an understanding of our feelings and also of what made Joachim travel to Cuba, I will, as a start tell you something about the background of my boy and family.

 We are a quite international oriented family, my wife being a Norwegian national, the children and myself Danish. Our youngest daughter, however, is adopted from India, and joined us in 1978 when she was 3 years old. For about 8 years, in the eighties, we lived in the Middle East, where the children attended international schools. Before going abroad, my wife was for 12 years employed by a traveling agency, which resulted in numerous tours, also for the children, to destinations all over Europe. Furthermore we have hosted 2 international students - Each for a 1/2 a year period - in 1972 and 1974. In my present job I have for the last 17 years been traveling to more than 70 countries all over the world, having thereby established good contacts and, must I say, good friendships. Fortunately the friendships do not exclude anybody because of racial or political differences. On top of this our oldest daughter and two grandchildren are working and living in Norway.

And why do I want to enlighten you on this? My reason is that I want you to understand that Joachim was very much focused on international human relations and enjoyed making friendships across borders. You should know that he spoke seven different languages, and that the purpose of him going to Cuba was to learn the Spanish language. He did so well that he learned that language.

 In 3 months moving from no knowledge to almost speaking Spanish fluently and, as mentioned, all picked up during the 3 months he lived in Havana.

Although the killing took place on the 29th of March, we only came to know about it on the 6th of April - I.E. after 8 days were we had the feeling that the Cuban authorities were unwilling to inform anything about the incident. Only because of good relations with Spanish speaking friends in other Latin American countries did we succeed in getting into contact with the family with whom Joachim stayed and the repeated message from their side was that they could reveal nothing, but that the situation had turned out very bad and that we had to come to Cuba as soon as possible. At the same time all contacts to the responsible authorities turned out negatively, and worst of all we really felt nobody in Havana dared take contact to the police.

Only after continued pressure from our side on the Cuban embassy in Copenhagen, things suddenly changed and the sad information was given to us by our local police on the evening of the 6th of April.

We are, however, 100% convinced that had we not made use of our own contact and had we not continued our pressure on the embassy in Copenhagen, we might have faced a situation where Joachim would have been declared a missing person, a way out the Cuban authorities have been accused of applying in similar cases.

 So where does that leave us:

 We do feel we were (and still are) left with no answers except to maybe one of the following questions: Where, When, Who, Why

Starting out with the where we were told that Joachim was killed by the soldiers outside the Ministry of Interior.

What we do not understand is why no fence or signs did inform that this is a restricted area? I have been on the spot myself, and the place appears exactly like a normal residential area. So you may question whether this in fact was the place of the killing? Contrary to this the authorities keep maintaining that the area was properly sealed off, and the relevant sign posts were in place.

As to when Joachim was killed we only have the information received from the police because of the delay informing one might believe that this is another forgery made up to cover the truth.

The who was in our opinion has never been answered by the Cuban authorities. We understand that a private soldier on duty was made responsible for the killing, and also it has been rumored that his officer in charge has been kept responsible. This is of course the easy way out, but why can't we get to know the whole and true story? 

 Finally the why? Why would somebody kill a fine young man who was serious about his studies and without absolutely and criminal record whatsoever?

 Why is it that you are left with the terrible feeling that the truth has never been told, and why is it that the authorities are backing out and covering up?

Why did the soldiers have to fire two shots, one to his body and one to his head, to murder him? Was Joachim violent and did he, an unarmed individual, attack the armed soldiers? Or is it simply that the instruction to Cuban soldiers are: first you shoot and then you ask? But again: Who can explain why two shots were needed?

It is very difficult to understand that in a country working hard to attract tourists from abroad - many of whom are European non-Spanish speaking people - At the same time does not warn you about their special security rules and regulations as well as the non presence of signs of warnings around a building like the Ministry of Interior. I mean if, as a host, I allow somebody into my house, is it then not my responsibility to inform this somebody about the house rules and in case of misunderstandings warn them instead of shooting them?

To me such circumstances demonstrates the complete irresponsibility from the Cuban authorities side, and for sure may cause the reason for future incidents.

We lost our 27 years old boy, and whatever is done from the day he passed away, will never bring him back.

I have been raised in the faith that you are judged by your actions, and I do feel that this should apply to everybody - including a government in power, and you can't help being left with the feeling, that in Cuba the government and the authorities are above any law, resulting in disrespect and contempt for human life.

 I did visit Cuba twice, and from my observations I can only add that I do feel sorry for a people living their lives under a regime not respecting fundamental human rights.

All honor to my son, Joachim, he was a good son and we still miss him very much.

Thank you for listening to me.

Danish student studying Spanish in Cuba gunned down

Joachim Løvschall shot to death by Cuban soldier in Havana

 
Joachim Løvschall, a Danish student studying Spanish at the University of Havana gunned down by an AK-47 wielding Cuban guard as he walked home on the evening of March 29,1997. The body remained hidden for days. The shooter was never identified. Ten years after his son's extrajudicial execution, Christian Løvschall spoke at a parallel forum in Geneva Switzerland about what had happened.

Sixteen years later he is not forgotten. Friends and family remember and honor this young man on Facebook. He was born on December 8, 1970 and was extra-judicially executed sixteen years ago on March 29, 1997 and those responsible in the Cuban regime have not been held accountable.

He should have celebrated his 42nd birthday back in December, but thanks to the arbitrary cruelty of Cuba's state security apparatus he perished at age 26.

Today, a prayer in his memory and for his family who still miss him.