One year after changing U.S. - Cuba Policy course to the wrong direction: Marginalizing democrats; embracing dictatorship

Changing course to go in the wrong direction is not progress.

From meeting with opposition leaders (2003) to shunning them (2015)

Today the White House tweeted "One year ago, we changed course in Cuba" and claimed to have achieved "progress." Over the past year human rights have worsened in Cuba and overall situation has deteriorated. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's passivity before regime demands is partly to blame.

One year ago today the Cuban Interests Section in Washington D.C. was formally re-designated the Cuba Embassy with Secretary of State John Kerry in attendance.  Later on that same day the significance of this new relationship with the Castro regime was made evident in the treatment accorded to Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo.

On  July 20, 2015 at the State Department, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attended a press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry and Castro's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. Rosa Maria had proper accreditation as a member of the press. She has had articles published in news publications such as The PanAm Post and her own blog. This did not stop Rear Admiral John Kirby, who was transferred from the Pentagon and in May of 2015 became the new State Department spokesman, from taking Rosa Maria aside and warning her that she would be physically removed if she asked any questions or caused any kind of disturbance.

Cecilia Bradley of NBC6 captured a blurry image of when Rosa Maria Payá was taken aside. The young activist tweeted a photo of Rear Admiral Kirby with the following text: "John Kirby kindly told me if I caused disturbances during the conference security would remove me." In a later tweet Rosa Maria reported that "Mr. Kirby asks me not to ask questions at John Kerry's press briefing or they would use force to expel me."

The United States Department of State in the space of  twelve years has gone from Secretary of State Colin Powell receiving Cuban democratic opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas to threatening his daughter with force if she dared to ask a question at a press conference in which Secretary of State John Kerry took questions with the Cuban dictatorship's Foreign Minister. The same dictatorship that martyred her father three years earlier.

Is this what is now celebrated as progress by the Obama administration?

A day later when  Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attempted to present a letter to the Cuban embassy requesting her father's autopsy report she was not allowed to turn in the letter and a patrol car was called. Since 2012 the Payá family has been requesting Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's autopsy report from the dictatorship and has yet to be given a copy as they are entitled by law. This is not how the embassy of a country behaves, but it is how a totalitarian dictatorship does. This is why South Florida residents protested placing a Cuban Consulate here earlier this year.

President Obama changed course on Cuba from Secretary of State Powell receiving a Cuban democratic opposition member in 2003 following a petition drive signed by more than 20,000 Cuban nationals demanding democratic reforms to the Secretary of State's spokesman threatening an accredited reporter with physical removal from the State Department because her father was martyred by the dictatorship (this administration normalized relations with) to prevent her asking a question at a press conference to the foreign minister of that regime.

Diminishing the moral stature of the United States government is the opposite of progress. Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo in a tweet summed up this new reality perfectly:  "I didn't think I would receive in the State Dept the same kind of coercive warning security at the Panama airport gave me."

Neither did I.

Obama administration says human rights a priority in Cuba but actions say otherwise

The Obama administration talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk on human rights in Cuba.

State Department spokesman John Kirby threatening Rosa María Payá

The State Department Spokesperson John Kirby at the Daily Press Briefing in Washington, DC on March 4, 2016 made the following remarkable statement that contradicts the actions of the Obama administration on Cuba since December 17, 2014.

"On human rights, there’s no question that we continue to have concerns about the human rights issue in Cuba, and we’ve been very candid and frank about that, publicly and privately. There still remains concerns that we have about it. [...] So we’re still going to highlight it as an issue of concern; we’re still going to talk about it; we’re still going to raise our concerns with Cuban officials about it going forward. Because that’s what you do when you are working towards the full normalization of diplomatic relations in a country like Cuba."

The above rhetoric does not match up with the actions of the State Department and the Obama administration and here are a few high profile examples since December 17, 2014:

1. President Obama's announcement that he and the First Lady would be traveling to Cuba for a two-day visit beginning on March 21st to meet with "President Raul Castro" was not a step forward but a huge step backward to the days when U.S. presidents embraced and legitimized Latin American military despots. 

2. Secretary of State John Kerry did not invite Cuban human rights defenders to the flag raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on August 14, 2015. The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents. and journalist Andres Oppenheimer laid it out: "Kerry’s trip to Havana didn’t break new ground on human rights even symbolically, and in effect hurt Cuba’s fledgling internal opposition by making it look irrelevant in the eyes of many Cubans."

3. On July 27, 2015 the State Department's human trafficking report was watered down for political aims including ignoring the severity of sex trafficking in Cuba and the use of slave labor by the Castro regime. Major League Baseball is now floating a proposal that would make it a partner of the dictatorship in exploiting baseball players. Politicizing the report undermines the credibility of the United States on human rights around the world.

4. On July 20, 2015 at the State Department, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attended a press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry and Castro's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. Rosa Maria had proper accreditation as a member of the press. Rear Admiral John Kirby,  the State Department spokesman, took Rosa Maria aside and warned her that she would be physically removed if she asked any questions or caused any kind of disturbance. This was most likely done to appease the Castro regime's foreign minister.

5. Releasing Castro spies on December 17, 2014 serving life prison sentences, including one of them imprisoned for conspiracy to murder three U.S. citizens and one permanent resident. Two days later in a press conference, President Obama described the premeditated act of state terrorism carried out on Fidel and Raul Castro's orders on February 24, 1996 as a "tragic circumstance" while ignoring the open indictments on members of the Cuban military directly involved in the shoot down by U.S. courts. These actions encourage impunity and does not prioritize human rights.

The human rights situation in Cuba during the Obama administration has deteriorated and there is a body count that has coincided with the normalization drive that began in 2009 and continues to the present. The number of arbitrary detentions in Cuba have grown more than four fold between 2,074 politically motivated arbitrary detentions in 2010 compared to 8,616 detentions in 2015. The first two months of 2016 have seen a total of 2,555 arbitrary detentions.

The reality is that human rights in Cuba is not a priority for the Obama administration, but rather lifting the economic embargo and having a photo-op in Cuba later this month for his Presidential library. Truly hope I'm wrong but the record over the past seven years says otherwise.

U.S. Cuba Policy: Pay attention to what they do not what they say

Secretary Kerry gives the Castro regime a pass on human rights violations

Secretary of State John Kerry said that human rights was at the top of the Cuba agenda, and that they would not give Cuba a pass on human rights but proceeded to not invite Cuban human rights defenders to the flag raising ceremony at the Embassy. The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents. In an interview with Andres Oppenheimer, the Secretary of State offered an expanded explanation:

“Rather than have people sitting in a chair, at a ceremony that is fundamentally government to government, with very limited space, I will meet with them...and exchange views.”

However, the State Department did accommodate "entrepreneurs and Cuban American activists" to fly down with Kerry and his official delegation with a planeload of them. The "activists" support the Obama administration's Cuba policy and are advocates of lifting sanctions on the dictatorship and some like former Congressman Joe Garcia had received financial contributions from supporters of the Castro regime in his previous campaigns that became a source of controversy and contributed to the one term congressman not being re-elected.

Furthermore, Secretary Kerry did not object to celebrating the embassy opening with Cuban spies who had been expelled from the United States under previous Administrations due to their espionage activities against the United States of America.  

Despite the plane load of lobbyists and businessmen and the Cuban spies CNN anchor Jake Tapper in a tweet observed that there was plenty of space to have invited Cuban dissidents. This indicates that it was not space considerations but bending over backwards to accommodate the Castro dictatorship that led to the decision not to invite human rights defenders. This combined with the shabby treatment of Rosa María Payá last month by State Department spokesman John Kirby and the message is clear and journalist Andres Oppenheimer laid it out:

Kerry’s trip to Havana didn’t break new ground on human rights even symbolically, and in effect hurt Cuba’s fledgling internal opposition by making it look irrelevant in the eyes of many Cubans.  Could it be that Obama is so eager to visit Cuba before he finishes his term — to go down in history as the U.S. president who “opened” Cuba, much as Nixon “opened” China — that he is willing to sacrifice the human rights cause? Could it be that he is so eager for a foreign policy victory that he is willing to abandon a long-standing U.S. policy of moral support to pro-democracy activists? 

 The Obama administration's Cuba policy did not begin on December 17, 2014  but first enunciated in his 2009 inaugural address when the President spoke of extending a hand to old adversaries. This went beyond rhetoric in 2009 and again in 2011 with the loosening of sanctions against the Castro regime. During the past six years of the Obama administration the Castro regime has seized the opportunity to do away with opposition leaders that could have been alternatives of national leadership to the current regime while projecting itself further into Latin America.  The dictatorship understands, as did the Chinese before, that while the United States will pay lip service to human rights concerns when it comes to concrete actions this administration holds economic engagement with the dictatorship as a higher priority then human rights.

If you doubt this then just asked yourself then why there was room to fly down a plane load of business men and lobbyists for doing business with the dictatorship but no room for human rights defenders at the flag raising ceremony?  The answer is brutally simple. Business and engagement with the dictatorship in Cuba is the priority not human rights or the freedom of the Cuban people.

The lesson is clear when dealing with the Obama administration: Pay attention to what they do and not what they say.

Five reasons normalization of relations with Cuba is another Obama foreign policy failure

Post borrows from a blogpost from the Free Cuba Foundation posted yesterday and adds on to it.

Despite what the Obama Administration and mainstream media would have you believe the United States and the Castro regime have had extensive diplomatic contacts since 1977, military contacts since 1994, and trade since 2000. This is why when Obama pledged on December 17, 2014 the objective of normalizing diplomatic relations the Castro regime was able to raise numerous demands that the United States has complied with that undermine U.S. security and credibility. Below are five reasons why the normalization of relations with the Castro regime is unfolding into another Obama foreign policy failure: 

 

1. Releasing Castro spies on December 17, 2014 serving life prison sentences, including one of them imprisoned for conspiracy to murder three U.S. citizens and one resident. 

2. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary removing the Castro regime from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on May 29, 2015.  

3. On July 27, 2015 watered down the State Department's human trafficking report for political aims including ignoring the severity of sex trafficking in Cuba and the use of slave labor.

 

4. Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a press conference with the Foreign Minister of the Castro regime on July 20, 2015 and had the daughter of a martyred dissident threatened and silenced. The State Department's spokesperson Admiral John Kirby took Rosa María Payá, an accredited member of the press, aside and told her if she asked a question that she would be physically removed.Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, her dad, was assassinated by the Castro regime on July 22, 2012.


5. As President Obama and the State Department normalize relations with the Castro regime violence and repression against dissidents and refugees has risen in Cuba. 

Secretary of State John Kerry will be in Havana, Cuba to raise the flag at the US Embassy on Friday, August 14, 2015 and that would be the perfect day to remind the world the price paid in compromising not only the national security of the United States (freeing terrorist spies and letting ones guard down as to the terrorist threat posed by the dictatorship) but also undermining the credibility of the State Department's report on human trafficking and respect for human rights. Above are images that you can click on and share with others on social media or print them out to use in public protests to hold the administration accountable for another foreign policy failure while recognizing that there is a nonviolent alternative.