Remember and condemn the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel, and those who back them

 #RememberOctober7 #CubansStandWithIsrael

 

 

On September 26, 2024 the Israeli military carried out an airstrike while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut. Killed in the attack was Hassan Nasrallah, the long time leader of the terrorist group.

 

Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raul Castro’s handpicked president, denounced Israel on X, “We condemn the cowardly targeted assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, as a result of Israel’s attack on residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing destruction and death of innocent civilians.” 

 

This is in sharp contrast to the Cuban government's response to Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7.

 

One year ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Iranian proxies, invaded and attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals (including 46 Americans ) and seizing 251 hostages. 

The United Nations' inquiry commission "verified information concerning the deliberate targeting of civilian women, including the killing, abduction and abuse of women, as well as the desecration of women's bodies, sexual violence and other gender-based crimes.This was the largest mass murder of unarmed Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. 

 

This terrorist attack sparked a Middle East war that began between Israel and Hamas, a terrorist organization based in Gaza. The war expanded into Lebanon when Hezbollah, another Iran proxy, on October 8, 2023 began launching rockets into northern Israel. 

Friends and allies of the Jewish people condemned the attack and mourned the victims. International communist networks, led by the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Cuba took a different approach.

 

Cuban official media spokespersons Leticia Martinez, chief of communications for Miguel Diaz-Canel, and "El Necio" took to social media to celebrate a "Free Palestine" and justify terrorist attacks. He retweeted the People's Forum's genocidal call on October 8, 2023 to abolish the Israeli state, which included the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

 

 

On October 8, 2023, one day after the terror attacks in southern Israel, militant leftists held a protest in Times Square to commemorate the killings as an act of resistance, chanting anti-Semitic slogans, waving banners and posters. The Center for a Free Cuba was aware of the protest at the time, as well as the promotion of it by official Cuban media. 

 

 On October 8, 2023, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations published a statement criticizing Israel's "impunity," describing the Jewish state as an occupying force and the United States as historically complicit. 

 

Dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Dictator Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua , President and former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro in Colombia refused to condemn the terrorist attacks on Israel, while calling for the end of the “illegal occupation of Palestine” on October 7, 2023.

On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.

The group’s co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations,” according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for Peace.

On November 23, 2023, the Cuban dictatorship organized a 100,000-person pro-Hamas march with prefabricated banners, and posters featuring photos of Hamas militants such as Abu Obaida carried by Cuban youth. 

In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”

Official Cuban journalist Pedro Jorge Velázquez, who goes by the pseudonym El Necio on X with over 157,000 followers has been graphically repackaging antisemitic tropes out of the "Protocols of the Elder of Zion" and spreading blood libels against the Jewish people far and wide in threads on X since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 which he described as "Palestinian resistance launches unprecedented offensive in Israeli territory."

  Independent voices in Cuba that sympathize with the Israeli people threatened and silenced.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide in their 2024 Annual Report on Cuba informed that "In the final months of [2023] numerous Protestant pastors from both registered and unregistered religious denominations across the island were summoned for interrogation in regard to comments they had made about Israel. In each case, the pastors were told that that expressing any kind of support for Israel was unacceptable, they were ordered to stop praying for Israel or, in one case, for the ‘peace of Jerusalem’ and told that any commentary on the situation must be in line with the position of ‘the Revolution and the CCP’ [ Cuban Communist Party].

Advancing antisemitic tropes, and the destruction of Israel

“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

-Manolo De Los Santos speaking at The People’s Forum in NYC. pic.twitter.com/TxGcaVK62j

— Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) January 15, 2024

On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

De Los Santos is echoing Karl Marx’s early formulation of communism which is antisemitic and offers a “solution” to the “Jewish Problem.”

“Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself…by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible.” Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii, pp146-74

“The People’s Forum” (TPF) is funded through Goldman Sachs and linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Both its executive directors Manolo De Los Santos and Claudia De La Cruz are PSL members, and active supporters of the Cuban communist dictatorship. TPF put out an advertisement in The New York Times in October 2022 that repeated numerous propaganda claims by the Cuban dictatorship, and was rebutted by the Center for a Free Cuba. 

Prior to another Pro-Hamas March in Havana on March 2, 2024, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel in a video tweet on X accused Israel of a new genocide and operating an "extermination camp" in Gaza in which he said that five months ago, “humanity witnessed with horror a new holocaust.” 

Remembering when Fidel and Raul Castro allied with Arab states, and militarily attacked Israel

Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began, fifty one years ago, on October 6th. There were no outstanding bilateral issues between Cuba and Israel. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea. Soldiers left Cuba bound for Syria, dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports identifying them as university students. Soviet military equipment, including T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, were provided to them. Cuban tank crews fought alongside Syrian troops in their war of aggression. According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured in that conflict.

Cuban combat troops remained in Syria until 1975. 

Below is the documentary in Spanish by Abraham Rivera from 2020 on the Yom Kippur War.

This hostility towards Israel did not end when Cubans left Syria in 1975, but the Havana regime continued to aid and train terrorists in the Middle East, and allowed Hezbollah to set up a base in Cuba. 

Today, the Cuban dictatorship, both directly and through Venezuela, continues to provide support to Hamas, and Hezbollah as it has for decades. Cuba is a state supporter of terrorism all throughout the world, including in the Middle East, where it has long harbored animosity for Israel.

Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism around the world, including in the Middle East, with a decades long hostility against the state of Israel. The Cuban dictatorship has a problem with Jewish people.

They repeat old Soviet lies about the state of Israel, and refuse to recognize that the Jewish people are the original inhabitants of what is today Israel.

Free Cubans on the other hand recognize the historical facts, and today join with our Jewish brother, and sisters in remembering the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023, and call for the hostages to be freed, and the Islamic Regime of Iran, and their terrorist proxies to end their war against Israel.

6:29AM

October 7, 2023.

The moment time stopped.

Beeri. Nahal Oz. Nir Oz. Reim. The Nova Festival. Kfar Aza. Sderot. Ofakim. Nirim. Holit. Zikim. Ashkelon.

We remember the victims.

We pray for the return of the hostages. #RememberOctober7 pic.twitter.com/DuTL9ml8kI

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) October 7, 2024

Castro dictatorship's shock troops crackdown on hundreds of non-violent protesters in Caimanera, Guantánamo, Cuba

Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Díaz-Canel with UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan. Source: Estudios Revolución

"Cuba is committed to all human rights mechanisms," Díaz-Canel lied to UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan on May 5, 2023 during her visit to Havana, Cuba.

One of the human rights mechanisms recognized by the United Nations is the freedom of assembly and association. 

Diaz-Canel's lie was demonstrated a day later.

Hundreds of Cubans in the town of Caimanera in Guantánamo, Cuba took to the streets to demonstrate tonight. They shouted "Homeland and life", "Freedom" and "Long live human rights" demanding their human rights and freedom. 

Cubanet cited a local source in Cuba that "confirmed that the protests began around seven at night and up to the time of writing this note they were continuing. “First three men came out and began to demonstrate on Carretera street between José Martí and Correo, and the people joined them. We walked around Caimanera until we reached the park and passed the Communist Party headquarters, where no one came out because they are with the police."

According to this source, "the trigger for the protest, he indicated, is the lack of food and the precarious conditions of the health system. “After the five pounds of rice for the month are gone, we are eating bread with sugar. They are starving us while they live well." ... "In one of the videos that have come out of the demonstration, the people are heard shouting that they are hungry and that they do not believe in the excuse of the blockade. There is also a man who tells how he took his little son to the hospital and there was not even what was necessary to suture his wound."

Cubanet's Camila Acosta reported over Twitter at 11:24pm that Cuba had been without internet connection or telephone service in all of Cuba for more than an hour. She also said that "the last report indicated the arrival of special troops to suppress the protests."

Netblocks confirmed at 11:25pm that "Network data show a collapse in internet traffic in Cuba amid protests for freedom and human rights centering around Caimanera, Guantánamo; connectivity remains intermittent at present with partial restoration noted." 

Black Berets arrived in Caimanera, and violently ended the nonviolent protest during the shutdown of internet and telephone service.Video emerged after the internet black out was partially restored.

Will Alena Douhan reconsider her favorable remarks in light of these developments?

Considering that in her public remarks during her meeting with Diaz-Canel Ms. Douhan did not address his public call on July 11, 2021 for Cuban communists to violently put down nonviolent protests with what he called an "order of combat," hopes are not high.

This pessimism is underscored by Ms. Douhan's pattern of arguing that regimes like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are the victims and Western sanctions the culprit.

However, there is hope that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk will hold the Cuban government to account.

Regardless of what these UN officials do,  people of good will should send a message both to Havana and the international community by signing and sharing the petition to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council.

 

Russian FM thanks Havana for "full understanding" on Ukraine invasion.

Raul Castro and his handpicked president Miguel Diaz-Canel meet Putin's foreign minister

Overview of how Castro regime is backing Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine

Excerpt from CubaBrief 

Agence France-Presse reported that Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on April 20, 2023 thanked the Castro regime for its 'full understanding' over the war in Ukraine as he started his visit to the island nation during a tour of Latin American allies backing the illegal war.

"We appreciate that from the start of the special military operation, our Cuban friends... have clearly shown their position and expressed their full understanding in their evaluations of the reasons that led to the current situation," said Lavrov during a meeting with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez, according to the Russian foreign ministry's Telegram account.

What was the Russian foreign minister referring to when he said that "our Cuban friends" had " clearly shown their position"? Below is a partial accounting of the actions taken by Havana in support of Moscow's illegal war.

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez laughs with Sergey Lavrov

• On February 23, 2023 Cuba abstained from voting on a non-binding resolution at the United Nations that called on Russia to leave Ukraine.

• On November 22, 2022, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel stated in Moscow that "Russia is not responsible" for the current conflict in Ukraine, and praised Vladimir Putin's “vigorous historical analysis” used to justify the Russian invasion, "and annexation of sovereign Ukrainian territory."

• On October 12, 2022 at the UN General Assembly Cuba was one of the 35 countries that abstained, and its ally Nicaragua was one of the 5 that voted against a resolution condemning the Russian Federation’s annexation of four Eastern Ukraine regions. .

• On September 16, 2022 Cuba was one of seven countries voting "no" at the UN General Assembly together with Belarus, Eritrea, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, and Russia. This "no" vote was to silence Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky from delivering a pre-recorded address at the UN General Assembly.

• On September 15, 2022 "Russian top propagandist Vladimir Solovyov urged for the establishment of an international coalition with countries" that included Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, Serbia, and Venezuela for its war against Ukraine.

• On April 7, 2022 Cuba, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Vietnam, were among those who voted against suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council ( 93 voted to suspend, 24 against, and 58 abstentions.)

• On March 2, 2022 Cuba and Nicaragua abstained from the vote condemning the Russian invasion at the United Nations General Assembly. ( 141 votes to condemn the invasion, 5 against and 35 abstentions).

• Euronews reported on February 24, 2022 that "only Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Syria supported the Russian recognition of independence for the occupied regions in Luhansk and Donetsk."

• The Cuban government is spreading Russian propaganda both domestically and internationally defending Putin's invasion, and repeating Moscow's talking points.

• Cubans dissenting from this official line on the island have been arrested.

• Cuba has taken part in Russia’s International Military Exercises that in 2022 were held in Venezuela and Iran.

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

Votes not elections: Reflections on the Castro regime's electoral charade in Cuba

Dictator Raul Castro votes today in sham elections in Cuba.

The Castro regime is seeking to spin a non-vote into a democratic election, but there are some basic facts that exposes the true nature of what is going on. 

"Cuba holds National Assembly elections Sunday, but there are only 470 candidates running for the 470 seats, with no opposition challengers and no campaigning," reports the Associated Press. 

Why go through this political circus?

Professor Jaime Suchlicki of the Cuban Studies Institute offers an explanation of what the dictatorship's actual objective is:

"Like in most communist countries, elections in Cuba are not aimed at changing previously selected officials, but rather at highlighting existing polices and mobilizing the population to support the communist system." 

 This is not a secret, but established in existing regime rules. 

Cuba's 2019 constitution declares that the country is officially a one-party system with the Communist Party serving as the "superior driving force of the society and the state" and "orienting the communal forces" toward the creation of a "communist society." 

Internal democracy does not exist in the Cuban Communist Party.  It is a top down process.

Despite this, the Cuban dictatorship finds itself in a crisis. Cubans are losing their fear, and refusing to go along with the regime's charade.

Reuters, in their March 22, 2023 article "As Cuba Election Day Nears, Some Voters Ask, 'Why Bother?'" offers anecdotal evidence of voter apathy.

Like a growing number of Cubans, 77-year-old Havana resident Humberto Avila says he will likely sit out Sunday's legislative elections. The retired university professor says he's done the math - 470 candidates, 470 open seats - and sees no point in voting. "That's the same number of candidates as open seats," he told Reuters. "There are no choices."

Cuban dissidents in the island are calling on citizens not to take part in the sham. "Not attending the electoral farce orchestrated by the regime is an act of elementary consistency with truth and justice. No to tyranny," tweeted from Cuba Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement on March 24, 2023. 

"Not attending the electoral farce orchestrated by the regime is an act of elementary consistency with truth and justice. No to tyranny," tweeted from Cuba Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement yesterday. https://t.co/pJ3z0ojS2e 14/

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) March 25, 2023

As Professor Suchlicki observed above, this is not a question of electing representatives in a democracy, but measuring the communist dictatorship's ability to influence or coerce mass support for the system in a vote.

This is why the regime is threatening Cuban citizens with consequences if they do not participate in the regime's vote today.

This is also why they do not allow independent international observers, or independent domestic observers for today's vote, despite recognizing in law the ability of citizens to observe elections.

T @CubaDiceNO Since the early hours of the morning, the political police in #Cuba have prohibited several observers from leaving their homes with a patrol at the door. Among them, Zealandia Pérez, coordinator of #COCUDE, the #Cuban Electoral Defense Commission. https://t.co/CF2YRUMyXC

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) March 26, 2023

Cubans that had wanted to observe the elections today found police cars outside their homes, and were told that they were under house arrest, and could not leave.

 The dictatorship has reason to be concerned.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project in their March 23, 2023 report "Political Repression in Cuba Ahead of the 2023 Parliamentary Elections" predicted that "unaddressed grievances and repression might lead to lower voter turnout in the upcoming elections, which could, in turn, further undermine the legitimacy of Cuba’s next government." 

With no observers agents of the dictatorship can stuff the ballot boxes, and claim whatever result they want, but internally they will know the true level of dissatisfaction within the populace.

This dissatisfaction was observed on July 11-12, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans, knowing what dangers openly defying the regime entailed, took to the streets of Cuba in protest. 

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1923 commented the following about elections,“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how.” 

The effort to stop the poll watchers, though poll watching is permitted under current electoral law in Cuba, hearkens back to that principle of control alluded to by Stalin 100 years ago.

This is why Cubans should stay home, and abstain from taking part in this charade.

T @RosaMariaPaya
The route where #CubaDecides:

1. MOBILIZATION for Rights & Conditions
2. COMPLIANCE with Rights & Conditions
3. BINDING PLEBISCITE to change the system
4. TRANSITION
5. FREE ELECTIONS#IDoNotVote with the dictatorship's rules. Mobilization for #SystemChange https://t.co/l7TOrQzfru

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) March 26, 2023

 

One last, but important observation that many have gotten wrong. Cuba has not entered the post-Castro era.

Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado and Miguel Díaz-Canel

President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado held the title of president from July 17, 1959 through December 2, 1976. Cubans called him "president spoon" (because he neither pricks [like a fork] nor cuts [like a knife]). It was their way of saying he had no real power because it resided with Fidel Castro and his brother Raul.

Miguel Díaz-Canel, the current president of Cuba is another Dorticós Torrado, a figure head without any power. Raul Castro remains the strong man, and his son Alejandro Castro Espin, the heir apparent.

Rejection of request to protest by Castro regime is yet another example of intolerance of freedom of expression. Protest leader say N15 civic march continues.

"Using violence is a stupid decision." - Dr. Gene Sharp, January 30, 2012

Source: CubaBrief

104 days ago today on July 11, 2021 tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets across Cuba declaring that they were no longer afraid, and calling for an end to the dictatorship. The dictatorship's response was public, swift, brutal, and sustained. The regime's repression has not ended, but nor has the civic defiance and courage of Cubans.

Reuters reported on October 21st that Cuban prosecutors had summoned protest leaders (organized in a Facebook group called Archipelago, from across Cuba who are calling for protests on November 15th over curbs to civil rights in Cuba, and demanding an amnesty for jailed regime opponents) warning them against convening civic marches "under penalty of the law."

Lexi Lonas reported in The Hill, on the same day that "a Cuban protest leader said Thursday his group will gather for a demonstration in November despite warnings from a prosecutor that doing so could have legal ramifications." Lonas cited a quote by Yunior Garcia, leader of the Archipelago group, taken from Reuters stating, "we are not mercenaries, nor are we receiving orders from anyone." ... "We are openly demonstrating a difference of opinion.”

Expressing a difference of opinion with the Castro regime is a dangerous proposition in Cuba. 

Expressing a difference of opinion in Cuba is a criminal offense under the dictatorship's legal code, and in practice. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, with regards to the upcoming November 15th Civic March said:

“Groups of people from various provinces around the country have been submitting requests in recent weeks to different local governments asking for authorization to carry out peaceful marches, organized in a clearly defined way in a legitimate exercise of their right to freedom of expression. Instead of guaranteeing these rights, President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government has declared these civil society marches ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’, once again violating the right to peaceful protest in Cuba.”

The spontaneous nonviolent protests that took place in Cuba in mid-July were met with deadly force and hundreds, if not thousands of Cubans jailed. Cuban human rights defenders addressed this matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) audience titled "Human rights situation in the context of protest in Cuba". However Black human rights defender Manuel Cuesta Morua was blocked by Havana from speaking.

President Miguel Diaz Canel, handpicked by Raul Castro, told Cubans in a televised national public address on July 11th: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything.” Diaz-Canel made explicit his demand for violent confrontation stating: "We are calling on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets and go to the places where these provocations are going to take place today from now on, and in all these days and face it decisively, firmly, with courage." He concluded his address to the country declaring: "The order of combat is given, revolutionaries take to the streets."

Regime agents dressed in black, and police officers fired their weapons on unarmed protesters, and some of the Cubans, who survived these encounters, showed where some of the rounds had passed through them. Not all survived these encounters with the dictatorship's security forces. On July 12th, the second day of the uprising, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back by police. NGOs initially placed the number of extrajudicial killings at five during the protests, but the total number remains unknown. Video emerged on July 15th of the aftermath of Diubis being shot in the back and posted over Twitter.

Human Rights Watch in their October 19, 2021 report "Cuba: Peaceful Protesters Systematically Detained, Abused" describes in detail how the regime is still using arbitrary detention, ill-treatment (including gender-based violence), and summary trials that fall far short of international standards to directly impact hundreds of Cubans. According to Human Rights Watch there are 1,000 Cubans detained and 500 current political prisoners, but these are partial numbers painstakingly gathered by human rights observers such as CubaLex that have also been threatened for their work documenting human rights violations.

Cuban dissidents responding to this violent and ongoing crackdown have asked for help and solidarity.

Eileen Kinsella reported in ArtNet News, on October 19, 2021 in her article "Havana Biennial Boycott Gathers Support, With Hundreds Signing Open Letter Against Government Crackdown" that a long "list of Cuban and international artists and experts have signed an open letter that was posted on e-flux" that include artists Tania Bruguera and Coco Fusco, as well as Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, a British/Venezuelan art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, calling for a boycott of the 14th Havana Biennial to protest "injustices committed by the Cuban government against its citizens, including harassment and wrongful imprisonment." High profile names have already withdrawn from the event, including Swiss artist Ursula Biemann, French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, artists Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Aimee Joaristi Argüelles, and curator Maria Belén Saez de Ibarra, according to Hyperallergic.

 Thus far, this example of solidarity has not been replicated in the Paris Club. Marc Frank reported for Reuters on October 20th that the Castro regime "reached a deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations to postpone an annual debt payment due in November until next year, according to diplomats from five of the governments involved, the latest sign the Communist-run country is suffering a grave foreign exchange crisis. The historic 2015 Paris Club agreement with Havana forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion in sovereign debt Cuba defaulted on in 1986, plus charges. Cuba agreed to repay the remainder in annual installments through 2033, but only partially met its obligations in 2019 and defaulted last year." The Economic Eye on Cuba, the blog of the New York based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc. reported on this deal with an important note reproduced below.

NOTE: Individuals participating in the negotiations shared on background that the group of creditor countries have no expectation that the Republic of Cuba will maintain the terms of a newly-termed debt repayment agreement. The altering of debt repayment terms was pro forma as the Republic of Cuba continues to be in arrears for hundreds of millions of dollars of private sector commercial debt including to joint venture partners, and continues to seek debt forgiveness and debt restructuring of private sector commercial debt. There is an expectation that long-term government-to-government financing programs for infrastructure and durable products will become donations.

These "donations" to the dictatorship in Cuba are assisting in the repression of the Cubans. The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, a coalition of pro-democracy and human rights groups inside and outside Cuba, issued a press release condemning the deal reached by the Paris Club and the Castro regime and explained how "this concession to the Cuban regime will serve to subsidize repression in Cuba, as the regime continues to buy military equipment to crack down on civil society and peaceful demonstrations. On June 10, 2021, 240 Cuban leaders and activists signed a letter, asking the Paris Club to not collaborate with repression in Cuba. Their fears were confirmed on July 11, 2021, and unfortunately Cubans expect to see the same levels of violence and military and police deployment on November 15, 2021, as the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office has threatened the organizers of the upcoming peaceful demonstration."

The Christian Liberation Movement, based in Cuba that led the Varela Project which over 35,000 Cubans in the island signed, called for the isolation of the Castro dictatorship with the following proposal that contains eleven measures that includes the ongoing and successful boycott of the 14th Havana Biennial, but also not granting the Cuban regime lines of credit, and placing an arms embargo on the dictatorship.

We propose that until the dictatorship unconditionally releases all those arrested for the peaceful demonstrations and all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and holds free and plural elections:

– The Cuban regime should be excluded from participating in any international forum, Summit and event.

– Cuba should be investigated and condemned for its human rights violations by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

– All economic and military cooperation agreements with the Cuban dictatorship, like the EU-Cuba cooperation agreement, should be suspended.

– Lines of credit should not be granted to the Cuban regime.

– Foreign investments and tourism to Cuba should be discouraged.

– All products exported from Cuba, either directly by the regime or through foreign companies associated with Cuban tyranny, should be boycotted.

– An international arms and repression equipment embargo on Cuba should be imposed

– Cuba should be banned from all international sporting, cultural and academic events.

– Visas to military junta officials and relatives, and to members of Cuba's Communist Party and all organizations and institutions who take part in repressive actions or support the repression, should not be granted or should be revoked.

– Channels to send humanitarian aid should be facilitated as part of this campaign to isolate the regime and in solidarity with the Cuban people.

– An international commission to support democracy in Cuba should be created. It should promote that these and other measures are executed, and should watch over its implementation.

Dictatorship's like the one in Havana understand only one thing, force, but it can impact them in many ways and the list above demonstrates the power of nonviolent, civic action.

 

 

#11July: One week later and nonviolent resistance continues in Cuba

For freedom and justice.

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

One week later and the protests continue, despite the most brutal efforts of the Castro regime to silence Cubans on the island. It began on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, just South East of Havana when Cubans took to the streets in protest. Others saw it streaming live, and also took to the street in cities and towns across the country chanting "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship." 

President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on official television threatening: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything."

Cuban protesters were met with extreme violence by the dictatorship, but they have continued to take to the streets to the present day. Cubans in the diaspora around the world have taken to the street in solidarity with their counterparts in the island. On July 11th,  I was outside of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC protesting the repression of the dictatorship, and in solidarity with Cubans on the island demanding freedom.

On July 14, 2021 the Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero appeared on television and announced that the dictatorship would "temporarily lift restrictions on the quantity of food and medicine incoming travelers could bring into Cuba."

On Saturday, July 17 the regime held their official rally, and even there they could not obtain unanimity and violently dragged out an unknown protester who screamed "Freedom."

The opposition movement to the Castro regime since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 has been a nonviolent one, and regime brutality is an attempt to shock and outrage Cubans to embrace violence, and in turn give the regime the pretext to escalate their violence and terror against the populace.

Gene Sharp was the theoretician of nonviolent action, that thanks to Jose Basulto, in June of 1996 I was able to meet and learn from him over a series of lectures and conversations at Florida International University. This encounter marked a before and after in my life. This blog has cited him time and time again and promoted the South Florida premiere of the documentary about his life, How to Start a Revolution, back in 2011. Professor Sharp passed away on January 28, 2018 at age 90.

In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

These weapons can be wielded by the average citizen to great effect, but also requires strategy and tactics to be successful.

Now is the time to double down on nonviolence. The Castro regime came into existence with the secret backing of the Soviet Union, the public backing of the United States, a U.S. arms embargo on Batista, then lies, terror, and mass murder to consolidate its rule. They have used violence and terrorism as state policy for 62 years. They are experts in the application of violence. 

To abandon the strategy and tactics of nonviolence that have put the regime on the defensive is the equivalent of deciding to abandon a chess match with a boxer when you have him checked on the board to decide the battle in the boxing ring.

This happened in Syria with Assad and on February 5, 2012 Professor Sharp summed it up succinctly: "using violence is a stupid decision."

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study finds “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

The usual counter argument is that nonviolence would not have worked against the Nazis but history says otherwise with the successful nonviolent action of the Rosenstrasse protest carried out by German wives who successfully got their Jewish husbands back from the concentration camps in 1943. Nor does one consider the scores of violent actions that failed to dislodge the Nazi regime but only consolidated their rule despite two close calls that nearly got Adolph Hitler in 1939 and 1944.

This dictatorship, I believe, has killed many this last week, and is continuing to kill Cubans and we may never have a full accounting. Thousands have been jailed or disappeared, and the oppressors responsible need to be identified and sanctioned by the international community. The Global Magnitsky Act holds torturers and kleptocrats accountable nonviolently through targeted sanctions, and needs to be applied now in Cuba. This is one of the weapons in the nonviolent arsenal described by Professor Sharp above.

Gene Sharp provides below a holistic look at how nonviolence works:

In a great variety of situations, across centuries and cultural barriers, another technique of struggle has at times been applied.  This other technique has not been based on turning the other cheek, but on the ability to be stubborn and to resist powerful opponents powerfully. Throughout human history, in a multitude of conflicts one side has fought - not by violence, but - by psychological, social, economic, or political methods, or a combination of these.  This type of conflict has been waged not only when the issues were relatively limited and the opponents relatively decent.  Many times this alter- native form of struggle has been applied when fundamental  issues have been at stake and when ruthless opponents have been willing and able to apply extreme repression.  That repression has included executions, beatings, arrests, imprisonments, and mass slaughters. Despite such repression, when the resisters have persisted in fighting with only their chosen nonviolent weapons, they have some- times triumphed. This technique is called nonviolent action or nonviolent struggle.  This is “the other ultimate sanction.”  In acute conflicts it potentially can serve as an alternative to war and other violence.

We have witnessed it in Cuba over the years with a number if initiatives. The Cuban Committee for Human Rights and its ability to document human rights abuses in the island to expose the brutality of the regime in the 1980s and 1990s to the international community. The Christian Liberation Movement in the 1990s and 2000s that through the Varela Project non-violently petitioned the Cuban government to reform and respect international human rights standards, and gathered over 25,000 signatures of Cuban citizens in the island who knew what the cost would be to say they wanted change. The San Isidro Movement formed in 2018 by artists protesting Decree 349, a further tightening of restrictions on artistic freedom in Cuba, has carried out nonviolent campaigns that on November 27, 2020 shook the dictatorship when hundreds of artists and intellectuals engaged in a non-violent intervention outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana, Cuba.

Violent resistance to the regime was tried early on by courageous Cuban men and women, but was crushed by the Castro regime with the aid of Soviet counter-insurgency forces. Today, not only the Russians are there, but so are the Chinese. 

Non-violent resistance remains the most effective option to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba, and restore Cuba's positive human rights legacy.

The documentary "A Force More Powerful" is about non-violence, and its power to change the world over the past century. It is worth noticing that faith and belief played a major role in these movements that achieved positive and lasting change. We will need a lot of both in the days, weeks, and months to come.

King and Queen of Spain are ignoring Cuban dissidents

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." -  Desmond Tutu

The Miami Herald, November 13, 2019

King and Queen of Spain are turning a blind eye to Cuba’s oppression | Opinion 

Diaz-Canel, left, with Spain’s King Felipe VI review troops in Havana, Cuba, R Espinosa AP

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article237328414.html#storylink=cpy

Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia arrived in Cuba for an official visit on Nov. 11, just days before the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana by Spanish representatives.

Before the royal visit it was announced that the Royal couple would not meet with dissidents.

Amnesty International sent King Felipe a letter, made public on Nov. 8, petitioning him to make four requests during his visit to Cuba: Release six Cuban prisoners of conscience, José Pilot Guide , Silverio Portal Contreras, Mitzael Díaz Paseiro, Eliecer Bandera Barrera, Edilberto Ronal Azuaga, and Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces and repeal their sentences; Inform José Daniel Ferrer García of the charges against him or release him. Meanwhile, ensure that he has access to his family, lawyer and medical care; End harassment of Cuban artists Luis Manuel Otero and Amaury Pacheco; Repeal Decree 349 that prohibits all artistic activity without prior approval from the regime.

Spain is a constitutional monarchy, and the king must do what Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the ultimate political authority, instructs. Unfortunately, Sánchez is a member of the Spanish Socialist Party.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez with representative of Castro dictatorship in 2018

He visited Cuba in November 2018 and failed to speak publicly for Cuban prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet or address the July 22, 2012, murder of Spanish Cuban dual citizen Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. Instead, Sánchez pledged to pour money into the Cuban dictatorship that strengthened the military and police state that oppresses Cubans and Venezuelans. This has been the first visit to Cuba by a Spanish prime minister in 20 years. Unlike his predecessor, José María Aznar, he did not meet with Cuban dissidents. He has now instructed King Felipe to do the same. This is a sad time for those of us who have affection for the Spanish people.

Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar with Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

The Spanish prime minister’s failure to be consistent on human rights is appalling. On Oct. 24, Sanchez presided over the exhumation of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen and said this “ends a moral affront — the exaltation of a dictator in a public place.” But this politician’s outrage did not extend to Fidel Castro’s regime declaring three days of mourning when Francisco Franco died in 1975, or the “special relationship” between the two despots. Moral blindness is found across the political spectrum, but Sanchez reached new lows in his relationship with the Castro dictatorship. 

Che Guevara attends bull fight with Franco's secret police in 1959

The so-called “special relationship” between Castro and Franco, which saw Che Guevara attending a bull fight with members of Franco’s secret police, was not so special on the Cuban side. In their 2017 book,  History of a challenge five decades of relentless struggle of the Civil Guard against ETA (Historia de un desafío: Cinco décadas de lucha sin cuartel de la Guardia Civil contra ETA), Manuel Sánchez and Manuela Simón reveal that, “In the spring of 1964, ETA militants received training in Cuba with lessons on kidnappings, subversion and sabotage. Thus began the ideological and terrorist training that would later be a constant in the history of the terrorist band.” 

The Cuban Communist dictatorship has a long history of sponsoring and engaging in terrorism around the world, and Spain was not exempt.

ETA terrorists were trained by Cubans in 1964 according to 2017 book.

This year, the great city of Havana deserves to be honored on its 500th anniversary and its origins remembered. Havana was founded at its present location by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1519. The city would thrive and flourish for centuries, but the arrival of the Castro regime in 1959 ushered in six decades of decay and destruction that continue. Communist rule has been hard on the historic city, with many sections falling apart.

Sadly, it’s all too clear why Havana inspired German filmmaker Florian Borchmeyer in 2006 to make a documentary titled “Havana — The New Art of Making Ruins.”

Parts of old Havana are literally crumbling away.

John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, based in Falls Church, Virginia.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article237328414.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article237328414.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article237328414.html#storylink=cpy