"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Silverio Portal Contreras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silverio Portal Contreras. Show all posts
“Don’t believe anything they tell you. I stand firm in the sense that
either they set me free or I’ll be carried out of here dead.” - Silverio Portal Contreras, October 13, 2020
Lucinda González and prisoner of conscience Silverio Portal Contreras
Madrid based NGO Prisoners Defenders earlier this month reported that there were 139 political prisoners in Cuba, and that there are 11,000 Cubans, not affiliated with opposition groups, jailed on the Orwellian charge of “pre-crime.”
An urgent case of a Cuban prisoner of conscience currently unfolding is that of Silverio Portal Contreras.
Amnesty International on August 26, 2019 recognized “Silverio Portal Contreras, former activist with the Ladies in White, [who] is serving a 4-year sentence for “contempt” and “public disorder” a prisoner of conscience. According to a court document, Silverio was arrested on the 20 June 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area.” … “According to Silverio’s wife, Lucinda González, before his arrest he had campaigned against collapsing dilapidated buildings in Havana.”
He suffered from epilepsy and hypertension before prison, conditions that worsened after he suffered two strokes, lost vision in one eye after a brutal beating. He is quickly losing vision in the other eye after being diagnosed with diabetes.
Throughout their conversation, Lucinda says Silverio had a prison guard standing next to him. He told her: “Don’t believe anything they tell you. I stand firm in the sense that either they set me free or I’ll be carried out of here dead.”
On the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington this blog commemorated the date by highlighted the speeches of Martin Luther King III and his daughter at the Lincoln Memorial on that day, and the brutality visited on several black Cubans by the Castro regime in recent weeks. One of the cases focused on was that of Silverio Portal Contreras.
Yesterday, over Twitter Lucinda González wife of prisoner of conscience Silverio Portal Contreras asked for help from everyone starting today, Monday at 10:00 am, to show their solidarity with them, in the audio message embedded in the tweet below.
Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities.
According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana.
Silverio was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International on August 26, 2019. He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.
Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.”
We fear for Silverio's life today imprisoned for thinking and speaking freely.
Please use one of the images of Silverio below on your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
"We're taking a step forward on America's rocky but righteous journey towards justice." - Martin Luther King III, August 28, 2020
Fifty years ago on August 28, 1963 much of the United States was in the midst of a struggle to do away with segregation
and civil rights activists were struggling to pass voting rights
legislation. The march on Washington D.C. that culminated in Martin
Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech sought to pressure legislators into voting for the legislation, and they succeeded.
This was a nonviolent revolution that sought justice, and changed the United States of America and in 2009 an African American president sat in the White House evidence that part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream had been achieved.
Today at a moment of national crisis Martin
Luther King III, son of the martyred civil rights leader, together with his daughter returned to the Lincoln Memorial to address questions of racism and injustice in the United States in 2020 and share their message of love and the legacy of their dad and grandad respectively. This event began last night and will continue into this evening and is live streaming.
“We stand and march for love, and we will fulfill my grandfather's dream,” Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., says during the March on Washington. https://t.co/S58qRg2xjvpic.twitter.com/9HKWOrmKk8
This is part of a national conversation on racism and violence in the United States, and there were calls to refund and dismantle the police, but there were other views included in the conversation. It has the potential to be another nonviolent moment.
Sadly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States by 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. found his nonviolent posture challenged
by a black power movement that instead of accelerating change in areas
of social and economic justice brought it to a halt. Reverend King warned black activists not to take the way of the Castros and Che Guevara:
“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective
failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability
to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it
is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how
loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted
the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the
style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could
succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a
handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled
the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a
right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff
must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic
problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a
roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the
hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic
plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at
nonviolence now.”
Critics of nonviolence like to point out that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, but fail to mention that he succeeded in transforming the United States into a better country by successfully and nonviolently addressing historic injustices.
What did Reverend King accomplish? He led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He led the Birmingham campaign in 1963 that faced off with the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used high-pressure water jets and police attack dogs on children. The campaign ended with Connor losing his job and the city’s discriminatory laws were changed.
Martin Luther King Jr on August 28, 1963
Reverend King played an instrumental role in the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, D.C. with over 250,000 participants. It was done to pressure for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 in Alabama demonstrated African Americans desire to vote. The violence by local authorities, racists, and the Klu Klux Klan and the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights activists were key to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. These laws gave African Americans political power that had been denied them.
Contrast this with the fires and riots across the country over the past several weeks. Smaller in number than non-violent protests they have too often drowned out those advocating reform and a revolution in values to a person centered society. Today there was light and a conversation while in places like Portland and Seattle, where revolutionaries gunned down young black men, and the police were absent, having been driven out, painfully demonstrated that violence begets violence and does not bring our country closer to the Beloved Community and black lives continue to be unjustly killed. The way of Stokely Carmichael leads to a sterile dead end of bloodshed and violence with the seductive call of revolutionary violence that he embraced in Havana in the 1960s ended with end of this period of civil rights reforms.
Let us also not forget that many who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s took up arms again against him in the 1960s in an armed struggle that failed wiping out all opposition: violent and nonviolent for years.
A nonviolent movement began to emerge out of Cuba's prisons in the mid 1970s and onto the streets in the mid 1980s yet there are voices that claim that nonviolence hasn't worked and counsel either collaboration with the dictatorship or violent resistance.
Let us compare Reverend King's nonviolent legacy with the violent revolution
that sought to end a dictatorship ninety miles away from U.S. shores in
Cuba that in 1963 was just four years old. Sixty years later and the
Castro dictatorship that replaced the Batista dictatorship is still in
power killing and repressing. Despite fraudulent statistics in areas of health care and education the reality of an ongoing cholera epidemic and the mass exodus of millions of Cubans demonstrates the nightmare
that exists in Cuba today. Today, Cubans are unjustly imprisoned for exercising their human rights and are prisoners of conscience.
Prisoner of Conscience Silverio Portal Contreras beaten and going blind
Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana.
Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.” We fear for Silverio and his life today imprisoned for speaking what he thought.
Hatred and the appeal of revolutionary violence leads to strange bedfellows. The Progressive, a publication founded in 1909 in Madison, Wisconsin on June 18, 2020 published an article titled "Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims "Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States."
If the United States adopted the Cuban approach recommended by Mr. Erlich any person recording a police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to prison.
A
law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on
or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before
sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First
Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also
runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory,
even though the document is censored in the island.
Six days after The Progressive published its essay celebrating Cuban policing in Castro's Cuba, a 27 year old Cuban was shot in the back by a Cuban police man.
Hansel E. Hernández (age 27) killed on June 24, 2020.
On June 24, 2020 in Havana, Cuba Hansel E. Hernández (age 27)was shot in the back and killed by the police while allegedly trying to flee. It took three days for the authorities to report the killing, despite repeated requests for clarity on what had happened.
This would normally have ended silently with no one being the wiser, but Facebook and the courage of a traumatized family member prevented that outcome. On June 25, a woman posted on Facebook a photo of the dead Black youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.
"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice.
Facebook post by Hansel's aunt calling for justice.
Hours later, the authorities of the Castro regime released an official statement claiming that the 27-year-old had been caught by a National Revolutionary Police patrol
when, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), "he was
stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop", then fleeing. During
the chase "on the run for almost two kilometers, over uneven terrain",
the young man, to avoid being arrested, "attacked one of the policemen
throwing several stones, one of which hit the policeman in the crotch,
another in the side of the torso and a third dislocated his shoulder and
threw him to the floor," indicates the statement posted on social
networks on June 27th. In response to Hansel Hernández's throwing stones, “the soldier fired two warning shots.Immediately
afterwards and due to the danger to his life due to the magnitude of
the aggression, the policeman riposted from the ground, firing a shot
with his regulation weapon that impacts the individual and causes him to
die," continues the official version.
"Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. The secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and started arbitrarily detaining those who they suspected would take part in the non-violent protests. A number of activists recorded or expressed over social media their intention to take part in the protest action and some were able to message out when they were taken, or had their homes surrounded and laid siege to by state security and were placed under house arrest. This crackdown in which seventy Cubans were targeted successfully "prevented" the non-violent action.
On June 28, 2020 independent Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and is now being charged with "Fake news" for his reporting on this police killing of a black youth. Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests have been detained or laid siege to their homes in order to stop them reporting on the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano and reactions to his death. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.
Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it calls Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this is a systematic campaign of the dictatorship. While at the same time shutting down independent actions as previously mentioned. The tweet above is an example from this campaign.
No video to contradict the version of the dictatorship. Peaceful protests preempted. This is the reality of life under a dictatorship where freedom of speech and assembly do not exist. Is this what progressives want for the United States?
Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros: Died on hungerstrike
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship without his families consent. Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:
It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.
Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:
I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.
On Friday, August 7, State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days.
Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom. He is not the first, and I fear while people of good will celebrate a white minority dictatorship in Havana while ignoring its black victims, there will be others. Black Lives Matter and that should include Black Cuban Lives too.
Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros died on hunger strike on August 7, 2020
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said Martin Luther King Jr., and he was right.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.,
like Gandhi before him, was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Another courageous man of Christian faith, inspired by Reverend King's nonviolent legacy, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement who had been a seminarian were martyred on
July 22, 2012 for advocating nonviolent change in Cuba. Oswaldo had
managed to obtain more than 25,000 signatures in a Stalinist
dictatorship demanding a vote to change the system and recognize the
rights and dignity of Cubans. Like Martin Luther King Jr. he was killed but his ideas and example live on to inspire others.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
Meanwhile, Raul Castro survived to the present day hanging on to power and
prepares to turn it over to a new generation of Castros, as his brother had passed it on to him before, as the island of Cuba sinks into misery
and despair, and humanitarian aid gathered in Miami and delivered to Havana by Oswaldo's daughter, Rosa María Payá Acevedo is blocked from being delivered to Cubans in need by the Castro dictatorship.
Rosa María Payá Acevedo carries on her dad's legacy
A dictatorship that claims to advocate for social justice
but silences those who wished to nonviolently protest the shooting in the back of a young unarmed black man by the Revolutionary National Police. A regime that in the midst of hunger rejects aid sitting at a port in Havana.
The Progressive, a publication founded in 1909 in Madison, Wisconsin claims to question anything, but when it comes to Cuba it has swallowed hook, line, and sinker the misinformation of the Castro regime on policing. On June 18, 2020 they published an article titled "Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims "Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States."
On the same day Havana Times published an article by IPS-Cuba titled "Is it legal to Take Photos or Videos of Police in Cuba?" The case of George Floyd became known because his death was recorded by a civilian who witnessed the events as they transpired, and then uploaded the video and shared it with others. Now the question is would it be legal to do that in Cuba?
According to
Cuban lawyer Humberto Lopez asked last Wednesday June
10th, on an episode of his “Hacemos Cuba” TV show "recording the police officer isn't illegal or constitute a crime" but
“if this image
is uploaded onto a digital platform without this person’s consent, then
you are using it without their authorization,”would violate the right to privacy of the police officer under Article 48 of the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban attorney added "that if the intent of the publication is to defame
police actions (he didn’t say if it mattered if these actions were right
or wrong), it is an administrative violation, which is subject to a
fine, because it violates Decree-Law 370 passed in 2018, by the Ministry
of Information Technologies and Communications."
Therefore, if the United States adopted this Cuban approach any person recording a police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to prison.
A law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory, even though the document is censored in the island.
According to a January 13, 2020 report in The New York Times
a former high-ranking judge in Cuba
provided
documents which "showed that approximately 92
percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial
in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are
accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government
uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having
committed a crime." Furthermore, the article says that "records show
that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. The Cuban
government has only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed."
The United States, in contrast to Cuba, offers regular reports on its prison system, and allows the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its prison, including high security areas such as the prison at the Guantanamo Naval Base.
The reason that so much is known and documented about the abuses with regards to the prisoners there is because the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited the U.S. Guantanamo detention facility over 100 times since 2001.
Meanwhile over the past 20 years the Cuban government permitted no visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuba's prisons. The Castro regime considered allowing a visit in 2013, but decided against it.
The Castro regime has demonstrated by not allowing international observers into its prisons that it is out of sight out of mind from most international indices, and gets the benefit of the doubt from "progressive publications."
Nevertheless there are moments that highlight the brutality of the regime.
Three black men executed by firing squad for trying to leave Cuba.
Lorenzo
Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis
Martínez Isaac,
were shot by firing squad following a speedy "trial" in 2003 for trying to leave Cuba. On April 2, 2003 eleven Cubans
hijacked a ferry traveling to Regla from Havana with 40 people on board
with the intention of traveling to the United States of America but ran
out of fuel 28 miles off the Cuban coast and were towed back to the
island. Despite verbal threats made against the safety of the
passengers to maintain control of the vessel, the situation, according
to the authorities, ended without violence and that “all of those who had been on board were rescued and saved without so much as a shot or a scratch.” The hijackers were tried by the "Court
for Crimes against State Security of the People’s Court of Havana. The
Court had applied the specially expedited summary proceeding
contemplated in Articles 479 and 480 of the Criminal Procedure Act, and found guilty. They appealed their sentence, and it was quickly denied. Unlike in the United States the Judiciary in Cuba is not independent of the Executive.
In the early morning of April 11, 2003, following the decision handed down by the Council of State, the sentences were carried out and Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad. Nine days after the hijacking and three days after the trial.
The Cuban government also knew how to handle the aftermath and avoid negative publicity.
Ramona Copello mourns execution of her son Lorenzo Enrique in 2003
Ramona Copello, Mother of Lorenzo Enrique Copello interviewed by the Associated Press described how:"They came to my home at 6 in the morning and knocked on the door and told me to go to the cemetery at 10:00. He was already dead and buried. Go to the cemetery at 10 (am) so we can tell you where your relative is buried. That was it.
He was already buried, he was covered. I asked and implored and even
kneeled so they would let me see his face. Since they are liars, I
couldn't believe it was him. I uncovered the crypt. I uncovered it
because I wanted to see if it was really him, but I couldn't see his
face because the security and police arrived and so I didn't get to see
his face. I'm not sure if it's my son or a dog buried there."
Lorenzo Enrique was 31 years old and left behind a widow and an 11 year old daughter, who last saw her dad on April 10, 2003. He worked as a caretaker in a health center.
Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla executed in 2003
On April 12, 2003 the Spanish newspaper El Pais on how another family reacted. "According to eyewitnesses, in the neighborhood of Central Havana, where Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla lived, who was 21 years old, some incidents were recorded when the execution was reported to his family. Sevilla's mother suffered a nervous breakdown upon hearing the news and went out of the house shouting against the government and crying, to which dozens of neighbors joined. The police arrived to control the situation and kept the area cordoned off all day long."
On April 25, 2003 Fidel Castro appeared on television to defend the three executions, and show trials against nonviolent dissidents that had taken place in parallel. The official transcript left out unscripted comments by the old dictator who referred to the three executed men as the "tres negritos" which translates into English as the "three pickaninnies."
Unlike in the United States, all mass media in Cuba is controlled by the Cuban Communist Party, and any embarrassing or inconvenient statements can be disappeared and erased from public view.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a black Cuban prisoner of conscience was subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture between 2003 and 2010, and following his death on February 23, 2010 was subjected to a campaign of vilification by Cuba's Communist authorities. Orlando's mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, denounced her son's mistreatment and held up a blood stained shirt that belonged to her son, who had been beaten up by prison guards, for rejecting communist re-education and continuing to denounce human rights violations in the prisons.
Reina Luisa Tamayo, with her son's bloody shirt
Ten years have passed since his untimely death, but many inside and outside of Cuba continue to demand justice for him and his family. The poster below reads "Tenth Anniversary of his Martyrdom: His Murderers Continue Without Being Tried" and underneath it reads "Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Martyr for the Liberation of the Cuban people" followed by his birth date and the day he died.
Black lives matter, without question but the question that necessarily arises is do they matter everywhere, regardless of ideology?
It necessarily arises because the leadership of the Black Lives Matter organization, despite the above examples (which are the tip of the iceberg) never raised these cases, but instead mourned the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016 and more shockingly defended what today is a old, male and white minority dictatorship in Cuba.
Will progressives speak up about continuing injustices against black Cubans such as Silverio Portal Contreras, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, who is now serving a four-year prison sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder"? He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.
Do black lives matter in Cuba? Is the monstrous Cuban police state what progressives want to turn the United States into?
Currently jailed and victims of beatings by prison officials.
Today in Cuba, Black Cuban men and women are being brutalized for their independence of thought, and refusal to obey the dictates of a white minority government that has ruled the island for 61 years.
Please let others know of their plight and raise your voice in solidarity with them.
Prisoner of Conscience: Silverio Portal Contreras
Silverio Portal Contreras is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, a former activist with the Ladies
in White, who is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public
disorder." Amnesty provided the following description of his plight.
"According to a court document, Silverio was
arrested on the 20 June 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel
Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that the behavior of the
accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a tourist area. The document further describes the accused as having “bad social
and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in
pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his
arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings
in Havana."
Silverio was the victim of a sever beating in mid-May 2020 that has cost him his sight in one eye, according to a report from his wife.
Political prisoner in Cuba today: Aymara Nieto Muñoz
Aymara Nieto Muñoz is a black woman, a dissident, and today a political prisoner. She was beaten up by prison officials two days ago. Aymara's family fears for her life, and they have every reason to be concerned. She is also being denied contact with her family. Black Cubans killed by Castro regime agents
The stakes are life and death, and other Black Cubans did not survive the encounter with the Castro regime. Here is a very partial listing of some recent high profile cases. Sadly, there are many more that stretch back over the decades to 1959.
It was ten years ago at 3:00pm on February 23, 2010 that it was
announced that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died. This humble bricklayer
who became a human rights defender, spent nearly seven years being
mistreated and tortured by the Castro regime.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arbitrarily detained by the secret police on
December 6, 2002 together with other activists, including Dr. Biscet, to
stop them participating in a human rights workshop at the home of human
rights defender Raúl Arencibia Fajardo. Three months later on March 8,
2003 Orlando was released.
Orlando Zapata photographed with prominent dissidents
Twelve days later on March 20, 2003 Orlando Zapata was re-arrested in
the midst of the Black Cuban Spring when over 75 activists and
independent journalists were jailed during a crackdown and sentenced to
long prison terms. He had been taken part in a fast and vigil demanding
the freedom of Dr. Biscet, who had remained jailed since the December 6,
2002 arrest.
"My
dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to
say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I
hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro
dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that
are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*
This did not silence him. When prison officials chose to attack his
human dignity, and engaged in acts of physical and psychological
torture, Orlando Zapata would respond with nonviolent defiance. He
carried out hunger strikes within the prisons he was transferred to. The
regime's response to his nonviolent defiance was to pile on prison
years to his sentence. Between May 2004 and December 2009 they carried
out nine trials without due process guarantees for a total sentence of
25 years and six months.
Reina Luisa Tamayo, with her son's blood stained shirt
What we know is a partial accounting of what he suffered. On July 26,
2008 in the Holguin Provincial Prison he was brutally beaten, on the
orders of the prison director, Major Orelvis Miraldea, and Orlando's
body was covered in bruises, but especially suffered blows to the head
that caused a intracranial hematoma in the lower part of his brain, and a
year later he needed to be operated on for this brain injury.
Despite this, because of his refusal to be re-educated and silenced, the
beatings continued on August 29, 2009, September 24, 2009, and a more
severe beating on November 26, 2009.
On December 3, 2009 he is transferred to Kilo 8 in Camaguey, a maximum
security prison. Upon his arrival the food that his mother had turned
into him the day before was confiscated, and they wanted to force him to
wear the uniform of a common prisoner. Orlando refused and begins his
last hunger strike.
Major Filiberto Hernandez Luis, director of Kilo 8 prison, retaliates
placing him in isolation without clothes and sleeping on the floor. Over
18 days they deny him water in an effort force him to end his hunger
strike, and break his spirit. On January 3rd and again on January 6th
he is taken to Amalia Simoni Hospital and undergoes intravenous
rehydration and is returned to his isolation cell.
On January 21, 2010 he is transferred to the Amalia Simoni Hospital
prison ward where he is kept under strong air conditioning unit with a
thin blanket that causes him to develop pneumonia, aggravating his
health situation. At the same time on several occasions members of the
political police film Orlando Zapata in his hospital bed.
On February 16, 2010 he is transferred to Havana in a military
operation, and his mother is not allowed to accompany him in the
ambulance. This is the last time that she sees her sons conscious.
On February 20, 2010 after strong protests by his mother to the secret
police, she is able to see Orlando at the Combinado del Este prison
ward, but he unconscious and intubated.
On February 22, 2010 she is called to a late night meeting with doctors,
where she is filmed without her knowledge. There she is told for the
first and only time that her son is alive thanks to an artificial
respirator. ( However, in a later article in the official newspaper
Granma it is reported that he had been on a respirator for days.)
On February 23, 2010 around mid-day, the secret police and military
doctors in form Reina Luisa Tamayo, Orlando's mother, that he is being
transferred to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in a critical state. He dies
three hours later at 3:00pm according to the information by the
political police to his mother.
Castro regime book “The
Dissidents” mentioned OZT as an opponent.
Following his death the Castro regime sought to destroy Orlando's reputation
and went as far as to deny that he had been a dissident. This campaign
failed, because even the dictatorship's own propaganda had recognized
his activism, published a picture of him with other activists and
attacked him years earlier.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Before and after Castro's imprisonment
They killed his body, but they did not obtain his obedience, and his spirit of defiance lives on.
However, one need not be a black political opponent to be killed.
Angel Izquierdo Medina, a 14-year old child was shot and killed by Amado
Interian, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from State Security, in
Mantilla, Cuba in 2011 because he stole some mamoncillos. When 400 friends, family members and neighbors decided
to attend the dead child's wake they were subjected to Cuban state security agents
laying siege to the dead child's wake.
Mother, Raiza Medina, and Ismael Suarez Herc, cousin of the victim
Raiza Medina demanded justice for her son Ángel Izquierdo Medina, who was killed on July 15, 2011. Pictured with Ángel's cousin, Ismael Suarez Herc, 17, who was an eyewitness to the crime.
The reaction by the dictatorship's
security forces no longer made this a simple indictment of one retired
state security agent but of an unjust system with a total disregard for
human life.
14 year old shot and killed in Cuba for stealing Mamoncillos in 2011
Three Black Cubans were shot by firing squad following a speedy "trial" in 2003 for trying to flee Cuba. On April 2, 2003 eleven Cubans
hijacked a ferry traveling to Regla from Havana with 40 people on board
with the intention of traveling to the United States of America but ran
out of fuel 28 miles off the Cuban coast and were towed back to the
island.
Despite verbal threats made against the safety of the
passengers to maintain control of the vessel, the situation, according
to the authorities, ended without violence and that “all of those who had been on board were rescued and saved without so much as a shot or a scratch.” The hijackers were tried by the "Court
for Crimes against State Security of the People’s Court of Havana. The
Court had applied the specially expedited summary proceeding
contemplated in Articles 479 and 480 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The
petitioners add that the trials took place from April 5 to 8, 2003." At
the "end of the expedited summary trial, the alleged victims were
sentenced to death for violating the 'Cuban Law against Acts of
Terrorism,' of December 2001.
Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez
Although the legally defined offenses
committed by the hijackers, the law prescribes imprisonment, not the
death penalty. The three Black Cubans sentenced to death, Lorenzo
Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis
Martínez Isaac, appealed against their death sentences to the Supreme People’s Court. The
Court ratified the sentences in less than a day. In keeping with
current laws in Cuba, these death sentences were submitted for
consideration by the Council of State, which proceeded to ratify them,
condemning them to death. In the early morning of April 11, 2003, following the decision handed down by the Council of State, the sentences were carried out and Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad. Nine days after the hijacking and three days after the trial.
"They came to my home at 6 in the morning and knocked on the door and told me to go to the cemetery at 10:00. He was already dead and buried. Go to the cemetery at 10 (am) so we can tell you where your relative is buried."
"That was it. He was already buried, he was covered. I asked and implored and even kneeled so they would let me see his face. Since they are liars, I couldn't believe it was him. I uncovered the crypt. I uncovered it because I wanted to see if it was really him, but I couldn't see his face because the security and police arrived and so I didn't get to see his face. I'm not sure if it's my son or a dog buried there."
Lorenzo Enrique Copello
Lorenzo Enrique Copello had a daughter, Yanisleydis Copello, she was 11 when her dad was killed, but she is now a dissident and demands justice for her father:
They executed her dad by firing squad when she was 11.
"I was only 11 years old when my father was shot, because he tried to leave Cuba in a boat, at all times we were deceived, I say we, because my dad was also deceived, my father was a worker at the Reina Polyclinic, he had no criminal record."
"At that time they told us that they guaranteed his life, however he was shot at dawn on April 11, 2003. After being buried they informed the relatives;I suffered a trauma from which I never recovered, with medical treatment and when I became an adult I demanded JUSTICE for my father's murderers."
The
executions created a firestorm of international criticism in
quarters that usually backed Castro's regime. The dictatorship demanded tacit support in a statement titled "LETTER OF CUBAN INTELLECTUALS AGAINST THE ATTACKS TO THE REVOLUTION" signed by
prominent Cuban figures asking their usual allies on the Left criticizing the summary executions of these three young
black men to be silent. The list of signers are a who's who of Cuban arts and culture: Alicia
Alonso, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Miguel Barnet, Julio García
Espinosa, Leo Brouwer, Fina García Marruz, Abelardo Estorino, Harold
Gramatges, Roberto Fabelo, Alfredo Guevara, Pablo Armando Fernández,
Eusebio Leal, Octavio Cortázar, José Loyola, Carlos Martí, Raquel
Revuelta, Nancy Morejón, Silvio Rodríguez, Senel Paz, Humberto Solás,
Amaury Pérez, Marta Valdés, Graziella Pogolotti, Chucho Valdés, César
Portillo de la Luz, Cintio Vitier, and Omara Portuondo. Some of them, like Cuban singer and dancer Omara Portuondo, and Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés were Black Cubans themselves, but had to sign off on three young black
men, who had not physically harmed anyone, being tried
and executed by firing squad in the space of nine days for reasons of
national security, despite it not being punishment that should have been applied by the laws on the books. The question of anti-black racism was raised because of the executions. “By
executing [three young black Cubans], Castro was sending a clear message to
the Afro-Cuban population” that dissent will not be tolerated, observed Dr. Jaime Suchlicki, director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami,
in a report on Cuban racism in June of 2003.
Systemic racism under the Castro regime documented, despite dictatorship's denials
The New York Times on January 25, 2020 published an opinion piece by French journalist and essayist Jean François Fogel that reports that
Cuba under the Castro dictatorship is "a segregated society: 70 percent
of black and mixed-race Cubans said they didn’t have access to the
internet, compared with 25 percent of white Cubans. The racial wealth
gap was also vast: While 50 percent of white Cubans had a banking
account, only 11 percent of black Cubans said they had one. Moreover,
white Cubans received 78 percent of remittances to Cuba, and they
controlled 98 percent of private companies."
On August 16, 2018 the Castro regime "categorically denied the existence of racial discrimination in Cuba to the group of independent experts of the United
Nations (UN) that form the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD)
during the review of Cuba under the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination," reported the non-governmental organization Race and Equality.
The purpose of the
review was for the Castro regime to present information on how it had implemented
action plans to combat racial discrimination in Cuba.
Juan Antonio Madrazo barred by Castro regime from talking about racism in Cuba
Voices from the island with a different point of view, that could have attended the gathering, were barred by the dictatorship from traveling. Juan Antonio Madrazo, Coordinator of the Citizen’s Committee for Racial
Integration (Comité Ciudadano por la Integración Racial), was prevented
from leaving Cuba to participate in the review, and Roberto Mesa,
Coordinator of the Black Brotherhood (Cofradia de la Negritud) was
arbitrarily detained a few days before he was scheduled to travel.
Roberto Mesa blocked by Castro regime from testifying on racism in Cuba.
In 2015 when a group of black Cuban human rights defenders were protesting for human rights that was video recorded, a woman was shouting about them in racist terms:"They’re a bunch of blacks who had no rights before and now want everything handed to them!"
Dissatisfaction by Black Cubans with the Castro regime became self-evident in 1980 when about half of the Mariel Exodus was made up of Cubans of African descent.
Cuba has a complicated history with regards to race relations that involves centuries of brutal slavery, and a plantation system centered around sugar and tobacco production. While at the same time long wars of independence from Spain that brought together slave owners and slaves in wars of liberation that changed relations, but following independence led to profound tensions in society that in the early days of the Republic led to blood shed, but in later years forged a new national identity.
Despite this history Castro regime officials try to jump on Black Lives Matter bandwagon
Castro regime officials, Comandante Ramiro
Valdes Menendez and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez are both playing a
dangerous game highlighting the problems of racism in the United
States. Bruno Rodriguez tweeted a 44 second excerpt of the video of the killing of George Floyd, and wrote: "George Floyd did not "pass away".He was brutally murdered.Unfortunately it's a story that African Americans know. He was unarmed.He shouted "I can't breath", but it was not enough to prevent an injustice. The color of the skin should not define us. #BlackLivesMatter"
Ramiro Valdes Menendez retweeted the Cuban Foreign Minister adding the observation: "That is the democracy and human rights that the empire defends: The oppression of the powerful, the hatred between the races.The
most basic human right, life, is trampled on in the United States and
its president remains silent in the face of such injustice."
They are inviting an examination of their own record, which has its own horrors, but highlighting what is happening in the United States in official Cuban media may boomerang as Black Cubans reflect on their own plight, and take matters into their own hands.
On Friday, June 5, 2020 news broke that a police station may have been assaulted and two policemen killed and a third seriously injured by assailants that had grievances with the police over poor treatment when making a complaint and harassment. We are still waiting to get additional confirmation.
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