Castro Incorporated: Undermining Human Rights, Dignity and Freedom Worldwide Since 1959

Proposed flag for Castro Incorporated.

 Over the past few weeks many, especially in Venezuela, have focused on the role of the Castro regime and its intelligence service in shoring up the Maduro regime and speculated about its protagonism in the killing and torture of Venezuelan students. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the Castros' interventions in the internal affairs of Venezuela. The harm done by this dictatorship is not limited to Latin America but spans across the globe undermining human rights, dignity and freedom since 1959.

NGO moment of silence for CaoShunli  HRC25

Meanwhile today at the United Nations Human Rights Council the Castro dictatorship applauded the human rights record of the People's Republic of China, and voted to block the effort of human rights defenders to hold a moment of silence for Cao Shunli. She was an activist who had tried to participate in China’s Universal Periodic Review, but was detained at the airport trying to get on a flight to attend the current session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and accused of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles." Within three months in detention and being denied medical care Cao Shunli died on March 14, 2014.

 Denied medical treatment while in detention Cao Shunli died. © Private

The behavior of the Cuban government is not a surprise. Their is a long track record going back decades. During the first Universal Periodic Review of the People's Republic of China in 2009 the Castro regime recommended that China take a harder line against human rights defenders. Representatives of the Castro regime also defended North Korea against a critical United Nations human rights report claiming that it harmed prospects for dialogue. At the same time the close relationship between Cuba and North Korea and the smuggling of arms in violation of international sanctions has also been in the news. The Castro regime also involved itself in Ethiopia with a close ally, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who is now a convicted war criminal who they guided in a red terror that killed scores of children considered ideologically suspect in Ethiopia. Cuban diplomats for the dictatorship played a crucial role in blocking a UN investigation of atrocities in Sri Lanka.

Despite being in charge of a small country that often talks about the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples facing a great empire (i.e. The United States) the plight of the people of Tibet does not interest the Castro brothers. (Nor did the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979.  The Cuban dictatorship openly applauded the massacre of Chinese students in  Tiananmen Square in 1989 commending Chinese authorities for "defeating the counterrevolutionary acts." This should answer the question about their possible involvement or advocacy of such practices in Venezuela.

However, ideological litmus tests have not limited the Castro brothers embrace of gross and systematic human rights violators. Formerly classified documents made public by the German intelligence service in November of 2012 reveal that Fidel Castro in the 1960s personally recruited former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops and also reached out to Nazi operatives, Otto Ernst Remer and Ernst-Wilhelm Springer, in Germany's extreme right to purchase weapons. In the 1970s the Castro regime developed a close relationship with right wing military junta in Argentina that had disappeared, according to some estimates, as many as 30,000 Argentinians many of whom were leftists. The Castro brothers have also defended the Assad regime for years at the United Nations, and looked the other way when the United States set up its prison camp in Guantanamo. The one Cuban dissident, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who first criticized the presence and treatment of inmates at Guantanamo was murdered by agents of the Castro regime on July 22, 2012.

Raul Castro's International Relations: Europe's Last Dictator & Sri Lanka's Genocidal President

"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions." - Václav Havel, October 1989

Sharing Havel's worldview is the reason that while observing the situation in the world one is compelled to offer an opinion and when circumstances demand it to repeat it and act on it. This is the situation with regards to the regime operating in Cuba that makes a negative impact not only on the lives of Cubans in the island but around the world in places like Belarus, China, Iran, Libya, Sri Lanka and Syria.

Many of these tyrants, like their Cuban counterpart, share Havel's view, but whereas he expressed this statement with hope and optimism, they view it with fear. It is for that reason that these dictatorships attack freedom of the press and freedom of expression because they view both as an existential threat.

Raul Castro and Alexander Lukashenko

The past two weeks have once again demonstrated its defense of dictators and genocidal regimes with visits from heads of state from Belarus and Sri Lanka leaders to Cuba. At the same time in Geneva at the U.N. Human Rights Council its efforts to silent critics while defending brutal dictatorships demonstrates the horrid nature of the regime.

Alexander Lukashenko is the last dictator of  Europe and has the prisoners of conscience. He has been the "president" of Belarus since 1994. His official visit to Cuba on June 24, 2012 was not his first. Both Lukashenko and the Castro brothers have a lot in common in persecuting dissidents and stifling freedom of expression and association.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka and Raul Castro

In the case of Sri Lanka, in 2009 the Cuban government's diplomats took the lead in blocking efforts to address the wholesale slaughter taking place in Sri Lanka. The Foreign Policy Association reported at the time that:

As expected, Cuba’s seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council has already become an obstacle to the process of investigation and recognition of gross human rights offenses. Yesterday Cuba succeeded in blocking debate on abuses in Sri Lanka, which many countries have pushed for after the extreme violence that rocked the country earlier this month.

Amnesty International said that “[t]he vote is extremely disappointing and is a low point for the Human Rights Council. It abandons hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka to cynical political considerations.” In 2011 the regime's diplomats opposed a reopening of the Sri  Lanka case which many have called a genocide. The official visit to Cuba of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka (considered by many to be a war criminal) should dispel the illusion that Raul Castro is any different than his predecessor.



Some on the Left that recognize this loathsome behavior attempt to minimize it within a cold war paradigm but to do so they must ignore the Castro regime's strategic embrace of the Argentine military junta in the 1970s that disappeared 30,000 leftists. Not to mention its initial reception to the Bush Administration shipping prisoners to Guantanamo.

The choice is simple and clear it is not one of being right or left but whether you believe that human beings have dignity and fundamental rights that you are willing to recognize and defend or you don't.  In Cuba, under the Castro brothers the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered a subversive document. It is for these reasons that the dictatorship in Cuba and its ally Venezuela have no place on the U.N. Human Rights council. The effort to remove or keep out of the membership these kind of regimes from the Council is not done out of small mindedness but out of a desire to save it from irrelevance.

At the same time it is up to all of us wherever we are to speak out when we have the opportunity for those who are being silenced in solidarity with them.

The Cuban Regime's International Impact on Human Rights: Sri Lanka

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”. ["Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are."] - Spanish proverb

Victims of war crimes in Sri Lankan conflict

May 30, 2011 Update: Cuba opposed a reopening of the Sri Lanka case before the 17th Session of the UN Human Rights Council according to Navi Pillai, the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

When dealing with human rights and Cuba there is an obvious focus on the systematic human rights violations inside of Cuba that often leads to overlooking the impact of the regime in multinational and international institutions. In the past this blog has reported on some of the many countries the Castro regime has made an impact in: Angola, Argentina, Ethiopia and Venezuela now Sri Lanka is added to this list.



Back on May 28, 2009 the Cuban regime was one of 29 developing countries that backed a Sri Lankan-proposed resolution describing the conflict as a “domestic matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference”. The Cuban government's diplomats took the lead in blocking efforts to address the wholesale slaughter taking place in Sri Lanka. The Foreign Policy Association reported that:

As expected, Cuba’s seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council has already become an obstacle to the process of investigation and recognition of gross human rights offenses. Yesterday Cuba succeeded in blocking debate on abuses in Sri Lanka, which many countries have pushed for after the extreme violence that rocked the country earlier this month.

Amnesty International at the time said that “[t]he vote is extremely disappointing and is a low point for the Human Rights Council. It abandons hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka to cynical political considerations.”

The consequences of that vote continued to be felt in 2010 and Amnesty International continued to campaign for victims of repression in Sri Lanka. On April 8, 2011 Amnesty International issued a call to the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to make public the report prepared by a 'panel of experts' that is to be handed to the UNSG on April 13, 2011.

All of the above is proof of the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr.'s observation written in 1963 from a Birmingham jail that:"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Do your part to demand justice for the victims of systematic human rights violations in Sri Lanka and in doing so help undo some of the damage committed against the people of Sri Lanka by the Castro regime. Remind the world that justice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere because we are all "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality" for good or ill. Let it be for the good.