Responding to Carlos Gutierrez and Alan Gross on Cuba policy

Question asked and answered

Some of the Cubans killed by the Castro regime during Obama detente

 Secretary Carlos Gutierrez's observation would be more accurately directed at the Obama Administration that legitimized a dictatorship, distanced itself from dissidents, freed terrorists that planned attacks on U.S. soil and killed Americans, and looked the other way while diplomats and their dependents were being harmed in Cuba.

This was not a foreign policy but wishful thinking that was also doing the bidding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Agriculture lobby to open up credits to the Castro regime that would saddle Americans with the bill, and perpetuate the Castro dictatorship at the expense of the Cuban people.

Victims of state violence in Cuba during Obama detente

Oswaldo Payá, and Laura  Pollán, opposition leaders that would have overseen a democratic transition were killed, and repression exploded without consequences during the Obama years. Extrajudicial killings of fleeing Cubans continued but during the Obama years high profile activists also met untimely deaths that appear to have been carried out by Castro's state security service. The same spy agency that Obama's October 2016 Presidential Directive on Cuba ordered the CIA to share intelligence with.

Explosion in arbitrary detentions during Obama detente with Castro regime

Finally, with regards to the point raised by Alan Gross on agricultural export sales. They collapsed on President Obama's watch because they were no longer politically necessary to purchase leverage in the American political process. The Castro regime was getting everything it wanted through unilateral concessions. 

Prison conditions in Cuba: What we know, what we don't know and why

A polemical question?

Alan P. Gross: Before and after five years in a Cuban prison

Alan Gross was never debriefed by the U.S. government following five years in captivity in Cuba. The Obama Administration never placed him as a priority in the normalization campaign, and this was a contributing factor to his long and unjust incarceration. During these five years in a Cuban prison he lost 5 teeth, 110 pounds and contemplated suicide before his December 17, 2014 release.

According to Alan Gross in a 2015 Sixty Minutes interview, Cuban officials had "threatened to hang me. They threatened to pull out my fingernails. They said I'd never see the light of day."

Officially, Gross was jailed for trying to provide uncensored internet access to a local Cuban Jewish community. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on November 13, 2012 confirmed that Alan Gross has been arbitrarily detained and should be immediately released.

In reality, Gross was a hostage used by the Castro dictatorship as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of Cuban spies arrested for espionage that involved planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, gathering information on military bases and conspired to carry out an act of state terrorism that led to the deaths of four civilians.

I was treated better as a political prisoner in Cuba. https://t.co/iij39KQQUd

— Alan P. Gross (@AlanPGross) June 23, 2019

Gross commenting on the terrible conditions for migrants, including children, at the Clint border station in Texas has repeatedly made the claim that he was treated better as a political prisoner in Cuba.  

Mr. Gross was a special case, of high value for the Cuban government that led to the release of key members of their WASP spy network. Therefore his experience may not have been typical.

It is possible to learn what prison conditions are like in U.S. prisons, but it is not so easy to do so in Cuba. The last time the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch were granted permission to enter a Cuban prison was in 1988. The International Committee of the Red Cross prior to that had not had access since 1959.

British businessman spent 16 months in Cuban prisons

Other foreigners, such as British businessman Stephen Purvis, have written their own accounts of prison life in Cuba, but there are also reports from respected human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch that paint a grim picture. 

In their World Report 2019 Human Rights Watch provides the following summary on prison conditions in Cuba:

Prison Conditions

Prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners are forced to work 12-hour days and are punished if they do not meet production quotas, according to former political prisoners. Inmates have no effective complaint mechanism to seek redress for abuses. Those who criticize the government or engage in hunger strikes and other forms of protest often endure extended solitary confinement, beatings, and restrictions on family visits, and are denied medical care.

While the government allowed select members of the foreign press to conduct controlled visits to a handful of prisons in 2013, it continues to deny international human rights groups and independent Cuban organizations access to its prisons.

On August 9, Alejandro Pupo Echemendía died in police custody at Placetas, Villa Clara, while under investigation for a crime related to horse racing. Family members say his body showed signs of severe beatings; authorities contend he threw himself against a wall and died of a heart attack. Allegations have surfaced of family members and witnesses being coerced to withdraw their initial statements and to confirm the official version.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in their 2017 annual report cited the Cuban NGO Cubalex that "reported that since the 2013 Universal  Periodical  Review  (UPR)  there have been 22 suicides of inmates by hanging in Cuba."

We know about the dismal conditions in the Texas border station and in the Guantanamo Naval Base prison because there is oversight. The reason that so much is known about the Guantanamo detention facility with regards to the prisoners there is because the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited it over 100 times. Meanwhile the Castro regime over the past 60 years permitted only one visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuba's prisons and that was 31 years ago in 1988.

The lack of international outrage sends a message and that is that not allowing human rights organizations to visit prisons for decades has a lower cost then opening them up to international inspection.

Cuba policy, the Alan Gross precedent and the death of Otto Frederick Warmbier

 Actions have consequences
 

Alan Gross before and after 5 years in a Cuban prison

American Alan Gross was arrested on December 3, 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison. Alan Gross, an American citizen, spent 25 days in a Havana jail before being visited by a U.S. diplomat. Gross's supposed "crime" was providing uncensored internet access to local Jewish communities, but in reality it was to test the resolve of the new Administration that had just entered office. The signal sent was that Mr. Gross was not a priority and the drive to normalize relations was. Alan Gross was finally freed on December 17, 2014 emaciated, missing teeth and exchanged in a swap with Cuban spies, one of which was serving a life sentence for murder conspiracy. Unfortunately other outlaw regimes were also paying attention and taking hostages knowing that it would provide leverage to advance foreign policy goals as it had the Castro regime.

College student Otto Wambier was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor in March 2016 for trying to steal a political propaganda poster in North Korea. One year and three months later he was released to the United States in a coma acquired in prison allegedly from botulism and died a day after his return. Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, in a press conference prior to the young man's death lamented that the previous Administration 'could have done more.' Worse yet they told the Warmbier family to keep a "low profile" so as not to "upset the North Koreans." "We've been forced to be quiet and act different because we didn't want to 'offend them."

Cuba and North Korea have close relations. Cuba was caught smuggling tons of weapons including warplanes and missiles on a North Korean ship in 2013 in violation of international sanctions. These type of regimes share information on their bad practices.

Alan Gross got out alive, but Otto Wambier was not so lucky. Otto Warmbier's death in North Korea is the responsibility of Kim Jong-un but bad policy contributed. The legacy of appeasing dictators played a role in ending the life of a 22 year old American college student.

Otto Wambier: December 12, 1994 - June 19, 2017

Open Letter to President Obama with regards to his remarks on Cuba in the State of the Union Address

State of the Union 2015

Dear President Obama,

President Obama sometimes in foreign policy the options to chose from are not ideal and that is the case with Cuba. Over the past 56 years different administrations have sought to engage the Castro regime. Like North Korea it is a totalitarian communist dictatorship with a terrifyingly effective state security apparatus and unlike North Korea it has an effective propaganda apparatus both nationally and internationally. Two prior administrations in 1977 under President Carter and in 1992 under President Clinton went down this path and in both cases the end results compromised U.S. national security and people died.

This "shift in Cuba policy" will not "end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere" because sanctions were and are not at the root of the conflict but rather a fundamental difference between a democracy that says it values human rights and freedoms and a totalitarian dictatorship that does not recognize them except in service to the aims of the regime. Furthermore the Castro regime from its days as a guerrilla movement through decades of dictatorship has defended, practiced and carried out terrorism as a legitimate tactic in revolutionary struggle.

The regime has no need of "phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba" and no further proof of this is needed than to recall how Soviet publications were banned during the Gorbachev era because perestroika and glasnost were considered subversive by Fidel Castro. The old tyrant understood that what the Russians were peddling was a threat to the dictatorship.

Mr. President extending the hand of friendship to Fidel Castro (as President Clinton did in 2000) and as you did to Raul Castro in 2013 is not extending it to Cubans but to their oppressors. Raul Castro ordered the shoot down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996 killing four humanitarians and it was on his watch that Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero died under suspicious circumstances that have all the hallmarks of an extrajudicial execution carried out by state security. This is why on February 3, 2015 Rosa María  before the Senate Subcommittee provided an indictment of the Obama administration's outreach to the dictatorship in Cuba: 

On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention.

The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the US government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes. 

Rosa María Payá Acevedo asked the question in December 2013: "Why did Barack Obama shake the hand of my father's killer, Raul Castro?" We now know that part of the answer was to free three Cuban spies, one of them Gerardo Hernandez, who was held legally responsible for ending the lives of the above mentioned four men.

Standing up for democratic values in Cuba does not mean freeing a spy serving life for killing Americans. Mr. President you recognized Alan Gross at the State of the Union Address but not the terrorist spy you freed to get him back: Gerardo Hernandez. 

Alan Gross should not have spent five years in prison but your administration's initial strategy of silence combined with US diplomats taking 25 days to see Alan Gross cost him 5 years in prison because it sent a signal of weakness and turned Mr. Gross into a hostage to be exchanged. The release of the five spies is a major propaganda victory for the dictatorship and for its hardline elements.

Appeasing tyrants and freeing murderers is a policy that is long past its expiration date of 1939 and the tragic lessons should be heeded to avoid yet another tragedy.

The small steps you are taking is filling many democrats in Cuba not with hope but with despair and the knowledge that more good people will be murdered by this regime and its tenure in power perpetuated by your policies as the dictatorship was by the Clinton administration at the end of the Cold War.

Unfortunately, the desire of agribusiness and the chamber of commerce pushing for subsidized trade with the Castro regime will as  is now the case with mainland China assist the dictatorship in modernizing without improving human rights thus endangering them for their neighbors.

Two final considerations: It has been during the Obama administration that Castro regime was caught in 2013 smuggling arms, including ballistic missile technology and dismantled MiG fighter jets to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. Secondly, once again links have been demonstrated between drug traffickers and the Castro regime. Ignoring these realities do not only endanger Cubans, other Latin Americans in the region but the American people as well.

This is a recipe for disaster.

Principled and Strategic Nonviolence are the path for a Free Cuba

"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

On December third at the Paths for a Democratic Cuba international conference organized by the Christian Democrat Organization of America and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation spoke on the afternoon panel "Political Opposition: Towards a unity of action and strategies for Change." Below is an abbreviated version of the presentation.

Listening to the panels this morning on civil society and the political opposition led to a re-think on this presentation. But first would like to address what my colleague Andres Hernandez of the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba concerning the international situation with regards to Cuba.

In 2013 a cargo ship that left Cuba bound for North Korea was discovered to be full of weapons: including rockets and MiG fighter jets hidden under bags of sugar which it tried to smuggle through the Panama Canal. Despite an investigation by the United Nations that demonstrated that the Cuban government had violated international sanctions against North Korea no action was taken. The regime in Cuba has expanded its power and influence in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and exporting its repressive model.

Meanwhile the Obama Administration has had a policy of loosening restrictions despite an American being held hostage, Alan Gross, since December 2009 and escalating high profile deaths of opposition figures beginning with Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010 followed by Lady in White founder Laura Inés Pollán Toledo in 2011 and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero in 2012. Not to mention escalating violence against opposition activists including machete and knife attacks in 2013 and 2014. These are difficult times.

However, lets return to this morning's focus on how to achieve change inside Cuba.

Vladimiro Roca in the second panel this morning stated that there was no top down change in the island: "No change in Cuba. There are adjustments that are reversible. ...When there is change there is no regression."

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

There is common agreement that the best and most effective manner to confront the totalitarian system in Cuba is with non-violence.

In the second panel this morning Cuesta Morua said that "the means are as important as the ends." This brought to mind Mohandas Gandhi's observation on ends and means:  "They say ‘means are after all means’. I would say ‘means are after all everything’. As the means so the end."

Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina in this morning's first panel explained that "the populace is obtaining information but there are still deficiencies in the knowledge of democracy and human rights." Rolando went on to explain that "the nonviolent struggle is not sufficiently known either within the population or the resistance itself," and he also observed that there needs to be not only more struggle but more preparation.

This presents a challenge because if non-violence is just a buzzword that is not understood then the reality is that the opposition may have multiple meanings on what nonviolence is but without internalizing its meaning. Unfortunately, nonviolence is often confused with passivity.

Nevertheless there are specific areas of consensus, for example Reinaldo Escobar this morning mentioned four points of minimum consensus now circulating in the island:

1. Freedom of political prisoners in Cuba including activists on probation
2. End repression against nonviolent organizations: this includes ending arbitrary detentions, acts of repudiation, etc.
3. Ratification of human rights and labor covenants
4. Recognize the legitimacy of the emerging Cuban civil society

At the same time the 1998 Agreement for Democracy signed by 121 organizations inside and outside of Cuba has 10 points of which three coincide with four points mentioned by Rolando: 

2. Immediately issue a general amnesty for the liberation of all political prisoners, including those who have been sentenced for fictitious common crimes, and cancel the pending political causes against Cubans in exile, so as to facilitate their return to the homeland and their reintegration into the national society.
4. Recognize and protect the freedom of expression, the press, association, assembly, peaceful demonstration, profession, and religion.
6. Immediately legalize all political parties and other organizations and activities of civil society.

This lists concern outcomes, the ends which everyone agrees on, but the lack of understanding of what nonviolence means both on a strategic and individual level is more problematic because it addresses the means to achieve the ends. Within academic circles there are two broad areas of nonviolent thought: strategic and principled nonviolence. Strategic nonviolence has been advocated by among others, Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institute and principled nonviolence by Michael Nagler of the Metta Center for Nonviolence.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence.

Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones:

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

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion: 

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner. Metta Center defines it as follows:

Principled nonviolence is not merely a strategy nor the recourse of the weak, it is a positive force that does not manifest its full potential until it is adopted on principle. Often its practitioners feel that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, and who they wish to become as individuals. To adopt principled nonviolence is not a quick and easy decision one can make through logic but a slow, perhaps lifetime endeavor. Nonetheless, we focus on principled nonviolence because we think it has the potential for creating permanent, long-term change.  Ultimately it can rebuild many of our institutions on a more humane and sustainable foundation. In the long run nonviolence is, as Gandhi said, an “experiment with truth.” We have all to experiment with nonviolence in the way that seems best to us, because in the end the world will need all our experiences to arrive at a new order based on nonviolence.

Michael Nagler provides the following Six Principles of Nonviolence that can serve as a guide for individuals to empower themselves:

1. Respect everyone – including yourself. The more we respect others, the more effectively we can persuade the m to change. Never use humiliation as a tool — or accept humiliation from others ; that degrades everyone. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) . Remember, nobody can degrade you without your permission. The real success in nonviolence , which violence can never achieve, is to heal relationships. Even in a case of extreme violence, Gandhi felt it was possible to hate the sin, not the sinner.

2. Always include ‘Constructive Programme’. Concrete action is always more powerful than mere symbolism, especially when that concrete action is constructive: setting up schools, cottage industries, cooperative farms, etc. [...] Constructive work has many advantages:

• It enables people to break their dependency on a regime, by creating their own goods and services. You cannot get rid of an oppressor when you’re depending on him for something essential.
• It’s proactive ; you are not just reacting to offenses but taking charge. This helps you shed passivity, fear, and helplessness.
• It gives a movement continuity , as it can continue when direct resistance is not advisable.
 • It builds community . Studies have shown that working together is the most effective way to unite people. CP also reassures the general public that your movement is not a danger to the social order

And, most importantly,

• CP builds the infrastructure that will be needed when the oppressive regime falls. Many an insurrection has succeeded only to find a new set of oppressors rush into the vacuum. So a good guideline to follow is:  Be constructive wherever possible, obstructive wherever necessary. [...]

4.  Look for “win/win” solutions that will satisfy the real needs of all parties . Remember that you are trying to rebuild relationships , if at all possible, not score “victories.” In a conflict , we can feel that in order for one side to win, the other has to lose ; but this is a not true . Therefore, in nonviolence we do not seek to be winners, or rise over others; we seek to learn and to make things better for all.

5 . Use Power Carefully. We are conditioned (especially in the West) to think that power “grows out of the barrel of a gun.” There is indeed a kind of power that comes from threats and brute force – but it is powerless if we refuse to comply with them. There is another kind of power that comes from truth. Let us say that you have been petitioning to have an injustice removed; perhaps you have made your feelings known in polite but firm protest actions, but the other party is not responding. Then you must, as Gandhi said, “not only speak to the head but move the heart also.” And this we can do by taking upon ourselves, to make it clear, the suffering inherent in the unjust system . This is known as Satyagraha, or ‘truth force.’ In extreme cases we may have to do it at the risk of our life (which is why it is good to be very clear about our goals!).

[In the Cuban context there are examples of activists such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas who were threatened with death but continued their nonviolent activism risking their lives for their fellow citizens and paid the ultimate price.]

Do this with care. History, and often our own experience, has shown that even bitter hostilities can melt with this kind of persuasion that seeks to open the eyes of the opponent rather than coerce him or her. Nonetheless, there are times when we must use forms of coercion, for example, when a dictator refuses to step down, and we have to act immediately to end the vast amounts of human suffering that is caused by that person misusing power. Even then, it requires strategic thinking and nonviolent care to do it right. But when time does allow we use the power of patience and persuasion, of enduring rather than inflicting suffering. The changes brought about by persuasion are lasting: one who is persuaded stays persuaded, while someone who is coerced will be just waiting for the chance for revenge.

6 . Claim our Legacy . Nonviolence no longer needs to take place in a vacu um. To know the history of the many nonviolent movements we referred to at the beginning, and be in touch with others involved in similar efforts today, can be very helpful. 

Colleague on my right spoke about the nonviolent revolution in Burkina Faso, but today in Hong Kong a nonviolent movement born in 1989, in reaction to the massacre of students in Beijing in June of that year, anticipated the British handover to main land China in 1997 demanding democratic reforms and an agreement for the transfer that protected the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents. Since 1997 when the Chinese communist regime has sought to renege on its agreements: taking over education in order to indoctrinate Hong Kong youth; passing anti-subversion laws that would've gutted civil liberties hundreds of thousands took to the streets nonviolently with concrete demands and succeeded in stopping the power grab. Now in 2014 the announcement was made that the selection of candidates and the universal suffrage of Hong Kongers would not be respected and hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets and key areas of Hong Kong have been occupied.  These are movements worth studying.

Unfortunately, the temptation to embrace violence, especially after provocations with the belief that it will speed up change has been demonstrated time and time again to be a failure. For example following the Sharpesville massacre in 1960 the African National Congress abandoned its nonviolence stance and prolonged the existence of the Apartheid state for another three decades. It was not the African National Congress and the armed struggle that brought the Apartheid regime to the negotiating table but the United Democratic Front (UDF) and mass civic nonviolent action combined with international sanctions.

The path to a free Cuba is to be found in the intersection of principled and strategic nonviolence.

Cuba, Alan Gross, and the shadow of the St. Louis

Antisemitism in Cuba, then and now.

Jewish refugees not let into Cuba in 1939 and Jewish man not allowed to leave in 2009

 Seventy years after the events surrounding the voyage of  the St. Louis, when between May 27 - June 6, 1939 Cuban officials extorted desperate Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany then refused them entry leading them to ask for asylum in the United States only to be denied and returned to Europe where many of the refugees died in the holocaust, in Miami Beach survivors gathered to remember on December 13, 2009. 

Evidence emerged in 2012 of the Castro regime's past relationship with Nazis and its present influence in Venezuela and the rising antisemitism there.  Scholars have also documented the links between the dictatorship in Cuba and the rise of international terrorism and its role in backing the Palestinian Liberation Organization and other movements in their attacks on Israel.


What was still unknown at the time of the St. Louis survivors gathering was that a Jewish American, Alan Gross, had been arrested in Cuba ten days earlier on December 3, 2009 and denied consular access for 25 days. The official reason for Gross's imprisonment: trying to provide uncensored internet access to the local Cuban Jewish community. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has confirmed that Alan Gross has been arbitrarily detained and should be immediately released. The real reason is that he is a hostage being used as a bargaining chip by the dictatorship in Cuba to obtain the release of Cuban spies arrested on U.S. soil for espionage that involved planning terrorist attacks, gathering information on military bases and an act of state terrorism that led to the deaths of civilians.

The shadow of the St. Louis continues to hang heavy over Cuba as another Jewish victim suffers at the hands of a regime with a long history of antisemitism.

United Nations confirms that US citizen arbitrarily detained in Cuba*

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Palais Des Nations, Geneva photo by gruntzooki

A 12 page decision from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, dated November 23, 2012, and first released to the Cuban government on September 11, 2012 in a private communication and today the report has been made public. It calls for the release of Alan Gross and describes the legal process that he was subjected to in Cuba as not being "independent and impartial" and his imprisonment over the past three plus years as "arbitrary."

Background on Working Group 

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was established by the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1991 to investigate instances of alleged arbitrary deprivation of liberty. Its mandate was clarified and extended by the Commission to cover the issue of administrative custody of asylum-seekers and immigrants. In 2010, the Human Rights Council confirmed the scope of the Working Group's mandate and extended it for a further three-year period.

The Working Group is comprised of five independent expert members from various regions of the world. The Chair-Rapporteur is Mr. El Hadji Malick Sow (Senegal) and the Vice-Chair is Ms. Shaheen Sardar Ali (Pakistan). Other members include Mr. Mads Andenas (Norway), Mr. Roberto Garretón (Chile) and Mr. Vladimir Tochilovsky (Ukraine).

Excerpt from the 12 page report:

Text below taken from Capitol Hill Cubans

According to the U.N.'s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:

43. [I]t is within the Working Group’s competence to analyze if the person had the right to fair and impartial legal proceedings before an independent court. The detention would be arbitrary if the court had rejected exculpatory evidence or admitted illegal evidence.

44. In order to begin its analysis as to whether the present case is situated within the framework of Category III utilized by the Working Group, the Group had to first take note that neither the Government nor the source dispute that Mr. Gross was able to enjoy many of his procedural rights, such as presenting evidence; cross-examining the witnesses for the prosecution; presenting his own defense witnesses; having legal counsel of his choosing; having had a period of time to prepare his defense; having had interpreters; declaring freely; as well as the fact that the trial was public and attended by observers from his country, family members, and friends of the accused, among others.

45. In addition, the Working Group notes that there are no differences in some of the objective facts in the case. Both the source as well as the Government accept that Mr. Gross was in Cuba for the purpose of working on a project named “Para la Isla” [“For the Island”] of an agency of the Government of the United States of America; that he acted under a contract of the firm Development Alternatives, Inc. to carry out a project jointly with USAID; that the bringing in of equipment for facilitating wireless connections to the Internet was legal; that Mr. Gross made five trips to Cuba as a tourist, always using his United States passport; and that he maintained relationships with Jewish communities in Cuba; among others.

46. However, there are serious differences between the parties with regard to the following points: firstly, as to whether the courts that tried Mr. Gross in the first and second instances were or were not independent and impartial.

47. In order to resolve this issue with the greatest possible degree of impartiality, the Working Group recalls the following:

(a) In 2000, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women observed with concern that the National Assembly of People’s Power has the authority to appoint and dismiss the People’s Supreme Tribunal and the Attorney General and his/her substitutes; the Office of the Attorney General is subordinate to the National Assembly and to the Council of State; and the Attorney General is accountable for the performance of his/her duties to the National Assembly. Said constitutional provisions hinder the impartiality and independence of the judiciary (E/CN.2000/131, paragraph 67). The Government of Cuba, emphasizing that the people have chosen a socialist political system, rejected this assertion, which in its view was based on false information that had been fabricated by malicious sources or was based on fundamentalist ideological positions (E/CN.4/2000/131, p. 9).

(b) The Committee against Torture had recommended in 1997 that the rules for organizing the judicial system be adjusted so as to accord with international standards (A/53/44, paragraph 118).

(c) In 2007, the then-Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers reminded Cuba that, in accordance with international standards, military courts in principle should not have jurisdiction to try civilians (A/53/44, paragraph 118).

(d) The former Personal Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recommended that Cuba adjust its criminal procedure to the provisions of Articles 10 and 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (A/HRC/4/12, paragraph 35; E/CN.4/2006/33, paragraph 35; E/CN.4/2005/33, paragraph 36); [sic] E/CN.4/2004/32, paragraph 35).

(e) According to the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, access to justice with regard to the right to food should be improved. The courts should have a mandate to examine human rights violations and an independent institution should be established and charged with processing complaints and providing reparations for infractions committed (A/HRC/7/5/Add.3, paragraph 79 (c)). In response to this communication, the Government of Cuba clarified that its inter-institutional system processes said complaints (A/HRC/8/4/Add.1, paragraphs 108-110).

48. The aforementioned antecedents, emanating from reports from the non-conventional mechanisms created by both the former Commission as well as the current Human Rights Council, were compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Working Group in charge of the Universal Periodic Review of Cuba (see document A/HRC/WG.6/4/CUB/2 dated December 18, 2008, paragraph 20). Said reports were considered in due course by the organs which established said mechanisms with no reservations or objections whatsoever. Consequently, the Working Group cannot ignore same.

49. By virtue of said antecedents, the Working Group cannot rule out the fact that the courts of first and second instance that tried Mr. Gross did not exercise the judicial function in an independent or impartial fashion.

50. The Working Group must also consider if the national security law – and specifically its Article 91 – fulfills the requirements of precision and certainty that authorize the application of a sentence. Illicit conduct, in accordance with criminal doctrine, must be perfectly described prior to the commission of the illicit act, in harmony with the provisions of Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But that description must be precise, such that the potential criminal knows the limits between what is and is not considered criminal activity. The classification of a crime must contain all of the necessary elements for this.

51. In the opinion of the Working Group, the description of the punishable offense in Article 91 of the Criminal Code of Cuba does not fulfill the requirements of precision required for the criminal to know exactly what conduct is prohibited. In effect, said article, inserted among acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the State, within the section related to crimes against State security, provides that “the one who, in the interests of a foreign State, executes an act with the purpose of harming the independence of the Cuban State or the integrity of its territory, shall incur in a sanction of imprisonment of 10 to 20 years or death.” The vagueness of concepts such as “executing an act”; “in the interests of a foreign State”; [and] “harming the independence of the Cuban State or the integrity of its territory” do not satisfy the requirement of a rigorous description of punishable conduct.

In conclusion, the Working Group considers that the courts of first and second instance that tried Mr. Gross did not exercise their function in an independent or impartial manner. Article 91 of the Criminal Code does not satisfy the requirement of rigorous description of  punishable conduct, which lends an arbitrary nature to the detention.

Palais Des Nations, Geneva

The complete report is available both in Spanish and English in pdf format at Bring Alan Home. 

*Background and excerpted text in this blog taken from outside sources.

As a U.S. citizen rots in a Cuban prison, Castro's agents get visas to USA

Cuban repressor Adalberto Sánchez Sorit (shirtless) has a US Visa

 On August 4, 2011 the Obama Administration announced a ban on visas for people who the State Department finds have been involved in human rights violations, but it now appears that Cuban state security agents and their willing accomplices are being exempted from this presidential directive.


The pictures in the video above were sent by human rights activist Yoan David González Milanes, of the November 30 Democratic Party and the National Front for Civic Resistance OZT, from Santa Cruz del Sur, Camaguey, where you can see the alleged repressor and state security agent Adalberto Sánchez Sorit (who is scheduled to travel to the U.S.) participating in an act of repudiation against activists at their home. Additionally, you can see the repressor's sister Hilda Sánchez Sorit and his wife Mayra Esquivel, also participating in the repudiation act. All three are known repressors of nonviolent activists in the Cuban province.

It appears that the presidential directive has not been vigorously enforced because it would as Human Rights Watch observed "strengthen the US government’s commitment and capacity to prevent mass atrocities and other grave human rights violations around the world" and Miami would not be filled the Castro regime's henchmen. The directive signed by President Obama is clear. Now the question remains when will it be vigorously enforced or this another demonstration of how the Administration has extended a hand to the Castro regime?

This at a time when human rights in Cuba are deteriorating and Alan Gross, a United States citizen, is currently unjustly imprisoned in a Cuban prison and has been there for more than three years. 

Adalberto Sánchez Sorit

US Administration's passivity has cost American citizen 3 years in a Cuban prison

Alan Gross before and after 3 years in a Cuban prison

There have been failures in protecting US lives and property under the Obama Administration as in the case of the Benghazi scandal in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans lost their lives which have garnered lots of press coverage.  But there is another case which is that of American Alan Gross, arrested on December 3, 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison which has been spun into a debate around US sanctions on Cuba which is a failure in restoring the liberty of an unjustly imprisoned American citizen.

 On April 17, 2009 President Barack Obama said that his Administration sought "a new beginning with Cuba" and stated further that he was “prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues — from human rights, free speech, and democratic reform to drugs, migration, and economic issues.” Less than eight months later Alan Gross was taken hostage in Cuba. Nevertheless, the Administration continued its policy of unilateral concessions.

Several questions remain unanswered that are extremely troubling. First, why did this American citizen spend 25 days in a Havana jail before being visited by a U.S. diplomat? By that time Alan Gross had been approached by a Cuban “attorney” who just happened to be representing five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States for espionage and conspiracy to commit murder against four US citizens and they had also planned terrorist actions on US soil. This Cuban attorney represented Alan Gross before his show trial and later appeals. Secondly, did anyone ask if their was not a conflict of interests by this attorney and considering that her clients work for the Cuban State Security agents, Thirdly, has anyone investigated whether or not she is also an employee of the Cuban clandestine services? Finally who advised the Gross family to maintain this individual as their legal representative?

Alan Gross’s supposed crime: Attempting to provide Internet access to the local Jewish community in Cuba is an internationally recognized right. The reality is that he is a hostage of the Castro regime to be used in pressuring concessions. The Obama Administration dangled several offers to the
Castro regime and made a unilateral concession: 

• Take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  
• Waive probation for one of five Cuban agents convicted of espionage in the United States that planned at least one terrorist attack in the United States and provided intelligence that led to the downing of two US civilian planes over international airspace on February 24, 1996 killing four
• Cuba democracy programs would no longer be about promoting democracy but "building civil society."
• The White House and Senator John Kerry pushed to unilaterally cut money for the Cuba democracy programs and freeze their funding. 

On the other side of the ledger the Cuban dictatorship did not suffer any repercussions for arbitrarily detaining a U.S. citizen.  Alan Gross remains incarcerated to this day and tomorrow, December 3, 2012 will mark his third year in captivity as a hostage of the Castro regime who is now explicitly calling for his exchange for five convicted Cuban spies.

The dictatorship in Cuba is criminal, but not irrational and if the Obama Administration's approach is one of all carrots and no stick then the regime will continue to collect concessions and hang on to their hostage until that changes. Meanwhile the Obama Administration will continue to harvest the bitter fruits of appeasement.

The bitter fruits of appeasement

Appeasing totalitarian tyrants has a long losing track record

Alan Gross: American held hostage in Cuba since 2009

While reading the September 15, 2011 New York Times article on what Governor Richardson and the Obama Administration were willing to offer the dictatorship in Cuba in order to obtain the release of American hostage Alan Gross, I had a sense of deja vu. The Administration dangled several offers to the Castro regime and made a unilateral concession:

• Take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• Waive probation for one of five Cuban agents convicted of espionage in the United States that planned at least one terrorist attack in the United States and provided intelligence that led to the downing of two US civilian planes over international airspace on February 24, 1996 killing four.
• Cuba democracy programs would no longer be about promoting democracy but "building civil society."
• The White House and Senator John Kerry pushed to unilaterally cut money for the democracy programs and freeze their funding.

Now that these offers have failed, another is floated:

• Get the European Union to changes its common policy limiting relations with Cuba because of human rights concerns.

This policy approach has been tried before in Cuba, North Korea, Libya, China, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany with disastrous results. Historian Paul Kennedy has described "as the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an armed conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly dangerous."

The approach has often failed when dealing with totalitarian regimes of the right and the left because they often refuse to maintain a clear eyed vision of who the adversary is. In the case of Nazi Germany this failure led to WWII, the Holocaust and over 40 million dead.

On the other hand consider for a moment the example of Ronald Reagan who in 1980 brought an end to the policies of appeasement and detente championed by the American political establishment. However, President Reagan did engage in dialogue and negotiation but with a sense of realism of who and what he was dealing with stating in 1983:

During my first press conference as President, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas -- that's their name for religion -- or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates an historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930's. We see it too often today.This doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them.

Secondly he identified the adversary's ideological framework as morally repugnant in the same speech but separated their humanity from that framework:

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

Because Reagan refused to mince words and had a clear eyed sense of the adversary and pursued policies in defense of American interests and values he achieved great successes without any major wars on his watch and millions were freed of decades of oppression. 

Since then, even those like George W. Bush, who claim to be the heirs of Reagan have fallen far short in what amounts to appeasement. The Bush Administration continued the policy of appeasement of the Clinton Administration on North Korea. In October of 2008 they took North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism without any improvement in its behavior in an attempt to obtain a deal to stop the regime's nuclear weapons program. It only encouraged more aggressive behavior by North Korea that perceived the US concession as a sign of weakness. On the other hand, what was described as a great success in the Bush Administration, the normalization of relations with Libya is now a source of shame. Qaddafi's regime murdered hundreds of American citizens and despite that, in exchange for a pay out, were also taken off the list of state sponsors of terror and apparently collaborated with the torture of detainees sent there by the Bush Administration. In the case of China, the communist dictatorship receives US development aid to build "civil society" controlled by the dictatorship while dissidents are left in the cold to fend for themselves.

Now the Obama Administration continues this failed approach with Cuba and because of the perception of weakness projected to the totalitarians in Havana now has an American hostage that has been unjustly imprisoned since December 2009. If instead of making unilateral concessions in the first months of his presidency he had demonstrated an understanding of nature of the regime and its fundamental systemic immorality then Alan Gross would not be an American hostage in Cuba today.

Its not only government policy but also at the level of civil society. For example when the Latino and American Students Organization at American University invite the Cuban ambassador to speak in a propaganda exercise to white wash the crimes of Cuban state security agents that planned terrorist acts on US soil that sends a message of weakness and encourages these types of regimes to continue their activities in the United States.

Historically, the fruits of appeasement when practiced with ideologically committed totalitarian regimes have been extremely bitter. De-linking human rights concerns from overall policy concerns has been a disaster for human rights in China and would also be a disaster for them in Cuba. Altering the designation of a state that sponsors terrorism in an effort to appease there conduct elsewhere is a dangerous policy that undermines a national commitment to hold as pariahs those regimes engaged in such practices. All too often throughout history appeasement has ended in armed conflicts that were more expensive, bloody and dangerous where a more principled and tough foreign policy would have avoided it.