"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)
The Cuban government is denying that it was involved in the smuggling of tons of cocaine on a ship bound for Turkey with a stop in Holland. The Panamanian government is also giving the dictatorship in Havana the benefit of the doubt on the cocaine shipment. The only problem is that the Castro regime lies consistently. The government of Panama is making a mistake.
U.S. and Canadian diplomats suffering from unexplained brain injuries.
At least 24 U.S. diplomats and 14 Canadian diplomats have suffered unexplained brain injuries in Havana, Cuba. Symptoms included "nausea, headaches, nosebleeds, hearing and eye problems." Official Cuban government response: The diplomats are victims of mass stress and the sounds that they are hearing are crickets. The Cuban embassy in Washington DC on
September 19, 2017 claimed that “Cuba strictly observes its obligations to protect foreign
diplomats on its soil” is not true. This is another lie. There is a decades-old pattern of
hostility. In 2006, the Miami Herald
reported how a high-ranking member of the U.S. mission found his
mouthwash replaced with urine. In another case, after one diplomat’s
family privately discussed their daughter’s susceptibility to mosquito
bites, “They returned home to find all of their windows open and the
house full of mosquitoes.” American diplomats, like their Canadian
counterparts, have also had pets poisoned while stationed in Cuba. The
types of injuries suffered by diplomats since November 2016 are new, but
Cuba’s outlaw behavior toward them is not.
Raul Castro on March 21, 2016 in the joint
press conference with President Obama said that there were no political prisoners in Cuba, and if any were identified they would be released
immediately. A list of current Cuban political prisoners was provided,
but they were not freed.
Weapons and fighter jets hidden under sacks of sugar.
In July 2013, Cuban officials were caught trying to smuggle tons of arms that included: warplanes, missiles, and technology related to
ballistic missile programs hidden under 220,000 bags of sugar to North Korea and lied about it. This was also in violation of U.N. sanctions.
The Castro regime has sought to smuggle narcotics into the United States since 1961, and has been implicated time and time again. Indictments have been issued and documentaries have caught the illicit activities of the dictatorship on film.
Raul Castro with Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado
According to the UPI in 1982 the following high ranking Cuban officials were indicted by the United States for operatiing a drug ring out of Cuba: Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado, head of the navy and a member of the Communist
Central Committee; Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, ambassador to Colombia;
Gonzalo Bassols-Suarez, a former staff member at the Cuban embassy in
Colombia; and Rene Rodriguez-Cruz, a Central Committee member and
president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People.
"What’s past is prologue" - William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I @RosaMariaPaya Angel is in danger. Will the world once more accept the rules of the Cuban government?
There are important lessons to be drawn from the past 53 years of totalitarian rule under the Castro brothers but despite this people of good will fail to see the patterns or learn the lessons of history. Our friends in Europe who co-existed with these type of regimes and had in their midst men of the caliber of Václav Havel who understood the power of the truth against a system built on lies.
In the case of Cuba the power of the truth was able to shake the regime from the its very beginnings while going along with the regime’s lies would destroy the complicit liar. It is not easy to hold on to the truth when one has been subjected to the techniques of interrogation, manipulation, torture and blackmail that Cuban state security are experts in. Even democratic governments can be duped into thinking that remaining silent and going along with the lie will benefit an imprisoned citizen or subject.
They could not be more mistaken.
Cuban history provides two parallel examples in which high ranking military officials in the regime were told that if they went along with the lie and pleaded guilty to the charges made against them that they could go home.
Towards the end of 1959, less than a year into the Castro regime, as it was still consolidating power and holding mass executions by firing squad the regime wanted to eliminate Huber Matos. Matos was one of the Commandants of the revolution who had entered Havana at Fidel Castro’s side but he was a fervent anti-communist who had fought Batista’s regime to re-establish democracy in Cuba not install a communist dictatorship. He had tried to resign his position but was repeatedly refused by Fidel Castro. Until the moment came to accuse Huber Matos of conspiracy and treason and set up a summary military trial in order to have him speedily executed. While being held in custody Fidel Castro sent a messenger to Huber Matos to tell him that if he confessed to everything that he had been accused of over the proceeding days and remained silent during the trial that he would not be executed and could go home.
Huber Matos in the above video describes how they asked him to go along with the lie to save himself
Huber Matos rejected the offer and said he would defend himself. He went on to do so at his military trial and was able to shift the opinion of military officers in the room who applauded his courage during the trial. The Castro brothers had planned to execute him but instead, fearing they would make him a martyr, sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the
history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in
the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the
truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its
transcendence for the future of Cuba.
If the truth shall make you free then what does the lie offer? The Ochoa case offers a dramatic answer. Nearly 30 years later in June of 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa is arrested. He had been declared a “Hero of the Revolution” by Fidel Castro in 1984 but was deemed too dangerous by the dictatorship because he had been contaminated with ideas of Glasnost and Perestroika while visiting the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era. He was also popular within the ranks of the military due to his exploits in Africa. As was done with Huber Matos he was slandered and accused of conspiracy and treason this time tied to drug smuggling and corruption. He was also approached with the offer that if he confessed to everything he had been accused of and did not mount a vigorous defense that he could go home into retirement.
Confession of General Arnaldo Ochoa during military trial
These are two high profile and historic examples but there are many others in which the families of political prisoners have been told that if they remain silent and behave that their loved ones would be sent home to them.
Years and in some cases decades would go by before the family would understand that it was a lie. At the same time those who organized international campaigns and spoke out were able to obtain improved conditions for their imprisoned relatives and in many cases an early release. The most high profile examples of this practice are the Ladies in White. Their husbands, fathers and sons had unjust prison sentences that ranged up to 28 years yet thanks to their efforts all were out of prison within eight years.
The obvious questions raised by the previous examples outlined are why is the truth uttered by an individual so powerful and how can it possibly protect an individual instead of going along with the regime’s desire that one lie?
Václav Havel in his 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless which he dedicated to the memory of Jan Patocka explained the power of confronting the lies with the truth saying:
As long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations.
Living in truth is a powerful shield of protection within a totalitarian regime but it doesn’t mean that one is still not in danger. Jan Patocka, a great Czech philosopher and dissident and Charter 77 signatory, that Havel dedicates his essay to, died after an 11 hour interrogation at the hands of state security in his country on March 13, 1977.
However, once one goes along with the lie their life is in greater danger because as long as the one who has gone along with the lie lives they can still recant and for the dictatorship it is more convenient to silence them. They have the video confession giving their version of events and no one to contradict it.
This is why when Rosa Marie Paya tweets that Angel [Carromero] is in danger she is telling the truth.
The chief villain according to the defenders of Qaddafi is the Libyan League for Human Rights. They fail to mention that one of the founders of the group, Mansour Kikhia, was abducted in Cairo on December 10, 1993 and taken to Libya where he was executed on Qaddafi's orders. According to The Washington Post: "Kikhia, who defected to the United States in 1980, served as Gadhafi's foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations before turning into a sharp critic of the regime." Nor do the apologists mention "the Abu Salim Prison killings in June 1996, when the security forces allegedly killed up to 1,200 inmates" reported by Amnesty International in its 2011 annual report (which covers 2010). There are many more atrocities committed by the Qaddafi regime prior to the crisis of 2011 that are well documented prior to the "fog of war" which requires greater discernment.
Nevertheless, if I had it to do over again I would not remain silent and would once again sign the document calling for the international community to condemn the atrocities being committed against the Libyans. At the same time refusing to remain silent today when the new government commits human rights violations against former regime officials and African immigrants. To remain silent when a crime is being committed is to be complicit.
Photograph of Castro and Qaddafi. Taken from Libyan despots residence
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