#SixMonths after #11J protests in #Cuba: Fact checking the Associated Press report on the 11J protests and "collective trials."

"Caution foreign news agencies! Your representatives in these lands are always in danger of becoming hostages, first, and then collaborators of the rulers." - Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, August 12, 2014

"Be careful what you wish for." - Aesop's Fable

Today marks six months since Cubans across the island took to the streets in over 50 cities and towns calling for freedom and an end to the Castro dictatorship on July 11, 2021.

Regime officials are doing everything possible to terrorize Cubans with long and unjust prison sentences, and a continued militarized presence on Cuba's streets.   

Family members of Cubans jailed on the island for taking part in the July 2021 protests have been calling on news bureaus to report on the political show trials underway. 

International news services had been silent on the matter. This campaign began with EFE, but expanded to include Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Presse. Above is a graphic by Michael Lima Cuadra, of Democratic Spaces calling for news bureaus to "make their plight visible cover the trials."

Cubans march under a banner declaring "Down with dictatorship" and "Patria y Vida"

This is due to a history of the Castro regime ejecting journalists, and entire news bureaus when they report the news accurately. Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of Mexico's El Universal were all expelled in 2007 from Cuba for offering reporting, that although bending over backwards not to offend, still ran afoul of the regime.  

Fear is not unique to Cubans, and regime officials have spent decades intimidating foreign journalists.

The Associated Press  was expelled from Cuba in 1969. CNN was the first American outfit to return to the island in 1997, and AP soon followed in 1998.

A cursory Google search find that Andrea Rodriguez has been filing stories from Cuba for the AP since 2003. Over the past 19 years she has witnessed many of her colleagues expelled from Cuba, and has had to adapt to survive. This was not lost on opposition activists

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, months before his July 22, 2012 murder by the secret police,on September 20, 2011 videotaped his interview with Andrea Rodriguez of the Associated Press and released it because he believed that what he had told her was not fairly reflected in the article she had written.  In the interview he described how victims in Cuba are criticized because no one dare criticize the executioner and offered the following critique that Ms. Rodriguez did not publish:

"There is a real “moral inversion,” in what the foreign media, intellectual circles, ecclesiastical circles, diplomats and politicians are doing against the people of Cuba and against the dissident right now. They judge the persecuted, the poor, those who are silenced, but they do not dare to judge the government."

EFE's reporting on the trials and the 11J protests has its weaknesses. "On July 11, the largest anti-government protests in decades took place in Cuba, spontaneous and massive demonstrations linked to the serious economic crisis that the country went through." They failed to mention that many of the protesters were calling for an end to the dictatorship, and were singing the lyrics of "Patria y Vida" as they marched in the streets.

However, their reporting ends with a telling note that refers to EFE bureau members losing their accreditation. 

"NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: The decisions of the Cuban authorities in recent months have decimated the team of the Efe delegation in Havana, where currently only two journalists can continue to carry out their work. Efe hopes to be able to recover its information capacity on the island in the coming days."

 Andrea Rodriguez of the Associated Press demonstrates how she has survived in Cuba all these years. The AP reported gives the following description of 11J.

"Officials initially appeared to be caught off-guard when thousands of Cubans took to the street in cities across the island on July 11 and 12 to protest shortages of goods, power blackouts and economic hardship — with some also calling for a change in government."

The above description does not match with the videos that emerged of the protests in Cuba with the crowd chanting "libertad", "Patria y Vida" and calls for an end to the dictatorship.

However, the most egregious omission by the AP journalist is leaving out the statements by Miguel Diaz-Canel inciting violence and the regime police and paramilitaries firing on unarmed protesters. This is how she described it.

"At least one person died and several shops and vehicles were vandalized or burned."

It began on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, just South East of Havana when Cubans took to the streets in protest. Others saw it streaming live, and also took to the street in cities and towns across the country chanting "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship." 

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

 Cuban protesters were met with extreme violence by the dictatorship, but they continued to take to the streets over three days before the extreme repression shut them down.

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

This revealed the lie that the protests were caused by U.S. sanctions. Cubans were protesting the lack of freedom, and the internal blockade imposed on them by the Castro dictatorship. 

It is likely that more than one person died, but officials only recognized one death. The AP report omits that the overwhelming violence, and the one person killed, was unarmed and gun down by regime agents.

Havana officially recognized one Cuban killed during on July 12th during the protests, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36). He was shot in the back by regime officials on day two of nationwide protests in Cuba. Reports have been received that family members of those killed have been threatened to remain silent. 

Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) shot in the back by regime officials on July 12, 2021.

 Six months later, and many are asking themselves what can be done?  There is a petition circulating, and still gathering signatures, that calls for international action, and also informs the reader on the nature of the Cuban dictatorship.

Why are Cubans protesting in Cuba and around the world?

Cubans are engaging in nonviolent protests both inside the island and in the diaspora on November 15th ostensibly to protest limitations on civil liberties in Cuba, and call for the release of hundreds of political prisoners. The Cuban dictatorship has prohibited peaceful protests on the island, and is ramping up repression, and strategies to stop the demonstrations. 

Protest on 11/14/21 at Cuban Embassy in Washington DC.

Although the main objective is the release of political prisoners, and defending civil liberties, the grievances run far deeper, and are too numerous to list in a single blog entry, but some highlights can be listed here for context and greater understanding.

1. Dictatorship's decision not to get foreign vaccines for Cubans in order to claim that Cuba was the first country in the world to vaccinate their entire population with homegrown vaccines caused many deaths.

Posted on Facebook by Tîcö Äwö Ôrümîlä, had to bury his grandmother in a mass grave in the Juan González cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba. (Screen capture)

Officials decided not to acquire vaccines from their allies, China and Russia, or sign up with the United Nation's COVAX program. Russian and Chinese vaccines became available in Latin America as early as February 2021. Reports of Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines reaching Latin America made news in early March 2021, but Havana declined them preferring to promote their still unavailable domestic vaccines while most other countries in Latin America did.

Official regime journalist Leticia Martinez Hernandez over Twitter on May 18, 2021 bragged that "Cuba will be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines. Live to see!" She even replied to her own Tweet that she would keep the above "tweet fixed until then. I want to remember the feat on which we have bet." Havana's foreign ministry on June 9, 2021 repeated the same campaign theme as the official journalist: "Cuba could be the first country to immunize its entire population with its own vaccines. The population wants and trusts the vaccine candidates, our science, and the country's experience in vaccine development."  Officials rejected using alternative vaccines over the six months that they were available, because their  first "homegrown vaccines" had not been ready for clinical trials until May 2021 in Havana, and in the rest of the island until June. As of November 9, 2021 none of the Cuban vaccines have been peer reviewed. 

Cuban official statistics on COVID-19 infections and deaths are not reliable. Professor Duane Gubler of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore in the January 8, 2019 New Scientist report, "Cuba failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases in 2017", stated matter of factly that "Cuba has a history of not reporting epidemics until they become obvious." Doctors and journalists have been jailed in Cuba for speaking truthfully on past disease outbreaks.  Sarah Marsh, of Reuters, was reporting on June 17, 2021 that "coronavirus infections have halved in Havana since authorities started administering Cuba’s experimental vaccines en masse in the capital a month ago." Less than a month later Reuters was reporting that Cuba "has the highest rate of contagion per capita in Latin America." There are official denials, but independent reports of mass graves in Cuba for COVID-19 victims continue to circulate.

Following July protests in Cuba, officials in later August 2021 accepted China's sinopharm vaccine and began providing it to Cubans. This was at least seven months after it had already been distributed in the rest of Latin America. Why didn't Havana do this beginning in January or February when the rest of Latin America did and Cuba did not have "home grown" vaccines? Why are they doing it now when they have the "home grown" vaccines that they claim are up to 92.8% effective (but have not been peer reviewed), compared to China's sinopharm vaccine that is only 72% effective?

2. Havana wishes to maintain monopoly control over distribution of assistance and zero transparency. 

Volunteers collect humanitarian aid collected in Miami to be sent to Cuba.

In 2020 the Castro regime seized a humanitarian shipment that would have helped tens of thousands of Cubans.They continue to block grassroots efforts today. The Biden Administration in early July 2021 granted a temporary authorization from the US Department of Transportation for two cargo airlines to travel to the island with humanitarian cargo. According to 14ymedio the "permit, which will be in force until November 30 and was made public on August 13, includes charter flights 'for emergency medical purposes, search and rescue, and other trips considered of interest to the United States.'” Two months had passed and there was still no response from Havana, despite the urgent need on the ground.

3. Cubans are resentful of the internal blockade placed on them by the Castro dictatorship.

Havana continues to call the United States economic embargo on Cuba a "blockade." This is not true as the State Department (and U.S. - Cuba trade statistics over the past 20 years) demonstrate. A meme appeared on social media in Spanish that outlines this reality, and Cuban scholar and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner on July 15, 2021 gave a commentary on the blockade not prohibiting a series of economic measures that are proscribed by the Cuban government. Another meme correctly replaced the term "blockade" with "economic sanctions."

This first to be examined was the claim that "U.S. sanctions do not prohibit fishermen in Cuba from fishing, the dictatorship does." This was explored in a July 29th CubaBrief that was mentioned in a column by Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the September 7, 2021 print edition of The Wall Street Journal titled "A Sanction Worth Lifting in Cuba."

The second to be examined was the claim that "U.S. sanctions do not confiscate what farmers harvest, the dictatorship does." Castro regime seized and collectivized properties, and prohibited farmers selling their crops to non-state entities, in the early years of the revolution. The Cuban government established production quotas and farmers were (and are) obligated to sell to the state collection agency, called Acopio. Most recent law on agriculture in Cuba ( Decreto Ley 358 de 2018) continues to prohibit private sales of agricultural products to non-state entities. 

Today, between 70% and 80% of Cuba's food is imported. This included the years when Cuba was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, and was part of the East Bloc. Since 2000, much of the food purchased by Havana has been imported from the United States.

Rotting crops cannot be blamed on economic sanctions, but inefficient centralized communist agricultural practices that prohibit market mechanisms to increase efficiency and deliver more food to Cubans. Diario de Cuba (DDC) ( March 18, 2021) and 14ymedio (June 15, 2021) have reported on rotting food crops due to the failures of the state enterprise, Acopio in picking them up on time. Worse yet, farmers have no other option bu to allow them to rot or risk fines and prison.

4. Cubans are beaten and imprisoned for thinking differently. There are hundreds of Cuban political prisoners who have not committed any crime, except exercise their fundamental rights. Nonviolent opposition leaders have died under suspicious circumstances with official involvement. 

Oswaldo Payá and Laura Pollán died under suspicious circumstances linked to regime.

Cubalex, a human rights NGO, identified 1,227 detained Cubans (this is a partial number), related to the protests that began on July 11th, in their database. Summary trials have been carried out, with Cubans condemned in excess of 20 years in prison for taking part in the protests.

Following the 11J uprising on August 18, 2021 Havana brought Decree-Law 35 into force. Human Rights Watch reported that "the decree, which has the stated purpose of 'defending' the Cuban revolution, requires telecommunications providers to interrupt, suspend, or terminate their services when a user publishes information that is 'fake' or affects 'public morality' and the 'respect of public order.'

Extrajudicial killings of dissidents also happen in Cuba.

On July 22, 2015 Javier El-Hage, and Roberto González of the Human Rights Foundation released a 147 page report titled The Case of Oswaldo Payá found that "witness statements, physical evidence and expert reports – suggest direct government responsibility in the deaths of Payá and Cepero. Specifically, the evidence deliberately ignored by the Cuban State strongly suggests that the events of July 22, 2012 were not an accident – as was quickly claimed by authorities in the state-owned media monopoly and later rubber – stamped by Cuba’s totalitarian court system – but instead the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the State, acting (1) with the intent to kill Oswaldo Payá and the passengers in the vehicle he was riding." Oswaldo Payá was the founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement.

Cuban opposition leader and human rights defender Laura Pollán died on October 14, 2011 under circumstances that Cuban dissident and medical doctor Oscar Elias Biscet described as "death by purposeful medical neglect." Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. She was the founding leader of the Ladies in White.

5. The Castro regime ended black advancement in Cuba, and silenced criticism of racism for decades through repression of black voices.

From Verde Olivo 1, no. 29 (October 1, 1960). A cartoon depicting Fidel Castro meeting with African Americans in Harlem in a pro-regime publication. On the left capitalists, and on the right Fidel Castro with black Americans featured with racist stereotype

 

“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many  have had to close their doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement,” reported Cuban nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay in the NAACP's publication The Crisis in 1961. 

Racist attitudes persist in Cuba under the Castros and this is reflected in rates of interracial marriage being lower in Cuba than in Brazil that has a much higher level of inequality than the Caribbean island, and has not undergone a communist revolution.

On the economic front the glaring differences between black and white Cubans are shocking with 95% of Afro-Cubans having the lowest incomes compared to 58% of white Cubans.

 

Placing the July 11th protests into context for a non-Cuban audience

 

Family Ties: Cuban Americans and Their Emigration Story | NBCLX

 

 

A recent surge of anti-government protests in Cuba have turned a spotlight back on calls for reform in the one-party Communist country. And for Cuban Americans whose families left the country in previous decades, it’s a reminder of what was lost and gained in their immigration to the U.S. NBCLX storyteller Eric Rodriguez takes a closer look at the Cuban emigration stories that are at the heart of the Cuban American experience.  

 

https://www.lx.com/community/family-ties-cuban-americans-and-their-emigration-story/44089/

Maleconazo at 27: When Castro's secret police shot into crowds of non-violent protesters with live ammunition and the world looked the other way

 "Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future." - Elie Wiesel  

 

Secret police in plain clothes firing live ammunition at protesters

27 years ago on August 5, 1994, a thousand Cubans marched through the streets of Havana chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro!" They were met with brutal repression, including regime agents dressed in plain clothes shooting live rounds at unarmed demonstrators.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Castro" on 8/5/94 in Havana

On July 11, 2021 it happened again, but this time it was not just in Havana, but across the island with hundreds of thousands of Cubans participating from over 50 cities and towns. The response of the dictatorship was the same as 1994, but this time the images reached the world almost immediately.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Communism" on 7/11/21 across Cuba 

 

In 2013 photographs taken during the 1994 protests by Karel Poort, a Dutch visitor, were made public and confirmed the anecdotal accounts of that day. Cuban dissident Regis Iglesias described how the dictatorship militarized the streets in an effort to terrorize the populace: 

A convoy of trucks crammed with repressive special troops and a vehicle with a 50 caliber machine gun on top patrolled up and down the long street.

Little has been reported on this, but some of the images and sounds remain. This combined with testimony of those who were there provide a better idea of what took place.

What happened?
Five hundred of the Cubans had arrived at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to board a launch that was rumored was going to be taken to Miami.  These people were not seeking to overthrow the dictatorship but did want to live in freedom.

They were met by the Castro dictatorship's secret police who told the crowd to disperse.

Instead of diffusing the situation another 500 Cubans joined in and  they began to march along the Malecon chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro! After marching for a kilometer, a hundred Special Brigade members and plain clothes police confronted the protesters firing live rounds into the crowd.

 

Secret police aiming handgun at protesters on August 5, 1994

 

27 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day. 

Eyewitness account  

 

Ignacio Martínez Montero

 

Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:

Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year's day, I'd arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that's why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting. 

Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution ... And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one. 

They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream "Viva Fidel." They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say "kidnapped" because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.

Twenty seven years later and the Castro regime continues in power terrorizing, beating, torturing and murdering nonviolent dissidents, and shooting young black men in the back, but some Progressive Americans want to apply Cuban style policing in the United States, and claim that there is a lot we can learn from them. Hopefully, the events of July 11, 2021 will wake up many more to the true nature of the Castro dictatorship, and the need to be in solidarity with the Cuban people, not their oppressors. 

 

Message of solidarity with the people of Belarus and eternal hostility to Lukashenko, the "Fidel Castro of Europe"

 "It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so." - Mr. Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General

Hispanics demonstrate their solidarity with freedom struggle in Belarus

Presidential elections were held in Belarus on August 9, 2020 and official provisional results claimed that the "incumbent President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko received 80.08% of votes, whereas his opponent Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya received 10.9%." Elections were marred by government "violence, unjustified detentions and falsification of election results."

Protests broke out across the country against Lukashenko, who has been the communist dictator of Belarus since 1994. Despite brutal repression and torture by government officials the populace has taken to the street to protest the latest stolen presidential election.

Pro-regime rally on the left dwarfed by opposition rally on the right on the same day

 We are approaching the 29th anniversary of Belarus achieving its independence from the Soviet Union after more than seventy years of occupation. Nevertheless, this day is not cause for celebration because for the majority of that time and currently Belarusians have been subjected to what today is the last dictatorship in Europe under the autocratic regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

Fidel Castro and Alexander Lukashenko: Birds of a feather

Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, is called the "Fidel Castro of Europe" and upon Fidel Castro's death in November 2016 he sent his effusive condolences to Raul Castro that give an insight into the Belarus dictator's character fawning over one of the great despots of the 20th century, and his close relationship with the current Cuban dictator.

 “It is with deep pain and sorrow that I have learned the news about the death of my Friend and your Brother,” the message of condolences reads." ... “Fidel Castro left his bright mark in history as a true patriot who dedicated his life to the selfless service to the Homeland and the ideals of the Cuban Revolution. ..." His wise ideas and advice are very important for me. I am convinced that this invaluable legacy will help me in state activities and personal life,” Alexander Lukashenko stressed. Addressing Raul Castro, he remarked: “Raul, we lost a close and dear person, and a unique thinker.”

One hopes that Lukashenko is not the Castro of Europe because after 25 years in power, he would still have another 22 years in power before handing the dictatorship to a close relative in a dynastic succession in 2042 as Fidel Castro did to Raul Castro in 2006 after he fell ill, and was unable to continue running Cuba's communist dictatorship after 47 years.

Raul Castro and Alexander Lukashenko

For anyone to remain in power for 25 years, much less 47 years, normally does not rely on the consent of the governed through a democratic process, but use a repressive apparatus and the willingness to punish, torture and kill those seeking a democratic change, even if they are pursuing it nonviolently. The Castro regime had secret police fire into marching protesters on August 5, 1994. There has been a report of at least one Belarusian shot by police during current protests against Lukashenko.

Andrew Roth writing in The Guardian on August 13, 2020 reported disturbing practices committed by the authorities against those already in custody.

Those detained in police stations, jails and makeshift prisons spoke of ritual beatings, up to 55 women being crammed into a cell meant for two people and men who were kept in stress positions for hours on end. Leaked audio files and other testimony has corroborated the reports of widespread torture as Lukashenko tries to hold on to power.

One 31-year-old builder from Minsk, who asked for his name not to be used, described being arrested at 6pm on Sunday evening, a few hours before polls closed, after he filmed a column of riot police in central Minsk.

For the first few hours, he was treated well, but was then moved to a notorious holding centre on Okrestina Street on the outskirts of Minsk, where he was placed in a cell meant for four people that eventually had 21 men inside as more and more were arrested during the evening.

After two days, in which he was given water but no food and could hear the screams of people being beaten in the courtyard, he was forced to sign a paper with false information about where and when he was arrested. He was then given an 11-day prison sentence in a makeshift trial inside the prison. A few hours later, at 3am on Wednesday morning, he was told he could leave.

“They called me to the exit, but then in the courtyard riot police with their faces covered told us to lie down on the floor and then they started beating us. They were smashing me with batons all over my body. Then they were smashing me with fists. Then they told us to stand up to see if we could stand up. I didn’t really know what was happening.”

Similar and worse practices have been carried out under the Castros since 1959 and in Belarus under Lukashenko since 1994. In addition to their brutality they have also played the race card. Black dissidents have died on hunger strikes in Cuba, black Cubans have been executed by firing squad for trying to hijack vessels to flee the island, and revolutionary police shot a young man in the back and regime officials prevented protests over the killing. Today, Lukashenko tried to rally his supporters using the race card declaring "they want to impose on us NATO forces... Including black and yellow soldiers. Not on my watch!!"

Belarus and Cuba maybe thousands of miles apart with different languages and national histories but both share the ill fortune of having communist totalitarian regimes and their methods of repression are similar. The languages and customs may be different but the repression and human rights violations are the same, and so are their lies and denials. In addition the regimes in Belarus and Cuba have close bilateral ties.

In the early years of the Communist Revolution in Cuba when the Castros old compatriots had returned to the hills and mountains of the Escambray carrying out a guerilla struggle to achieve democracy, the regime brought in hundreds of Soviet counter insurgency experts to assist the Castro regime in crushing this democratic resistance in what Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal in 2017 called a Soviet cleansing.

Today in Belarus it is a mass nonviolent movement of millions, and although the Soviet Union ceased to exist 29 years ago, its KGB agents are still in positions of power.
Lukashenko has a choice: listen to Belarusians demands and reach a democratic accommodation or appeal to the former KGB officer, now despot of Russia, Vladimir Putin to assist him in cracking down on the democratic aspirations of his countrymen.

The historical rally is happening in Minsk. Now there are two options for Lukashenka:
1) negotiations with opposition;
2) Putin to come pic.twitter.com/v1txzVzyCl

— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 16, 2020

It appears that repression tactics are universal which offers another reason why a universal human rights standard is not an idealistic abstraction but a concrete response to real world problems.

Finally, the close relationship between these two brutal dictators demonstrates once again the need for victims of repression to work in solidarity with each other. A Czech dissident who died under interrogation by state security over three decades ago called it the solidarity of the shaken. His name was Jan Patočka.

This is why on the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union we joined in worldwide protests of solidarity, and it is why today we are speaking out for Belarusians experiencing repression and torture for wanting to be free. 

This evening concludes the largest protest in the history of #Belarus. By different reports up to over a million people gathered on the streeets of #Minsk demanding freedom, free election results and step down of #Lukashenko. pic.twitter.com/uEsNdFUJsc

— Belarus Free Theatre (@BFreeTheatre) August 16, 2020

Fighting Historical Amnesia in Cuba: Remembering past and present street protests

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" - Milan Kundera

Animal rights protest in Cuba permitted by communist regime

Four decades of non-violent resistance erased with a couple of headlines. Reuters titled it , " Independent march in Havana believed first for communist-run Cuba, organizers say" and Agence France Press, "Some 300 activists march in Havana to demand an animal protection law, in the first independent demonstration to take place in Cuba in years."  The first independent march in Cuba, according to these news sources, was for animal rights. This ignores the decades of human rights activism in Cuba that cost many their freedom.

This ignores the many street protests stretching back decades that were not approved by the communist regime, but otherwise tolerated or brutally repressed.

Massive anti-government street protest in Havana on August 5, 1994

We must remember the thousands of Cubans who took to the streets 25 years ago on August 5, 1994 chanting "libertad" freedom and were met with brutal repression in what became known as the Maleconazo.



We should also remember the courageous activists who year after year took to the streets on International Human Rights Day and were met with violent repression with hundreds detained.

Activists arrested in Cuba on human rights day for peacefully assembling (Reuters)

We must remember the Ladies in White (Las Damas de Blanco) that despite harassment, threats, brutal beatings, and arbitrary detentions beginning in the Spring of 2003 following their loved ones unjust imprisonment began a regular campaign of nonviolent marches demanding freedom for their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.

 Laura Inés Pollán Toledo became a dissident when her husband was imprisoned during the Black Cuban Spring of 2003 along with more than 75 other activists and civil society members. She was one of the founders of the Ladies in White and challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Cuba. Following brutal repression, in an effort to prevent them from marching through the streets of Havana, Laura Pollán directly and nonviolently challenged the regime: "We will never give up our protest. The authorities have three options — free our husbands, imprison us or kill us.

We should also remember that after seven years of constant struggle they achieved their goal of freeing their loved ones. 

The Cuban dictatorship assumed that they would disappear but Laura Pollán made the announcement that they were now a human rights organization, that they would continue marching until the laws were changed, and shortly afterwards met with a suspicious death after a sudden illness in 2011.  Despite Laura's death the Ladies in White continued marching, and facing the consequences. On Mother's Day in 2012 they marched along with Laura's widower in remembrance of her.

Ladies in White march on Mother's Day in honor of Laura Pollán, along with Laura's widower

The march this past Sunday, may be the beginning of a new chapter, with regime approval of a non-communist party demonstration, or it may be another example of the fake change Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas warned about. Either way we must remember the demonstrations that have taken place in Cuba before yesterday's and place them in proper context.

Ladies in White still marching today in Havana, Cuba (Photo by Angel Moya)

We must not forget. These protests are still taking place today in Cuba, and human rights defenders continue to pay a terrible price.