The Padilla Affair 50 years later: How a political show trial boomeranged against the Castro regime on April 27, 1971

"The pen is mightier than the sword." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1839)

Heberto Padilla's identification permit

The Castro regime has copied many aspects of the Soviet experiment, but on more than one occasion failed to get the desired effect. On April 27, 2021 the world will mark the 50th anniversary of the Padilla Affair. This was a show trial where a poet confessed his counter-revolutionary tendencies, in a 4,000 word confession, but it did not have the effect Havana desired it boomeranged on the communists. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Final page of Padilla's confession

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes. 

This blog looked at the 1946 show trial of Milada Horakova, and the price she paid for not going along: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes." She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.  Communists in Czechoslovakia hid her testimony for decades because it cast them in a negative light, and Milada as a heroic martyr.

Arthur Koestler dramatized how this machinery operates on the individual level with the show trial in the novel Darkness at Noon.  In the typical Stalinist show trial the accused pleads guilty to all the crimes he or she did not commit then is sentenced to some sort of draconian punishment and gives thanks to the regime for its generosity.

Heberto Padilla, a Cuban poet, who like many had been an enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro ousting Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, became disillusioned when the Castro regime's dictatorial nature became clear, and reflected it in his writings.

In 1968, however, Cuban judges in the national poetry contest awarded their "Julian  del Casal" poetry prize to Padilla's collection, Fuera del Juego (Out of the Game), which contained critical lines such as:

"The poet! Kick him out!
He has no business here.
He doesn't play the game.
He never gets excited
Or speaks out clearly.
He never even sees the miracles ..."

The book was published but an addendum was added that criticized the work as counterrevolutionary, and Heberto Padilla was placed under house arrest. In March 1971 he was interrogated for a month and on April 27, 1971 forced to confess before the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC). The New York Times on May 26, 1971 described what had gone on and printed an excerpt of the confession in an editorial. Padilla's wife Belkis has also written about their arrest in March 1971 and the knock on the door, and the search of their home by the secret police.

Heberto Padilla with his wife Belkiz Cuza Malé in Cuba in 1973. Photo

 

This was a disaster for the Castro regime. Intellectuals of the caliber of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag, who had defended the Cuban Revolution, organized to protest Padilla's mistreatment. Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz and Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, also broke with the dictatorship as did many others.

Half a century later on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, a choral reading of Heberto Padilla’s confession will be streamed via social media over 24 hours. Twenty Cuban intellectuals from the island and the diaspora, directed by Cuban American artist Coco Fusco, are participating in the project organized by the San Isidro International Movement and 27N.

 On April 27, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla's legendary confession, 20 Cuban intellectuals will present a reading of the confession. Stay tuned! (In Spanish with English subtitles.) https://t.co/unIXTfBnPN@cocofusco1960 @27Ncuba @Mov_sanisidro pic.twitter.com/kK2fpKmo1H

— Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) (@AtRiskArtists) April 23, 2021

Heberto Padilla would suffer ostracism, and harassment until 1979 when he went into exile, and continued his criticism of the Castro regime, and in 1984 appeared in the film "Improper Conduct" where his case was highlighted, and he discussed Raul's Castro visit to Bulgaria and saw that the streets were very clean, without anti-social elements, especially the homosexuals, and that they had been placed in camps. Raul Castro returned to Cuba and instituted the practice with his brother, Fidel's approval in the 1960s.

There had been and would be other show trials in Cuba, and some of the most notorious were the show trial of Huber Matos in 1959 , Ochoa Trial of 1989, and the Black Cuban Spring show trials of 2003, and each left their mark, but the Padilla Affair was the most explicit demonstration that under Castro thoughtcrime would be prosecuted. Read the excerpt of Padilla's confession below to understand why it outraged people of conscience.

The New York Times, May 26, 1971

‘Confessions’ of a Cuban Poet  

The Cuban poet Heberto Padilla was arrested in Cuba in March and released last month after “confessing” to wrong doing and wrong thinking. (His treatment prompted sixty European and American intellectuals to write to Premier Fidel Castro to express shame and anger.) The text of Mr. Padilla's “confession” was distributed in New York by the Cuban Mission to the United Nations with the explanation that the poet had “admitted to counterrevolutionary activities and asked for an opportunity to expose and discuss his conduct publicly.” This article is excerpted from the “confession”:

I have meditated profoundly before deciding to write this letter. I am not doing so through fear of the inevitable and just consequences of my contemptible, well‐known and demonstrated attitudes—demonstrated far beyond what I myself could ever have imagined possible. I am moved by a sincere desire to make amends, to compensate the Revolution for the harm I may have occasioned and to compensate myself spiritually. I may prevent others from losing themselves stupidly.

But, above all, I desperately want to be believed and my action not to be taken for cowardice, although I myself am overcome with shame at my own actions.

For many days I struggled with myself to make the decision to tell the truth. I did not even want my truth to be as it really was. I preferred my disguise, my appearances, my justifications, my evasions. I had become accustomed to living in a deceitful and subtle game. I did not dare to confess how ignoble, how unjust, how unworthy my position was: I really lacked courage to do so.

Under the disguise of the writer in revolt within a socialist society I hid opposition to the Revolution, behind the ostentations of the critical poet. who paraded his morbid irony, the only thing I really sought was to express my counterrevolutionary hostility. Among both Cubans and foreigners I accused the Revolution unjustly of the worst things. Among both Cubans and foreigners I discredited every one of the initiatives of the Revolution, striving to look like an intellectual who was an expert in problems I had no information neither knew anything about; and following this course I committed grave faults against the true intellectual's moral code, and what is worse, against the Revolution itself.

What I wanted was to call attention to myself, to profit from the scandal. I wanted to be the only writer with a political mind in Cuba, the only writer capable of confronting the revolutionary process and to impose my ideas. Hypocritically and contemptuously, I repeated the old theory that politics is too serious a matter to leave to the politicians.

I who had not achieved anything either before or after the Revolution, I wanted fame and looked for it along a road that could only lead to counter revolution.

My ego-centrism was growing by leaps and bounds. The B.B.C. of London did a long interview with me in color for a program dedicated to Cuban education and culture. A Canadian radio station sought me out for more interviews.

Because my vanity then had no limits I carried my disaffected political positions to heights I never should have scaled: to poetry. I was convinced that a poem which would represent a supposed criticism of the Revolution would awaken the interest of certain international circles: the circles of skepticism and hatred toward Revolutions. That's how I came to write insidious and provocative poems which, under the clever appearance of dislocations because of the problems and demands of history, expressed no other thing than the temperament of the unbeliever, the cynic, a verse‐maker trapped by his own moral and intellectual limitations.

I have been tremendously ungrateful, unjust with Fidel, and the deep repentance I feel for having acted that way motivates me to make amends for my cowardly and counterrevolutionary virulence.

When I have mentally reviewed the fragments I wrote, parts of the novel, I have felt extraordinary shame. It seems to me incredible that I could have thought that this sickly bundle of papers—containing all my bitterness—could have had some intellectual and human worth. Not only were they politically negative and deformed, not only did they reflect my ideological and counterrevolutionary vacillations, but they also expressed a profound disenchantment with life, with hope and the poetry of life. The man who wrote those pages was a man who was headed toward his own moral and physical destruction.

Only the vanity and petulance of considering myself worthy of all honors could lure me into such a plan— one that as always was linked to the outside world, to the purpose of giving my prestige a boost in the foreign periodicals, editorial and public. And among my most serious mistakes is precisely this one: to think that I, a Cuban, could live a double life: on the one hand vegetate like a parasite in the shadow of the Revolution, while on the other cultivate my literary popularity abroad at the cost of the Revolution and helped by its enemies.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/26/archives/confessions-of-a-cuban-poet.html

pic.twitter.com/PFP7VSvX0g

— coco fusco (@cocofusco1960) April 25, 2021

Jailed Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara faces political show trial in Cuba

#SetHimFree #FreeLuisManuel

Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara

International attention has justifiably focused on the plight of human rights defender Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, and the recent show trial he and three other dissidents were subjected to, but there are over 125 identified political prisoners, and Amnesty International recognized six new Cuban prisoners of conscience in August and September of 2019.

Sadly, prisoners of conscience have existed over the six decades of the Castro regime. One of these new prisoners of conscience, Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Hace, an independent journalist and attorney smuggles a letter out of prison revealing that during an earthquake on January 28, 2020 prisoners were kept in their cells rather than taken out to an open space, that would have been safer under the circumstances. 

Human rights defenders, and independent journalists are not the only targets of repression in Cuba. Artists have also been cracked down on by officials of the dictatorship.

Decree 349, a 2018 law that criminalizes all independent cultural activity in Cuba, gives regime authorities total control over artistic production and ensures that individual artists can no longer be independent. 

This provoked protests by independent artists. Many were arbitrarily detained, and at least two were jailed for a prolonged period. Rapper Maikel Castillo Pérez in September of 2018 and Rapper Lazaro Rodriquez Betancourt “Pupito en Sy” in November 2018 were jailed for protesting this law. Pupito en Sy was released on August 23, 2019. Maikel Castillo was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April 2019 for protesting Decree 349, and was released on October 23, 2019.

It appears that Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara will soon face a political show trial for his activities as a dissident. Please sign the petition calling for his freedom.

The Art Newspaper, March 3, 2020

Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrested on way to a LGBTQ+ censorship protest 

The artist will face a summary trial in ten days while activists say the arrest amounts to "state terrorism" 

By Gabriella Angeleti

In a 2018 performance, artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara dragged himself through Havana's streets on a pilgrimage to the church of San Lázaro, in the name of democracy and freedom of expression © Nonardo Perea; courtesy of the artist

 The Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested on 1 March in Havana for alleged property damage following his involvement in an anti-censorship protest and will face a summary trial in ten days, according to a statement released by the San Isidro Movement, a collective of Cuban activist artists that emerged in 2018 in response to the controversial censorship legislation known as Decree 349 that has since seen many artists and creatives targeted by the government.

The artist was arrested outside of his home when he was en route to participate in a “kiss-in” that had been convened by members of the LGTBIQ community to protest the censorship of a gay kiss scene in the 2018 film Love, Simon that was broadcasted by the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.

Around 25 are said to have participated in the protest; the organiser Jancel Moreno was also arrested.

Otero Alcántara’s girlfriend, the artist and activist Claudia Genlui, was attacked by a police officer when she attempted to film Otero Alcántara’s arrest on her phone. She was “hit, thrown to the ground and left on the public road; her cell phone was confiscated, and she did not receive documents to show that her phone is now in police possession” according to the movement’s statement.

Genlui and members of the San Isidro Movement met at the headquarters of the national police in Havana to request information about Otero Alcántara’s arrest this week, where a police officer told Genlui that Otero Alcántara has been detained in a processing centre and will have a judgement within the next ten days.

“Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is now in jail prior to conviction. He had already been accused by Cuban authorities of contempt toward state leadership and desecration of national symbols,” the Movement’s letter reads, adding that, although Alcántara has been arrested before, most of his previous charges “do not carry enough weight, and therefore the state has fabricated a criminal charge against him”.

“We note that the use of unnecessary repressive force and physical abuse of helpless citizens and the course of policing procedures should be regarded as forms of state terrorism.”

Decree 349 essentially grants the Cuban Republic complete control over independent artistic production in the private sector, allowing government officials to shut down concerts, performances, galleries and book sales if they do not comply with a strict list of prohibited subject matter. Since it went into effect in December 2018, artist-activists have vigorously opposed the legislation through protests, performances and events, generally resulting in multiple arrests. Otero Alcántara has been arrested more than 20 times since 2018 for his political performances and protests.

Last month, the Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco wrote an open letter to Cuban artists on Facebook, where she claims that past accusations of “contempt and outrage to the patriotic symbols related to the performances he has developed in the streets of Havana are designed not only to crush [Otero Alcántara’s] artistic career but also to instil fear in the artistic community”. She urges art professionals to “raise their voices and denounce the abuse” against the artist.

The letter addresses the case of other of Cuban artist who have been either censored, beaten, interrogated or persecuted by authorities, such as Juansí Gonzalez, who was arrested in the 1980s for his street performances that critiqued government dictatorship, and Tania Bruguera, who was arrested in 2015 after a 100-hour open-studio performance in which she read The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

Fusco says these series of aggressions by the Cuban government against artists, musicians and journalists is “a strategy to tame creators that has worked very well in Cuba for more than 60years.” She adds: “The State that promotes some is the State that suppresses all.”

The San Isidro Movement says it has already begun a campaign to free Otero Alcántara and uphold the civil rights of all Cubans. “We will be in the streets and in the courts, and we will be raising our voices against injustice. We call on artists and intellectuals of the world to speak out against the injustice being perpetrated by the Cuban government and to send messages of support.”

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/cuban-artist-luis-manuel-otero-alcantara-arrested

Send a message to the Castro regime: Free Eduardo Cardet!

 Update: Cuban prisoner of conscience to be subjected to show trial tomorrow in Cuba. 

Eduardo Cardet Concepción, jailed since November 30, 2017, goes on trial

Update #2: Trial began at 9:30am and at 1:07pm the Christian Liberation Movement tweeted a statement by Eduardo Cardet's wife, Yaimaris Vecino, who stated the following:

"The witnesses for the prosecution were inconsistent, it was clear that they had not been there."

"The prosecutor remained inflexible in his request for a 3-year sentence."

"The defense lawyer made a good defense and asked for the acquittal, in my opinion the witnesses for the defense demonstrated the innocence of Eduardo"

"Sentencing will be on March 20th."

Update #1: Christian Liberation Movement reported over twitter on 3/3/17 at 9:49am: Trial against #EduardoCardet begins, arrived guarded by 7 Ministry of the Interior agents. Zone taken by rapid response brigades. 

The Christian Liberation Movement has announced that the trial against their national coordinator, Eduardo Cardet, will be held tomorrow morning in Gibara, Cuba. Eduardo's family and MCL members are finding it difficult to get to the trial because some drivers refuse out of fear and others take advantage of the situation and ask for exorbitant fares.

It is important to recall that there is no independent judiciary in Cuba and this is a political show trial whose outcome is already determined. The only way to change it is for there to be a public outcry both inside and outside of Cuba.

Amnesty International has recognized that Eduardo Cardet is a prisoner of conscience but it would help to raise attention for him in these hours prior to the trial. Eduardo is a medical physician, family men and a man of faith.

Therefore I plead with you to use the hashtags #FreeEduardoCardet #LibertadParaEduardoCardet and share it over all your social media platforms and encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same.

Eduardo is in prison and has suffered brutal beatings by Castro's secret police for having the courage to give a critical assessment of Fidel Castro when the old dictator died to the international media while traveling abroad.

“There are few people in the streets, and lots of police presence. Lots of controls and restrictions. Castro was a man hated and rejected by the Cuban people.”

He was beaten up and jailed on November 30, 2017 when he returned home to Cuba. Please help him, his wife and two children to get him back home.

Freedom Now for Leopoldo López and Venezuela

"Two years in prison but free in mind and spirit. Seeing that the hours of the dictatorship are numbered, I know that it has been worth it." -  Leopoldo López, over twitter on February 18, 2016

 Unjustly imprisoned for two years for advocating for the nonviolent defense of democracy in Venezuela,  Leopoldo López has become from his prison cell the most important political figure in the country. On February 18, 2014 with hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in Venezuela he turned himself over to the agents of the Maduro regime but not before addressing them and calling on them to maintain nonviolent discipline:

"Well brothers and sisters I ask you to continue in this fight and do not leave the street, to assume our right to protest, but to do it in peace and without violence, I ask that us, all of us that are here, all of the Venezuelans that want a change, to get informed, educated, organized, and to execute non-violent protests, the protests of masses, and the will of souls and hearts that want to change, but without hurting your neighbor. " 

Since then he has been subjected to a political show trial in a Venezuela that no longer has an independent judiciary and sentenced to 13 years and nine months in prison. Leopoldo went on hunger strike for 30 days demanding that a date be set for the National Assembly elections. This nonviolent action led to the elections being held on December 6, 2015 and the democratic will of the Venezuelan people being exercised and the opposition taking over the National Assembly.

Today the struggle for a free Venezuela continues and the next step is the freedom of all prisoners of conscience in an amnesty. Looking forward to seeing Leopoldo López reunited with his family in freedom and continuing the nonviolent movement to the restoration of the rule of law in Venezuela.

Americans thinking of investing in Cuba: A word of caution

Don't say you weren't warned...

Western business men investing in Cuba have seen Cuban prisons up close (Photo: BBC)

The Alabama-based company Cleber LLC was cleared by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)to do business under new regulations issued by the Obama administration that expand commerce with Cuba. They expect, once they have finalized an agreement with the Castro regime, to initially hire 30 Cubans and manufacture 1,000 tractors a year. The Obama administration is circumventing U.S. law using executive authority to gut the economic sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship.

Under the U.S. embargo American companies made $5.2 billion dollars in cash and carry trade with Cuba while at the same time with normal relations and financial institutions providing credits, France lost $4 billion to Cuba. Overall debt owed to several countries according to the Paris Club is $15 billion. Under the Obama administration trade between Cuba and the United States has steadily collapsed. The high point of trade between the two countries was the last year of the Bush administration (2008) when it peaked at 711.5 million dollars. Trade between the United States and Cuba in 2015 totaled 180.3 million dollars the lowest figure since 2002.

The Obama Treasury Department effective January 27, 2016 joined France and the rest of the world in legalizing financing of transactions between U.S. companies and the Castro regime.  The Cuba policy the Obama administration is abandoning has protected U.S. taxpayers. In the future in real terms trade between U.S. companies and the Cuban dictatorship will be negative, as it has been for the French, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Russians, the Canadians and many others.

American investors should also consider what has happened to their Canadian and British counterparts who have been falsely imprisoned in Cuba so that the dictatorship would avoid having to pay what is owed them.

For example, Canadian automobile executive Cy Tokmakjian spent three years unjustly imprisoned in Cuba after being subjected to a show trial on September 28, 2014  when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Castro regime seized about $100 million worth of company assets including bank accounts, inventory and office supplies, a ruling the company was challenging in international arbitration. (He is not the only Western executive to undergo the experience). 

British investor, Stephen Purvis, who was jailed for 15 months and who the Castro regime confiscated 17.3 million dollars of his company's assets in an August 2013 letter to The Economist explained what may be behind the arrests of Western foreign investors:

I spent time with a number of foreign businessmen arrested during 2011 and 2012 from a variety of countries, although representatives from Brazil, Venezuela and China were conspicuous in the absence. Very few of my fellow sufferers have been reported in the press and there are many more in the system than is widely known. As they are all still either waiting for charges, trial or sentencing they will certainly not be talking to the press. Whilst a few of them are being charged with corruption many are not and the accusations range from sabotage, damage to the economy, tax avoidance and illegal economic activity. It is absolutely clear that the war against corruption may be a convenient political banner to hide behind and one that foreign governments and press will support.

American businessmen thinking of investing in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship don't say that you were not warned when things take an unexpected turn and you find yourself in a Cuba prison with your assets seized. Taxpayers may bail out your losses, but years in a Cuban prison are years that you can never get back.

 

The Leopoldo López Case: How to Conduct a Show Trial

The crisis in Venezuela

Show trial: n (Law) a trial conducted primarily to make a particular impression on the public or on other nations, esp one that demonstrates the power of the state over the individual. A trial (as of political opponents) in which the verdict is rigged and a public confession is often extracted.  Before the trial even started today outside of the courthouse, a dynamic familiar to Cuban dissidents on the island played out. Opposition activists gathered to show their solidarity with Leopoldo López with a heavy police presence monitoring them. At the same time a large number of pro-regime people showed up and verbally and physically assaulted the opposition activists trying to provoke them. 60 opposition activists were hurt and one man died of a heart attack provoked by the mob. A woman six months pregnant was beaten up by the pro-regime mob that tried to knock her down as she tried to leave the demonstration.


Human Rights Foundation issued a press release condemning the 13- year prison sentence against Leopoldo López. Below is an excerpt that outlines some of the irregularities and places it within a comparative international context:

The criminal proceedings against López were riddled with due process violations. The trial consisted of 70 hearings and took place behind closed doors in violation of the right to a public trial. The media, human rights defenders, and international observers were strictly banned from the courthouse. Out of 700 hours of trial, López’s legal team only had three hours to argue in his defense. In another ostensible display of disproportionality, bias, and unfair treatment in court, Judge Barreiros allowed 108 witnesses and 30 exhibits presented by the prosecution. In contrast, of the 60 witnesses proposed by the defense Barreiros allowed only two, and declared that the bulk of the documentary evidence presented by López’s legal team was inadmissible. Public statements by high-ranking government officials were made declaring López’s culpability in violation of the right to presumption of innocence.

As the criminal proceeding against him was taking place, López was held in the Ramo Verde military prison in Los Teques, Venezuela, where he was subject to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. López’s imprisonment in Ramo Verde was characterized by the violation of international standards on the protection of the human dignity of persons deprived of liberty. Apart from the appalling conditions of captivity and excessive isolation—López has spent at least a third of his time in prison in solitary confinement, having been denied the right to receive visitors, including, at times, his wife and children, and his lawyers—there have been numerous violent searches, and the confidentiality of his communications has been violated.

“Terms like ‘kangaroo court’ or ‘sham trial’ do not begin to describe what happened to López. A teenager with rudimentary knowledge of a fair legal system would have found the charges brought against him absurd. López wouldn’t be in jail if Venezuela were a democratic nation,” said Javier El-Hage, chief legal officer of HRF. “Lopez now joins the group of prominent prodemocracy activists under dictatorial regimes worldwide who have been convicted to serve dozens of years in prison for advocating basic human rights. In 2009, the Chinese dictatorship jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo on charges of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ after he wrote a democracy manifesto, while in 2012 Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime convicted the leader of the democratic opposition, Vladimir Kozlov, of ‘inciting social hatred.’ Kozlov, whose case is very similar to that of López, was also convicted for ‘creating and managing an organized criminal group,’ which is the label the regime gave to Kozlov’s political party, in a move very similar to the one Venezuela pursued against López’s party, Voluntad Popular,” said El-Hage.  

López’s unjust arrest and incarceration were condemned by multiple institutions worldwide, including Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Parliament. HRF was the first organization to declare López a political prisoner and a prisoner of conscience, after determining that the opposition leader had been persecuted, arrested, and imprisoned exclusively for having exercised his right to freedom of expression.

Venezuelans in Doral pay homage to imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo López

"Only in dictatorship is it a crime to say there is insecurity, shortages and thousands of reasons to protest."- Leopoldo López Mendoza, June 2, 2014 hearing

43 crosses for each Venezuelan killed in anti-govt protests since February 12th

Venezuelans in Doral paid homage to imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo López Mendoza on Sunday, July 6, 2014.  Leopoldo is a prisoner of conscience unjustly imprisoned since February 18, 2014 and faces a political show trial later this month on July 23 in Venezuela before a politicized court that is no longer independent of the executive branch which in this case means Nicolas Maduro and his Cuban advisers.

Carlos Vecchio accepting plaque from the Mayor of Doral on Leopoldo's behalf

Carlos Vecchio, political coordinator of Leopoldo Lopez's political party Voluntad Popular received a plaque in Leopoldo's honor from the Mayor of Doral, Luigi Boria at the XXIII Festival for the Independence of Venezuela at JC Bermudez Park. Also sharing the stage with Vecchio was the Venezuelan journalist Carla Angola.

Venezuelans gather in Doral, FL to pay homage to Leopoldo Lopez on 7/6/14

 On Saturday July 5 approximately 150 women dressed in black held a silent protest and planted 43 crosses representing Venezuelans killed in the anti-government protests in that country since February 12, 2014.

Tonight over twitter Leopoldo sent a message to the Venezuelan military calling on them to reflect on their role in Venezuela. Below are excerpts of the tweets* joined together in a coherent whole:

Today I call on the military family, equally to they who put on the uniform w/ a genuine commitment to serve all Venezuelans as well as those who've been carried away by ideology, turning compatriots with different opinions to theirs into enemies. I invite them to read Art 328 and 330 then to undergo a patriotic reflection on whether it is good to see a brother as an enemy for thinking differently. I urge all our military to reflect on the current partisanship, destination of military spending and strategic direction of the National Armed Forces. Partisanship in the Armed Forces, political control has replaced merit, work and efficiency in fulfilling of one's responsibility. [...] The National Armed Forces have stopped confronting groups that plague our borders to take on fictitious enemies: the empire, the bourgeoisie and capitalism. The National Armed Forces are called to follow with patriotic commitment and honor the Constitution. If so, the country will reward them, if not, it will demand it.

The full text is available in Spanish here.

Tonight we also learned that the officials who allegedly killed Geraldine Moreno have been freed while pending trial.
Last Sunday(, June 29, 2014) over his twitter account  appeared the following tweet and video:

"Leopoldo asked me to make this video reach you about Maduro's "Justice". Please help me with its RT/LT"

 *Tweets regarding the military taken from Leopoldo's twitter account

Milada Horakova: A profile of courage in the face of terror

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them." - Milada Horakova, final day of her show trial on June 8, 1950.

Milada Horáková: 25 December 1901, Prague – 27 June 1950, Prague

 Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. She was a  lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. She had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. However she refused to abandon her country.  She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state."

Totalitarian regimes are designed to crush the spirit of the individual along with the machinery to kill large numbers of people for the sake of some revolutionary objective. Arthur Koestler dramatized how this machinery operates on the individual level with the show trial in the novel Darkness at Noon.  In the typical Stalinist show trial the accused pleads guilty to all the crimes he or she did not commit then is sentenced to some sort of draconian punishment and gives thanks to the regime for its generosity. A high profile example of a show trial was on worldwide display in Cuba in 1989 in the General Ochoa affair, with the accused executed by firing squad on July 13, 1989 after confessing to everything on camera. but there have been exceptions. Another version of the show trial was also seen with the Spanish youth leader Angel Carromero, who was beat up, threatened and told to read from a prepared script if he wanted things to go well at his show trial in 2012. Torture and breaking one's spirit is common practice in these circumstances.

Even when one is able to resist and remain defiant in the face of the physical and psychological torture the totalitarians will also rewrite what happened and claim that they also broke you.  This is what was done to Milada Horakova. According to Radio Prague, "For decades the communist orthodoxy maintained she had been broken by interrogators and had renounced her beliefs."

Milada Horakova at her show trial in 1950

 It is important to remember that this was not a meaningless exercise in sadism by the communists, but as in the case of Ochoa in 1989 served what these totalitarians viewed as a necessary objective to consolidating and maintaining power. Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism:

The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement

According to D. E. Watkings Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial:

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes^. She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule:

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle? (Both quotes excerpts taken from here)

Ms. Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor,  was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." She tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost.

Today, June 27, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as  “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.”

People in Need make international appeal for jailed Cuban rapper El Critico

Imprisoned Cuban rapper faces show trial on June 20, 2014 below is a reproduction of People in Need's appeal for Angel Y. Arzuaga.

New international appeal to free El Critico

By Miranda Fuertes / People In Need

 

The striking case of Angel Yunier Remon Arzuaga, a young Cuban rapper from Bayamo who is more commonly known by the stage name El Critico del Arte, has been made public through the Twitter campaign #FreeElCritico and a petition in his name on change.org. He has been illegally imprisoned and is still waiting for a date to be set for a proper trial. Rumor has it that El Critico del Arte will be given an eight year sentence for resisting arrest.

This member of the group Los Hijos Que Nadie Quiso has freely expressed his discontent with the current regime in Cuba through his lyrics: “Yo no inventé lo de los actos de repudio/ yo no hundí el remolcador 13 de marzo/ yo no fui el que asesinó a Boitel/ yo no soy el culpable del Mariel/yo no reprimo al que piense diferente/ yo no tranqué a 75 inocentes/ mira cuantos delitos en la gaveta tú has guarda’o/ este sí es mi delito/ hablar de lo que tú no has habla’o” which means:  “ l did not invent the acts of repudiation / I did not sink the tug on March 13th / I was not the one who killed Boitel / I am not guilty for Mariel / I do not repress those who think differently / I did not lock up 75 innocent people / Look how many offenses you have kept hidden under lock and key/ Yes this is my crime /To talk about what you have not”.

He has paid dearly for exercising freedom of speech. Angel was violently arrested in March 2013 following the “antirevolutionary” speech he was holding in front of his house in Bayamo. He was beaten repeatedly, denied family visits, and was not given medical treatment. Just six months after being jailed he contracted cholera. His wife has also been subject to aggressive actions and was detained by the State Police, when she participated in a march of The Ladies in White – which take place every Sunday – to protest against his unfair detention and to denounce the political motivation behind it. He has already held both hunger and thirst strikes three times and has had to be hospitalized as a result.

His situation has been made more difficult by the isolated nature of the region where he lives, where media access is limited and the visibility of such cases is lower, which typically allows the State National Security forces to act with a higher degree of impunity.  Despite public support from politicians and artists, El Critico remains imprisoned more than one year after his detention.

We at People In Need strongly believe that the basic rights of freedom of expression, the manifestation of ideas, and freedom of belief must be available to all without fear of repression. We are convinced that anyone would stand up against someone that was overtly trying to oppress them for their beliefs. As the situation of El Critico has remained unchanged and his health is in peril, we are appealing to you, to speak up about his case to increase its visibility, and to give back to him the voice that was taken away in such an unlawful and violent way.

Cuban rappers continue to risk their freedom to criticize the regime
Although criticizing the Cuban government through music is a risky business, Cubans still use it to express their discontent with the communist regime. Whether they are established names in the industry, like Los Aldeanos, or younger musicians like Los Censurados or Los Hijos Que Nadie Quiso, they all rap their truth regardless of the risks they are undertaking. As difficult as it is to get information about this musical scene because of constant censoring, we have discovered that their struggle continues on a daily basis.

Los Censurados, a young Cuban rap duo, spoke about the harsh repression they face back home when they performed in Prague last March, following an invitation from People In Need. They dedicated their concert to all the imprisoned Cuban dissidents and in particular to El Critico del Arte, the rapper and human right activist.

Los Hijos Que Nadie Quiso:


Los Censurados and Los Hijos Que Nadie Quiso:


Miranda Fuertes
Miranda Fuertes is human rights defender focused on Cuba and based in Prague, Czech Republic

Castroite Show Trial in Bayamo, Cuba tries to cover up the real crime

show trial: n (Law) a trial conducted primarily to make a particular impression on the public or on other nations, esp one that demonstrates the power of the state over the individual. A trial (as of political opponents) in which the verdict is rigged and a public confession is often extracted. Ex: They were forced to confess their guilt in public show trials.

Police block courthouse, keeping the children of Oswaldo Paya from attending the trial of Angel Carromero, who is on trial for their father's death (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

Today, the children of Oswaldo Paya attempted to attend the trial of the young man accused of being responsible for their father's death according to the dictatorship's version of the events on July 22, 2012.  Rosa María Payá Acevedo tweeted at 11:08 am: "I'm with my brothers 100m from court, surrounded by 30 state security agents, they don't let us pass, we want to see Angel." More than two hours later she gave an update at 1:37pm:  "Tried for hours to reach Court gates where the trial of Carromero is being is conducted. State security stops us 90m from there." At 2:52pm Oswaldo's daughter still denied entry to the trial tweeted: "We don't believe in a trial made by the same ones who threatened my dad with death. But its our right to attend, we want to see Angel Carromero." At 10:37pm her final tweet of the evening on the matter: The circus is over for tonight, the authorities have taken a city and have only demonstrated all that they hide. Everything that they fear."

Angel Carromero enters the courtroom to attend his own show trial

 Another shameful chapter of history repeats itself in Cuba. A trial is underway in Cuba that falls far short of international standards of fairness which is systemic to the regime but it also appears in order to cover up two extra-judicial killings by the dictatorship. Spanish youth leader Angel Carromero has been in detention since July 22, 2012 and is now undergoing a trial Bayamo, Cuba in which he is accused of being responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Escalante in a car accident charged by the dictatorship with negligent homicide. A little over a week after he had been in detention he gave a public statement incriminating himself via video in a press conference organized by the Castro regime. Before the trial began Yoani Sanchez, her husband and journalist Reinaldo Escobar, and blogger Agustín Díaz were detained on their way to Bayamo to report on the trial and held for 30 hours.

Oswaldo Paya with his wife Ofelia Acevedo, his two sons and Rosa Maria

Oswaldo Paya's family does not accept the official regime narrative and has repeatedly called for a transparent and independent, international investigation into the events that took place that day that took the lives of Oswaldo and Harold. They have an online petition requesting signatures in support of it.



Oswaldo Paya's widow, Ofelia Acevedo, explained in a lengthy statement on behalf of the Paya family why they refused to accept the regime's version of events on July 22, 2012 and the following excerpts are reproduced below:

"It is presented by the same organs of State Security of the government that have threatened to kill him multiple times through their agents over the years in which they have defamed, insulted, watched, discredited with television campaigns inside and outside of Cuba, the same ones that have placed microphones over our bed in telephone boxes, the same ones knowing that her mother had cancer, visited to cowardly intimidate her, and did not allow their children who live outside of Cuba to visit, which forbade my oldest son , a 24 year old student from visiting his aunt on holiday in Spain last year." 
...

"They are the same ones who on several occasions have loosened the nuts on the wheels of our car while parked and knowing that the whole family and even friends were traveling. Only last June 2 while he and I were traveling in our car (1964 VW station wagon), to my mother's house in La Lisa traveling on the road of El Cerro and having practically surpassed the intersection of Rancho Boyeros Avenue were impacted by an old American car in the rear right wheel of our vehicle with such force that rocked our car, my husband could not control it and after sliding with only two wheels on the left side turned on the opposite path being trapped inside and covered with broken windshield glass. Oswaldo was wounded in the left arm by the elbow and nothing happened to me."
...

Because I received the news from Madrid of the supposed car accident that my husband was traveling at three eighteen on the afternoon of Sunday, July 22 where they communicated with me, "carrying four people, only three in the hospital, we do not know about one. Two friends, one of them unconscious. They were hit and removed from the road. Do you know who the other two where? The whereabouts of one of them is unknown. "

Why was I not allowed to meet with the Swedish boy and still have not allowed me to meet with the Spaniard who were survivors of the event?

 The behavior of the dictatorship since July 22 in this matter should raise the suspicions of any fair minded observer. The trial now underway combined with the earlier "press conference"in which the Spaniard incriminated himself has the aroma of a 1930s Stalinist show trial, but then again it wouldn't be the first time one of those has been held in Castroite Cuba.  Speak truth to power by signing the petition demanding an international and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the July 22, 2012 deaths of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero and expose the regime's web of lies.