Independent computer network in Cuba has been taken over by the Castro regime

The Castro regime is totalitarian.

Preemptive arrests and state security presence block protest for SNET

Today the space outside of the Ministry of Communications was taken over by state security, and preemptive arrests were made to prevent youth that wanted to protest the take over of SNET by the Castro regime from gathering and expressing themselves.

Yoani Sanchez reported earlier over twitter that "with arrests and threats, State Security aborts a protest for SNet. Activists, independent journalists and members of the wireless network denounced political police pressures."

#Cuba Más detalles de lo ocurrido hoy: Con arrestos y amenazas, la Seguridad del Estado aborta una protesta por SNet. Activistas, periodistas independientes y miembros de la red inalámbrica denunciaron presiones de la policía política. https://t.co/3YeDRyPXxz pic.twitter.com/nlV8gdLiac

— Yoani Sánchez 🇨🇺 (@yoanisanchez) August 17, 2019

On August 16, 2019 Andrea Rodriguez, the long time Associated Press correspondent in Cuba, reported that "after weeks of complaints and protests, the state JovenClub will absorb SNET, the street network that delighted gamers for a decade without Internet in Cuba."

This is a euphemistic way to report that the Castro regime has seized an independent network in a government take over. 

This has also happened in the real world in the recent past with the seizure of the Rotilla music festival in 2011. Rotilla had been tolerated and held gatherings in Cuba for over a decade before it was shut down.

S-Net and Rotilla were not political spaces but free spaces for youth to gather. In a totalitarian regime that is unacceptable. This is why when members of S-Net try to maintain a horizontal platform they are tolerated for a time, as was Rotilla, but is eventually eliminated. The priority is control not providing more services and spaces for Cubans.

It's ironic that @ETECSA_Cuba fights #SNET. In the long run, they would gain business by giving SNET free Internet access. ETECSA would get new users, new apps & the #Cuban economy & society would benefit. https://t.co/rwshJXuvlC https://t.co/1xrFQgY3OP
@camilocondi @ElYuma pic.twitter.com/YAhxEPWCaM

— larry Press (@larrypress) August 15, 2019

Ernesto de Armas  on August 15 over twitter posted a 5-second video that briefly shows a blue vehicle traveling with the following text: "Yesterday at 11:45 pm + - State security came to my home. They took me in a patrol car. They threatened me, falsely accused me of things, even threatened me with jail. I am very sad that this happens just to defend SNET in my country. I don't hurt anyone ..."

Ayer a las 11:45pm +- vino la seguridad del estado a mi casa. Me llevaron en una patrulla. Me amenazaron, me acusaron falsamente de cosas, incluso me amenazaron con la cárcel. Estoy muy triste de que esto suceda solo por defender SNET en mi país. Yo no hago daño a nadie...😢😢 pic.twitter.com/cBJGlBdfGz

— Ernesto De Armas (@RealErnesto95) August 15, 2019

On Saturday, August 10, 2019 more than a hundred S-Net users gathered outside the Ministry of Communications of what 14ymedio described as "SNet (Street Network), the largest wifi network in Cuba."

In a prior CubaBrief the phrase "the devil is in the details" was used to discuss economic sanctions and trade with with Castro regime. It should also be applied when discussing the expansion of the internet in Cuba.

On May 29, 2019 both official and independent publications on the island reported that on July 29, 2019 the Cuban government would recognize private, informal networks and legalize them. Reuters reported that Cuba announced that "it would legalize private Wi-Fi networks to access the internet and connect computers," based on resolutions (98/2019 and 99/2019) issued by the regime's Ministry of Communication

What has happened is the opposite of what was reported in May. "S-Net", a domestic, non-hierarchical, self organizing and self configuring private network that covers all of Havana and is also found in the country side has been declared illegal.The two resolutions issued by the Cuban dictatorship's Ministry of Communication in May 2019 that were interpreted positively by the international press are being used to target this mesh network. Now what had been long tolerated is being shut down.

In addition, Article 68 of Decree-Law 370/2019 issued on July 4, 2019 prohibits "f) hosting a site on servers located in a foreign country, other than as a mirror or replica of the main site on servers located in national territory” and “i) to disseminate, through public networks of data transmission, information contrary to the social interest, morals, good manners and integrity of people.” This can be easily used to censor on-line platforms with political views that do not advance communism in Cuba, and has also come under criticism in Cuba.

The Cuban government is shifting tactics for controlling information. For a long time it simply barred internet access on the island, but now it has decided to follow the Chinese model: expand internet access, while systematically controlling and censoring it. The regime is playing a little catch up and had been caught off its game with protests that were mobilized through social networks earlier this year. This also presents an opportunity to further systematically monitor Cubans on a mass scale, and would be a modernizing tool for totalitarianism as it is now in China.

The tactics changed but the objective remains the same. The Castro regime continues its six decade effort to block access to the free and uncensored flow of information. The dictatorship began by targeting and shutting down independent newspapers, radio and television stations in 1959 and sixty years later it is doing the same with the internet.

Antonio García Martínez of Ideas at WIRED and author of 'Chaos Monkeys' had reported in 2017 on the burgeoning internet scene in Cuba gives a more somber assessment now in 2019, "Information may want to be free, but dictatorships have other plans."

Freedom of expression whether with paper or electrons continues to be a cat and mouse game in Cuba.

Amnesty International denounces new Cuban law as dystopian attack on Cuba's artists

 "Within the Revolution, everything; outside of the Revolution, nothing." - Fidel Castro, June 30, 1961

Cuba: New administration’s Decree 349 is a dystopian prospect for Cuba’s artists

24 August 2018, By Amnesty International

In response to Decree 349, one of the first laws signed by Cuba’s new President Miguel Díaz-Canel in April 2018, which will come into force in December and has provoked protests by independent artists in Cuba, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International said:

“Amnesty International is concerned that the recent arbitrary detentions of Cuban artists protesting Decree 349, as reported by Cuban independent media, are an ominous sign of things to come. We stand in solidarity with all independent artists in Cuba that are challenging the legitimacy of the decree and standing up for a space in which they can work freely without fear of reprisals.”
“As far back as the 1980s, Amnesty International has documented the harassment and arbitrary detention of independent artists in Cuba simply for peacefully expressing their opinions through art. Instead of consolidating their control over artists perceived to overstep state-sanctioned criticism, the Cuban authorities should be making progressive changes to protect human rights.”

Background:
Signed by President Díaz-Canel in April and published in Cuba’s Official Gazette in July, Decree 349 is expected to come into force in December 2018.

Under the decree, all artists, including collectives, musicians and performers, are prohibited from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture. Individuals or businesses that hire artists without the authorization can be sanctioned, and artists that work without prior approval can have their materials confiscated or be substantially fined. Under the new decree, the authorities also have the power to immediately suspend a performance and to propose the cancelation of the authorization granted to carry out the artistic activity. Such decisions can only be appealed before the same Ministry of Culture (Article 10); the decree does not provide an effective remedy to appeal such a decision before an independent body, including through the courts.

Amnesty International is concerned that the decree contains vague and overly broad restrictions on artistic expression. For example, it prohibits audiovisual materials that contain, among other things: “use of patriotic symbols that contravene current legislation” (Article 3a), “sexist, vulgar or obscene language” (Article 3d), and “any other (content) that violates the legal provisions that regulate the normal development of our society in cultural matters” (Article 3g). Furthermore, it makes it an offence to “commercialize books with content harmful to ethical and cultural values” (Article 4f).

Prohibiting artistic expression based on concepts such as “obscene”, “vulgar” or “harmful to ethical and cultural values” does not meet the tests of legitimate purpose, necessity and proportionality required under international human rights law. The lack of precision in the wording of the decree opens the door for its arbitrary application to further crackdown on dissent and critical voices in a country where artists have been harassed and detained for decades. This would not only contravene the right to freedom of expression of artists in Cuba, but the right of every person in the country to seek and receive information and ideas of all kinds.

International human rights law and standards require that any restriction to the right to freedom of expression, including through art, must be provided by law and formulated with sufficient precision to avoid overly broad or arbitrary interpretation or application, and in a manner that is accessible to the public and that clearly outlines what conduct is or is not prohibited.

Restrictions must also be demonstrably necessary and proportionate for the purpose of protecting a specified public interest which, under international human rights law, are only national security, public order, and public health or morals, or the rights or reputations of others.

As signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Cuba is required to refrain from acts that would defeat the object and purpose of the treaty. Article 19 of the ICCPR specifically protects the right to freedom of expression, which includes the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds…” including “in the form of art”.

The rights to freedom of opinion and expression are essential for the full development of any person or society, and are key to enabling individuals to exercise other human rights. As such, under international law, states have a duty to protect the free expression of ideas and opinions of all kinds, including when deeply offensive. Laws restricting insult or disrespect of heads of state or public figures, the military or other public institutions, flags or symbols are prohibited under international human rights law.

The blanket requirement for prior authorization by the Ministry of Culture of an artist’s work to be shown in public, as set out in Article 2.1, would also impose controls over the exercise of artistic expression that may amount to prior censorship and would exceed the permissible restrictions on the right to freedom of expression.

Amnesty International is further concerned that Decree 349 is likely to have a general chilling effect on artists in Cuba, preventing them from carrying out their legitimate work for fear of reprisals.

Cuba: Transform Confrontation into Dialogue: A Human Rights Agenda for Cuba, 16 April 2018,

Cuba: “Your Mind is in Prison” – Cuba’s web of control over freedom of expression and its chilling effect on everyday life, 16 November 2017,

Urgent Action: Urban artist at risk in Cuba, 24 August 2017,

Following controversy UM postpones event but the drive for engagement with the Castro regime continues.

UM's drive to engage with the Castro dictatorship continues.

The University of Miami has been under a cloud of controversy following the announcement that the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) would be closed, then back tracked that it would remain open, with a new director. Furthermore that the founding director Professor Jaime Suchlicki had not retired but resigned in protest over the direction Cuba Studies was taking under the new UM President Julio Frenk.

As the weeks went by the claims made by Professor Suchlicki's about the University of Miami going in a different direction that requires placating the dictatorship in Cuba became more evident. The University of Miami has now produced a special report titled "Cuba and the Caribbean" that has a clear editorial line, including a slanted poll that makes little or no mention of human rights or dissidents.

Screen grab from A University of Miami Special Report

ICCAS had a track record of serious scholarship that debunked Castro regime propaganda and opened its doors to Cuban dissidents from the island. This included important studies and books on the nature of health care and education in Cuba that no doubt irritated the Cuban dictatorship. The shuttering of ICCAS and replacement of the entire faculty of the the institute is troubling and an assault on academic freedom, but makes sense if the priority is having a relationship with the communist regime in Cuba that does not tolerate critical academic inquiry. Dr. Suchlicki resigned from the University of Miami but continues his highly respected academic inquiry into Cuba at the new Cuban Studies Institute, along with Jose Azel and Pedro Roig, who were also forced out of ICCAS despite their academic credentials and numerous publications. Dr. Jose Azel had been the Senior Research Associate and Pedro Roig, the Senior Consultant at ICCAS.

One would hope that a university would challenge communist propaganda in an academic setting with an exchange of differing views with the goal of getting at the existing reality. Unfortunately what had been planned at the Department of Public Health Science at the University of Miami was a one sided presentation by Professor Roberto C. Villafranca, MD, MS, PhD of the University of Medical Sciences in Matanzas, Cuba. The flier reproduced below is an uncritical repetition of Castro government propaganda. There is plenty of evidence that the Cuban Public Health System has serious problems that are not reported in the official statistics provided.

Roberto Cañete Villafranca is a visiting scholar at the University of Miami

Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 who spent time in Cuba studying its healthcare system, contracted dengue while there, experiencing first hand the 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' She found a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights.  Professor Hirschfeld had spoken at the old ICCAS.  One wonders if she would be invited to speak at the new ICCAS?

Professor Sherri L. Porcelain who has taught Global Public Health in World Affairs at the University of Miami for more than 30 years wrote an important analysis titled U.S. & Cuba: A Question of Indifference? I could not find this article on the ICCAS web site but found it instead at Professor Suchlicki's Cuba Studies Institute and what it reveals is disturbing.

"Investment in the health of people includes protecting human rights. This means allowing the health community to speak out and not to be jailed for releasing information about a dengue epidemic considered a state secret, or not sharing timely data on a cholera outbreak until laboratory confirmation of travelers returning from Cuba arrive home with a surprising diagnosis. This causes me to reflect upon my personal interviews where the remaining vigor of public health actions in Cuba exists to fight vector and water borne diseases. Sadly, however, health professionals are directed to euphemistically use the vague terms of febrile illness in place of dengue and gastrointestinal upset for cholera, in contradiction to promoting public health transparency."

 This led to cries that the agreement reached with Julio Frenk that the University of Miami did not want to set up academic exchanges that would legitimize the Castro dictatorship was not being fulfilled. On October 17, 2017 after requesting the day before what steps would be needed to attend the event on the 18th the following message was received from one of the organizers of the event:

"Thank you for your interest in attending the Department of Public Health Sciences’ Grand Rounds on the Cuban Public Health System. As you might have heard, this event has been postponed till further notice. It was decided that for this topic, a different structure that incorporates presenters with different viewpoints on public health in Cuba will be more beneficial. We will announce through our usual channels once another date and time has been decided."

Meanwhile reviewing the section on Politics and Policy finds the "party line" of the new Administration being repeated in the article "A Renewed Tenuous Relationship" with statements such as Michael Touchton, a UM political science assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences: “[t]here is so much superior work that could be done if we team up with Cuban academics,” he says. “They don’t have the resources, but by combining our expertise we can do excellent work.” It is repeated once again by Lillian Manzor, associate professor and department chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of Arts and Sciences who said: "I think the establishment of relations is long overdue,” she says. “Engagement with other countries has proven to be better than isolationist tactics.”

Equally disturbing is the article "A Trusted Ally for Leftists" on the negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC guerillas in Cuba. The article fails to even mention the explosion in cocaine production during these negotiations and makes the charge that the vote by Colombians to reject the peace agreement was based on "partial lies and misinformation" and "post-truth." Colombian voters understand that the FARC will use drug money to finance its entry into Colombian politics and attempt a Venezuelan style take over over the span of a few election cycles. This point of view is not reflected in this "special report" because dissenting points of view were purged from ICCAS back in August of 2017 and replaced by an Interim Director willing to adopt the new line from the University President that echoes those already mentioned above and are now found on the Institute's new website.

ICCAS, under Dr. Suchlicki, produced serious scholarship that not only embarrassed the Castro regime by debunking its propaganda but was also a challenge to other academic centers that study Cuba and are compromised by their need to satisfy the Castro regime's demands to be able to continue to have access to the island. Professor Suchlicki is the co-editor of the tenth edition of Cuban Communism. Reviewers of the 901 page tome say that it "has widely come to be known as 'the Bible of Cuban Studies.'" The distinguished periodical Foreign Affairs said of it: "There is no handier guide to the Castro regime and the debates swirling around it."

 Mike Gonzalez, currently a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation think tank, has written an important analysis of how foreign governments influence what Americans learn in college. The term "influence" is an understatement. He outlines how China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Cuba have successfully censored and propagandized what is taught at American colleges and universities.  The section of the article on Cuba described what is now taking place at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies:

Long a thorn in the side of the communist dictatorship in Havana, ICCAS has constantly received vituperative attacks by the regime’s propaganda outlets. Never before, however, has it come under the threat of the university’s own leadership. Frenk is a long-standing and well-known admirer of the Cuban regime’s health practices. As Mexico’s health secretary in 2001, he said Cuba had the best health indicators in Latin America, and Mexico would benefit from learning about Cuba’s success.

Unfortunately for Frenk, the ICCAS kept saying the truth about Cuba’s failed health system, as it did on July 20 in a report called “Cuba’s Silence is Dangerous to Your Health.” That report notes that “After a century hiatus, cholera, malaria and dengue have returned to Cuba.” I post the report here because it seems to have disappeared from the ICCAS website.

 Let me be clear. Believing in academic freedom I have no problem with Cuban "academics" speaking at the University of Miami or any other college. The word academics are in quotation marks because in a totalitarian communist dictatorship there is no academic freedom and academics are constrained by the demands of the dictatorship in what they can say and write and that needs to be taken into account.

However I do have a problem when dissenting voices are silenced or purged to satisfy the demands of a dictatorship for the sake of access or funding.  Incorporating presenters with different viewpoints in an academic setting to debunk propaganda and get to the facts is a positive step. Unfortunately, American academia seems to have been corrupted and the University of Miami that it in the past with ICCAS had been an oasis of academic excellence is eager to join the desert of accommodation with tyrants repeating the same lies in order to have a relationship with a totalitarian dictatorship. One can call that many things, but academic scholarship is not one of them.

Meanwhile I salute Professor Jaime Suchlicki for his truth telling and look forward to continue reading the work of the Cuban Studies Institute. I look forward to seeing who is finally selected as the new permanent director of the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami and pray that he can fill the chasm left by Dr. Suchlicki.

Castro’s war against human rights in Cuba

"We too, we Cubans, have the right to rights. We are human beings…" - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, July 15, 2010, National Catholic Register

Human rights are those rights that pertain to you because you are a human being. This was once understood by the Cuban government but that all changed six decades ago.

Past is prologue

The Cuban diplomatic delegation representing what would be the last democratic government of Cuba, along with other Latin American governments, in the aftermath of WWII pushed hard for a human rights covenant.

On December 10, 1948 the countries of the world agreed upon a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that listed 30 articles outlining these rights.

Cuba’s last democratically elected president Carlos Prio Socarras was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista on March 10, 1952. Human rights and democracy began what would become a six decade long retreat.

Fidel Castro led an insurrection that claimed as its aim the democratic restoration of the republic, and the defense of human rights but in reality plotted replacing an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian, communist regime that has now been in power 58 years.

Under authoritarian dictator Batista passive acceptance of the regime was sufficient but with Castro's totalitarian regime active support is necessary to avoid punishment. The Batista regime on paper maintained democratic norms, but Fidel Castro did away with them punishing all dissent with force of law.

Legal repression

All rights and freedoms in Cuba under the Castro regime are subordinated to the communist dictatorship and this reality is reflected in the Cuban Constitution.

The current system recognizes only one legal political party in Article 5 of said constitution which is the Communist Party of Cuba, described as "the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the highest leading force of society and of the state, which organizes and guides the common effort toward the goals of the construction of socialism and the progress toward a communist society."

Article 62 of the 1992 Cuban Constitution states:

“None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to what is established in the Constitution and by law, or contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism. Violations of this principle can be punished by law.”

This is also reflected in Article 103 of the Cuban criminal code which outlaws political dissent as “enemy propaganda”:

1. Any person who: a) incites against the social order, international solidarity or the communist State, by means of oral or written propaganda or in any other way; b) prepares, distributes or possesses propaganda of the type referred to in paragraph (a) preceding; shall be punished with one to eight years imprisonment. [...] 3. If mass communication media are used for performance of the acts referred to in (1) and (2) of this article, the penalty shall be seven to fifteen years imprisonment. [...]

 Pre-Crime Cuban-style: "Dangerousness"

Science fiction author Philip K. Dick called it pre-crime but the Castro regime calls it a predilection to social dangerousness and defines it as follows:

Article 72. A dangerous state is defined as the special predisposition of a person to commit crimes, demonstrated by conduct that is manifestly inconsistent with the norms of socialist ethics. 

Article 75. A person who, though not in one of the dangerous states specified in Article 73, by virtue of links or dealings with persons potentially dangerous to society, to others, and to the social, economic, and political order of the socialist state may be predisposed to crime shall be warned by the competent police authority as to prevent him or her from engaging in activities that are dangerous to society or criminal in nature.

In 1996 Law 88, also known as the gag law, expanded restrictions on freedom of expression and association increasing prison sentences to 20-years. Many of the independent journalists, human rights activists, Varela project activists, and independent librarians arrested during the March 2003 crackdown were tried and sentenced under this law. All of them were identified by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. Persons imprisoned for nonviolently exercising their internationally recognized human rights.

Cubans isolated for decades

Human rights experts have been systematically barred from entering Cuba for decades. The last time the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch were granted permission to enter a Cuban prison was in 1988. The International Committee of the Red Cross prior to that had not had access since 1959. 

Compare this to over 100 International Committee of the Red Cross inspections of the notorious US Guantanamo Detention Center since 2003 compared to one inspection of Cuba’s prisons in 58 years.

Amnesty International in its 2016/2017 world report cited that “Cuba is the only country in the Americas where authorities didn't grant them permission to visit.”

This systematic rejection of international human rights standards, international oversight,  and outlawing of dissent has meant that Cubans  have had no recourse but international institutions and international law to defend their rights. Attempts to use national laws led to the Cuban Constitution being declared unchangeable in 2002 and 75 activists sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the spring of 2003.

This has also meant that over the past 58 years Cubans have been subjected to summary executions, extrajudicial executions, torture, arbitrary detention for decades in cruel and unusual conditions, forced internal exile and a long list of horrors too long to list here.

Consider the following:

A family of four was detained on November 27, 2016 and three siblings sentenced to a year prison for going outside during the official mourning period for Dictator Castro. The twin sisters and brother went on hunger strike on March 7, 2017 to protest the unjust imprisonment and nearly died before being released on April 7th following international outrage. Mom was sentenced to a year under house arrest.

Eduardo Cardet, a Cuban physician and human rights defender, was beaten up in front of his wife and two kids by the secret police on November 30, 2016 for speaking critically of Fidel Castro's legacy. He was sentenced to three years in prison following a show trial on March 20, 2017.

There is also the case of a student who failing to actively lie and say what the dictatorship wanted paid a high price. David Mauri Cardoso, age 22, was expelled from university when he honestly answered a question about Castro in an exam in January of 2017 and described him as a dictator. He was being forced to lie or speak the truth and suffer the consequences.    

Opposition activists such as the Ladies in White are regularly beaten and harassed for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. Other non-violent activists such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (July 22, 2012) have been murdered and there have been no consequences.

The totalitarian nature of the Castro regime remains intact. Cubans need the solidarity of the international community to provide some protection against the dictatorship that has spent six decades waging war against human rights in Cuba.

Je suis Cuba

"I know what this is, I have lived it. The families of the more than 120 fatally wounded victims will never recover." - Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Artwork by Jean Jullien on the left and Rosa María Payá  on the right

Je suis Cuba

By Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Diario de Cuba, November 15, 2015 - Two years ago in Paris, at exactly this time, I had the satisfaction of meeting in person a renowned Cuban writer who lives there. I was there only a few days and traveled little around the city. They were days of work, meetings and interviews before flying to Strasbourg, to attend the Sakharov Prize ceremony for the child activist Malala Yousafzai, who had suffered an assassination attempt at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban in an attack that shocked the world.

I remember that at the foot of the most famous tower in the world I could hear all the languages  echoing. I imagine that this is the sound of freedom of movement. Something thousands of Cubans have not had, Cubans who escape the island on rafts, ready to die and in many cases dying in the sea. The same freedom of movement that made possible the terror in the City of Light this Friday, when eight boys started shooting at dozens of other boys.

I know what this is, I have lived it. The families of the more than 120 fatally wounded victims will never recover. This November will not be easy for the French people to overcome. Like the Christian refugees, who have been lucky enough to escape the ethnic cleansing occurring in the Middle East with less media coverage, will not return to their countries.

And again it is repeated: attacks on human dignity are no longer circumscribed by geographical boundaries, call it jihadism or the Castros’ totalitarianism. Terror has shown the power to cross the Mediterranean, like authoritarianisms are reproducing in Latin America.

I fear that the crime that took the life of the young activist Harold Cepero on a Cuban highway should warn us of the deaths of teenagers on the streets of Caracas two years later.

Solidarity is no longer a question of altruism but of survival. We do not ask for whom the bell tolls. As in Paris and so in Havana, it tolls for all of us.

Examining Cuba and North Korea healthcare claims

"Communist political violence flowed from a utopian vision of the future, from the great goals pursued, and from the intolerance the service of these ideals inspired, as well as from an intense attachment to power. The means had to be subordinated to historically unparalleled ends that require extraordinary measures." - Paul Hollander, The Distinctive Features of Repression in Communist States

Regimes in Cuba and North Korea are totalitarian allies

 

Both Cuba and North Korea are totalitarian dictatorships that have made claims of great achievements in the area of healthcare over the course of the past month.

On June 19, 2015 the regime in North Korea said that it had "created a wonder drug which not only cures AIDS, but also eradicates Ebola and cancer."  At the same time North Korea has approximately 10.2 million North Koreans currently facing famine.

On June 30, 2015 the World Health Organization said that the regime in Cuba had "became the first country in the world to receive validation from WHO that it has eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis." This is the same regime in Cuba that tried to cover up or under report dengue and cholera outbreaks jailing doctors and reporters who warned of the outbreaks at the time in order to preserve a false image of its healthcare system. The dictatorship has not reported any new cholera cases since September 2014 but according to the Public Health Agency of Canada the government of Canada reported a case of cholera in a traveler who returned from Cuba in January of 2015. Tourists have been stuck with the bill in Cuba after contracting cholera on vacation.

When evaluating the above claims by both dictatorships it is important to recall the nature of these type of regimes. The website Boundless which seeks to provide a "cloud powered education" gives a complete definition of totalitarianism which includes the following observation:

"Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through all-encompassing propaganda campaigns (disseminated through the state-controlled mass media), a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror"

Now the claim made by the regime in North Korea was ridiculed by the mainstream press and shows that the regime is not as sophisticated in its propaganda messaging as their Cuban counterparts.

The regime in Cuba used the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote a false narrative of the Cuban healthcare system exploiting a misleading validation process which the WHO described on their website:

"As treatment for prevention of mother-to-child-transmission is not 100% effective, elimination of transmission is defined as a reduction of transmission to such a low level that it no longer constitutes a public health problem. An international expert mission convened by PAHO/WHO visited Cuba in March 2015 to validate the progress toward the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. During a five-day visit, members visited health centers, laboratories, and government offices throughout the island, interviewing health officials and other key actors. ... The validation process paid particular attention to the upholding of human rights, in order to ensure that services were provided free of coercion and in accordance with human rights principles."

Before anyone travels to a totalitarian regime they should first read Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society if they do not want to be manipulated.  This book studies and catalogs the strategies and tactics that these regimes use to control what one sees visiting their respective countries and what the unintended consequences are for its victims: i.e. the people who have to live there. Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 who spent a lot longer than five days in Cuba studying the healthcare system, contracted dengue while there experiencing first had the 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' She observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights. 

These false or exaggerated healthcare claims are a central element to both totalitarian regimes' justification for continuing their repressive systems and hanging on to power using "extraordinary measures." 

August 23: Remember the victims of totalitarianism in Europe

We remember and pray for the departed marking the day 75 years ago when Nazis and Communists signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Below we have reproduced an announcement sent from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Black Ribbon Day 

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in cooperation with The Platform of European Memory and Conscience and the Joint Baltic American National Committee invite you to attend a special remembrance and wreath-laying ceremony on Saturday, August 23rd (10:00 AM) commemorating Black Ribbon Day 2014.

Black Ribbon Day Commemoration
Date: Saturday, August 23, 2014
Time: 10:00 AM
Location: Victims of Communism Memorial (intersection of New Jersey Ave. NW and Massachusetts Ave. NW)

Join us as we commemorate the victims of totalitarianism in Europe with a special remembrance and wreath-laying ceremony on Saturday, August 23rd at 10:00 AM. This August 23rd marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which divided Europe and helped start the Second World War. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact stands as a reminder that although totalitarianism takes various forms, it only ever leads to death and destruction.

On May 22, 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 4435, which designated August 23rd as Black Ribbon Day. Congressman John Shimkus of Illinois, co-chairman of the House Baltic Caucus, sponsored the legislation. The legislation now moves on to the Senate. If the Senate passes a matching Resolution, the United States will join countries around the world in marking August 23rd as Black Ribbon Day and commemorating the millions of victims of Nazi and Communist regimes in Europe.

VOC, in cooperation with the Platform of European Memory and Conscience and the Joint Baltic American National Committee, will distribute copies of Lest We Forget: Memory of Totalitarianism in Europe to every member of Congress. Lest We Forget is a publication of the European Platform of Memory and Conscience supported by the European Commission.

Please join us at this commemorative ceremony, where ambassadors and representatives of various ethnic communities will remember all the victims of European totalitarianism.

Please register for this event here.

If you are interested in laying a wreath at this event, please contact Travis.LaCouter@VictimsofCommunism.org.

Original source: http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=91e76c85ef3ce77d7a53b176f&id=fdad8cc905&e=973b842cbc

Amnesty's Human Rights Report on Venezuela and María Corina Machado's nonviolent moment on #1A

 Venezuela's slide into totalitarianism and the democratic resistance

María Corina Machado, National Assembly member tear gassed #1A

April 1, 2014 in Venezuela was no joking matter. Two events on the same day demonstrated the human rights challenges facing the South American country:  release of the Amnesty International report on Venezuela and María Corina Machado's nonviolent rally to demand admittance to the National Assembly where she is a member duly elected by the Venezuelan people.


Beginning in Madrid in the late morning, Amnesty International released its report on the human rights crisis in Venezuela titled: Venezuela: Human Rights at risk amid protests and during the presentation of the report a number of tweets by the authors and researchers highlighted the situation.

"Esteban Beltrán, provides data on arrests, deaths and wounded in protests in recent weeks in Venezuela."
"Nuria García talks about field research and emphasizes that there are victims who fear speaking in Venezuela."
From Amnesty Spain: "We're concerned, by among other things, threat in residential neighborhoods, using rubber bullets and the abuse of detainees.
From Amnesty Spain: We have received dozens of complaints from people who have been ill-treated in detention.

María Corina Machado addressing supporters prior to the tear gas attack

 Hours later in Caracas,  María Corina Machado met supporters at a  peaceful rally and march to defend her seat in the National Assembly. Daniel Lozano of El Mundo Caracas described what happened:

"The Bolivarian Police took advantage of the speeches by the politicians, surrounding the demonstration stealthily. At the end, they did not hesitate one second to launch the famous 'good gas'. "Strong repression", complaied the Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma, one of the closest allies of Machado. "They are desperate to see that they can not intimidate the brave people in the streets and repressed a peaceful demonstration," he added. Machado, accompanied by several opposition MPs and still suffering the effects of gas boarded a group of motorcycles and sped off towards the Assembly. On the stage small battle groups of people recovered from the effects of the gas. Students took to the streets to another area of ​​the city, ready to protest the umpteenth police crackdown  as violent as ever."

María Corina Machado was removed from office for having addressed the Organization of American States on the human rights crisis in Venezuela. Due to maneuvers of the Venezuelan government she was blocked from speaking and the government of Panama credentialed her to speak. The Chavista's used this as the basis to remove her from office in a manner that is unconstitutional and that was upheld by the Chavista packed Supreme Court. Venezuelans are being shot in the head, killed by snipers, for participating in nonviolent protests.  It appears that these killings are being carried out by government agents. Others have been tortured. Their is reason to this brutality and it did not appear out of the blue.

Some of the victims of Maduro's repression since February 12, 2014

However, what is being witnessed in Venezuela today did not begin with the Maduro regime but started over 15 years ago on February 2, 1999 with the start of the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez. Human Rights Watch in 2004 released a report: Rigging the Rule of Law that was subtitled Judicial Independence Under Siege in Venezuela and warned of the government simultaneously packing the Supreme Court with pro-Chavez judges while at the same time purging those critical of the government. On the tenth anniversary of Chavez's 1998 electoral victory Human Rights Watch took a look back over the first decade in power and had this to say about the judiciary:

In 2004, displeased with a series of controversial judicial rulings, the president and his supporters in the National Assembly launched a political takeover of the Supreme Court. They enacted a new law expanding the court from 20 to 32 members. Since the law allowed the legislature to select new members by simple majority vote, this meant the governing coalition was able to use its then slim majority in the National Assembly to obtain an overwhelming majority of seats on the court. (At the time the court was believed to be evenly divided between Chávez allies and critics.) The law also gave the National Assembly the power to remove justices from the bench with a simple majority vote rather than the two-thirds majority required by the 1999 Constitution. The law, in short, made it possible for the governing coalition to both pack and purge the country's highest court. ... Within weeks of the law's enactment, the three Supreme Court justices responsible for the rulings that had most angered the Chávez camp were gone from the bench. In December 2004 the governing coalition in the National Assembly filled their vacancies, as well as the 12 new seats, with political allies. Over the next few years, this packed Supreme Court fired hundreds of lower court judges and appointed hundreds more to permanent judgeships.

The political takeover of the Supreme Court effectively neutralized the judiciary as an independent branch of government. The packed court has largely abdicated its role as a check on arbitrary state action. When the Chávez government has pursued measures that undermine human rights protections, the court's response has typically been one of passivity and acquiescence. It has failed, in particular, to counter assaults on the separation of powers, such as the 2004 court-packing law and, more recently, a 2007 constitutional reform package. It has also failed to safeguard fundamental rights in prominent cases involving the media and organized labor.

The concentration of power and its abuse did not end there. In a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch titled Tightening the Grip Concentration and Abuse of Power in Chávez's Venezuela it had a section on the judiciary which described how judges view themselves:

In recent years, justices on the packed Supreme Court have openly rejected the notion of the judiciary as an independent branch of government. Instead of serving as a check on arbitrary state action, they have espoused the view that the role of the country’s courts is to support the political agenda of President Chávez.
For example, at the public ceremony initiating judicial activities for 2011, the keynote speaker, Justice Fernando Torre Alba, declared that the judiciary has the duty to participate in the effective implementation of the government’s public policy to develop “a deliberate and planned action to carry out a Bolivarian and democratic socialism” and that the courts “must severely…sanction behaviors or correct judicial cases that undermine the construction of [this] Socialism.”[18]
Later that year, Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales declared publicly that President Chávez’s “direction, inspiration, and conception of the Republic is what constitutionally inspires…our activities.” Addressing the president—whom she referred to as “our leader”—she said: “Here are all your institutions, and we are firmly moving forward with the responsibilities that you have given us, which we will never betray, not now, not ever.”[19]
More recently, in May 2012, while addressing newly appointed judges at their swearing-in ceremony, the Supreme Court president exhorted them to understand their role as adjudicators in terms of “our revolutionary project and of the change that is taking place in Venezuela today.”[20]

The remaining question of what would happen to a judge that maintained the view that the judiciary was independent and should make decisions based on the law and not on the arbitrary decisions of the executive was demonstrated in the case of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni:

Judge Afiuni was detained on December 10, 2009, the day she authorized the conditional liberty of Eligio Cedeño, a banker accused of corruption, on the basis that he had been in pretrial detention for almost 3 years, despite the 2-year limit prescribed by Venezuelan law. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions had declared Cedeño’s detention “arbitrary.” The authorities accused Afiuni of corruption, abuse of authority, and “favoring evasion of justice.” On December 11, President Hugo Chávez said Afiuni was a “bandit” and should be sentenced to 30 years in prison. Cedeño fled Venezuela and requested political asylum in United States a few days later.

In September of 2013, The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and Human Rights Watch  issued a joint statement which outlined the rest of her plight:

A few days later, [Chávez] said she was “correctly jailed” and reiterated that she should be given a maximum sentence, adding that he “would give her 35 years.”In January 2010, prosecutors charged Judge Afiuni with corruption, abuse of authority, and “favoring evasion of justice.” Prosecutors provided no credible evidence to substantiate the charges. Judge Afiuni was held in prison for over a year, before being transferred to house arrest.During her detention, Judge Afiuni was raped and suffered physical and psychological violence, including death threats from other inmates.In June 2013, Judge Afiuni was released on bail, while her trial, which began in 2012, continues. We recall that the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary prohibit inappropriate or unwarranted interferences with the judicial function, including through reprisals such as those perpetrated against Judge Afiuni.

Where the judiciary is subordinated and controlled by the executive branch one of the main pillars of a democracy: the rule of law has been removed. In 2014 the end result of the weakening of Venezuela's democratic institutions has reached the point that it is at a tipping point into a totalitarian dictatorship.  Freedom of the press has been curtailed and government institutions that should be independent are all centralized in the executive. The democratic resistance has only one outlet to demonstrate its opposition in Venezuela and that is to take to the streets demanding that its rights are respected. The response of the Maduro regime with their Cuban advisors is to try to terrorize nonviolent protesters with violence, killings and torture. Imprisoning nonviolent opposition leaders such as Leopoldo Lopez has failed to shutdown the nonviolent demonstrations. From behind bars Leopoldo has been able to call thousands to the street in defiant and nonviolent protest.

Today's response by María Corina Machado and thousands of her supporters to nonviolently stare down the regime's repressive forces maintaining their nonviolent discipline following a gas and rubber bullet attack by the regime to prevent a march to the National Assembly demonstrates a movement that poses an existential threat to a totalitarian regime: nonviolent resistance backed up with moral authority has been shown to be part of the equation of ridding a country of a totalitarian regime. Corina Machado's moral stand rings out over twitter:

"They will not silence us. Now more then ever, I am a member of the National Assembly and assume my responsibility to be Venezuelan's voice in and out of the National Assembly."

In Plaza Brión: "We demand the the Attorney General's resignation, we demand real Electoral Authority."

In Plaza Brión:"We will not give up, because our struggle is for human dignity."

In Plaza Brión: "My job as your Member of the National Assembly I have done in the streets with you and I will continue there until we overcome."

María Corina Machado in Caracas on #1A