Franklin Brito: A Martyr for Liberty and Human Rights in Venezuela

 "I’ve learned of the death of hunger striker Franklin Brito. It appears that Hugo Chavez now has his own Orlando Zapata" - Yoani Sanchez, August 31, 2010 on twitter

 

(Above) Franklin Brito before and after engaging in 8 hunger strikes

Hunger strikes are the ultimate recourse in the arsenal of non-violent resistance, and over the years around the world it has succeeded at times but in places like Cuba, Ireland, and now in Venezuela human beings have died on hunger strikes.

In Cuba the names of Pedro Luis Boitel and Orlando Zapata Tamayo are remembered as is Bobby Sands of Northern Ireland (who the Castro dictatorship built a memorial to in Cuba) and Venezuela's Franklin Brito is part of this select grouping that demonstrates the ultimate price when engaging in a hunger strike.

Franklin Brito was a farmer and a biologist whose land was expropriated by Hugo Chavez in 2000 according to CNN. Other news agencies place the date of expropriation anywhere between 2003 and 2004. He exhausted every recourse and was driven to the final option: the hunger strike in 2005.El Universal out of Caracas offers a chronology of Brito's odyssey. In the video below published on October 28, 2009 after over 90 days on hunger strike Franklin was carrying out, he explains how all of this began.

The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man by the Organization of American States and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations both recognize the right to private property, despite the fact that it is frequently violated. It is a human right that is acknowledged on a global scale and is expressly stated.

Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article XXIII of the American Declaration states: "Every person has a right to own such private property as meets the essential needs of decent living and helps to maintain the dignity of the individual and of the home."

When Franklin Brito's family said that he stood for "the struggle of the Venezuelan people for property rights, access to justice, for living in freedom," they were simply stating the facts of the matter. Franklin Brito states in the video below, which was shot on November 19, 2009, that he is defending human dignity.

"I am not doing this strike for something material or because persons have behaved badly towards me - that one could say are corrupt. I am doing this strike for dignity and justice. I believe that these are the greatest values that a human being should have."

 The Venezuelan tyranny* said that Franklin Brito was mentally unstable and took him to a military hospital, and placed him under an armed guard.. The Red Cross, Caracas Clinical Hospital and the Venezuelan Psychologists' Association said that Franklin Brito was of sound mind.

The tactics Mr. Chavez is using in questioning the mental stability of his adversaries, and smearing them, even in death, is straight out of his Cuban mentor's repertoire. Friends and family of Franklin Brito had best organize the facts and evidence surrounding his case protect it and duplicate it so that it cannot be seized and destroyed. They should engage in speaking out anywhere and everywhere to counter the avalanche of slander and libel from regime apologists against a man who can no longer defend himself.

Hugo Chávez has nationalized 2.5 million hectares as part of a “land reform drive.” The so-called reform, combined with increased government control over the economy, has exacerbated food shortages in Venezuela with Chavez forced to step up imports despite abundant land and a tropical climate just like Cuba did years ago.

It is not madness to take extremes in the defense of liberty and justice, but it is madness to repeat the same failed policies that have bankrupted and destroyed nations the world over and expect a different outcome in your own homeland.

Franklin Brito was a sane man confronting an evil system, and through his protest embarrassed the Venezuelan dictatorship that sought to disappear him and drove him to his death.

Three years later Hugo Chavez was dead, and his successor Nicolas Maduro was a former bus driver who had gotten training in Cuba before embracing Chavismo. 

14 years have now passed, and Franklin Brito is not forgotten, and the evil of the regime in Caracas is now recognized around the world.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

*Use of the term tyranny is not a rhetorical exercise but defines what Hugo Chavez's democratically elected government has descended into a tyranny. There are two dictionary definitions of tyranny which are often related to each other. For example in the case of Cuba with Fidel Castro it is the state ruled by an absolute ruler but in the case of Venezuela it is the "arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority" that applies.

November 9, 1989: The day they started tearing down the Berlin Wall and the importance of memory

"The official Cuban press has not yet announced the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thus, year after year, many Cubans check the national newspapers in search of any allusion to this fact ... but nothing ..." - Yoani Sanchez, over Twitter, November 9, 2020

Tearing down the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989

Today is a day to remember and cherish. 31 years ago it was the day that the Berlin Wall became no more, but in Communist regimes like Cuba, as Yoani Sanchez pointed out today, the official media has not recognized this historic episode of liberation.  

Freedom from tyranny.
Freedom from captivity.
Freedom from communism. #BerlinWall #FallOfTheWall pic.twitter.com/HHYgcTBV5x

— Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) November 9, 2020

It is important to remember and share so that new generations will know what happened, and be inspired.

31 years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe. 

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961 with barbed wire fence followed by a 100 mile wall and more than 300 watch towers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

In Germany, this was not a passive top down process or the Berlin Wall falling as a result of gravity and inertia. It bears repeating that it was torn down by courageous Germans.

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down at least 136 Germans were extrajudicially executed by East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is The Berlin Wall Museum that offers a complete listing of the 136 known victims with details about them and their deaths.
 

Chris Gueffroy shot dead on February 5, 1989 at age 20 by East German guards while trying to cross the Berlin Wall

For example one of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies “Harmonie“ and “Sorgenfrei” on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. Dead at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. A memorial column commemorating Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online. 

Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall! 🎉

The Wall divided East and West Berlin for 28 years. But today marks 31 years since ordinary Berliners tore it down!

Do you remember that fateful day? 🇩🇪🤝🇺🇸#FalloftheWall pic.twitter.com/uk9fZ7p2zX

— German Embassy (@GermanyinUSA) November 9, 2020

As in Cuba today, the process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas and of nonviolent action. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped but many paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

On June 14, 1973, Fidel Castro addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Later in the evening Premier Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:

It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with great admiration for you and for your services.

Some equate nonviolence with pacifism and they are profoundly mistaken. There is nothing passive and often times nothing peaceful about nonviolent resistance. It can be loud and boisterous or as in the case of the Berlin Wall the loud sound of tools smashing against an oppressive structure that denied the East German people the right to freedom of movement.

Tonight, I lift my glass and give a toast to freedom in memory of those brave souls who tore down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and those today in Belarus, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere in the world continuing the struggle for freedom. And I remember the worlds of the Czech writer Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

This is why the Castro regime continues to try to shut out the news of this great event over the past 31 years, and why we must continue to endeavor to break through the walls of censorship. At the top of this blog, the text of Yoani Sanchez's tweet is translated to English. Below is her tweet from today.

La prensa oficial cubana no ha anunciado aún la caída del Muro de Berlín. Así, año tras año, muchos cubanos revisamos los periódicos nacionales en busca de alguna alusión a este hecho... pero nada... https://t.co/TZEq6vroP8 pic.twitter.com/qWa4ovqGyW

— Yoani Sánchez 🇨🇺 (@yoanisanchez) November 9, 2020

Fake elections in Cuba

Fraudulent change in Cuba, the latest example

 
Yesterday, this blog revealed that the last free election held in Cuba was in 1950. Today we translate the tweet from independent journalist and blogger Yoani Sanchez who briefly reports on yesterday's vote as follows:

#Cuba Without the possibility of choosing between one candidate and another, without announcing the names previously, without campaign proposals, without a program for future action, without access to the accredited press ... so were the "votes" for governors in this island...

 Below is the original tweet in Spanish:

#Cuba Sin la posibilidad de elegir entre un candidato y otro, sin anunciar los nombres previamente, sin propuestas de campaña, sin un programa para el accionar futuro, sin acceso a la prensa acreditada... así fueron las "votaciones" de gobernadores en esta Isla... https://t.co/QTkowwYFKE

— Yoani Sánchez 🇨🇺 (@yoanisanchez) January 19, 2020

The so-called election of provincial governors and vice-governors was a fake election and Cubans are tired of these fraudulent exercises that are now in their 61st year.

Online and real world campaign to free Cuban artist launched

Three months in jail and counting for his art.

 On March 28 at 3pm at La Paja Recold located on Ave 35 #4202 between 42 & 44 Apartment 5 in Havana, Cuba there will be a concert, expo, performance and "disrespect" all under the headline: "Freedom for Danilo." These members of civil society are testing the boundaries of what is permissible in Cuba. Increased international visibility may provide some protection.

Became aware of this event via a tweet sent by Yoani Sanchez on March 25, 2015 with the above poster.

The graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as El Sexto, remains imprisoned in Valle Grande prison. Today, March 26, marks three months that he has been imprisoned. Authorities rejected the habeas corpus appeal presented by independent attorney Laritza Diversent, of the NGO Cubalex .

For now, according to the independent lawyer, there is still no trial date set and she hopes that there will be a change of custody, because the events in which El Sexto is involved are a “misdemeanor.”
Also, Diversent said that she had sent information to international bodies so that they will speak out on the situation of the graffiti artist.


Fellow activists and supporters have been using the hashtag “#FreeElSexto” to promote solidarity and the immediate release of the independent Cuban artist. In addition, there is an online signature campaign underway calling for the freedom of Danilo Maldonado.

Marc Masferrer, of Uncommon Sense, broke the news on his blog that Cuban artists, including punk rocker Gorki Aguila and his band, Porno Para Ricardo, launched an online campaign on March 21, 2015 to demand that the Castro dictatorship release Danilo from jail.

As the group People In Need reported last month, El Sexto was "detained on December 26, 2014 on the Malecón esplanade in Havana as he was driving towards the Central Park to make a performance with two pigs whose bodies were painted with the names of Cuban leaders: 'Fidel' and 'Raúl.'

On March 6, 2015 the punk band Porno para Ricardo released a video calling for Danilo's release that now has over 6,032 views and the lyrics translated to English are available here.

International Human Rights Day 2014 and the Enduring Legacy of Dr. Ricardo Bofill

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas." - Dr. Ricardo Bofill, 1987 in Nobody Listened documentary

International Human Rights Day in Cuba 2014 and men and women in Cuba continue to be arbitrarily detained, harassed and beaten for peacefully demonstrating in favor of human rights. Thanks to courageous activists across the island the world learned about these injustices today via twitter moments after the repression unfolded and at the same time the nonviolent actions of nonviolent opposition and human rights activists. Here is a brief sampling of some of those voices:

Sayli Navarro reported tonight that "in Colon 5  Ladies in White gathered together where Caridad Burunate  lives and handed out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Angel Juan Moya at 8pm described over twitter how today, on December 10th, police beat Lady in White Adisnidia Dallet with a pistol while arresting her. He attached the above photo.

At 5:14pm the Ladies in White reported that the latest news was that hundreds had been detained and their counterparts abroad posted a press release.

Yoani Sanchez reported at 3:21pm over twitter that "police arrested and warned 14 y medio reporters for 'doing something illegal' ... but [Yoani exclaimed] they are doing journalism!"

 Rosa María Payá Acevedo at 1:24pm over twitter provided the context for what was taking place: "December 10th will go down in history as the day of State Security brutality. This is how the Government makes a mockery of human rights in Cuba."

At 12:36pm today the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) tweeted that "communist hordes assaulted the home of Elder Perez, of MCL in Majibacoa and beat up his wife who is pregnant."

Via telephone the Cuban Democratic Directorate today documented numerous demonstrations taking place across the island and also interviewed Sonia Garro who was sent home yesterday after spending two years, eight months and 22 days along with her husband and neighbor arbitrarily detained and is currently under house arrest. None of the three activists have undergone a judicial proceeding.

Ricardo Bofill, Cuban human rights pioneer

Regis Iglesias, spokesperson of the Christian Liberation Movement at 1:40pm over twitter posted a picture of Ricardo Bofill with the text: "Honoring honor. Ricardo Bofill, an essential reference in the defense of  Human Rights of Cubans."

These courageous activists are the disciples of Dr. Ricardo Bofill. Dr. Ricardo Bofill along with Martha Frayde and Eddy Lopez founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. In 1987, Nobody Listened, the documentary directed by Néstor Almendros and Jorge Ulla first introduced the world to Ricardo Bofill and the nonviolent human rights movement in this video.

Later in the same documentary, in the video above,  Dr. Bofill is interviewed and discusses his circumstances as a dissident in Cuba engaged in the battle of ideas:

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas. In this field I’ve had no response just prison and the police. And I don’t know why because the revolution controls all mass media. They have editorials, journalists, even many writers in the world. I don’t know why the response, time and again, has been jail. The response should come in the field I fight in, with ideas. I was arrested again in 1983. On that occasion, I was sentenced to 17 years in jail accused of activities in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the last period of prison began. For reasons of health and others I know not of in 1985 I was placed in the status I’m now in which is “conditional liberty with restriction of movement.”

 Following the interview with Bofill in an interview with Fidel Castro the name of the human rights defender is raised. Castro dismisses his importance, but it is obvious in the context of the interview that he knows very well who this lone activist is.  Bofill went into exile and the leadership of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights passed to Gustavo Arcos who died of natural causes in 2006, but remains an icon of the Cuban human rights movement.

What started in 1976 as three activists based in Havana, in and out of prison, is now 38 years later a nationwide movement of thousands who are nonviolently engaged in the battle of ideas and the defense of human rights. Today's repression across the island continues to demonstrate that the Castro regime is terrified of them.

Yoani Sánchez in the Cuban Exile Quarter

Cubans, period

Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving fragments of the ugly scar, that wall that had divided a nation. In the compartment of that train, while thinking about my father and grandfather – both engineers – who would have given anything to ride on this marvel of cars and a locomotive, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting directly across from me.

After the first exchange of greetings, of mistreating the German language with “Guten Tag” and clarifying that “Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch,” the man immediately asked me where I came from. So I replied with “Ich komme aus Kuba.”

As always happens after the phrase saying you come from the largest of the Antilles, the interlocutor tries to show how much he knows about our country. “Ah…. Cuba, yes, Varadero, rum, salsa music.” I even ran into a couple of cases where the only reference they seemed to have for our nation was the album “BuenaVista Social Club,” which in those years was rising in popularity on the charts.

But that young man on the Berlin train surprised me. Unlike others, he didn’t answer me with a tourist or music stereotype, he went much further. His question was, “You’re from Cuba? From the Cuba of Fidel or from the Cuba of Miami?”

My face turned red, I forgot all of the little German I knew, and I answered him in my best Central Havana Spanish. “Chico, I’m from the Cuba of José Martí.” That ended our brief conversation. But for the rest of the trip, and the rest of my life, that conversation stayed in my mind. I’ve asked myself many times what led that Berliner and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the Island as two separate worlds, two irreconcilable worlds.

The answer to that question also runs through part of the work of my blog, Generation Y. How was it that they divided our nation? How was it that a government, a party, a man in power, claimed the right to decide who should claim our nationality and who should not?

The answers to these questions you know much better than I. You who have lived the pain of exile. You who, more often than not, left with only what you were wearing. You who said goodbye to families, many of whom you never saw again. You who have tried to preserve Cuba, one Cuba, indivisible, complete, in your minds and in your hearts.

But I’m still wondering, what happened? How did it happen that being defined as Cuban came to be something only granted based on ideology? Believe me, when you are born and raised with only one version of history, a mutilated and convenient version of history, you cannot answer that question.

Luckily, it’s possible to wake up from the indoctrination. It’s enough that one question every day, like corrosive acid, gets inside our heads. It’s enough to not settle for what they told us. Indoctrination is incompatible with doubt, brainwashing ends at the exact point when our brain starts to question the phrases it has heard. The process of awakening is slow, like an estrangement, as if suddenly the seams of reality begin to show.

That’s how everything started in my case. I was a run-of-the-mill Little Pioneer, you all know about that. Every day at my elementary school morning assembly I repeated that slogan, “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.” Innumerable times I ran to a shelter with a gas mask under my arm, while my teachers assured me we were about to be attacked. I believed it. A child always believes what adults say.

But there were some things that didn’t fit. Every process of looking for the truth has its trigger, a single moment when a piece doesn’t fit, when something is not logical. And this absence of logic was outside of school, in my neighborhood and in my home. I couldn’t understand why, if those who left in the Mariel Boatlift were “enemies of the State,” my friends were so happy when one of those exiled relatives sent them food or clothing.

Why were those neighbors, who had been seen off by an act of repudiation in the Cayo Hueso tenement where I was born, the ones who supported the elderly mother who had been left behind? The elderly mother who gave a part of those packages to the same people who had thrown eggs and insults at her children. I didn’t understand it. And from this incomprehension, as painful as every birth, was born the person I am today.

So when that Berliner who had never been to Cuba tried to divide my nation, I jumped like a cat and stood up to him. And because of that, here I am today standing before you trying to make sure that no one, ever again, can divide us between one type of Cuban or another. We are going to need you for a future Cuba and we need you for the Cuba of the present. Without you our country would be incomplete, as if someone had amputated its limbs. We cannot allow them to continue to divide us.

Just as we are fighting to live in a country where the rights of free expression, free association, and so many others that have taken from us are permitted; we have to do everything – the possible and the impossible – so that you can recover the rights they have also taken from you. There is no you and us… there is only “us.” We will not allow them to continue separating us.

I am here because I don’t believe the history they told me. With so many other Cubans who grew up under a single official “truth,” I have woken up. We need to rebuild our nation. We can’t do it alone. Those present here – as you know well – have helped so many families on the Island put food on the table for their children. You have made your way in societies where you had to start from nothing. You have carried Cuba with you and you have cared for her. Help us to unify her, to tear down this wall that, unlike the one in Berlin, is not made of concrete or bricks, but of lies, silence, bad intentions.

In this Cuba so many of us dream of there will be no need to clarify what kind of Cuban we are. We will be just plain Cubans. Cubans, period. Cubans.

[Text read in an event at the Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida, 1 April 2013]

Yoani Sanchez: A Forbidden Voice Speaks Out

"Moved by sharing this moment with many human rights defenders in the world. Thanks to the organizers of Movies Matter." - Yoani Sanchez, March 23, 2013 at 12:50pm in Amsterdam

Yoani Sanchez is a human rights hero who has exercised her fundamental human rights to inform the world about what is taking place in Cuba. Yoani has also been subjected to both physical violence and short term arbitrary detentions in Cuba over the years.

Today in Amsterdam the Movies that Matter Festival is screening a documentary "Forbidden Voices"that also includes a chapter on Yoani Sanchez's life and unlike on so many other occasions when she was denied the right to travel on this occasion she is present.

Looking forward to the day, hopefully soon, to sit down and exchange views on Cuba and human rights in general.

In the mean time her blog offers a wonderful accounting of her travels inside and outside of Cuba. 

Crackdown on nonviolence in Cuba

37 nonviolent activists detained over the course of two days in Cuba.

According to sources in Cuba this is the shirt Angel Santiesteban Prats  was wearing when he was arrested.

Scores of activists were detained in Cuba on November 7 and 8, 2012 and two of them are being threatened with long prison sentences. Antonio Rodiles is still being held and is accused of allegedly "resisting arrest", the number of his case file is 62886. Yoani Sanchez reported that the first arrest in the ongoing crackdown occurred on the morning of Wednesday, November 7, 2012 with attorney Yaremis Flores followed by the arrests of Antonio Rodiles and Laritza Diversant.Other activists were detained as they went to the police station to demand the release of those arrested and were themselves arrested.

How and why did this wave of repression in Cuba begin? According to pastor and blogger Mario Félix Leonard Barroso in a statement made to the Cuban Democratic Directorate the aim of the crackdown was to prevent the peaceful gathering of various individuals involved in a project to lobby the regime to ratify its human rights commitments with the United Nations:

"I signed the Citizens Demand for Another Cuba and also I promote it. This afternoon, November 8, a meeting was to be held at the home of Antonio Rodiles, of State of SATS, with several people that promote the Demand in the provinces. It was an unannounced meeting, it was for the promoters of the Demand. But since yesterday, they started arrests of people who were going to participate."

Some background information is necessary here on two important projects of Cuban civil society. The first is the State of SATS, a project led by Antonio Rodiles that has its objective, "to create a plural space for participation and debate, where open and frank debate is exchanged. The project sponsors panel discussions, forums and other events that are filmed and broadcasted on the Internet." The second is a petition initiative signed by hundreds of Cubans inside and outside of the island and submitted to the National Assembly of People's Power on June 20, 2012 which in part states:

That immediately put into practice the necessary legal safeguards and policies conceived in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that it ratify the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights of the United Nations, signed by the Government of Cuba on February 28, 2008 in New York City. This would ensure full respect for citizens no matter what their ideas or their political-social outlook and that the rights of everyone to their opinions who disagree with the government to have them restored. We consider these essential rights in the formation of a modern, free and plural Cuba, that welcomes everyone equally and inserts our sovereignty into a dynamic and increasingly global world. We are committed to a democratic transformation, where everyone can present their views and contribute to its realization.

List of 37 Cuban activists arrested on 7 and 8 of November 2012 compiled by the Cuban Democratic Directorate:

Activists detained in Havana

1. Yaremis Flores Julián 

2. Laritza Diversent 

3. Antonio Rodiles 

4. José Díaz Silva 

5. Yoani Sánchez 

6. Claudio Fuentes Madán 

7. Arabel Villafuentes 

8. Mario Alberto Hernández 

9. Julio Aleaga Pesant 

10. Ailer González 

11. Andrés Pérez 

12. Mario Morago 

13. Vladimir Torres 

14. Rolando Rabanal 

15. Luis Fumero 

16. Veisant Boloy 

17. Angel Santiesteban Prats 

18. Mario Morales 

19. Reinaldo Escobar 

20. Agustín López 

21. Angel Moya Acosta 

22. Librado Linares García 

23. Eduardo Díaz Fleitas 

24. Iván Hernández Carrillo 

25. Félix Navarro 

26. Guillermo Fariñas 

27. Eugenio Leal 

Activists detained in Camagüey 

28. Virgilio Mantilla Arango 

29. Humberto Galindo Moya 

30. Elicardo Freire Jiménez 

31. Angelo Guillermo Alvarez Olazábal 

32. Pablo Jiménez Santarrosa 

33. Fautino Calá Rodríguez 

34. Jeiser Torres Morales 

35. Santos Manuel Hernández 

36. Luis Alberto Alvarez 

37. Isbel Freire Jiménez 

They Tried to Strip Me. I Resisted and Paid the Price.* by Yoani Sanchez

Text taken from Translating Cuba and photo from Yoani Sanchez's twitter account.

Missing tooth following struggle with regime agents

They wanted to keep me from attending the trial of Angel Carromero, the Spaniard who was driving when a car crash killed Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero. Around five in the afternoon a big operation on the outskirts of Bayamo stopped the car my husband, a friend, and I were driving in. “You want to disrupt the court,” a man dressed completely in olive-green told us, as he immediately proceeded to arrest us.

The operation had the scale of an arrest against a gang of drug traffickers, or the capture of a prolific serial murderer. But instead of such threatening people, there were just three individuals who wanted to participant as observers in a judicial process, looking on from within the courtroom. We had believed the newspaper Granma when it published that the trial was oral and public. But, you already know, Granma lies.

However, in arresting me, they were actually giving me the chance to experience, as a journalist, the other side of the story. To walk in the shoes of Angel Carromero, to experience how pressure is applied to a detainee. To know firsthand the intricacies of the Department of Investigations of the Ministry of the Interior.

The first were three uniformed women who surrounded me and took my cell phone. Up to that point the situation was confused, aggressive, but still had not crossed the line into violence. Then these same hefty ladies took me into a room to strip me.

But there is a portion of ourselves no one can rip from us. I don’t know, perhaps the last fig leaf to which we cling when we live under a system that knows everything about our lives. In a bad and contradictory verse it might read, “you can have my soul… my body, no.” So I resisted and paid the consequences.

After that moment of maximum tension came the turn of the “good cop.” Someone who comes to me saying they have the same last name as me — as if that’s good for anything — and they would like “to talk.” But the trap is so well known, has been so often repeated, that I don’t fall into it.

I immediately imagine Carromero subjected to the same tension of threat and “good humor”… it’s difficult to endure this for long. In my case, I remember having taken a breath after a long diatribe against the illegality of my arrest where I repeated one sentence for more than three hours: “I demand you let me make a phone call, it’s my right.” I needed the certainty the reiteration gave me. The chorus made me feel strong in front of people who had studied the diverse methods of softening human will at the Academy. An obsession was all I needed to confront them. And I became obsessed.

For a while it seemed my insistent nagging had been in vain, but after one in the morning I’m allowed to make the call. A few phrases to my father, through a line obviously tapped, and everything was said. I could then enter the next stage of my resistance. I called it “hibernation,” because when you name something you systematize it, believe it.

I refused to eat, to drink anything; I refused the medical exam of several doctors brought in to check on me. I refused to collaborate with my captors and I told them. I couldn’t get out of my mind the helplessness of Carromero over more than two months of dealing with these wolves alternating the role of sheep.

Much of the time all of my activity was filmed by a camera operated by a sweaty paparazzi. I don’t know if one day if they’ll put some of these shots on State television, but I organized my ideas and my voice so that they would not be able to broadcast anything that infringes on my convictions. Either they will keep the original audio with my demands, or have to make a hash of it with the voiceover of an announcer. I tried to make it as difficult as possible for them to edit the material later.

I only made one request in 30 hours of detention: I need to use the bathroom. I was prepared to take the battle to the end, but my bladder, no. Afterwards they took me to a dungeon-suite. I had spent hours in another with a rare combination of curtains and bars, terribly hot. So to come to a larger room, with a television and several chairs, opening onto a room with a tantalizing bed, was a low blow. Just looking at the pattern of the curtains, I had the presentment that it was the same place where they’d made the first recording that circulated Angel Carromero’s statement on the Internet.
This was not a room, it was a stage set. I knew it immediately. So I refused to lie down on the freshly made bed and put my head on the tempting pillow. I went to a chair in the corner and curled up. Two women in military uniforms watching me at all times. I was living another deja vu, the memory of the scene that transpired in the early days of Carromero’s detention.

I knew it and it was hard. A hardness not in the beating or in torture, but in the conviction that I could not trust anything that happened within these walls. The water might not be water, the bed looked more like a trap, and the solicitous doctor was more snitch than physician. The only thing I had left was to submerge myself into the depth of “me,” close the gates to the outside, and that’s what I did. The “hibernation” phase let to a self-induced lethargy. I didn’t utter another word.

By the time they told me I was “being transferred to Havana,” I could barely raise my eyelids and my tongue was practically hanging out of my mouth from the effects of prolonged thirst. However, I felt that I had won.

In a final gesture, one of my captors offered his hand to help me into the minibus where my husband was. “I do not accept the courtesy of repressors,” I fulminated. And once again I thought of the young Spaniard who saw his life turned upside down that July 22, who had to struggle among all these deceptions.

On arriving home I learned from the other detainees that Oswaldo Payá’s own family was not allowed to enter the courtroom. Also that the prosecutor asked for a seven-year sentence against Angel Carromero, and that the trial had been “concluded, awaiting sentencing” on Friday. Mine was just a stumble, the great drama continued to be the death of one man and the imprisonment of another.

*Translator’s note: Yoani lost a tooth. From El Pais

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.

Marginalizing dissidents and white washing the Castro regime's crimes

Befriending tyrants while dismissing Yoani Sanchez and international human rights standards

Dilma Rousseff and Raul Castro in Havana 2012

Over emphasizing and romanticizing the importance of political violence while remaining mute on the Castro regime's torture and extrajudicial execution of opposition figures along with its role in fomenting political violence and terrorism internationally is a difficult task but Julia Sweig, the director of the Latin America program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) manages to do so in the February 1, 2012 article by Matthew Bristow in Bloomberg titled "Dissident blogger says Cuba wanted more on human rights from Rousseff trip":“Yoani’s situation bears zero comparison to what Dilma went through. Unlike Dilma, she hasn’t been and won’t be jailed or tortured and I seriously doubt she’s going to be president of Cuba.”

Yoani Sanchez shortly after 2009 abduction and attack

On November 6, 2009 Yoani Sanchez was kidnapped and beaten up by Cuban state security agents. Other Cuban women have suffered greater abuses for being members of the Ladies in White or simply demanding democratic reforms. They have suffered harassment, beatings, arbitrary detentions and in the case of Laura Pollan what amounts to a very sophisticated form of torture that resulted in her death on October 14, 2011 in at what best could be described as "purposeful medical neglect." She is not the only one.

Yoani Sanchez wearing a t-shirt with image of the late Laura Pollan

To say that Yoani Sanchez will not be arrested in the future or possibly subjected to torture is to ignore 53 years of history under the Castro brothers, but then again Professor Sweig has been known to overlook the Castro regime's history. One example is found on page XIV of the acknowledgements of her May 2002 book Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground Julia Sweig lists a number of people who assisted her in writing the book. Two names stand out: Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad who Sweig described as championing the project. This husband and wife team were working as Cuban diplomats at the Cuba Mission in New York City but were in reality State Security agents. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 with the objective of detonating 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

Cuban diplomats/terrorists and "champions" of Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations

Yoani Sanchez has empowered other Cubans with knowledge of how to circumvent regime controls and speak to the world. She took a leading role in a campaign in 2008 to seek the freedom of Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila who faced prison for his punk attitude and political lyrics. Finally she has provided an unfiltered perspective on what Cubans are going through on the island. She is also demonstrating first hand the power of "living in truth" as a free Cuban in Cuba today despite being denied the right to travel outside of her country on 19 occasions. The irony that on this 19th occasion she received a visa from Brazil last month to travel there to attend the premiere of a documentary on media freedom in Cuba. The denial came shortly after a visit by the Brazilian president who when asked about it said that "Brazil gave the visa to the blogger. The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government". Apparently, President Rousseff does not view as an international matter Article 13 subsection 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:

"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

Dilma Rousseff, as a young women in the late 1960s was inspired to take up arms against a right wing military dictatorship. The military had overthrown a democratically elected left wing president out of fear that he would turn Brazil into another Cuba. Opposition to military rule split into two strategies one violent and the other nonviolent.

Iconic poster of Rousseff's guerilla past

Rousseff, although claiming not to have fired on the police or military, does admit to having been a member of the "National Liberation Command" (NLC) which is described in the same terms as the Red Army Faction, a German left wing terror group. The magazine, Piauí, says that despite her denials now that she handled weapons for the group. The NLC was inspired by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina)[OSPAAAL]that was founded by the Castro brothers and Che Guevara at the 1966 Tricontinental meeting in Havana.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's example are what led Dilma Rousseff to join an organization that robbed banks and assassinated police officers that ended with most of her compatriots dead or in prison. Dilma wound up captured, tortured over 22 days and put on trial then prison between 1970 and 1972. The violent option in Brazil was crushed.

Dilma Rousseff in the dock in 1970

What ended the military dictatorship? A nonviolent political opposition able to build coalitions and with a worsening economy pressure the military into transitioning back to democracy.

It was not Dilma Rousseff's guerrilla past that got her elected president but her talents as an efficient administrator in the Lula government that raised her profile nationally and got the attention of the voters.

Dilma Rousseff is no Lech Walesa nor a Vaclav Havel. Yoani Sanchez with her embrace of nonviolence, rejecting hatred and risking everything to express herself follows more closely in their tradition.

Yoani Sanchez is no Dilma Rousseff. Thank goodness.

Professor Sweig is half right Yoani Sanchez bears zero comparison with Dilma Rousseff. Her choices as a young woman are not only morally far superior but have also been much more effective in empowering her fellow citizens for a democratic change than the sterile path chosen to confront the military dictatorship by Rousseff. Also it doesn't take much courage to attack the human rights record of the United States raising the issue of Guantanamo while ignoring human rights violations in Cuba while in the island meeting with Cuban officials. Not exactly a profile in courage.

Dilma Rousseff's 1970 mugshot

Thankfully, the democratic institutions and political currents that pressured the military into a democratic opening and now pressured the granting of the visa to Yoani Sanchez should also keep the current president from allowing her admiration and pride in meeting with Fidel Castro from turning into a dark chapter for Brazilian democracy as Hugo Chavez has been for democracy in Venezuela.

Rousseff still admires Castro and Che Guevara