"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying
with Tehran's hijab regulations. Mahsa was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and she died from her injuries on September 16, 2023.
Today she was posthumously awarded the European Union's Sakharov Prize.
Saleh Nikbakht, Mahsa Amini’s family lawyer and Iranian activists Afsoon Najafi & Mersedeh Shahinkar
Her murder at the hands of Islamic regime agents sparked the #WomanLifeFreedom movement.
Seventy five years ago on December 10, 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly. In 2008 in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of this important milestone, Mary Ann Glendon, the United States Ambassador to the Holy See, highlighted Latin American and Catholic contributions to human rights, and made special mention of the contribution made by Cuba that was documented in a diplomatic cable.
“The principal leader of the Latin American group in 1948 was a charismatic young Cuban representative named Guy Perez Cisneros. His son, Pablo Perez-Cisneros, attended the conference and recounted his father's contributions to the UDHR, noting the gap between the Cuba of his father's day and the deplorable state of human rights under the present regime. The work of Guy Perez-Cisneros and other delegates was captured in a 12-minute video presentation featuring archival footage of Eleanor Roosevelt and Guy Perez-Cisneros' UN speech in support of the UDHR.”
However, Perez Cisneros was not the architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and until The Washington Post journalist David Hoffman explored this chapter of Cuban history in his 2022 book, Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba, this information was only available in some archives, and obscure blogs.
Hoffman found that the 1940 Cuban Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 88g of the 1992 Cuban Constitution that made the Varela Project possible were largely the result of one talented Cuban who over the course of his career had been a diplomat, jurist, and scholar, but you’ve never heard of him. In fact, he has been called the “forgotten man”.
Gustavo Gutierrez Sanchez (1895 - 1959)
His name was Gustavo Gutierrez Sanchez and he was born in Camajuani, in the Province of Santa Clara, Cuba on September 20, 1895, and he died in exile in Miami on July 17, 1959 at age 63. In 1916, at just 21 years of age he had obtained doctorates in Civil and Public Law, and became Assistant Professor of International Public Law in the University of Havana, and in 1919 became the department head at age 24.
Carlos Márquez Sterling, a Cuban historian and statesman who led the drafting of the country’s 1940 Constitution, in 1976 wrote an article in Diario de las Americas where he highlighted Gustavo Gutierrez’s role in the drafting of the 1940 Constitution.
"Gustavo had formed part of the Bicameral Commission which drafted the project of the Constitution and I can assure you that many of the institutions that later found expression in our original document were based on previous works created by Gustavo Gutierrez."
Hoffman in “Give Me Liberty” reported that the 1940 Constitution had a provision that had been drafted years earlier by Gustavo Gutierrez, and became “Article 135, Section F, which provided that laws could be proposed by congressmen and senators, government officials, courts, - and by citizens. ‘In this case,' the constitution declared, ‘it will be an indispensable prerequisite that the initiative be exercised by at least ten thousand citizens having the same status of voters.”
The Cuban jurist believed that this clause would have given Cuban citizens a voice in public affairs that could have acted as a brake on Machado’s slide into dictatorship, or led to an earlier repeal of the Platt Amendment, or prevented Batista becoming a strong man. This provision somehow was recycled into the 1992 Cuban Constitution, and was the basis for the Project Varela that challenged totalitarian rule in Cuba beginning in 2002.
Chapultapec Castle in Mexico City
Less than five years later in February 1945, with World War Two still underway, at the Chapultapec Castle in Mexico City twenty Latin American countries and a large delegation from the United States participated in the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace. Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez presented on behalf of Cuba “two detailed proposals for consideration, a Draft Declaration of the International Rights and Duties of the Individual and a "Draft Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Nations." These two drafts were written by Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez in his book La Carta Magna de la Comunidad de Naciones. Later that year the Cuban delegation in San Francisco would present his draft for consideration in the creation of a universal declaration of human rights.
French jurist René Cassin and Guy Perez-Cisneros argued strongly in the discussion over the drafting of the declaration that the right of individuals to petition “for redress of alleged human rights abuses to ‘the public authorities of the State of which he is a national or in which he resides, or with the United Nations.” was an essential human right that should be included. This was objected to by the Soviet Union, and Mexico that argued that it “violated the principle of national sovereignty and violate provisions of non-interference.” It would not end up in the declaration, but be recognized later by some states. The spirit of this clause that individuals could petition to have injustices committed against them all the way to the UN is consonant with Gutierrez’s advocacy for giving citizens a voice in public affairs.
“I was no Thomas Jefferson and, although a lawyer, I had had practically no experience drafting documents. But since the Secretariat had collected a score of drafts, I had some models on which to work. One of them had been prepared by Gustavo Gutierrez (Sanchez) and had probably inspired the draft Declaration of the International Duties and Rights of the Individual which Cuba had sponsored at the San Francisco Conference.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an initiative by Latin American nations, in which Cuba played an important role proposing it, assisting to draft the document, and successfully lobbying for it.
The Cuban diplomats that played this historic role in bringing into existence this “Magna Carta of the Community of Nations” have been erased to make way for one of the great lies of the Castro dictatorship that the political concepts of liberty, equality, and justice are not universal but differ based on geography. This is also why the communist dictatorship in Havana views the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as enemy propaganda.
This is why Cubans across the island risked everything to be heard by the international community in 2002, 2004, and 2021 in their demands for freedom and an end to dictatorship. In 2002 and 2004 this demand was made in the Project Varela petition by tens of thousands of Cubans, and in July 2021 by hundreds of thousands of Cubans across the island shouting for it at the top of their lungs. Currently there are over 1,000 political prisoners in Cuba, and on international human rights day 2023, the 75th anniversary of the signing of the declaration we call for their freedom, and the freedom of all Cubans.
Dec. 1945. Ex-PM Winston Churchill invited to lunch at the Cuban Embassy in the UK.
Human rights are an intrinsic part of Cuban history that the current
dictatorship has spent decades systematically trying to erase, denigrate, and deny,
but every day Cubans for decades have stood up for the defense of human rights and dignity at great cost to themselves.There are over 1,000 political prisoners today in Cuba, more than in the rest of Latin America combined for demanding the restoration of human rights and democracy.
Fidel Castro in a 1986 interview claimed that
"[y]our political concepts of liberty, equality, justice are
very different from ours. You try to measure a country like Cuba with
European ideas. And we do not resign ourselves to or accept being
measured by those standards."
However the now dead Cuban dictator omitted that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an initiative
led by Latin Americans, and Cubans in particular. Furthermore that language placed in the Declaration was taken from the 1940 Cuban Constitution.
Beginning in 1945 Cuba took part in lobbying for and participating in the drafting of the declaration and submitted nine proposals
of which five made it into the final document.
Cuban diplomats invited Winston Churchill
to lunch at the Cuban Embassy in London in December of 1945 and
proposed the creation of a human rights commission for the United
Nations.
Cuban Ambassador Willy De Blanc hosted the former British Prime Minister with other Cuban diplomats
(including delegates to the U.N. Preparatory Commission Dr. Guy
Pérez-Cisneros y Bonnel and Cuban jurist Dr. Ernesto Dihigo y López
Trigo) where they requested his assistance in the creation of a human
rights commission for the United Nations.
Churchill recommended that the
Cubans lobby Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and they followed his advice.
Eventually the former First Lady was selected as chairwoman to the Human
Rights Commission.
The first meetings of
the General Assembly and the Security Council took place in London on January 10, 1946. On December 10, 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was voted on, and a Cuban diplomat played a high profile role that day.
On December 10, 2017 in the Miami Herald's letters to the editor section, Pablo Pérez-Cisneros Barreto, the son of Guy Pérez-Cisneros y Bonnel, wrote of his family's and Cuba's legacy in drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
My late father believed that the declaration is the fruit of the
great efforts of our civilization and human progress, a unique moment in
which humanity came of age in its civic education; that it is also a
source of inspiration for the formation of today’s citizens, and not
cause for divisions among them. [...] Cuba had the distinction of being
the country that proposed the finished declaration be put up for its
final UN vote on Dec. 10, 1948. Hard to believe now but Cuba was once a
leader when it came to human rights. And it is important to note that
nine initiatives proposed in 1945’s Cuba became part of the final
declaration, and that Cuba was the country that entrusted the Economic
and Social Council of the United Nations in San Francisco to prepare the
declaration as early as 1946. The third preamble of the declaration is a
copy of one of the articles of the famed 1940 Cuban Constitution, and
Cuba had the initiative to include in the declaration the right to honor
one’s human rights and reputation, as well as protect citizens against
arbitrary government interference in their private lives. Cuba
presented the first amendment to the draft declaration which was
accepted, adding the right of citizens of any member country to follow
the vocation they choose. Cuba presented a second amendment which was
also accepted — the right of every worker to receive an equitable and
satisfactory payment for their work.
Last month Cuba underwent a universal periodic review of its human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council. On the eve of this examination, a UN side event was held with witnesses testifying on the human rights violations committed by Castroism over the past five years.
Communist Cuba underwent its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
on November 15, 2023, at the UN Human Rights Council, a process Havana
repeatedly subverted since 2009 by using front groups to drown out critical human rights reports by established human rights organizations.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez began the UPR session attacking Israel, went on to blame the Cuban dictatorship’s shortcomings on U.S. sanctions, and turned the review into a politicized circus.
Over 20 years, I’ve witnessed Cuban diplomats undermine international
human rights standards, first at the United Nations Human Rights
Commission and later at the UN Human Rights Council, making a mockery of
human rights.
On April 15, 2004 when the UN Human Rights Commission decided by a
single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record, a Cuban human
rights defender attending the session, Frank Calzon, was physically attacked by a Cuban diplomat.
On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation, together with the
Organization of Islamic Congress, successfully passed resolutions that
turned the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression into an investigator policing “abuses” of freedom of expression.
On Sept. 21, 2018 Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso
Cuesta, during the Universal Periodic Review on Cuba at the UN Human
Rights Council stated that
“our country will not accept monitors. Amnesty International will not
enter Cuba and we do not need their advice.” Less than a month later,
Cuban diplomats led an “act of repudiation“ at the UN shutting down a discussion on political prisoners in Cuba.
On July 1, 2020 the Cuban dictatorship introduced a resolution
at the UN Human Rights Council endorsing the death of a free Hong Kong
and praising China for passing the Hong Kong National Security Law.
What the diplomats of Cuba’s communist dictatorship do in Geneva is
horrible, but it pales compared to what they do to Cubans on the island.
On July 11, 2021 when Cubans across the island
protested in huge numbers called for freedom, and an end to
dictatorship. Raul Castro’s hand picked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel
went on national television and gave the “order of combat.”
Regime agents opened fire on unarmed Cubans, the number killed remains
unknown due to regime repression, and lack of transparency, but the
video of 36 year old singer Diubis Laurencio Tejeda shot in the back by police, and dying in his friends’ arms is devastating.
Artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez
are imprisoned in Cuba today for authoring a song about “homeland and
life.” The dictatorship has severely restricted artistic freedoms,
passed laws outlawing criticism of the regime on the internet, and
passed an even more draconian penal code that expands the death penalty.
Human rights defenders Felix Navarro and his daughter Sayli Navarro,
who sought to ascertain the plight of detained Cuban protesters, were
themselves arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. There are over
1,000 prisoners of conscience in Cuba.
It was not always this way.
A democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights 75 years ago. Carlos Prío Socarrás, Cuba’s last democratic
president, was elected in free and fair elections and took office on October 10, 1948. President Prío valued human rights, as seen by the activities of his diplomats during the United Nations’ founding.
Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters.
Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted
language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.
“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which
finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of
law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse
of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”
Holodomor literally means death by
hunger. In 1932 and 1933, a vast famine in Soviet Ukraine killed three
to seven million people, according to estimates. While people starved,
the grain was shut away in barns for export.
The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity." Human decisions "determine whether a crisis
deteriorates into a full-blown famine."
According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union."
"In fact, with the exception of the 1943
Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the
other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to
socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine (
1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5
million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine
and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the
USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30
million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia
(0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North
Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2
million deaths)."
This was not due to poor central
planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of
genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by
eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of
victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall
populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant
around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the
case of China estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million. The Ukrainian Research and Documentary Center on the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor released the documentary Harvest of Despair.
We must also remember those who bore witness and spoke truth, and those who covered it up. Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist broke the story on the Ukranian famine on March 29, 1933 despite official denials. Walter Duranty of The New York Times wrote an article a day later rebutting Jones's claims that was published in the paper of record
on March 31, 1933. Duranty knew that what Jones published was true, but
he sought to appease his Soviet hosts, and remain in the country.
The Russians, under the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, are engaging in genocide again. People of goodwill cannot remain silent, or worse try to
minimize what is taking place.
Olena @ZelenskaUA and I joined the commemoration of the Holodomor genocide.
Today, the Ukrainian people are united in their prayers, desire for justice, and the flame of our national memory.
Ukraine will never forget the millions of our people who were killed by starvation. pic.twitter.com/YlOYJvGmzS
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 25, 2023
It also saddens me that the Castro regime in Cuba is not siding with the little country being invaded by a superpower, but is instead siding with the aggressor, sending Cuban soldiers to fight for war criminal Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
If you are in the Washington DC area today then please consider joining in a nonviolent act of remembrance marking 90 years since this Russian act of genocide.
Fidel Castro: Cuba's absolute dictator turned power over to his brother
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the
Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister, and Secretary-General of
the Non-Aligned Movement, Comandante Fidel Castro is still dead.
Seven years ago, on a Black Friday that fell on November 25, 2016, Cuban
tyrant Fidel Castro died at the age of 90 never having had to answer for
his many crimes against humanity both in and out of Cuba. From Nicaragua, to Ethiopia, to Venezuela,
and in many other places Fidel Castro assisted tyrants and
dictators to take power, hold on to it, and consolidate their rule. One day later in a blog post I predicted what would come next.
"Predictably over the next few weeks inside Cuba the world will see spectacles organized by the totalitarian dictatorship to "mourn the great leader." The regime has already started with nine days set asidefor
official mourning. This will not be the first time that monsters are
mourned by an oppressed people through different methods of command,
control and manipulation. The world has witnessed it before in the
Soviet Union in 1953 and more recently in North Korea with the Kim dynasty. The death of Stalin as dramatized in the film "The Inner Circle" is recommended viewing for those about to follow the circus in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro's death. Meanwhile in Cuba as the regime prepares its state funeral the Castro dictatorship's secret police begin to make threats, round up and take dissidents to undisclosed locations and commit acts of violence."
Six years later the fans of the late Cuban dictator are out trying to
defend his legacy and repeating the lies to put him in a positive light.
These apologists of the dictator are silent on the role played by the United States government and The New York Times in undermining Fulgencio Batista's rule and bringing Fidel Castro to power.
On this sixth anniversary of the dictator's death it is a good time to remember some of his more memorable statements.
Relationship with the truth
Fidel Castro in the 1950s repeatedly claimed that
he was not a communist because he knew that advocating a communist revolution would
lead Cubans to abandon him. On December 2, 1961 he explained his reasoning.
"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists
while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that
we would never have been able to descend to the plains."
On March 26, 1964, after announcing that he had always been a Marxist Leninist, Castro explained:
"I conceive the
truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is
truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth,
as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not
exist."
Jose Ignacio Rasco,
who knew Fidel Castro from school and afterwards concluded that the
Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.
Denied universality of human rights , and erased Cuba's role in 1948 codifying them
Fidel Castro in the above interview in Havana in 1986 divided freedoms
i.e. rights as one set being revolutionary liberties and another being
bourgeois liberties and claiming that there are two different concepts
of liberty he is rejecting the Latin American tradition which was best
expounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that there are
basic human rights that are universal and not separated by
political/ideological or as in the Islamic claim by religious
differences but are the same for everyone. Omitted the role played by Cuban diplomats in drafting and lobbying for the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
In 1961 in a speech that became known as "Words to intellectuals" Fidel Castro labeled dissenters "counterrevolutionaries" and explicitly stripped them of their rights.
What are the rights of writers and artists, revolutionary or non-revolutionary?Within the Revolution, everything;against the Revolution, no right (applause).And this is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers.It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the Revolution.
Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the
enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution,
because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to
develop, and the right to be victorious." ... "In other words: Within
the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing."
This is not an original statement, but an echo of speeches and writings made by other tyrants. A close parallel is found in Benito Mussolini's 1935 speech: "Everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State."
Consequences of this policy in Cuba were seen internationally in the Padilla Affair in 1971.
HomophobicWe would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965
On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not
confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in
the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”
Both Gays, and rock n rollers were sent to forced labor camps.
Ended Black Cuban agency
"In
Cuba, the exploitation of man by man has disappeared, and racial
discrimination has disappeared, too." - Fidel Castro, quoted in Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel By Lee Lockwood, 1967
“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their
doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is
without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba
died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had
the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose
of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil
obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man
to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule. It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite allying with
Black elites in the United States, and Africa while criticizing racism
in the United States.
For decades, the Castro regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes. Black Cubans who think for themselves are punished.
On Walls and border controls
Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and encouraged the border guards to
continue shooting Germans trying to flee to freedom by crossing the
Berlin Wall. At Brandenburg gate on June 14, 1972 in the afternoon (pictured above) he 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." 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."
On November 5, 1975, 30,000 Cuban troops were dispatched to Angola in
what was called Operation Carlota, and today pro-Castro sympathizers
over social media are celebrating this anniversary with excerpts of a speech the Cuban dictator gave announcing the move at the time. Cuban troops, beginning on May 27, 1977, took part in a massacre in Angola following a split in the governing Communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party. Amnesty International cites reports that 30,000 Angolans "had disappeared" in the purge; other sources place the number at 80,000 killed.
There was a racial component, with those massacred being young, black revolutionaries, and those in power who Castro allied with: mixed race and white Angolans and Eurocentric, although they were Marxist-Leninists so it was not a problem for Leftists, including those in power in Portugal. The definitive account of this massacre in English is found in Lara Pawson's 2014 book, "In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre." A 2017 review of the book by Fernando Arenas published in Luso-Brazilian Review provides the following summary.
In the Name of the People offers major insights regarding the history of May 1977, including the key role played by Cuban military forces, who defended Agostinho Neto and the ruling MPLA against the attempted coup, in defiance of the Soviet Union, while committing atrocities against Nito Alves's supporters. It also highlights the centrality of racial politics in Nito's movement against the perceived political dominance of mixed race and white Angolans in the MPLA to the exclusion of the majority poor black population, emphasizing the movement's rejection of endemic corruption within the MPLA and its betrayal of the socialist revolution.
"Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere
leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual
personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […]
The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president
in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the
meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist
leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on
February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints."
Ramiro Valdez, Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam
Amnesty International concluded that
"this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of
thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned."
Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries."
Advocating for and actively trying to start a nuclear holocaust
Castro freaked out Khrushchev with call for a first strike
If an aggression of the second variant
occurs, and the imperialists attack Cuba with the aim of occupying it,
then the danger posed by such an aggressive measure will be so immense
for all humanity that the Soviet Union will in circumstances be able to
allow it, or to permit the creation of conditions in which the
imperialists might initiate a nuclear strike against the USSR as well.
Thankfully,
Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome, but the Castro
regime continued to protest and was unhappy with their Soviet allies for
not launching the intercontinental ballistic missiles that would have started a
thermonuclear war.
Comandante Castro ordered students to the streets to chant "Nikita, mariquita, lo que se da no se quita" ("Nikita, little queer, what you give you don't take away").
The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.
Dan Rather:-The incident of the Brothers to the Rescue
aircraft…But you gave the order.It was
not your brother Rául or a general.
Fidel Castro:-I gave the order to communicate to the Air
Force that what happened on the ninth and thirteenth could not be permitted
again.But these operations are very
quick.They enter in a matter of
minutes and leave.It is very difficult
to establish a mechanism of communication and consultation.They had the general order of not permitting
them…They acted with full awareness that they were following the order.At that moment there was not…The air force
had the responsibility.As a rule they
can communicate with each other, but everyone is not always there.In fact, they had the authority to do it,
and I assume the responsibility.I am
not trying to elude the responsibility in the least, because they were
instructions given in a moment of really great irritation.They were given to the pilots, I believe, if
I remember correctly, on the 14th of January.
Detailed investigation into the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown available here.
Alliances with Fascists and Nazis
Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons
In the early 1960s the Nazi who saved Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1944, Otto-Ernst Remer, had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. The German
foreign intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), reported
that "evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from
personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives."
The Cuban autocrat was friendly with his Spanish counterpart
Francisco Franco, and declared days of mourning when the Generalissimo,
Prime Minister, Head of State, and Caudillo died on November 20, 1975.
In the picture below is Fidel Castro with Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez, one of the planners of the Falkland's invasion, of the Argentine military junta that extra-judicially executed and disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentinians between 1976 and 1983 in the Dirty War meeting in Havana at the Non-Aligned Movement gathering. He died of lung cancer on August 3, 1992.
Whereas Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sought to expose and end the Dirty War, as well as later document the crimes committed and demand justice on behalf of the victims, the Cuban government did everything possible at the time to obstruct efforts to investigate the disappearances from their perch at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
What have joint anti-drug operations with Cuba, and sharing intelligence done in concrete terms for US citizens? In 1999, the year when Washington intensified these efforts 3,186 U.S. citizens died of cocaine overdoses. In 2021, after 22 years of this "cooperation" 23,513 Americans died in 2021.
Anti-Semite
Cuban Jewish family targeted by the Castro regime for being Jewish.
From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966.
This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across
Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world
order in an authoritarian direction.
Fidel Castro compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979.
“From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution
and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But
there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the
dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are
currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”
The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to
rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in
direct military action.
Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just
days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from
Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria,
Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.
Until his death in 2016, Fidel Castro was a consistent enemy of democracy and human rights. He had many titles, including First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Comandante, but tyrant is the most appropriate. Fidel Castro, Cuba's despot, is still dead, and good riddance.
May the death cult that has formed around this tyrant soon join him.
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