"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)
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ~Adlai Stevenson
Frank Delgado returns to Miami to play the Manuel Artime Theater this Sunday, after playing his last concert here in 2000. He was interviewed and played some of his music on MegaTV in the program "Esta Noche Tu Night" just days before the concert.
Freedom of expression both artistic and political were on display Sunday night both inside and outside of the Theater. Prior to the start of the concert there was a demonstration across the street from the Manuel Artime Theater.
Demonstrators protesting cultural exchanges with Cuban dictatorship
The concert was streamed live (although the sound was horrible) one could still make out that Delgado ran through his repertoire with an enthusiastic audience that already knew the words. Nueva onda Cuba reported that Frank Delgado estimated his audience at 400 but Nueva Onda said it was probably more. Here are some of the songs he is best known for: "La Otra Orilla" from Sunday night and the video "Mi Mapa" with the lead actor now in exile.
Frank Delgado: "La Otra Orilla" in Miami 2010 The lyrics in many of his songs offer a critical appraisal of the reality on the ground in the island most likely reflecting popular frustrations with the regime, but some like "Mi Mapa" are just well written ballads.
Wikileaks leaked the February 27, 2009 cable below published in its entirety in El País that the US Interests Section in Havana has evidence that Cuba continues to be a safe haven for terrorists:
DEPARTMENT FOR DS/TIA/ITA
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2024
TAGS: ASEC, PTER SUBJECT: USINT HAVANA RESPONSE TO SPRING 2009 SEPQ
A. (C) Yes. We have reliable reporting indicating the presence of ELN, FARC and ETA members here in Havana. That said, they are unlikely to conduct terrorist operations in Cuba.
B. (C) The specific activities of these groups are largely unknown but Post was able to corroborate that ETA members assisting the FARC had spent time in Cuba and some even had family members in country. There is little chance of any operational activity given the need for safe haven.
C. (C) Yes. The GOC allows these groups to enjoy R&R in Cuba and receive medical care and other services (NFI). Reporting also indicates that the GOC is able to influence the FARC. The Cuban Communist Party International Department (PCC/ID) has close relationships with the Clandestine Communist Party of Colombia (PCC) which serves as the political wing of the FARC, and to some extent the ELN as well.
D. (S) Yes. The Al Ma'Sumin (Shia) Islamic Center located in Havana has established ties with, and receives support from, the Government of Iran.
Cuban Intelligence Service has deep involvement in Venezuela
In another Cable leaked by Wikileaks dated January 28, 2010 also published in its entirety in El País that the Ambassador to Venezuela indicated that Cuban agents controlled spying operations against the US embassy in Caracas:
DE RUEHCV #0107/01 0281832 ZNY SSSSS ZZH R 281832Z JAN 10 FM AMEMBASSY CARACAS TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0378 INFO RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS
(S/NF) RSO stated the current threat levels for post and stressed that Caracas is critical and high in 4 of the 6 threat categories. RSO and other sections confirmed that Venezuelan Intelligence Services (Directorate of Military Intelligence-DIM and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service-SEBIN formerly DISIP) are conducting HUMINT and TECH operations against Embassy staff, as well as political opposition leaders and are controlled by the Cuban Intelligence Service operating in Venezuela. While the collection priority appears to be for political opposition leaders, RSO reminded everyone that the VIS have the capability, means and desire to monitor and target Embassy staff.
SUBJECT: CUBA/VENEZUELA AXIS OF MISCHIEF: THE VIEW FROM CARACAS
REF: A. A: HAVANA 00118 B. B: HAVANA 00697 C. C: TD-314/63777-05 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION D. D: IIR 6 902 9698 06
Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROBERT R. DOWNES FOR 1.4 (D)
------- Summary -------
1. (S//NF) As noted in REF A, the Venezuelan relationship with Cuba continues to intensify. Thousands of personnel sent by the Cuban Government are involved in the Venezuelan health sector and other BRV social missions. Cubans cooperate extensively with Venezuelan intelligence services. Cubans may also participate heavily in the BRV's efforts to naturalize foreigners and provide documentation for citizens, according to various reports from Embassy contacts. Cubans' roles in the military are less clear but probably are also less significant.
2. (C) Venezuelans' views of individual Cubans are mixed. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to be trying to promote the involvement of Cubans in Venezuelan society, although he has proceeded slowly and carefully. Anti-Chavez politicians have barked up the wrong tree by decrying Cuban communism and sovereignty violations, issues that simply do not resonate with poor Venezuelans. While the economic impact of Cubans working in Venezuela may be limited, Cuban intelligence has much to offer to Venezuela's anti-U.S. intelligence services. End Summary.
---------------- How Many Cubans? ----------------
3. (S) Although the numbers of Cubans sent by the GOC to work in Venezuela are significant, the exact figures are difficult to establish. Embassy officers have noted regular flights of Cubans--or Venezuelans returning from official visits to Cuba--at Caracas's Maiquetia airport. According to a DOD analysis of flight activity, an average of about 350 people arrive on three to five commercial or military flights from Cuba to Venezuela per day. Most of these flights land at Maiquetia, but Barcelona and Maracaibo are also common destinations. Post cannot determine how many Cubans are on the flights or how many passengers stay in Venezuela permanently. Airport officials spirit passengers through the building without stopping in customs or immigration. ONIDEX, Venezuela's National Office of Identification and Immigration, reports that it naturalized only 12 Cubans out of a group of 22,664 persons naturalized in December 2005. Whether or not they enjoy Venezuelan citizenship, however, thousands of Cubans have Venezuelan documentation. In addition to the over 20,000 Cubans involved in the Venezuelan health sector (see below), less reliable reports indicate that thousands more are active in the Venezuelan interior. Manuel Rosales, the opposition Governor of Zulia State, told the DCM in October 2005 that 20,000 Cubans resided in Zulia alone. Former National Assembly deputy Pedro Pablo Alcantara (Accion Democratica) told us in October that Lara State had the most Cubans per capita in Venezuela. He claimed more flights from Havana arrived in Barquisimeto, Lara than in Caracas. Complicating the matter further are some 30,000 Cuban exiles in Venezuela, the Cuban exile NGO Net for Cuba estimates.
------ Health ------
4. (C) The BRV created Mision Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood Mission) to provide basic health care for disadvantaged neighborhoods in December 2003, shortly after signing a bilateral agreement with Cuba to swap oil for medical services. As of mid-2005, about 21,000 Cuban physicians, nurses, and support staff along with some 6,000 Venezuelan personnel staffed the mission, according to the Ministry of Communication. Mission clinics are small, two-story hexagonal structures that also house two to three doctors. The BRV provides the clinics' equipment and reduced-cost medicines. Through Barrio Adentro, the BRV identifies patients eligible for Mision Milagro (Miracle Mission), which flies Venezuelans to Havana for cataract surgery. Anecdotal reporting suggests the care Cuban doctors provide is often lacking and that many "physicians" are actually medical students. The BRV has recently begun Mision Barrio Adentro II, a network of more advanced diagnostic centers and inpatient clinics to be administered and staffed mostly by Venezuelans.
5. (C) Notwithstanding the 90,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil Venezuela provides Cuba per day on barter terms, Cuban doctors earn relatively little. According to press reports, Cuban doctors receive salaries of up to USD 400 per month, a figure slightly lower than local averages. A Cuban physician told Post's medical advisor, however, that he received room, board, and toiletries but that the Cuban Government was "holding" his salary until he finished his two-year tour. Some Cuban doctors have "deserted" and fled. A European diplomat told polcouns in mid-January 2006 that the number of Cuban asylum requests received by EU missions in Venezuela had increased over the past few months. A local legislator with extensive contacts in poor neighborhoods told us in November 2005 that Cuban doctors complained bitterly that the Cuban regime held their families hostage while the doctors relied on local donations to survive. In contrast, according to REF B, the GOC receives from Venezuela between USD 1,000 to 5,000 for each Mision Milagro cataract operation, which is comparable to the roughly USD 3,500 that a Venezuelan private clinic would charge for the procedure.
------------ Intelligence ------------
6. (S//NF) Sensitive reports indicate Cuban and Venezuelan intelligence ties are so advanced that the two countries' agencies appear to be competing with each other for the BRV's attention. Cuban intelligence officers have direct access to Chavez and frequently provide him with intelligence reporting unvetted by Venezuelan officers. Venezuela's Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP), moreover, may be taking advice from Cuban intelligence on the formation of a new intelligence service (REF C). Cuban intelligence officers train Venezuelans both in Cuba and in Venezuela, providing both political indoctrination and operational instruction. They also may work in other Venezuelan government ministries, unconfirmed sensitive reporting suggests.
Hopefully the next time there is a public debate about the threat the Cuban regime poses to the United States that all of this will be taken into account along with placing it in a historical context.
"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander" - Abraham Lincoln
Professor Salim Lamrani in his November 23 article “Cuba, the Corporate Media and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo” in The Huffington Post libels not only the late Orlando Zapata Tamayo but 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience as criminals while challenging the integrity of Amnesty International (AI). In his attack on AI and these Cubans he fails to mention that the imprisoned activists were locked up allegedly for “publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”1International standards, outlined in The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, provide guide posts as to what is a legitimate charge and what is illegitimate. The charges made against the 75 Cubans by the Cuban dictatorship, and repeated by Lamrani, fall far short. Other human rights organizations found that Cuba's state security laws violate these principles, illegitimately restricting fundamental rights and unjustly imprisoning Cubans.2
The claim that the “corporate media” disproportionately covers human rights violations in Cuba beyond an attempted distraction from the actual situation on the island also happens to be untrue. For example when Cuban agents massacred 37 men, women and children aboard the “13 de Marzo” tugboat on July 13, 1994 there was little media coverage compared to the coverage generated over the massacre in Chiapas on December 22, 1997 in which 45 men, women and children were massacred by Mexican agents. 3,4 The March 29, 1997 extrajudicial execution of Danish student Joachim Løvschall by a Cuban soldier in Havana was not covered by the “corporate media” despite it being an international incident.5 Unlike Professor Lamrani’s article there is no effort to judge which tragedy is more worthy of news coverage but simply to assert that the professor’s charge is without basis.6 A simple Google search would demonstrate that China, Iran, and the United States garner much more critical coverage in the area of human rights. Finally, other Cubans have died on hunger strikes in Cuba, although their deaths have been documented by international human rights organizations the “corporate media” has not reported on them. This is further evidence that the Lamrani's claim is without substance.
Setting the record straight on Cuban hunger strikers
The media got it wrong from the beginning when it made and repeated the claim that the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first such incident since Pedro Luis Boitel who died on May 25, 1972.7,8 There are a number of factors left out of the reporting on Zapata’s murder. For example, since 1959 the International Red Cross has only been able to obtain access to examine Cuban prisons once over a small window of time in 1989 out of a half century of the Castro regime in power. The numbers of deaths on hunger strike are not publicly accounted for or documented by Cuban prisons.9,10 Amnesty International has not been able to visit Cuba since 1990.11 As in the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo the world knows about Pedro Luis Boitel because his mother, Clara Abrahante Boitel, fought to save her son and make known the atrocities committed against him regardless of the threats visited upon her.12 However in addition to Pedro Luis Boitel and Orlando Zapata Tamayo the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has documented additional Cuban political prisoners who have died on hunger strike both before and after Pedro Luis Boitel not reported by the “corporate media”:
Roberto López Chávez, 25 years old, died on December 11, 1966 in Isla de Pinos prison on hunger strike without medical assistance.13 Armando Valladares, in his prison memoir, Against All Hope described the circumstances surrounding his death: “When Roberto López Chávez, went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses in the prison, the guards withheld water from him until he became delirious, twisting on the floor and begging for something to drink. The guards then urinated in his mouth. He died the next day.”14, 15
Carmelo Cuadra Hernández, died in La Cabaña prison in April of 1969 on hunger strike, after suffering mistreatment and torture over eight and a half months, without receiving medical care and was the third political prisoner that has died on a hunger strike.16, 17
Olegario Charlot Pileta, died in the famous "Escaleras" (staircase) of the Boniato prison, in of January 1973 during a hunger strike, without medical assistance and is described in documents as a “black youth.”18, 19
Enrique García Cuevas died on a hunger strike, without receiving medical care, in cell No. 4 of the new Provincial Jail of Santa Clara, on June 24, 1973.20
Two of the four outlined above died on hunger strikes after Pedro Luis Boitel and there are partial estimates that place the number identified to have died while on hunger strike at twelve including both Boitel and Zapata. Since the death of Pedro Luis Boitel there are partial lists identifying six political prisoners dead on hunger strikes between May 25, 1972 and February 23, 2010.21 This does not mean that there is a conspiracy afoot but demonstrates that human error the product of deadlines combined with staff and budget cutbacks in newspapers is impacting the quality of journalism.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Prisoner of Conscience
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was recognized as an Amnesty International (AI) prisoner of conscience on January 29, 2004 a designation given only to nonviolent activists after careful examination.22 The claim that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a violent criminal in prison for a violent crime is a lie manufactured by the Cuban regime and repeated by Lamrani.23 Furthermore the claim that “AI has never mentioned the alleged political activities that landed Zapata in prison” is untrue.24On January 29, 2004 Amnesty International outlined Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s past arrests:
“He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet3, but was released on 8 March 2003. Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners.”25
Orlando Zapata Tamayo appeared photographed in the Cuban government’s own publication Los Disidentes, in photos prior to his 2003 arrest and was then recognized by Cuban officials as a dissident. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo carried a photo the day after the Cuban regime announced the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with prominent Cuban dissidents.26 Even in death Orlando continues to be a victim of regime attacks libeling his good name repeated by Lamrani and others.
The aim of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s hunger strike
No one disputes that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on a hunger strike. However, the Cuban regime claims that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded: “a television, a personal kitchen, and a cell phone to call his family in order to end his hunger strike and regime sympathizers without citing the source repeat the claim.”27, 28 Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez transferred to the same prison in Camaguey as Orlando Zapata Tamayo on December 3, 2009 and briefly saw him and heard from other prisoners “that a few days before being taken away, Zapata stood up and shouted, ‘People, don’t let yourselves be lied to.Don’t believe anything that they tell you.I’m not demanding a kitchen or any of the things they took away from me.I’m demanding an improvement of treatment for all prisoners, and so you all know, I am going to die for it.’”29
When weighing the claims of the Cuban regime and a former Cuban political prisoner one should look at Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s background. This is a man who was arrested while on a hunger strike protesting the imprisonment of other prisoners of conscience who had been arrested with him in a sit-in in December of 2002 just days after he himself was released from prison in March of 2003. This fact, along with the rest of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s trajectory as an activist would give more weight to Abel Lopez’s version of events.
Basis for the claim that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was murdered
Both Abel Lopez Perez and Reina Luisa Tamayo charge that Cuban prison officials denied Orlando Zapata Tamayo water in an effort to break him. Reina Luisa Tamayo in an interview with Yoani Sanchez, hours after her son’s death denounced that officials had denied him water.30 Abel Lopez corroborates the charge describing what went on: “Before Zapata was checked into the hospital, he was regularly taking some vitamins.He was in a weak state of health.A military chief known as ‘Gordo’, who was the one responsible for ordering all of Zapata’s things to be taken out of the cell and to stop giving him water, also took his bottle of vitamins and poured all the pills down a drain.He told him, ‘Those who are in protest here don’t drink vitamins.I think those are pills sent to you by the Yankees so you can continue your hunger strike.’Those were the exact words said to him, I verified them.His vitamins were taken away, as were any other medications.And they stopped giving him water for a while.”31 This type of practice was also documented in the 1966 death of Roberto López Chávez.32, 33 Denying water to a man on a water only hunger strike is cruel treatment that contributed to his death.
Finally, the campaign to equate engaging in a hunger strike with suicide is at best mistaken. Nonviolence expert, Michael Nagler in an Introduction to Nonviolence filmed at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 2006 offered the following analysis on hunger strikes within a nonviolent context in the video above starting at 46 minutes and 38 seconds:34, 35
"This is not a case of suicide. You are not killing yourself. You are risking death. What you are doing is putting your life into the hands of another person." ... "You are not killing yourself but you are saying to the person that your behavior is so unacceptable that if you continue it its going to kill me. It is an extreme case of taking on the suffering that is in a situation." ...This is different from a threat because what you are saying to the person is "I am going to exhibit to you mirror back to you the ultimate consequences of what you are doing." ... "This is an act of truth. You are killing us - you are killing our people and I'm going to show you that you are doing it to awaken your conscience."...Thats why you have to be carrying on a conversation on a nonverbal level.36
Orlando Zapata Tamayo had been beaten and tortured on more than one occasion by prison guards and state security along with other prisoners. His body was scarred and his health in decline. For example AI reported that, on "October 20, 2003 [Orlando Zapata] was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations."37 The case of Ariel Sigler Amaya, another Cuban prisoner of conscience, is instructive. He had to threaten a hunger strike, although already emaciated and crippled, to obtain medical treatment to save his life.38 The hunger strike was not an act of suicide but rather a tactic of self defense within the arsenal of nonviolent options.
Amnesty International and 75 Cuban Prisoners of Conscience
Lamrani’s attack on AI and 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience point to an Amnesty International 2008 report and its observation that: “because [some of the 75] received funds and/or materials from the United States government in order to engage in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba” that this is a contradiction describing it as a “serious crime.”39 But they fail to reproduce the quote in its entirety leaving out that “activities included publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”40
There are international standards that indicate what a legitimate claim of treason is and what is illegitimate and the charges made against the 75 fall far short. At a 1995 international conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, a set of principles that provide guidance regarding permissible justifications for restricting rights known today as the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information was drafted. These principles invoke legitimate reasons to invoke national security interests which are: "protecting a country's existence or its territorial integrity against the use or threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the threat or use of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government."41
The Johannesburg Principles also outline illegitimate justifications for invoking national security interests which are: "protecting the government from embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to conceal information about the functioning of its public institutions, or to suppress industrial action."42
Finally the Johannesburg Principles specify that certain types of expression should always be protected, including criticizing or insulting the government and its symbols; advocating nonviolent change of the government or policies of the government; and communicating human rights information to the outside world.43 Human Rights Watch in their 1999 report Cuba's Repressive Machinery and in their 2009 report New Castro, Same Cuba find that Cuba's state security laws violate these principles, illegitimately restricting fundamental rights both in the phrasing of the laws themselves and in their application against nonviolent dissidents.44, 45
The Cuban government's attack on foreign funding by either government or non-governmental funding of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is not unique the Russians and Venezuelans are passing or trying to pass laws to cut off outside funding streams to civil society.46 While in the Cuban case dissenting from the official government line means in most cases losing your job and in some cases also being kicked out of your home it is easy to see that the policy is to only permit the existence of pro-government voices. Another example, similar to Cuba, is Burma where the opposition faces brutal repression and the cutting off of domestic resources and thus needs to look for support from abroad.47
Regimes, like the ones in Cuba and Burma, are desperate to suffocate all voices of dissent by demonizing, imprisoning, exiling, or killing them. Amnesty International's identification of prisoners of conscience is an important indicator of the presence or absence of basic freedoms in a country. The Johannesburg Principles exposes regimes, that hide behind the national security facade to impose a climate of fear, for what they are brutal dictatorships that systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens.
There is a big chasm between an individual advocating the violent overthrow of a government and using the force of arms to lash out against representatives of those in power and individuals exercising their fundamental human rights to achieve nonviolent change. The first is a political prisoner and the second is a prisoner of conscience.48
The Campaign to Destroy Reina Luisa Tamayo
The murder of Orlando Zapata Tamayo calls for justice. However, right now Reina Luisa Tamayo, the mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo faces a campaign to destroy her both physically and psychologically carried out by a ruthless dictatorship with an international reach. The regime cannot forgive that the main reason that the world knows about the torture all too common in Cuban prisons that led to Orlando Zapata to go on hunger strike and the continued mistreatment that contributed to his death is because of his mother Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger. Regime officials have physically assaulted and terrorized her when she has tried to visit Orlando Zapata’s grave and attend Mass.49, 50 Her remaining children and grandchildren are harassed and mistreated.
At the same time because of the outcry over Orlando Zapata’s death and brutal attacks on the Ladies in White a large number of prisoners of conscience, along with their families, have been sent into exile but there are a group of prisoners of conscience who have rejected exile in Europe declaring that they wish to live free in Cuba. They are still in prison despite an agreement reached with the Ladies in White by the regime through mediation with the Cuban Catholic Church that said they would be free by November 7, 2010.51
Professor Salim Lamrani please do not allow ideology to blind you to the great injustices being committed in Cuba and speak up for Reina Luisa Tamayo and these prisoners of conscience seeking to remain in the island.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 6TH REPORT ON THE SITUATION OFPOLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA: CHAPTER III: AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL CASES SUBMITTED TO THE IACHR 14 December 1979 http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/cuba79eng/chap.3.htm
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 6TH REPORT ON THE SITUATION OFPOLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA: CHAPTER III: AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL CASES SUBMITTED TO THE IACHR 14 December 1979 http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/cuba79eng/chap.3.htm
Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition KnopfApril 12, 1986) quote taken from (1st Edition Encounter Books April 1, 2001) pg. 379
Glazov, Jamie United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror WND Books, 2009 Pg 48
Ubieta Gómez, Enrique “For whom is death a useful tool?” International Granma Digital March 1, 2010 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/marzo/lun1/death.html(Official publication of the Cuban regime)
Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition KnopfApril 12, 1986) quote taken from (1st Edition Encounter Books April 1, 2001) pg. 379
Glazov, Jamie United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror WND Books, 2009 Pg 48
Nagler, Michael PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. Second Lecture. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7AoNZhWKlk
Nagler, Michael PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. Second Lecture. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7AoNZhWKlk
Article XIX THE JOHANNESBURG PRINCIPLES ON NATIONAL SECURITY, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION International Standards SeriesARTICLE 19, London ISBN 1 870798 89 9 November 1996 http://www.article19.org/pdfs/standards/joburgprinciples.pdf
Article XIX, op. cit.
Article XIX, op. cit.
Human Rights Watch CUBA'S REPRESSIVE MACHINERY Human Rights Forty Years After the Revolution June 1999 Human Rights Watch.Printed in the USA.Library of Congress#: 99-63561 http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba/index.htm#TopOfPage
Human Rights Watch New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era November 18, 2009 HRWhttp://www.hrw.org/en/node/86554
"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear." - Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks, mugshot 1955
Before the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. there was Rosa Parks. In the video below she recounts the events surrounding her arrest. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama sitting in the back of the bus [the area reserved for African Americans during Segregation] the "white" section having been filled to capacity with a white man standing the bus driver told Rosa Parks to stand up and give her seat to him. Rosa Parks refused and a nonviolent moment that would generate a movement that would tear down legal segregation was mobilized. She was arrested, finger printed, photographed, jailed and fined $14 dollars for refusing to give up her seat.
Rosa Parks finger printed in December of 1955 following her arrest. Below her finger prints.
On January 30, 1956 Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was bombed but the boycott continued and remained nonviolent. On November 15, 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court rules that bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. The boycott ended on December 21, 1956 when the Montgomery City Lines desegregated. The bus boycott had lasted 382 days, and turned both Rosa Parks and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. into national figures. Civil disobedience had triumphed over brute force and terror.
"Does conscience function at all or is it ‘social’? Which means, does it not function at all? Was it really possible to change the morals of a whole people like table manners?" - Hannah Arendt
IV. The moral side of the matter came to light after the war through court room procedure. The grandeur of the courtroom is that no one can any longer be a cog. To excuse yourself with – merely a cog, everybody else would have done it – is immaterial, because the judge looks only at you and asks: And why did you become a cog or continue to be a cog? All you say about cogs is at best mitigating circumstances.
And when this moral side came to light, there was the horror that it had been quite easy to still the conscience of a whole people — except a numerically small minority. When we think of morality, we think of conscience, but the words, morals as ethics, means manners, customs, conventions etc. Hence the question with which we are confronted is pretty serious: Does conscience function at all or is it “social”? Which means, does it not function at all? Was it really possible to change the morals of a whole people like table manners? There were however the minority of non-participants — we are not concerned with heroes or saints — but with everybody.
Who were the participants, who were the others?
V. 1. What is required of conscience in a situation in which you have nothing but yourself to guide you? You pit yourself not only against the legal system of the country but against public opinion. 2. Since totalitarianism relies on the atomization, you are – or think you are – one against all. For every communication is dangerous. The man whom you trust today may change tomorrow, and then you are lost. Those who think likewise are not known to you. 3. You apparently hold fast to standards which have lost all reality, they appear nowhere. 4. Empirically: Those who were always used to hold fast to standards without examining them, without doubting, who were conventional and respectable were the easiest to coordinate. The doubters, skeptics, rebels, and the like were much harder to sway. For this is a system with its own standards, and unexamined standards, simply accepted upon authority – or public opinion – crumble the moment they are no longer real. All that is left then is the habit to have standards to hold fast to something. And such standards are supplied by the new order.
VI. Those who did not participate were neither people who were old-fashioned enough not to accept new standards nor were they in possession of better ones. Their conscience did not function in this mechanical way — where you have a law and then subsume all particular cases under it. They were arrogant enough to judge by themselves. And their criterion, I’d suggest, was Socratic: Socrates said not only: Better to suffer than to do wrong, but he explained it: It is better to be at odds with the whole world than being one to be at odds with yourself. They asked themselves if they would still be able to live with themselves after having done certain deeds. And they decided not to participate, not because the world would be better (not because of political responsibility) and not because they were worried about the salvation of their soul, but because they wanted to go on living with themselves. They refused to murder not so much because they still held fast to the command Thou Shalt not Kill but because they were unwilling to live together with a murderer.
Two examples --
The presupposition for this kind of judging is the habit of examining and living together with yourself. We call that silent dialogue in which you speak with yourself thinking, but it is not technical, not the privilege of the educated and sophisticated. No one was easier to lure into the new morality-trap than the intellectuals because they can produce ideas for everything and they have a tendency to judge according to what makes them produce such things as notions and ideas.
We have a tendency to think of people who are in the habit of examining basic propositions and standards as destructive. We have every reason to change our minds on this subject. Doubters and skeptics are more reliable, not because doubting is wholesome or skepticism good but because such people are used to make up their own minds — to live together with themselves.
VII. This attitude of non-participation, of not doing certain things quite irrespective of the world, is politically a marginal situation. It is irresponsible, and such irresponsibility is justified when you are completely impotent. Hence it is the right attitude in extreme situations, and it can also be the right attitude for those who have made Thinking a way of life — the philosopher, or whoever claims freedom from politics, which our body politic guarantees to all citizens.
Against this attitude, the current claim was: Every citizen has a duty to obey the laws. He cannot examine the laws and then decide whether or not they are good laws; such conduct would undermine every body politic. No government can survive without this obedience. This is a fallacy, and it resides in the word obedience. Only a child obeys. An adult actually supports the laws or the authority that claims obedience. No action is possible without support and help from others. The one who starts action needs the support from others to see the matter through. Without such “obedience,” a leader is helpless — whereas in the nursery the child is helpless or the slave when they refuse to “cooperate.” If I obey the laws of the land, I actually support its constitution, and every revolution starts when this tacit consent is withdrawn.
In political terms, the non-participants to the extent that they came in conflict with the laws of the land did not claim freedom from politics but withdrew their consent, refused to support by shunning such places of responsibility where such support under the name of obedience was required, or by paying with their lives for non-obedience.
VIII. In conclusion: Moral responsibility begins where political responsibility ends, where you either can’t or won’t do anything for this world. In certain inhuman political situations it may be a sign of courage to admit impotence and to say: I don’t want any part of this world, I shall not take my share and shall not participate. Then, there is nothing left but life itself in its sheer thereness. And now you will decide according to this criterion only – the old Socratic criterion: If I can’t do this (f.i. examine myself and those around me) life is not worth living, and if I must do that – for instance. kill or bear false witness against my neighbor – I won’t be able to live with myself any longer. And though there may be many people who don’t live with themselves — and that means who, strictly speaking, have no conscience — for me life would not be worth living if I lost myself. If you are lucky, this moral attitude under totalitarian dictatorship leads you only into isolation from your fellow-men, if you are unlucky it leads you into death.
Demonstrators protesting cultural exchanges with Cuban dictatorship
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