Understanding Revolution: Documentary Enemy of the People online through August 12, 2011

“The only good bourgeois is a dead bourgeois.” - Pol Pot

Watch the full episode. See more POV.

July 17, 2010 Update: Enemies of the People opening in New York City July 30, 2010 at the Quad Cinema was the winner of the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Film making. The award is named after famed filmmaker Nestor Almendros who co-directed two important films about human rights in Cuba: Mauvaise conduite aka “Improper Conduct” (1984) about the persecution of gay people in Revolutionary Cuba and Nadie escuchaba (1987) aka "Nobody Listened"and both documentaries are available for viewing online.


Two films offer different perspectives












Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. - Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

To innovate is not to reform. - Edmund Burke (1796)


There are two documentary films that you must see to gain an understanding of how a true and pure revolution operates. One of them Enemies of the People will be screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City. The other S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (French: S-21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge) is available online and was released in 2003. Both are works of art that transcend the confines of documentary film making to serve an important role in truth telling and national reconciliation. Members of the Khmer Rouge are on trial and the first verdicts will be read out on July 26, 2010, but the verdict on their ideological project is still the subject of fierce dialogue and debate. Both these films can serve to not only inform but provide context into understanding revolution.

The films compliment each other. Enemies of the People offers the perspective of the revolutionary leadership, their ideological vision, and how they applied it as government policy. While the S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine documentary allows the viewer to see how that policy was implemented in day by day accounts by the prison guards and surviving prisoners. Enemies of the People offers the perspective of the documentary's director Thet Sambath, a senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post, and he is regarded as one of Cambodia’s best investigative journalists. On the other hand in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine the director, Rithy Panh, is a lifelong filmmaker and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge camps who lost his parents, sister, and many other relatives to the genocide.

Both films offer something I have never seen before in a documentary the voice of the individuals who committed the atrocities. In Enemies of the People the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen laying out what and why they did it, and in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine it is the guards themselves walking through S-21 prison with one of their former captives describing in detail what was done there.

Below is the trailer for Enemies of the People :



Enemies of the People will be showing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival on June 18, 2010 at 4pm, June 19, 2010 at 6:30pm, and June 20, 2010 at 1:30pm located at The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, upper level (between Broadway and Amsterdam) 212 875 5601

Although I recommend purchasing S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine from Amazon.com to support the filmmaker the entire documentary is available online on google video in two parts: part one & part two. Trailers of the film below in English and Spanish respectively.

Prisoner of Conscience Ariel Sigler Amaya: Before & After Cuban Prison

Body decimated, but spirit remains strong

"The story does not end here. We are going to press on in the struggle, until the last political prisoner has been freed, until we achieve freedom and democracy for the Cuban people."
- Ariel Sigler Amaya in interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) shortly after arriving home


Ariel Sigler Amaya, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience*, entered prison unjustly in 2003 a healthy athletic man and exited a Cuban prison today an emaciated paraplegic. His brother Guido Sigler Amaya, another prisoner of conscience, continues in prison serving an unjust 20-year prison sentence. Photographs taken today by Associated Press and Reuters as he arrived home are shocking:


Emaciated, in a wheelchair, and his legs (in the photograph below) nothing but skin and bones.


In the midst of a global conversation on Cuba and torture sparked by the withdrawal of an invitation to the UN expert on torture Manfred Nowak and his public comments along with UN Cuba Mission's coarse reply it is important to remember some concrete facts among the diplomatic theatrics and political spin:

1. There are hundreds of known political prisoners in Cuba and with laws such as "dangerousness" that locks people up because of their social class the number could be in the thousands.

2. They are enduring inhumane conditions and practices that amount to torture. As the pictures above attest.

3. Some prisoners have died as a result, others have been left crippled, their health compromised with illnesses acquired in prison, and others have died on hunger strike to protest conditions.


A prisoner of conscience is anyone imprisoned for the non-violent exercise of their beliefs. Independent journalists, human rights activists, and Project Varela petitioners currently imprisoned in Cuba are prisoners of conscience. According to Amnesty International, the human rights organization founded in 1961 a "prisoner of conscience" is someone imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of their beliefs. The term was coined by Amnesty International’s founder, civil rights lawyer Peter Benenson. For example in South Africa, Steve Biko was identified by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience whereas Nelson Mandela was not. Amnesty has identified Cuban prisoners of conscience and repeatedly called for their release. Two historic examples pre-dating Amnesty International would be Mohandes Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Today, Cuba's Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi are two examples of prisoners of conscience.

Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City June 10-24, 2010

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival back in New York and to The Film Society of Lincoln Center for its 21st edition. Out of the 30 films to be show there are two that caught my eye and one of them premieres this weekend appropriately enough on the one year anniversary of the contested elections in Iran. Iran: Voices of the Unheard is a Canadian production that explores the plight of Iranian secularists in a theocratic state. Below is a trailer of the documentary:



The US premiere is today Saturday June 12: 4:30 but there are two other opportunities to view the documentary Monday June 14: 8:30 and Tuesday June 15: 4:00

The other film that caught my attention: Enemies of the People but that doesn't begin screening until June 18 therefore I'll hold off going into a greater detail until a later blog entry. To get a better idea of what else is showing and bargain tickets visit the festival's website.

The Dictatorship doth protest too much

It has no credibility

Danish student Joachim Løvschall extrajudicially executed by Cuban soldier on March 29, 1997

"Cuba does not need an objective evaluation 'of the situation in the country.' Cuba seeks no endorsement. In Cuba, there has never been a single case of extrajudicial execution or forcible disappearance. Our achievements in matters of penal justice and crime prevention are well recognized. Few countries can exhibit Cuba's results in the treatment of sanctioned people and their full reinsertion into society." Statement by Cuban U.N. mission in Geneva, June 9, 2010


The above paragraph is taken from a statement released by the Cuban government's diplomatic mission in Geneva and is in response to the special rapporteur's statement earlier in the day chastising the regime for not following through on the invitation they had extended to him on January 28, 2009.

First, Cuba desperately needs an objective evaluation of the overall situation in the country not just in the area of human rights (although that is a good place to start). The dictatorship in Cuba desperately wants to avoid an objective evaluation of its human rights record, with good reason. There have been objective evaluations over the years and they are not positive especially in the areas of civil and political rights, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Human Rights Watch in 1999 and again in 2009 presents detailed overviews. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has documented numerous atrocities and closely studied the Cuban legal system.

Secondly, the statement: "In Cuba,there has never been a single case of extrajudicial execution or forcible disappearance" is painfully untrue. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the IACHR, and the UN Human Rights Commission have documented cases.

One well documented case cited by the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions is the sinking of the tugboat 13 de Marzo, which took place on July 13, 1994 by government agents and led to the extrajudicial execution of 37 men, women and children. Interviews with the survivors and photos and names of the victims in the video below:



Another case is that of Joachim Løvschall, a Danish student studying Spanish at the University of Havana gunned down by an AK-47 wielding Cuban guard as he walked home. The body remained hidden for days. The shooter was never identified. Ten years after his son's extrajudicial execution, Christian Løvschall spoke at a parallel forum in Geneva Switzerland about what had happened.

Third, the claim that "Our achievements in matters of penal justice and crime prevention are well recognized" is perversely true. The Telegraph offers a succinct description: "regular beatings, humiliation and arbitrary punishment with long periods of solitary confinement in cramped cells with cement beds." International human rights organizations are barred from visiting the island and even the International Committee of the Red Cross has not had access to prisons in Cuba for over 30 years, but what has emerged is evidence of widespread torture. As the following survivor Omar Pernet Hernandez can attest to:




Others like Sebastian Arcos Bergnes were not so lucky. Systematically denied attention he died a short time after his release, but he was able to address the UN Human Rights Commission in 1996 and present the reality within Cuba's prisons from his own experience. His son, Sebastian Arcos Cazabon, outlines what happened to his father which has been described as death by medical neglect. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.



The February 23, 2010 death of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo while on a hunger strike protesting prison conditions and the subsequent efforts by the dictatorship to smear his name, intimidate, and assault members of his family indicates that Cuba not only needs an objective evaluation of the human rights situation in the country, but also solidarity with the Cubans on the island who have had their human rights systematically violated for 51 years, and especially those who are imprisoned.

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." -Martin Luther King.

Cuban regime blocks UN Special Rapporteur on Torture from visiting Cuba

What does the regime fear?

“I regret that in spite of its clear invitation, the Government of Cuba has not allowed me to objectively assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in the country by collecting first-hand evidence from all available sources.” - Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, June 9, 2010

"I am very concerned about the undermining of the absolute prohibition of torture by interrogation methods themselves in Abu Grahib, in Guantanamo Bay and others, but also by rendition and the whole CIA secret places of detention. All that is really undermining the international rule of law in general and human rights but also the prohibition of torture," - Manfred Nowak, October 31, 2007

An invitation was officially and publicly extended to Mr. Nowak by the Cuban government by the Cuban Foreign Minister on January 28, 2009 and in February of 2009, as Cuba underwent its Universal Periodic Review the Cuban justice minister, Maria Esther Reus, who presented the regime's country report stated that: "The promotion and protection of human rights are guaranteed" and in press accounts reconfirmed that Havana had promised to allow a visit by the United Nations' independent expert on torture, Manfred Nowak.

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Manfred Nowak was appointed Special Rapporteur on Torture on December 1, 2004 by the former UN Commission on Human Rights. He is independent from any government and serves in his individual capacity. Mr. Nowak is currently Professor of Constitutional Law and International Human Rights at the University of Vienna (Austria), and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights.

The Cuban regime made a number of commitments to have a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council and one of them was to accept the various instruments of the Council which includes the special rapporteurs and the universal periodic review. This visit was to be the first mission to Cuba by an independent expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor specifically torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Unlike Cuba there are 68 countries with open invitations to all special rapporteurs.

What happened?

One thing that might have changed the regime's calculus on the visit was a January 2009 statement by Manfred Nowak in which he called for both President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to be prosecuted for permitting torture adding that: "Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation." There would be no chance of calling this expert on torture a lapdog of the United States government.

Victims of torture in Cuba now living abroad can offer living testimony and evidence of torture inside the island. The videos below are small sampling of testimony available:

Former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernandez describes how Cuban doctors, following a car accident while being transferred by state security agents to another prison, provided a "treatment" that was slowly crippling him. An English transcription is available:

José Gabriel Ramón Castillo below describes his experience in prison and that what he suffered was not exceptional but what other political prisoners are suffering. "I was tortured in prison. I arrived in prison healthy without any illness. I left the prison with diabetes, hepatitis, and a general dermatitis because they obligated to sleep on a mattress made up of live sponges, and I suspect that I was inoculated with the hepatitis-b virus while in the prison."

They feared an independent expert on torture with full access to all the prisons in Cuba interviewing prisoners living in the above described conditions. The International Committee of the Red Cross visited Cuba twice during 51 years of the Castro brothers dictatorship. The first visit began on May 12, 1959 and ended in July of 1959 there would only be one more visit and that would be 30 years later in 1989. Amnesty International in their 2010 Country report on Cuba announces that they have not been allowed to even visit Cuba, much less the prisons since 1990. In 2009 Human Rights Watch revealed that after requesting: "permission to visit Cuba, in hopes that the government would break with its practice of denying international human rights delegations access to the island. Unfortunately, Cuban officials never responded to any of these requests" they went without government permission on a fact finding mission in June - July 2009. There report New Castro, Same Cuba is available online.

Officials of the Cuban regime feared that Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Ramiro Valdez and everyone in the chain of command responsible for the torture of Cuban prisoners throughout the island were going to be named by Manfred Nowak, along with calls for their prosecution in Cuban national courts, and failing that before international courts. Regime diplomats claim not to be afraid, but the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Cuba signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on January 27, 1986 and ratified it on May 17, 1995.

With Professor Manfred Nowak they had reason to fear such an outcome and now they'll try to game the system as his mandate ends on October 30, 2010. Furthermore repressive government's like Cuba are trying to gut and politicize the special rapporteur mechanism and have had some success in the new Human Rights Council.