Just when the dictatorship in Havana thought things couldn't get worse

An ally's health care system is exposed as broken

The Cuban regime has excellent relations and bilateral ties with North Korea along with a shared ideological Marxist-Leninist worldview. According to "official" i.e. the dictatorship's media they are also improving relations and integrating further. No doubt Cuba's foreign ministry are sending instructions to their "diplomats" at the United Nations to discredit an Amnesty International report that exposes North Korea's broken health care system. Beyond the embarrassment for an ally there is a direct danger to the regime because the report contradicts the World Health Organization's glowing claim that "North Korea's health system would be the envy of many developing countries because of the abundance of medical staff that it has available." Sound familiar? For example that Cuba has twice as many doctors per capita as the United States. At the same time there is plenty of evidence that the Cuban health care system is also broken, but UN officials paint a similar rosy picture.

North Korea's crumbling health system in dire need of aid

15 July 2010

Amputation and other major surgeries carried out without anaesthesia are just one indication of the dire state of North Korea’s healthcare system, a new Amnesty International report has found.

The Crumbling state of health care in North Korea draws on interviews with North Koreans and health workers to paint a picture of barely-functioning hospitals void of medicines and epidemics brought on by malnutrition.

Witnesses described hospitals where hypodermic needles were not sterilized and sheets were not regularly washed.

“North Korea has failed to provide for the most basic health and survival needs of its people. This is especially true of those who are too poor to pay for medical care,” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Asia-Pacific.

According to the World Health Organization’s last available figures, North Korea spent less on healthcare than any other country in the world – under US$1 per person per year in total.

The North Korean government still claims that its healthcare system is free for all, but many witnesses told Amnesty International that they have had to pay for all services since the 1990s, with doctors usually paid in cigarettes, alcohol or food for the most basic consults, and taking cash for tests or surgery.

The North Korean government still claims that its
healthcare system is free for all © BBC World Service

The report found that many North Koreans bypass doctors altogether, going straight to the markets to buy medicine, self-medicating according to their own guesswork or the advice of market vendors. The North Korean authorities recently banned a highly addictive narcotic painkiller than many North Koreans routinely used as a cure-all.

“The government’s failure to provide basic education about using medication is especially worrying as North Korea fights a tuberculosis (TB) epidemic,” said Catherine Baber. “A growing number of patients have developed a resistance to first-line anti-TB drugs.”

“The North Korean people are in critical need of medical and food aid,” said Catherine Baber. “It is crucial that aid to North Korea is not used as a political football by donor countries.”

Amnesty International is urging donor countries to continue providing humanitarian aid to North Korea through the UN, and to base it on need and not political considerations.

North Korea needs far more international assistance to improve its public health infrastructure. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) in North Korea is also grossly underfunded, needing more donor support and political backing.

Food shortages remain constant in North Korea. After a botched currency revaluation in December 2009, the price of rice more than doubled and according to an NGO quoted in the report, thousands of people starved to death between January and February of this year in one province alone.

Many of the interviewees reported chronic health problems brought on by a lack of food, and had coped with hunger by eating grass, tree bark and roots. Tuberculosis has made a comeback in North Korea, aggravated by malnutrition.

The report is based on interviews with more than 40 North Koreans now living abroad, most of whom left the North between 2004 and 2009, and with health professionals who work with North Koreans.

“International law, including covenants ratified by North Korea, demands that the government provide adequate levels of food and health care to its population, and to seek international cooperation and assistance when it cannot,” said Catherine Baber.

North Korea was hit by famine in the early 1990s, resulting in the deaths of about a million people, followed by food shortages, which are still ongoing. Government policies significantly exacerbated the crisis.

In 1995 the government finally made an appeal to the international community for food aid and assistance.

But even after the UN and humanitarian aid agencies began distributing food and other essentials in the country, the government impeded their work on the ground, preventing them from accessing large segments of the population.

With the collapse of the government-run food rations and mass job losses due to closures of factories and other state-run enterprises in the 1990s, many North Koreans suffered immense hardship and struggled to survive.

Between 1995 and 2005, the WFP’s emergency operations in North Korea supported up to one-third of the population. Adhering to its “no access, no food” policy, the WFP improved its monitoring of food distribution in North Korea due to greater access within the country.

In September 2005, North Korean authorities announced that it had enough food and ordered the WFP to end its humanitarian aid programme citing better harvests. The North Korean government stated that only medium- and long-term (technical) development assistance would be permitted. However, international food aid through the WFP, which ended in December 2005, resumed a year later after devastating floods in 2006 and 2007.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/north-koreas-crumbling-health-system-dire-need-aid-2010-07-14

Some of what is described with regards to North Korea's health care system sounds similar to what goes on in Cuba. Check out the video below:

Something was (is?) Rotten at Foggy Bottom

Ana Belen Montes spied for decades at the Defense Intelligence Agency for the Cuban regime and Walter Kendall Myers for 30 years did the same at the State Department despite Cuba's status as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Walter Kendally Myers & Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers
Spies for the totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

Friday, July 16, 2010

Former State Department Official Sentenced to Life in Prison for Nearly 30-year Espionage Conspiracy

Wife of Official Sentenced to Nearly Seven Years in Prison for Her Role

WASHINGTON -- Walter Kendall Myers, a former State Department official, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 81 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in a nearly 30-year conspiracy to provide highly-classified U.S. national defense information to the Republic of Cuba.

The sentences, handed down today by Judge Reggie B. Walton in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, were announced by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; Shawn Henry, Assistant Director for the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Ambassador Eric J. Boswell, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security.

On Nov. 20, 2009, defendant Kendall Myers, 73, aka “Agent 202,” pleaded guilty to a three-count criminal information charging him with conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud. His wife, Gwendolyn Myers, 72, aka “Agent 123,” and “Agent E-634,” pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information charging her with conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information. The defendants, both residents of Washington, D.C., were arrested on June 4, 2009, by FBI agents and have remained in custody ever since.

Both defendants have agreed to the entry of a monetary judgment against them in the amount of $1,735,054. The assets that will be forfeited to the government towards satisfaction of that judgment include the proceeds from the sale of the defendants’ apartment and vehicle, and various bank and investment accounts.

“For nearly 30 years, this couple proudly committed espionage on behalf of a long-standing foreign adversary. Today, they are being held accountable for their actions. Their sentences should serve as a clear warning to others who would willingly compromise our nation’s most sensitive classified information,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

“Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were brought to justice not because they were careless, but because of an extremely well-planned and executed counterintelligence investigation that required the unprecedented cooperation of multiple agencies of the U.S. government tasked with protecting our national security,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. “Others like the Myers who are presently betraying the trust that this country has placed in them should know that they are not safe from prosecution regardless of how careful they think they are being. As with Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers, they will be caught and brought to justice.”

Shawn Henry, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said: “The Myers made a conscious decision to betray the United States and its citizens. The FBI, along with its partners in the U.S. Intelligence Community, will continue to aggressively pursue anyone who seeks to cause the same harm.”

“Walter Kendall Myers betrayed his country. By committing acts of espionage Myers grievously violated the confidence placed in him by the U.S. Department of State and the American people. Today, he has been rightfully sentenced for crimes against our nation,” said Assistant Secretary for State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell.

Background

According to the sentencing memorandum, plea agreements and other documents filed in court by the United States:

Kendall Myers began working at the State Department in 1977 as a contract instructor at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Va. After living briefly with Gwendolyn in South Dakota, he returned to Washington, D.C., and resumed employment as an instructor with FSI. From 1988 to 1999, in addition to his FSI duties, he performed work for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). He later worked full-time in INR and, from July 2001 until his retirement in October 2007, was an intelligence analyst for Europe in INR where he specialized on European matters and had daily access to classified information through computer databases and otherwise. He received a “Top Secret” security clearance in 1985 and, in 1999, received access to “Sensitive Compartmental Information.”

Gwendolyn Myers moved to Washington, D.C., in 1980 and married Kendall Myers in May 1982. She later obtained employment with a local bank as an administrative analyst and later as a special assistant. Gwendolyn Myers was never granted a security clearance by the U.S. government.

Recruitment

In December 1978, while an employee of the State Department’s FSI, Kendall Myers traveled to Cuba after being invited by a Cuban government official who had made a presentation at FSI. That Cuban official was an intelligence officer for the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS). This trip provided CuIS with the opportunity to assess or develop Myers as a Cuban agent. Myers kept a diary of his two-week trip to Cuba in which he explicitly declared his affinity for Fidel Castro and the Cuban government. The diary was recovered by the FBI in the investigation.

In 1979, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were visited in South Dakota by the same Cuban intelligence officer who had invited Kendall Myers to Cuba. During the visit, the Cuban intelligence officer recruited both of them to be clandestine agents for Cuba, a role in which they served for the next 30 years. Their recruitment by CuIS as “paired” agents is consistent with CuIS’s past practice in the United States. Afterwards, CuIS directed Kendall Myers to pursue a job at the State Department or the CIA to gain access to classified information. Kendall Myers, accompanied by his wife, returned to Washington, D.C., where he pursued a position at the State Department.

During the time frame in which Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were serving as clandestine agents for Cuba, the CuIS often communicated with its clandestine agents in the United States by broadcasting encrypted radio messages from Cuba on shortwave radio frequencies. Clandestine agents in the United States monitoring the frequency on shortwave radio could decode the messages using a decryption program provided by CuIS. Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers communicated with CuIS by this method. The shortwave radio they used to receive clandestine communications was purchased with money provided by CuIS. The shortwave radio was later recovered by the FBI.

Undercover Operation

According to the court documents, in April 2009, the FBI launched an undercover operation against the pair. Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers met four times with an undercover FBI source, on April 15^th, 16^th and 30^th, and on June 4, 2009. The meetings were all video- and audio-taped.

During the meetings, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers made a series of statements about their past activities on behalf of CuIS, including how they used code names and how they had transmitted information to their CuIS handlers through personal meetings, “dead drops,” “hand-to-hand” passes, and in at least one case, the exchange of shopping carts in a grocery store. The couple also stated that they had traveled to meet Cuban agents in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina and other locations.

When asked by the undercover FBI agent if he had ever transmitted information to CuIS that was classified higher than “Secret,” Kendall Myers replied, “oh yeah…oh yeah.” He said he typically removed information from the State Department by memory or by taking notes, although he did take some classified documents home. Gwendolyn Myers admitted she would process the classified documents at home for delivery to their CuIS handlers. In the final meeting with the FBI source, Kendall Myers disclosed “Top Secret” national defense information related to sources and methods of gathering intelligence. He also admitted that he had previously disclosed the information to CuIS.

Corroboration

The admissions by Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were corroborated by other evidence collected in the investigation. The FBI seized a shortwave radio in their apartment and confirmed overseas trips by the couple that corresponded to statements they made. The FBI also identified encrypted shortwave radio messages between CuIS and a handler for the couple that were broadcast in 1996 and 1997.

Furthermore, an analysis of Kendall Myers’ State Department computer revealed that, from August 22, 2006, until his retirement on Oct. 31, 2007, he viewed more than 200 intelligence reports concerning the subject of Cuba. Of these reports concerning Cuba, the majority was classified and marked “Secret” or “Top Secret.” The FBI also located handwritten notes by Kendall Myers reflecting the gathering and retention of “Top Secret” information which he intended to provide the CuIS, but never did.

Finally, since at least 1983 and until 2007, Kendall Myers made repeated false statements to government investigators responsible for conducting background investigations which determined his continued suitability for a “Top Secret” security clearance. By not disclosing his and his wife’s clandestine activity on behalf of CuIS and by making false statements to the State Department about their status as clandestine Cuban agents, he defrauded the United States whenever he received his government salary. Based on these false representations and promises, Kendall Myers obtained at least $1,735,054 in salary from the U.S. government for the benefit of him and his wife.

This investigation was conducted jointly by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Michael Harvey, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and Senior Trial Attorney Clifford I. Rones, from the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/July/10-ag-825.html

Women have the power: Cuba's Ladies in White

Laura Pollan, center with cast, leader of Ladies in White, a group of female dissidents, takes part in a march marking the anniversary of a major government crackdown on dissent, in Havana, Thursday, March 18, 2010. The crackdown took place in Cuba on March 18, 2003. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent." - Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968

“Even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Media analysis of the latest release of Cuban political prisoners tends to focus on the role of Spanish Foreign Minister Moratinos or Cardinal Jaime Ortega or whether or not the Castro brothers are easing up and if they are willing to open up Cuba. That is all well and good but overlooks the most important factor in this latest round of political prisoners being released: the civic resistance and its impact in the wider population and in the regime itself.

On the eve of his assassination Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the greatest speeches of his life: "I See the Promised Land" in which he seemed to forecast his own death but he also made a number of observations critical for any non-violent resistance movement among them that: “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

The example of Cuba’s Ladies in White is an application of the above observation. Their movement was born out of repression. On March 18, 2003 the Castro regime began a crackdown in which 75 activists were rounded up, their homes searched, then summary trials and long prison sentences ranging up to 28 years in prison in what became known as Cuba's Black Spring. Twelve days later on March 30, 2003 the Cuban Ladies in White attended mass at the Santa Rita de Casia Church and began their Sunday walks. There was nothing inevitable about this movement, but without their courage and determination there loved ones would still be imprisoned.

Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall in their essay “People Power Primed: Civilian Resistance and Democratization” offer a definition of “people power” that encapsulates how the Ladies in White operated:

Protest by itself cannot pry a ruler from office because power does not come from a public show; it comes from applying force. When directed strategically by a civilian-based movement, protest is only one of many nonviolent tactics, including strikes, boycotts, blockades, and hundreds of other acts of economic and social disruption that can dissolve the political or military support beneath a ruler. The power in “people power” is best understood as the yield from detonating these nonviolent weapons.

The Ladies in White and their weekly marches defying the dictatorship’s restrictions on public demonstrations since 2003 was but one of several tactics they used in an effort to obtain their relatives release from prison. For example, in October of 2004, Berta Soler delivered a note to Fidel Castro at the Communist Party headquarters in Revolution Square demanding that her husband, prisoner of conscience Angel Moya, who suffered from a herniated disc be sent to the hospital. She then set up a vigil that turned into a three day sit-in nearby in a park next to Revolution Square along with other women from the movement on a Tuesday. State security broke up the protest at dawn three days later and drove them home. Later that day her husband had been transferred to Carlos Finlay military hospital. The petition backed by a vigil and sit-in had achieved its immediate goal.

Along the way the Ladies in White found solidarity from women, who did not have relatives imprisoned, that joined them in their marches and became known as the Ladies in Support. This development made the dictatorship uneasy because the regime has always used a strategy of isolating the opposition from the general population and this movement was tearing that dividing wall.

On February 23, 2010 prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike protesting the brutal and inhumane conditions in Cuban prisons. During his water only strike prison officials denied him water for more than two weeks and contributed to his death. In the arsenal of nonviolent “weapons” the hunger strike is the military equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction only in reverse.

Michael Nagler co-founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at UC, Berkeley, where he taught an Introduction to Nonviolence and Nonviolence Today. His lectures are available online, I highly recommend them. In the second lecture of his Introduction to Nonviolence in Fall of 2006 Nagler at 46:38 offers an observation on what is a hunger strike:

"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."

This is precisely what Orlando Zapata Tamayo was doing and its reverberations are still being felt today in Cuba and around the world. However, if it had not been for his mother and Lady in White, Reina Tamayo, battling to see her son and denouncing the abuses by Cuban state security against her and her son the news of his death would have been obscured and covered up by the prison authorities. Following her son’s death she demanded and continues to demand a thorough investigation of his death and an independent autopsy to ascertain the cause of death.

The decision of the Ladies in White to escalate and to demonstrate for 7 days straight on the seventh anniversary of the March 18, 2003 crackdown led the regime to respond by escalating its repression against them. Violent mobs organized by the dictatorship, not for the first time, brutalized them in coordination with Cuban State Security, but despite bruises, and in some cases broken bones, they continued to return each day for more after being dragged away. In the end international and domestic outrage led the regime to search for a face saving alternative.

The question raised, by Gandhi’s observation at the top of the page, is how do enough people withdraw their cooperation with a government that will shrink the government’s legitimacy and raise the costs of enforcing its will? Ackerman and Duvall in their People Power Primed essay offer an answer:

The instrument for bringing this about is a self-organized movement, which political scientist Sidney Tarrow describes as having “the power to trigger sequences of collective action” based on a unified frame for common goals. When nonviolent movements of this kind have drained a ruler’s sources of support, the results have changed history.

In the Cuban case there have been a number of actions that to varying degrees have been able to generate dramatic impacts in Cuba. However, over the past seven years, in the midst of a massive crackdown in which many opposition leaders were imprisoned, the Ladies in White maintained a focus on their specific objectives and the means to achieve them that was courageous, disciplined and led to a series of collective actions from the weekly marches following Mass at Santa Rita Church to sit-ins and interventions all in the service of the freedom of Cuba's political prisoners.

When Laura Pollán responded to the regime’s brutality stating: “They can either kills us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens.” The dictatorship knew what its options were, and because harassment, intimidation, and beatings had not worked; realized that this movement was serious about enduring great suffering. The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and his mother’s courageous response despite death threats and violence in February 2010 only underlined the truth of Pollán’s statement.

It also underlined the truth of strategic scholar Thomas Schelling's observation nearly a half-century ago that:

“The tyrant and his subjects are in somewhat symmetrical positions. They can deny him most of what he wants—they can, that is, if they have the disciplined organization to refuse collaboration. And he can deny them just about everything they want—he can deny it by using the force at his command.... It is a bargaining situation in which either side, if adequately disciplined and organized, can deny most of what the other wants, and it remains to see who wins.”

This latest release of political prisoners is a victory for the Ladies in White, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, and Guillermo Fariñas Hernández. Nevertheless the struggle continues for a free Cuba in which the laws that imprisoned these prisoners of conscience are repealed so that systematic human rights violations come to an end. Even if in the near future Cuba's political prisoners are all released and no new one's locked up (which would be wonderful and unprecedented considering the past half century in Cuba) as long as the repressive laws, rapid response brigades, and short term detentions continue within a dictatorship in which Cubans are not able to exercise their human rights without repression the nonviolent civic struggle will continue.

Cuba's Olga Guillot, Queen of the Bolero: Singer and Victim of Cuba's Cultural Genocide

“We are united in a cause that is really important. We are united with women who are heroes and who are the only ones who have done for Cuba’s political prisoners, for the exile community, for the dissidents, for the opponents of the government and for us who have been 50 years in exile without a country these women have made news around the world so that the world know the pain of our Cuba. Thank you for giving us our heroes. Thank you. We will continue our fight. And while they march with bouquets of flowers in their hands--the only weapons they have. We, too, will continue to march in support of them. Thank you, Long Live a Free Cuba!

- Olga Guillot, Ladies in White Demonstration, March 25, 2010

International media are reporting on the passing of Olga, artists are recalling their friendships with her and Olga's impact in music and culture around the world but not in her homeland Cuba. The Miami Herald reported how fans and friends stretched out over 8 city blocs to pay tribute to La Reina del Bolero -- The Queen of Bolero.

According to the book Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe there is increasing concern within the international music community that post-revolution generations are growing up without knowing or hearing these censored musicians and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations. One of the musicians to undergo this process is Olga Guillot.

Wikipedia offers the following description of Olga's career:

Olga Guillot (born October 9, 1922 in Santiago de Cuba - died July 12, 2010 in exile in Miami, Fl) is a famous Cuban singer who was known to be the queen of bolero. She is a native of the Cuban city of Santiago. In 1954, she recorded her song "Mienteme" ("Lie to Me"), which became a hit across Latin America, and earned her three consecutive awards back home in Cuba as Cuba's best female singer. 1958 proved to be an important year for Guillot, as she toured Europe for the first time, including stops in Italy, France, Spain and Germany.

She sang alongside the equally legendary Édith Piaf during a concert held in Cannes. Olga Guillot kept a house in Cuba as she traveled around the world with her music, apart from her house in Mexico. But Guillot opposed Fidel Castro's Government, and, in 1961, she decided to leave Cuba for good and establish herself in Venezuela. Not long after that, she left Venezuela, making Mexico her only permanent residence country.

Kenia Fernandez wrote in article in My Latino Voice titled "Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero was censored in Cuba which describes how the Bolero was banned in Cuba:

First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society. The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced. Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dance halls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues. An entire generation was traumatized by loss of the very words and music that had defined the key moments of their lives -- coming of age, first loves, stolen kisses, secret romances.

Olga speaks in defense of the Ladies in White on March 25, 2010



Olga Guillot is one of many Cuban artists disappeared by the Cuban regime from Cuba's cultural life in what music censorship experts have described as a cultural genocide. She like Celia Cruz would be erased from Cuban culture under the communist dictatorship in Cuba. Both would never be able to physically return to Cuba because of the communist dictatorship there in power that banned their music and made the nonpersons. Please engage in an act of cultural resistance and rescue help spread their music and that of other censored artists into Cuba by any means at your disposal. Olga and Celia may not be able to return to Cuba physically, but there music and their place in Cuban culture can be restored.



Her long and talented life ended on July 12, 2010 but she will always be remembered for her music and as a Cuban who suffered a long exile from her homeland thanks to a brutal dictatorship that banned her music. Requiescat in pace Olga Guillot, Queen of the Bolero and Cuban patriot. We, free Cubans and children of Cubans, will make sure that your music and your cultural legacy are restored in Cuba.

"13 de Marzo" Tugboat Massacre: 16 years later

Remembering a barbaric crime and 16 years demanding justice

Sixteen years later and the names and faces of the victims continue to be seen on the internet and we remember. We continue to demand justice.




Fifteen years ago, one year after the massacre, Cuban exiles gathered together in a flotilla and peacefully invaded Cuban national territory to travel to the spot where the "13 de Marzo" tugboat sank and where the human remains of the 37 victims still reside never returned to their families to this day to hold religious services for them. Hard to believe that its been 15 years. I found an old essay written by a member of the Free Cuba Foundation just returned from the flotilla on July 14, 1995 and reproduce excerpts below:

It is still dark when we leave. We pray together for the fulfillment of our non-violent ceremony. We jump aboard a forty foot lobster boat. Ramon Saul Sanchez comes to our boat embraces and shakes hands with some of us. He apologizes that they don't have more room on the lead boat so that we can all travel together. A WSVN reporter and cameraman join us on departure and begin to do interviews. "This is a bad sign," someone says. "How do you figure?" replies another. "This is channel 7 covering us," he continues,"don't you know their motto: if it bleeds it leads." Gentle laughter among those who hear the exchange. Later they leave on a speed boat to interview someone else. We sleep and talk. As the hours pass and the sun climbs higher. Anticipation mounts The smell of diesel and the choppy seas take their toll on the passengers. All of a sudden dozens of dolphins start jumping in the wake of the boat. God's creatures living free on the open sea. A sense of emotional uplift spreads through the boat. Temporarily we forget our worries and enjoy these creatures entertaining themselves and us.

[...]

As we near the12 mile limit we begin to see Cuban aircraft circling. We wave our flags and sing the Cuban national athem. Joy fills our hearts our mission has been partially accomplished. We can see Democracia in the distance leading us further into Cuban waters. One of my compatriots asks if we have entered Cuban waters. Yes, we tell him. He throws a bucket over the side and draws the Cuban water out and pours it into a bottle shaped like the Virgin. This was his holy water: Cuban water. At this point we begin to see a military helicopter circling the flotilla. We wave our flags and shout our greetings. The Brothers to the Rescue fly formation with some of the Cuban planes. We see a MiG high overhead, and I feel proud of these pilots in small propellar driven aircraft facing off with military helicopters and MiGs.

As we continue in, we can see the Havana skyline. Someone says they see someone signaling with a mirror from one of the buildings. We begin to make out four dots leaving the island and growing larger. We continue in further. La Democracia speeds ahead. As the ships grow larger; we can see that they are gunboats. Our captain stops. His brother tells him to go further, "know when to say when," he responds. As he ponders whether to go further or not. We stare out across the water as La Democracia tries to evade the gunboats and make it to the 6 mile limit. We can see the two gunboats pass on both sides of the ship. La Democracia turns around and speeds towards us. They're radio has been knocked out. We need to call the Coast guard. They've been rammed. They have wounded on board, among them Dade County Commisioner Pedro Reboredo, who is going into shock. Our captain radioed in and heads out as fast as the engines will take him.

I learn later that two of the Brothers to the Rescue planes flew over Havana and dropped bumper stickers over the capitol. This was done as a diversionary tactic when the Democracia was attacked by the Cuban gunboats. The bumper stickers read: "Comrades no. Brothers."

Today, as we've done since 1995 we will hold a silent vigil for justice for the 37 Cuban men, women, and children extra-judicially executed on July 13, 1994. Wherever you are in the world I hope you'll join us in continuing the demand for justice.

''There are those who think that we should be full of rancor and a thirst for vengeance but I don't want revenge. I feel sorry for the people who assassinated my family. I can never be compensated for my loss. I will never be happy again with my family surrounding me. There will always be a tinge of sadness but I do want there to be a trial so that this situation can serve as a lesson and that these people or others like them in other parts of the world, don't do this kind of thing again. Not in Cuba. Not anywhere.''

Jorge García, July 13, 2004 (A decade after July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre)