"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)
“I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself
that I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible.”
- Raoul Wallenberg, Letter and Dispatches 1924 - 1944
"From
mid-May to the beginning of July 1944, some 440,000 Hungarian Jews were
deported to Auschwitz – the fastest, cruelest, and most efficient
killing field in the Holocaust. Wallenberg arrived as a member of the
Swedish Legation in Budapest in mid-July 1944. In a remarkable
demonstration of ingenuity and inspiration, bluff and bravado, he
rescued some 100,000 Jews in the last six months of 1944 and the
beginning of 1945, more than any other single government or
organization."
Nonviolent resistance to the radical evil of the Nazis by courageous Danes and German housewives also worked and saved thousands of Jewish people from the Holocaust.
It should come as no surprise that Wallenberg was abducted by Soviet Communist forces. The Nazis and the Soviets had been partners in the partition and conquest of Poland six years prior, in September 1939.
Today, on #RaoulWallenberg Commemorative Day, we honour the enduring legacy of Swedish diplomat and hero of the Holocaust Raoul Wallenberg, a hero who refused to be a bystander. We also mark 80 years since his disappearance into the Soviet Gulag- a profound and ongoing injustice.… pic.twitter.com/54p7TdQRFb
— Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (@TheRWCHR) January 17, 2025
Let us honor Raoul Wallenberg for all the lives he saved, and let us also continue to demand justice for him, who had his life taken by Josef Stalin. The Russians refuse to reveal what they did to Wallenberg, and his family has filed a lawsuit against them. In 2016, Sweden declared him dead.
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg.
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg displayed outstanding civil courage and bravery when he saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.
Cuba has been under a dictatorship for 73 years. On March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista brought an end to Cuban democracy. Carlos Prio, the last democratic president, and his first lady were forced into exile. An increasingly unpopular authoritarian and corrupt regime ruled Cuba for the following seven years.
The
hope for the restoration of democratic governance came to an end when
Batista refused to cede power nonviolently through a dialogue process, opening a path for Fidel and Raul Castro to take it by force. Although they had repeatedly pledged to restore the 1940 Constitution, and Cuban democracy they imposed a communist dictatorship.
Cuba's official motto was
changed from Homeland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad) to Homeland or
Death, We Shall Triumph (¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!).
Presidents of Cuba from 1902 to 1952 and dictator Batista
Since the beginning of their struggle on July 26, 1953, the Castro brothers
promised a democratic restoration, but all along planned a
Marxist-Leninist takeover. They imposed a totalitarian communist
dictatorship, killing tens of thousands of Cubans. The Castro regime systematically denied human rights to all Cubans while exporting their repressive model to Africa and Latin America, creating misery for millions more.
The communist regime has re-written the history of Cuba, creating myths to justify its tyranny. One of them is the so-called Cuban blockade, and the above documentary seeks to expose the false narrative.
From 1959 till now, generations of Cubans have resisted this communist dictatorship.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans risked everything in July 2021, taking to the streets in nonviolent protests demanding an end to the dictatorship. The Castro regime responded
by firing on unarmed protesters, imprisoning over a thousand, and condemning
many of them to 20 and 30 year prison sentences for exercising their right to peaceful assembly.
Remembering this sad past, we resolve to work even harder to bring democracy back to Cuba, replacing Homeland or Death (¡Patria o Muerte!) with Homeland, Life, and Liberty (Patria, Vida y Libertad).
Both petitions are addressed to members of the international community.
Wishing
you all a happy new year in 2025, and through the continuing work and
struggle for a free Cuba may freedom be restored that will finally fulfill Cuban exiles goal of "this year in Havana!"
A reflection on the 54 year alliance between the Assad and Castro regimes.
Hafez al-Assad
seized power in November 1970 in a bloodless coup, and remained in power through brutal means until his death on June 10, 2000. The Syrian dictator ruled his country for over 30 years, and when he died in power, was succeeded by his equally brutal son
Bashar al-Assad who ruled Syria for another 24 years. Throughout these 54 years, the Castro brothers maintained a close relationship with the Assad regime.
Fidel Castro broke relations with Israel on the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This was required for all Soviet-aligned regimes, as the international communist line defined Israel as a colonial state and an arm of U.S. imperialism. However, the Cuban dictatorship went above and beyond in their hostility to the Jewish state. Noticias de Israel (News of Israel) provided a more in-depth description of what took place next.
From the highest levels of power in Havana, a secret operation was orchestrated to send military support to Syria.A tank brigade, helicopter pilots, communications agents, and intelligence and counterintelligence officers were meticulously selected for this mission.It was imperative that these men did not arouse suspicion and that they were perfectly prepared for the task entrusted to them.
The Military Brigade of Senén Casas Regueiro was mobilized, and under the command of General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, a recognized name in military circles, this surreptitious plan was put into action. In a carefully planned diversionary maneuver, the soldiers left Cuba dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports that identified them as university students. They traveled on separate flights to East Germany, where they made a technical stopover, before reaching their final destination: Syria.
Once on Syrian territory, Soviet military equipment, including modern T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, was ready for operation. Figures vary, but it is estimated that between 1,800 and 4,000 Cubans were present in Syria during the 1973 confrontation.
The surprise of this operation resulted in a series of significant losses for Israel, both in human lives and military equipment. Some civilian areas were also hit during the clash.
On March 31, 1974, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan announced on US television that 3,000 Cuban troops had been dispatched to support Syria during the Yom Kippur War. The Economist published two articles in its Foreign Report in 1978 that highlighted Cuba's role in Syria beginning shortly after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Cuban tank crews fought with Syrian troops. According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured.
The bodies of hundreds of victims of the 1982 massacre that Hafez al-Assad ordered against Palestinians and Lebanese in the Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp, northeast of Beirut, Lebanon are still interred in unidentified graves. Between 1,500 and 2,000 people, primarily civilians, are thought to have been killed, although some estimate that the total number of victims during the siege may exceed 4,000.
No criticism was made by Havana regarding the massacre of these Palestinians by Assad. On the contrary the relationship between Havana and Damascus remained strong.
"An August 1985 cable from Assad to Fidel Castro on the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Syria and Cuba praised the two countries' friendship as beneficial 'for the two peoples in their joint struggle against world imperialism and its allies.' A telegram from the
Syrian foreign minister on the same occasion expressed 'Syria's admiration for the fraternal Cuban people's great achievements and their firm stands against imperialist aggression on the Latin American people.'”
In 2011, a nonviolent movement against the Assad regime emerged, which was met with extreme brutality, and resulted in a civil war.
When the international community, belatedly, demanded an accounting for the rights violations committed by the Assad regime in Syria, the regime in Havana was one of a handful of governments that voted against investigating the crimes of the dynastic dictatorship in Damascus.
On August 23, 2011 the Cuban
government along with China, Russia and Ecuador voted against investigating
gross and systematic human rights violations in Syria.
On June 1, 2012 at a Special
Session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria with a special
focus on
the massacre in El-Houleh the Cuban regime and its allies took a stand against holding the Assad regime accountable for its gross and systematic human
rights abuses.
The Associated Press reported that
the U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly on September 25, 2014, to share its
evidence of Syrian atrocities in hopes it will be forwarded to the
world's war crimes tribunal. By a vote of 32-5, with 10 abstentions, the
47-nation council adopted
the resolution condemning the lack of cooperation by
President Bashar Assad's government with a U.N. commission investigating
rights violations since March 2011 in Syria. Cuba was one of five nations—the other four being Algeria, China, Russia, and Venezuela—that voted against sharing evidence of
gross and
systematic human rights violations in Syria.
Ten years of civil war and bloodshed with tens of thousands disappeared, millions displaced, and over 500,000 killed, yet the Syrian regime was being normalized in 2023 by too many in the international community.
It
appears that the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria over two generations of
incredible levels of brutality and terror has come to an end. Let us
pray that what comes next after so many decades of depravity and
repression is an improvement. Assad's
decision to engage in the mass murder of the Syrian nonviolent
opposition in 2011 sparked a civil war that has claimed hundreds of
thousands of lives. Now
is the time to make an assessment of the governments who backed the
Assad regime, and call them out as we learn of the crimes of this
dynastic dictatorship.This includes the dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. All supported Assad, and legitimized his rule.
"It appears that the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria over two generations of incredible levels of brutality and terror has come to an end. Let us pray that what comes next after so many decades of depravity and repression is an improvement." https://t.co/5dO3DpvHFn 1/4
Vaclav Havel,
a man who had both head and heart, understood why this kind of regime
was so profoundly inhuman: "As soon as man began considering himself the
source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of
everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began
to lose control of it."
The optimism expressed by Gorbachev and the nostalgia of Cohen fail to
take into account the human cost of the USSR. The Soviet Union took the
lives of an estimated 61 million human beings. It was a brutal and evil system that allied with Nazi Germany to start WW2 in 1939, and afterwards spawned other brutal regimes around the globe that claimed over 100 million lives. Their lives mattered. Vaclav Havel, in his 1990 New Years Speech, called on his countrymen to remember.
"The rivers of blood that have flowed in Hungary, Poland, Germany and
recently in such a horrific manner in Romania, as well as the sea of
blood shed by the nations of the Soviet Union, must not be forgotten.
First of all because all human suffering concerns every other human
being. But more than this, they must also not be forgotten because it is
these great sacrifices that form the tragic background of today's
freedom or the gradual emancipation of the nations of the Soviet Bloc,
and thus the background of our own newfound freedom."
The
number of lives lost is only the material accounting and does not take
into account the spiritual ruin visited upon billions and its aftermath
to the present day. The late Czech president explained it in the same address.
"The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We
fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different
from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore
one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love,
friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and
dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological
peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient
times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships."
The
destruction, both material and spiritual, generated by the Soviet Union
over seventy years will take centuries to repair and transcend. That
hard truth may not be cause for celebration, but the end of the system
that wreaked so much damage is cause for celebration, not regret. To do
otherwise is to be heartless. The fact that it happened without violence
on Christmas Day in 1991 is also cause for joy.
Criminally, Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022 expanded his war into Ukraine in what some view as an attempt to resurrect the Soviet empire and the rivers of blood are flowing again, and we do not know how it will end. Gorbachev passed away on August 30, 2022 a respected figure abroad, but reviled in Russia. He was in many ways the polar opposite of Vladimir Putin.
Secondly, the largest remaining communist regime, the Peoples Republic of
China, remains in power and with
the aid of smaller communist powers (Cuba, Laos, Nicaragua, North Korea,
Venezuela, Vietnam, and their networks) is backing Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese Communist Party
celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2021. It is a
tragedy that they did not go the same way as the Soviet Union in 1991.
People of goodwill must continue to work for and pray for
the day that a second miracle can be celebrated with the the end of
communism in China, and a third miracle with the defeat of the Russian invaders in Ukraine.
“All the races of the world are men, and
of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this
is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free
choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the
entire human race is one.” - Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas (1550)
Since it is akin to asking what color Napoleon's white horse is, the definition of human rights ought to be self-evident at first glance. Human rights are those that you have just by virtue of being a person. These rights ought to apply to everyone since they are fundamental to being a human.
The modern concept of a universal human rights standard, despite its simplicity, was not even discussed until the 1550s. In a discussion concerning the rights of the native people of the Americas, Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas presented a universal concept of human rights for the first time.
“All the races of the world are men, and
of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this
is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free
choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the
entire human race is one.”
The French revolution is tied the emergence of rights to a particular national experience while appealing to enlightenment values. At the same time critical voices, such as Edmund Burke, emerged that challenged the abstract rights discourse with concrete examples and through his own prior actions provided a working alternative rooted in tradition, and moral values.
Theologian Nigel Biggar and The European Conservative's monthly
show, The Forge, "hosted by Harrison Pitt which aims to revive the art
of Socratic dialogue and intellectual combat," discuss questionsthat this blog has previously addressed and returns to them because of their conversation which raise important questions. "What is the proper relationship of these alleged rights to other important concerns, from duties and virtues to democratic politics and national traditions? Do natural and/or human rights exist at all? And even if they do, how did rights-talk come to be so effectively weaponized by utopian activists?
The failed enlightenment human rights project
Enlightenment liberalism is committed to full equality, individual
rights, dignity and has a discourse to protect the marginalized. All of
that is true and is backed up in the historical record. An excellent
example of a document that is a pure product of enlightenment liberalism
is "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," also known as the "Declaration of Human and Civic Rights" adopted on August 26, 1789 and is a product of the French Revolution as is the even more egalitarian document produced in 1793 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of Year I. Article 1 of the 1789 declaration reads: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good."
Enlightenment liberalism constructed abstract models that failed to take
into account the full complexity of human nature and its
contradictions. The French human rights charter declares men absolutely
both free and equal. Edmund Burke believed that
"full equality" outside of the moral and spiritual sphere is
unattainable and a dangerous fiction. First, to permit absolute freedom
is to tolerate profound inequalities because people if left to their own
devices develop hierarchies. Secondly, to enforce absolute equality
requires an all powerful state to repress natural inequalities. The French Revolution: How utopian aspirations led to dystopian results
The end
result is not absolute equality but a small group with great power at
its disposal making slaves of the majority. This is what happened in the
French Revolution and reached its apex with Maximilien Robespierre, in 1794 with an observation that he applied in governance: "The
government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against
tyranny." It is a contradiction in the same way that combining absolute
freedom and equality as revolutionary goals are in contradiction and
doomed to failure. Robespierre was only applying the logic of enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau's who spoke of "forcing men to be free."The "rights" that emerged out of the French Revolution were a rejection
of tradition, the Ancien Régime and the Catholic Church more specifically, gave Europe its first modern genocide of peasants in which men, women, and children were systematically exterminated, The Vendee, and the end result was the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a world war that took three million lives. Edmund Burke, and a conservative conception of Human Rights
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, written less than a year into the French Revolution, Edmund Burke predicted in 1790 that the follies of enlightenment liberalism and its abstractions would lead to widespread slaughter, tyranny, and ultimately a dictatorship.
Burke provides an alternative approach to the defense of human rights that rejects abstractions, defends tradition, but also has a moral sense informed by his Christian faith.Edmund Burke's lifelong opposition to "entrenched and arbitrary power" led him to clash with enlightenment liberalism at pivotal moments. He was the prosecutor who attempted to remove Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India, ten years before the French Revolution, for poor leadership, personal corruption, and mistreatment of the Indians he was responsible for. On February 15, 1788, Edmund Burke
opened with a speech which is excerpted below:
My Lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give
him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have
not; nor the Commons, nor the whole Legislature. We have no arbitrary
power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man
can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself
according to his own will; much less can one person be governed by the
will of another. We are all born in subjection—all born equally, high
and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable,
pre-existent law, prior to all our devices and prior to all our
contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations,
antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in
the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.
Edmund Burke in the trial against Hastings advocated for the idea that people of different races should not be exploited and
of the need for accountability. It was not the first time Burke spoke
out against arbitrary rule. In his March 22, 1775 speech on conciliation with America
he explained to the British government that the way to keep the
allegiance of the colonies was to maintain the identification with civil
rights associated with colonial rule warning that if that relation were
broken it would lead to dissolution.
Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil
rights associated with your government-they will cling
and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of
power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once
understood that your government may be one thing and
their privileges another, that these two things may exist
without any mutual relation - the cement is gone, the
cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and
dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the
sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of
liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith,
wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship
freedom, they will turn their faces towards you.
Edmund Burke's concept of human dignity as derived from the creator
combined with a concept of man's moral equality has deep roots in the
Christian tradition which incidentally is where the very language and
concept of human rights first emerged in the 1200s in the Catholic
Church and was refined by Thomas Aquinas.
Edmund Burke's defense of the marginalized, the colonized, and the
conquered was rooted not in abstract enlightenment theory but a
Christian moral vision of the universe. According to Burke, in his 1796 Letters on a regicide peace, man has freedom but it is not absolute:
As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure,
without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of
total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our
nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable
course of action without its having some effect upon others; or, of
course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his
conduct.
Conservative skepticism
The skepticism expressed by conservatives Nigel Biggar and Harrison Pitt in their conversation on human rights is not new. Paleo-conservative writer Thomas Fleming in The Morality of Everyday Life
asks: “If rights are claims to be enforced by government, then what are
‘international human rights’ if not the theoretical justification for
world government?”[Fleming, T. 2007 ] American conservatives are also concerned with the proliferation of rights into areas that undermine traditions.
It has been demonstrated that governments have a history of mass
killing. Why should one think that a world government would be any
better? The question has not only been raised by American conservatives but also by a man who the official media of the Soviet Union described as a reactionary utopian upon his death in 1948. Mohandas Gandhi
looked upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest
fear because, although it appeared to be doing good by minimizing
exploitation, it did the greatest harm to mankind by destroying
individuality. Furthermore Gandhi believed that: “Centralization as a system is inconsistent with [a] non-violent structure of society.”
Nature abhors a vacuum. Despite this skepticism the fact remains
that both human rights discourse and the universality of human rights
emerged out of one of the most conservative institutions: The Catholic
Church. Conservatives must not abandon the conversation on human rights to the Left. Therefore, if one wants to understand how human rights came to be and what can be done to ensure that they can be preserved in a way that, while acknowledging that utopia is unattainable, aims to improve the lives of their fellow humans, one must have a conservative conception of human rights. The Revolution in China, France, Russia, Cuba, and many other countries demonstrate that, when left to their own devices, the Revolutionary's imposition of expanding abstract rights results in a dystopian hellscape rather than a utopian paradise.
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