"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)
"Next February 29th my father would be 64 years old. Our friends and I,
in person, will be there, back in Havana in a thanksgiving mass for his
life. Death is not more powerful than Love. And the legacy of my
father Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero is full of love for life in a
free Cuba." -Rosa María Payá Acevedo, Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, February 23, 2016
Oswaldo Payá was born 64 years ago on February 29, 1952 and was extrajudicially executed in Cuba on July 22, 2012 along with Harold Cepero. Following these untimely deaths the Cuban opposition leader's family was subjected to death threats and heightened surveillance by state security leading them to go into exile.
Mexican Federal Deputy Cecilia Romero and Rosa María Payá on way to Cuba
However, Rosa María Payá has refused to go along with this all too common narrative and returned to Cuba on May 13, 2015 to hold a mass for her dad and lay at his grave in Havana. She now returns accompanied by Mexican Federal Deputy Cecilia Romero to hold a mass in Cuba on February 29th in celebration of her father's life.
Rosa María was inviting friends in Cuba to join her on February 29th in a Mass in celebration of her dad's and Harold Cepero's lives at 5:30pm at the Church of Los Pasionistas in Havana, but now that location has been changed to Cerro parish "El Salvador del Mundo", located on Santo Tomás y Peñón in Havana, Cuba. She has also reported that her SMS texting service has been arbitrarily blocked.
In Miami a Mass is being held at 8:00pm at the Church of Our Lady of Charity (La Ermita) at 8:00pm in celebration of the lives of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante.
All people of good will our invited to pray for the souls of these two good men and celebrate their lives. At the same time through the social media there is an effort underway to highlight this visit with the hashtag #UnaFlorParaPaya (#AFlowerForPaya) to let Cuban officials know that the world is watching.
In one of her final tweets before boarding Rosa made the following observation: "Soon I'll be in our beloved Cuba tragically the only country in the world Cubans don't have rights."
Going to Cuba to hold Mass for her martyred dad and friend
Performance art, rock n roll and Andy Warhol too...
On Thursday February 25th beginning at 7:30pm until late in the evening in South Beach Cuban graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado (El Sexto) was finally able to carry out his performance art piece that cost him 10 months in a Cuban prison. Two pigs named Fidel and Raul where at the center of an exhibition of drawings and paintings. In addition, Andy Warhol's acclaimed
film The Life of Juanita Castro was projected in Miami's Market
Gallery along with a performance by the Cuban punk rock band, Porno para Ricardo.
The exhibit will be open to the
public from February 26 to March 17, from 12:00pm - 12:00 am daily.
Market Gallery, 1420 Alton Road, Miami Beach, FL, 33139
Danilo Maldonado addresses the crowd with Ladies in White leader Bertha Soler
"Only through non violent
means can we cleanse the Cuban nation from the hatred instilled by the
dictatorship in Cuban hearts. The nonviolent methods
have proven to be the most effective and humanitarian means of resistance
against Castro's totalitarian state." - Jose Basulto, Our Struggle, March 2, 1996
Twenty
years have passed since the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, but the
regime that ordered this act of state terrorism remains in power and
continues to behave in a criminal fashion
murdering nonviolent dissidents and smuggling weapons to outlaw regimes
such as North Korea. At the same time, it is important to remember the
significance of the Brothers to the Rescue organization, the four lives
lost that day and the struggle still being
carried out by their families for justice and reconciliation.
How and why Brothers to the Rescue formed
In February of 1991 news accounts of the death by dehydration
of
15-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, a rafter fleeing Cuba, as U.S. Coast
Guard officials tried to save his life shocked the moral imagination of
several pilots. This was not an isolated event. Academics Holly
Ackerman and Juan Clark, in the 1995 monograph The
Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty
reported that “as many as 100,000 Cuban rafters may have perished
trying to leave Cuba.” Anecdotal evidence documents that some of them
were victims of the Cuban border patrol using
sand bags and snipers against defenseless rafters.
Gregorio Perez Ricardo
It was within this context that on May 13, 1991 Brothers
to the Rescue was founded with the aim of searching for rafters in the Florida Straits, getting them water, food, and rescued. In
December of 1993 Brothers to the Rescue inaugurated their permanent hangar naming it after Gregorio.
Brothers to the Rescue by November of 1995 was collaborating with the Florida Martin Luther King Institute
for Non-violence and took part in the King Day parade in 1996. On February 8, 1996 The
Miami Times reported “that this
group has come around to the belief that change can be brought about in
Cuba in the same way that it was brought about by Dr. King in the
United States.” The Miami Times concluded in the
editorial “Spreading King’s Message” that “In throwing Dr. King's principle into the volatile mix of Cuban exile
politics, Brothers to the Rescue is showing a willingness to be creative.”
Brothers to the Rescue logo
Why the Castro brothers wanted to destroy Brothers to the Rescue
They risked their lives in the Florida Straits to rescue Cuban rafters and at the same time Brothers
to the Rescue challenged the
Cuban exile community to abandon both the failed violent resistance and
appeasement approaches in order to embrace strategic
nonviolence. This
path followed the way of Martin Luther King Jr. with both civil
disobedience and a constructive program. What was the end result?
Brothers to the Rescue saved more than 4,200 men, women, and children
ranging from a five-day old infant to a 79 year old man, and rescued
thousands more during the 1994 refugee crisis.
One year after the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre in
which 37 men, women and children were killed Cuban exiles organized a flotilla to travel in a civic non-violent manner
to the spot six miles off the Havana coastline where the "13 de Marzo"
tugboat had been attacked and sunk to hold a religious service for the
victims. The Brothers to the Rescue overflight of Havana, where they
dropped bumper stickers in Spanish that read "Comrades
No. Brothers" was in response to Cuban
gunboats ramming the lead boat of the flotilla.
Brothers to the Rescue also served as a bridge
between a nonviolent civic movement inside of Cuba and an exile community seeking a different approach. Cuban dissidents announced on October 10, 1995
the intention to hold a national gathering of the opposition in Cuba on
February 24, 1996. The coalition of over a 160 groups named themselves
the Cuban
Council. Brothers to the Rescue in an open and transparent manner sent $2,000 of privately raised assistance
to this coalition on February 13, 1996. In the days leading up to
February 24 over a 180 dissidents were imprisoned in a nationwide
crackdown.
Coretta Scott King and Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue
Within moments of the shootdown,allegations were immediately generated that Brothers to the Rescue had involved itself in
"paramilitary activities against the government of the Republic of
Cuba." Juan Pablo Roque, who had defected the day before, and
arrived in Cuba through Mexico, claimed that they had been planning to introduce
anti-personnel weapons to blow up high-tension plants. This cover story collapsed when the third plane returned to Key West.
The four men who were killed represented all aspects of the Cuban diaspora: Armando
Alejandre Jr, a child who arrived with his parents from Cuba in 1960, Carlos Costa,
born in Miami Beach in 1966 and Mario Manuel de la Peña, born in New Jersey in 1971 the children of Cuban
exiles. Pablo Morales
was born in Cuba in 1966, raised there and was saved by Brothers to the
Rescue when he
was 26 years old while fleeing the island on a raft. Two were from
Havana, one was from New Jersey and the other from Miami Beach.
The
Castro regime targeted Brothers to the Rescue for slander,
infiltration, sabotage and extrajudicial execution on February 24, 1996
because it viewed the organization’s nonviolent
approach as an existential threat to the dictatorship.
The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down case in the U.S. courts
U.S.
courts found the Cuban government guilty of premeditation in the
February 24, 1996 shoot down. Family members of the four men have over
the past twenty years pursued and continue
to pursue justice. They have had concrete results.
On November 14, 1997 U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King found
Cuba guilty in civil court of
planning the shoot down before the actual attack, and noted that there
had been ample time to issue warnings to the Brothers to the Rescue
aircraft if these had been needed.
A jury in criminal court presided by U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard on June 10, 2001 found Cuban spy Gerardo Hernandez guilty
of conspiracy to commit murder because of his role in providing information to the Cuban government on the flight plans of Brothers to the Rescue.
On August 21, 2003 a U.S. grand jury indicted the two
fighter pilots and their commanding general on murder charges for the 1996 shoot down. Indictments
were returned against General Ruben Martinez Puente, who at the time
headed the Cuban Air Force, and fighter pilots Lorenzo
Alberto Perez-Perez and Francisco Perez-Perez. The defendants were
charged with four counts of murder, one count of conspiracy to kill U.S.
nationals and two counts of destruction of aircraft. They are still at
large.
There
has been a lack of political will on behalf of the The White House to
pursue justice in the premeditated, extrajudicial murders of these four
men. The Obama administration commuted
the double life sentence of
Gerardo Hernandez, the one man actually imprisoned for conspiracy to
commit murder in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down on December 17,
2014 setting him free and returning him to Cuba.
Nevertheless,the families of Armando, Mario, Carlos and Pablo continue their struggle for memory, truth, and justice on behalf of their
loved ones. This means “the indictments of the military officials involved, from Raul Castro, Minister of
the Armed Forces, down the military chain of command” and documenting what happened.
"We, Cubans do not need that the European Union or the United Sates
solve our problems, but we need them to be coherent and to support the
right to decide of the Cuban people, using all the channels available." - Rosa María Payá, Geneva Summit, February 23, 2016
Rosa María Payá addressing the Geneva Summit on February 23rd
On February 23, 2016 at the 8th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá gave the last presentation in which she announced that she would be returning to Cuba on what would have been her father's 64th birthday, if he had not been murdered by Castro regime agents, along with Harold Cepero, on July 22, 2012. Below is her speech in video and text formats.
Thank you for this opportunity to spread the voice of the Cuban people. Cubans have lived for nearly 60 years without the freedom to express our own voice. The Revolution of 1959, immediately suppressed freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, as their totalitarian tools to remain in power forever. These suppressions came with the repression and the violence, as illustrated by the long list of extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the Cuban authorities.
In this moment, I would like to remember and honor the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, dead exactly six years ago, during a hunger strike in a Cuban prison. My prayers are also for the four innocent pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, shot down in international waters by the Cuban military, on February 24, 20 years ago.
In February 2016, the same violators of human rights are still ruling on the Island. Even more dangerous, this corporate and military elite is involved in a fake transition not to democracy, but to legitimize their total control upon Cuban society, with a renewed image for the international public opinion, in order to attract foreign investors and financial credits.
This combination of the worst of communism and the worst of consumerism is leading my country into dynastic State capitalism, a “Castro-capitalism”, like my father Oswaldo Paya, warned in a book that is going to be published very soon. It´s a system where the “historical generation” and their descendants, have monopolized all the economic resources of Cuba, while they keep sequestered the political sovereignty of our nation, condemning an entire people to economic and social scarcity, because the absence of human rights prevents Cubans from managing themselves.
Is this the Cuba where the European Union and the United States expect to make profits, with the justification that at some point there will be an empowerment of the civil society? This empowerment hasn’t happened, not because of a foreign policy, but because of a totalitarian state that does not recognize legal personality to any Cuban citizen, and, therefore, no one can belong to a business company or civil association or political party. We do not believe that, what hasn´t happened in China or in Uzbekistan, is now going to happen in dictatorial Cuba.
My father, Oswaldo Payá —founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, and winner of the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament—, denounced this operation of the regime as the Fraudulent Change. He paid with his life for his peaceful activism to achieve the real rights that belong to the Cuban people. On July 22, 2012, my father was extrajudicially executed by agents of the political police, together with my dear friend Harold Cepero, staging a car crash that never took place, in a location of Cuba that remains to be determined.
Not satisfied with this double crime, my family was threatened with death and forced to exile, in order to carry on with more safety our lives and our struggle for a free Cuba. But we do not belong to exile, and I refuse to remain in exile, treated as a stranger by the Cuban government and their despotic bureaucracy, including the new embassy in Washington DC, where they didn’t open the door to me.
Next February 29th my father would be 64 years old. Our friends and I, in person, will be there, back in Havana in a thanksgiving mass for his life. Death is not more powerful than Love. And the legacy of my father Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero is full of love for life in a free Cuba. Many Cuban lives are still in risk today. This is why we are now trying to open an independent investigation, to stop the impunity, to find out how Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were murdered in Cuba.
In the summer of 2015 a special report was released by Human Rights Foundation, where all evidences indicate that this was a crime against humanity, with the involvement of Cuban authorities. We’ll never give up on justice, because there can be no reconciliation without the recognition of the whole truth. A nation that pretends to forget the violence against its innocent people will remain a captive nation. And it will be a nation condemned to suffer such violence over and over again.
Cuba is now the country that many Cubans DO NOT want to experience. My people are selling their houses to escape through Central America, or boarding a raft to reach the United States.
But I’m not here just to tell you about our tragic history, I'm here to ask you to support the Cuban people in our struggle to change our history. Today it is my honor to be part of the Latin American Youth Network for Democracy. We coordinate efforts in 20 countries to preserve and to rescue the democratic values that have been compromised in many parts of our continent, because of corruption, authoritarianism, and the interference of the Havana regime, as in the Venezuelan case.
So, it is time for Cubans to decide our own destiny, and to stop being the subjects of official agendas and secret pacts between governments. It is time to put an end to the impunity of the Cuban government, which has never been chosen by Cubans in free, fair and pluralistic elections. It is time for the younger generations to assume our responsibility to build together a better Cuba. This why more and more Cubans are now saying YES to a citizen initiative that claims for a plebiscite in Cuba, through a national and international campaign called Cuba Decide. Totalitarian and post-totalitarian systems cannot coexist with the people deciding by themselves. And this is precisely what Cuba Decide stands for, in order to initiate a true transition on the Island.
Cuba must open to our own citizens, who have the right to decide the system we want to live in, after almost 60 years of government without consent. Cubans have the right to be asked if we want to vote, in free elections: in a safe frame for peaceful and plural political organization, with international institutions and personalities supervising the process, to avoid fraud. In this, we need all of your solidarity to spread the liberation message of Cuba Decide, and for all Cubans finally to decide our own future.
By democratizing our country we do not need to become another corrupt nation. This fatalism is another fallacy of the regime, a lie repeated by many academics from the free world. Let me tell you that, as a young Cuban woman, me and many like me, are now struggling to live and love in a decent, inclusive, prosperous and modern 21st century society.
Please, join us, in this effort to return sovereignty to the people, to give power to the people and not to the powerful. The last Iron Curtain must fall, and it must fall now! “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all men are not free”, said President John F. Kennedy in his speech at the Berlin Wall. “Dictatorships do not have political colors: they are just dictatorships”, said my father until his life was taken. Dear friends: the Cuban people are not a monolith, to the image and likeness of the Communist Party, the only one legal according to the Constitution.
In this new era of “normalization with Cuba”, the table of negotiations should contribute to a true transition and not to the interests of a General in power. We, Cubans do not need that the European Union or the United Sates solve our problems, but we need them to be coherent and to support the right to decide of the Cuban people, using all the channels available.
We are Latin Americans, but we believe in the best principles of North America too. We are Caribbean, but we stand for the best values of Europe too. We are Cubans, but we are Asians and Africans struggling for a better life. Despite the rhetoric of a reactionary regime, let’s not forget that we Cubans are no less than human. And each and every one of the universal human rights applies to us, as much as to anyone in the world. No man is an Island. No nation is an Island. As my father used to say: help us to globalize solidarity, or human rights in Cuba will always be in danger.
God bless you all, and all our families and countries.
Thank you very much.
UN opening session sponsored by U.S., Canada & Czech Republic
GENEVA, February 22, 2016 -- Covered by major media from around the world, the UN human rights headquarters in Geneva was the site today of a rare gathering of courageous dissidents from Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, and Eritrea, together with family members of famous political prisoners in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, united for the 8th annual Geneva Summit of Human Rights and Democracy, organized by 25 non-governmental organizations, including UN Watch and Human Rights Foundation.
Day 2: Live Streamed
Today's opening UN session was co-sponsored by the U.S. Canada, and the Czech Republic.
The two-day Geneva Summit, whose main public session takes place tomorrow, features presentations by noted right activists, former political prisoners and victims from human rights hotspots, with the aim of placing key issues on the global agenda days before UN chief Ban Ki-moon and the world's foreign ministers gather to open the 10th anniversary session of the UN Human Rights Council. World political figures and diplomats are also participating. Today's keynote address was delivered by Maria Leissner, Secretary-General of the Community of Democracies. Tomorrow the summit will hear from Anne Brasseur, the outgoing president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Program & Media Interviews
For journalists, this week's Geneva Summit provides a one-stop opportunity to hear from and interview frontline human rights advocates, many of whom have personally suffered imprisonment and torture.
The speakers’ compelling and vivid testimonies today have called on UNHRC delegates not to allow politics to override the cries of human rights victims.
Speakers today and tomorrow include:
Antonietta Ledezma, daughter of Caracas mayor and political prisoner Antonio Ledezma · Svitlana Zalishchuk, Ukrainian MP and key figure in 2013 EuroMaidan movement · Yang Jianli, Former Chinese political prisoner, survivor of Tiananmen Square massacre
· Vian Dakhil, Iraq's only female Yazidi MP and champion of ISIS victims · Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, German psychologist who treats female ISIS victims
· Ensaf Haidar, Wife of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi (winner of 2015 Geneva Summit Courage Award) · Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada 2015, advocate for human rights in China · Jigme Golog, Tibetan monk and filmmaker recently released from jail · Darya Safai, Campaigner for Iranian women's rights · Orhan Kemal Cengiz, Turkish human rights lawyer & columnist · Daniel Mekonnen, Exiled Eritrean human rights lawyer and scholar · Lee Young-guk, Bodyguard to former North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Il who fled to South Korea · Rosa Maria Paya, Cuban human rights activist and daughter of late dissident Oswaldo Paya · Polina Nemirovskaia, Russian human rights activist
· Joan Hoey, Editor of The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index
· Lord David Trimble, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former First Minister of Northern Ireland
· Christopher Walker, VP, National Endowment for Democracy · Irwin Cotler, Former Canadian Minister of Justice and lawyer for political prisoners
Now in its eighth year, the annual conferences of the Geneva Summit have enjoyed widespread coverage by CNN, Le Monde, and other major media.
Reviving a shameful legacy of legitimizing dictatorship
President Coolidge with Dictator Machado and President Obama with Dictator Castro
President Obama's announcement that he and the First Lady would be traveling to Cuba for a two-day visit beginning on March 21st to meet with "President Raul Castro" was not a step forward but a huge step backward to the days when U.S. presidents embraced and legitimized Latin American military despots.
President Lyndon Johnson and "President"Anastasio Somoza (1968)
Lyndon B. Johnson who went to Managua, Nicaragua on July 8, 1968 was the last president to visit a Latin American dictator, when he met with Anastasio Somoza Debayle and offered the following praise:
"President Somoza, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
I am proud to be the first President of the United States to visit your beautiful country during his term of office." ... "In our conversations during the past few days,
President Somoza, I have welcomed the opportunity to discuss with you,
in detail, the achievements and the plans of modern Nicaragua that you
lead. This magnificent new airport, the growing network of your highways
throughout this country, the new efforts you have made in education and
public health and rural electrification, are signs of genuine progress."
President Obama's planned visit to Cuba is not a step forward, but a huge leap backward into the 1960s when U.S. foreign policy in Latin America embraced military dictators calling them "Presidents." On March 20, 1968 Lyndon Johnson invited General Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator of Paraguay, to the White House and gave him a state dinner. The official video described how the dictator was making "democratic reforms." Stroessner would continue to rule Paraguay as a dictator until 1989 when he was overthrown in a military coup.
Like General Stroessner, and unlike President Obama, Mr. Castro has never had to undergo a popular
consultation in a competitive multi-party election. Today he is in power
because of the state security apparatus that he rules over thanks to
his brother Fidel Castro who handed power over to him in 2006 due to illness.
The President of the United States is already calling Dictator Raul Castro "President" and treating him has an equal. The March 21st visit promises to be another part of the shameful foreign policy legacy of the Obama administration, which in this case prolongs the life of the totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba.
Lilian Tintori is calling on all to give a shout for the freedom of all political prisoners and amnesty and reconciliation for all of Venezuela on Saturday, February 20, 2016 dressed in white at 3pm gathered at the Avenida Francisco de Miranda (A la altura de Chacaito) in Venezuela.
Lech Walesa with Lilian Tintori in Venezuela on February 18, 2016
In that spirit if you are in Miami, FL please join me at 3:00pm, dressed in white, at the Torch of Friendship located in downtown (401 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33132) under the statue of Simon Bolivar then let us together give a shout for the freedom of all political prisoners and for Venezuela.
"Two yearsin prisonbut freein mind and spirit. Seeingthat the hoursof the dictatorshipare numbered, I know that it hasbeen worth it." - Leopoldo López, over twitter on February 18, 2016
Unjustly imprisoned for two years for advocating for the nonviolent defense of democracy in Venezuela, Leopoldo López has become from his prison cell the most important political figure in the country. On February 18, 2014 with hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in Venezuela he turned himself over to the agents of the Maduro regime but not before addressing them and calling on them to maintain nonviolent discipline:
"Well
brothers and sisters I ask you to continue in this fight and do not leave
the street, to assume our right to protest, but to do it in peace and
without violence, I ask that us, all of us that are here, all of the
Venezuelans that want a change, to get informed, educated, organized,
and to execute non-violent protests, the protests of masses, and the
will of souls and hearts that want to change, but without hurting your neighbor. "
February 24, 2016 will mark 20 years since two civilian planes were shot down over international airspace on the orders of the Castro brothers in Cuba. At Florida International University, students, members of the university community, and the families of the four men killed (Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales) will begin to gather at the main fountain at 3:00pm to hold a silent vigil from 3:21pm to 3:27pm the time that the two planes were destroyed.
Two teach-ins on what happened that afternoon and the aftermath will be examined over the next week and both will be in Spanish. The first will be on February 18, 2016 at the West Dade Regional Library in an event with the four families of the men killed. The second will be at Florida International University on February 25, 2016 with Jose Basulto one of the survivors of the events of that day.
Patria de Martí and Alianza Democrática invite the public to a symposium “Derribo de aviones de Hermanos al Rescate: 20 años después” [Shoot down of Brothers to the Rescue planes: 20 years later], commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of four Cuban American pilots on Thursday, February 18th at 6:00pm in West Dade Regional Library (9445 Coral Way, Miami FL 33165).
On February 25 at 7pm a panel discussion and presentation of the Translated Edition of “Seagull One: The Story of Brothers to the Rescue” will take place with panelists: Lily Prellezo, author of the book “Seagull One: La asombrosa y verdadera historia de los hermanos al Rescate”, José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, and Vicente Echerri, translator of Seagull One into Spanish. The event will be in FIU’s Green Library, room 220 (GL220). To RSVP please call (305)348-1991 or simply respond to this message.
Both events are free and open to the public.
Ten years ago the Free Cuba Foundation organized a panel discussion on the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down in an event moderated with Neri Ann Martinez. Below is the video taken from 2006 event.
Western business men investing in Cuba have seen Cuban prisons up close (Photo: BBC)
The Alabama-based company Cleber LLC was cleared by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC)to do business under new regulations issued by the
Obama administration that expand commerce with Cuba. They expect, once they have finalized an agreement with the Castro regime, to initially hire 30 Cubans and manufacture 1,000 tractors a year. The Obama administration is circumventing U.S. law using executive authority to gut the economic sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship.
Under the U.S. embargo American companies made $5.2 billion dollars in cash and carry trade with Cuba while at the same time with normal
relations and financial institutions providing credits, France lost $4
billion to Cuba. Overall debt owed to several countries according to the Paris Club is $15 billion. Under the Obama administration trade between Cuba and the United States has steadily collapsed. The high point of trade between the two countries was the last year of the Bush administration (2008) when it peaked at 711.5 million dollars. Trade between the United States and Cuba in 2015 totaled 180.3 million dollars the lowest figure since 2002.
The Obama Treasury Department effective January 27, 2016 joined France and the rest of the world in legalizing financing of transactions between U.S. companies and the Castro regime. The Cuba policy the Obama administration is abandoning has protected U.S. taxpayers. In the future in real terms trade between U.S. companies and the Cuban dictatorship will be negative, as it has been for the French, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Russians, the Canadians and many others. American investors should also consider what has happened to their Canadian and British counterparts who have been falsely imprisoned in Cuba so that the dictatorship would avoid having to pay what is owed them.
For example, Canadian automobile executive Cy Tokmakjian spent three years unjustly imprisoned in Cuba after being subjected to a show trial on September 28, 2014 when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Castro regimeseized about $100 million worth of
company assets including bank accounts, inventory and office supplies, a
ruling the company was challenging in international arbitration. (He is not the only Western executive to undergo the experience).
I spent time with a number of foreign businessmen arrested during 2011 and 2012 from a variety of countries, although representatives from Brazil, Venezuela and China were conspicuous in the absence.
Very few of my fellow sufferers have been reported in the press and
there are many more in the system than is widely known. As they are all
still either waiting for charges, trial or sentencing they will
certainly not be talking to the press. Whilst a few of them are being
charged with corruption many are not and the accusations range from
sabotage, damage to the economy, tax avoidance and illegal economic
activity. It is absolutely clear that the war against corruption may
be a convenient political banner to hide behind and one that foreign
governments and press will support.
American businessmen thinking of investing in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship don't say that you were not warned when things take an unexpected turn and you find yourself in a Cuba prison with your assets seized. Taxpayers may bail out your losses, but years in a Cuban prison are years that you can never get back.
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