CNN's Jake Tapper is right "Fidel Castro was a murderous despot who oppressed the LGBTQ community and many others" but there is more.

Giving credit when credit is due.

CNN journalist Jake Tapper spoke the truth when observed that "Fidel Castro was a murderous despot who oppressed the LGBTQ community and many others and pointing that out is actually part of being a news anchor."

He was responding to Afghan American filmmaker, musician, and activist, Ariana Delawari who was making a number of claims that do not stand up to scrutiny about Fidel Castro and his regime.

Mauvaise Conduite (Improper Conduct) is a 1984 documentary film directed by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal that explores the oppression of the LGBTQ community in Cuba, and is required viewing.  

Fidel Castro declared in 1965 that “[w]e would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” 

Castro apologists claimed that the Cuban dictatorship had changed since then, but the events of May 11, 2019 demonstrated just the opposite.

Pride March shut down by Castro regime on May 11, 2019

The hostility to Gays began early and from the top. On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”

In 1964 the Cuban government began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms, what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior," were taken to these camps.

This history should be taken into account when considering the Cuban quarantine of HIV positive Cubans from 1986 to 1997. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic it was associated with the Gay community. Furthermore the claim that HIV rates are lower in Cuba should also be taken with a grain of salt when considering the failure to report on other outbreaks.This is motivated by their need to justify the existence of the dictatorship with supposed successes in health care.

 

Cuban government officials inoculated him with HIV in 2018.

 

Cuban biologist, environmental activist, and Gay man, Dr. Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, documented his case to the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Frankfurt, Germany, where he denounced how agents of the Castro regime purposefully infected him with HIV in 2018.

After a staged assault of two policemen Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was arrested on May 3rd, 2018 and sentenced to prison for twelve months by a kangaroo tribunal. He was remanded in jail on May 8th, 2018 and protested from June 16th to July 2nd with a successful hunger strike which led to an early release from prison on July 3rd, 2018. On June 16th, 2019 he got informed that he is HIV positive. He eliminates a natural infection strictly. He believes that he had been infected with the HI virus on purpose in prison.

According to a statement of Dr. Ruiz Urquiola the doctor’s reports show that he got infected during his imprisonment. The lab results also confirm an infection on purpose. That’s how the short time between hospitalization and illness with a high inoculum (infective material or one as an antigen acting part of a germ), e.g. from a lab virus, can be explained.

The Castro regime is also a murderous regime. Glenn Garvin wrote an important essay in the Miami Herald on December 1, 2016 titled "Red Ink: The high human cost of the Cuban Revolution" and in it addresses the question of how many extrajudicial executions have taken place in Cuba and cites an authoritative source.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

The killings have continued to the present day under Fidel Castro's replacement, his brother Raul Castro, who has head of the Cuban Communist Party remains the maximum authority in Cuba in 2020.

Inner power circle of the Castro regime (Cuban Studies Institute)

Ironically, some who attacked Mr. Tapper's claims raised the issue of racism. It is the Castro regime that has exercised white supremacy when the dictatorship's inner circle of power are old white men that have ruled over a majority black country for 61 years silencing black voices.

Black voices silenced by the Castro regime are numerous and many remain unknown. Others such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a brick layer and human rights activist tortured and taunted with racial insults for eight years until his death on hunger strike on February 23, 2010 became known worldwide.

Others such as Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike, but due to a lack of international solidarity passed on in anonymity.

Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros

It remains a sad reality that as the world begins to pay attention to extrajudicial killings of black men by the police. There is one place that when a police man shoots a young unarmed black man in the back those who would normally speak out if it was the United States are a European country, remain quiet. 

Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano shot in back and killed

Castro's Revolutionary National Police shot Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano (age 27) in the back on June 24, 2020, but there was little or no protest outside of dissidents in Cuba, who were rounded up and roughed up for attempting to protest the killing. 

Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano killed at age 27

Even the Castro regime's propaganda apparatus launched blue lives style campaign to rehabilitate the image of their murderous police that they called "Heroes of the Blue",  the usual suspects remained silent and continued to claim that Cuba was an example to follow.

Heroes of the Blue (Heroes de Azul) campaign by the Castro regime

On the broader front, Racist attitudes persist in Cuba under the Castros and is reflected in rates of interracial marriage being lower in Cuba than in Brazil that has a much higher level of inequality, and has not undergone a communist revolution.

On the economic front the glaring differences between black and white Cubans are shocking with 95% of Afro-Cubans having the lowest incomes compared to 58% of white Cubans.

Annual income by race in Cuba.

It is too late to help Orlando, Yosvany and Hansel, but it is not too late to help Silverio Portal Contreras, but time is running out for him.

Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience Silverio Portal Contreras

Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. 

According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana. Silverio was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International on August 26, 2019. He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.

Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.”

Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu review troops in Ethiopia

Castro apologists in their push back against Jake Tapper's criticism of Fidel Castro, cited the Cuban tyrant's relationship with Nelson Mandela, but ignored the Cuban autocrat's relationship with Ethio­pian dictator, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Castro's involvement in the genocide in that African country.

Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia

These apologists also ignored that Mandela also had friendships with both war criminals Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, and Charles Taylor of Liberia. Both men are responsible for the murder of many Africans in their respective countries. That Mandela would be friends with Fidel Castro,
Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Charles Taylor is dark corner of an otherwise bright legacy.

 Mandela was friends with Charles Taylor and Mengistu Haile Mariam

The second President of the United States, John Adams, when defending British soldiers in a court of law, who had fired on a crowd during the Boston Massacre, stated: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." This holds true today for Castro apologists, the facts are against them in their defense of the Castro dictatorship.