"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)
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but
there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986
Joachim
Løvschall: December 7, 1970 - March 29, 1997
Joachim
Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was
gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty four years ago today on March 29, 1997. The identity of the soldier was never revealed to Joachim''s family. No one was brought to justice.
Joachim's family is not satisfied with the official explanation.
The last time they saw Joachim On March 28, 1997 Joachim Løvschall ate his last dinner with white wine
in a
little restaurant called Aladin, located on 21st street in Havana. He
went
to the Revolutionary Plaza and bought a ticket to the Cuban National
Theater. Following the performance he went to the theater's bar, Cafe Cantate, and
met
up with two Swedish friends. They each drank a couple of beers, but soon left
because
Joachim did not like the music. At 23:30, they said good bye to each other on the sidewalk in front of
Cafe
Cantate.
Joachim was never seen alive again. The Castro regime's version of what happened On September 28, 1997 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an article byKim Hundevadt titled "Dangerous Vacation" that outlined what happened to Joachim Løvschall and presented the Castro dictatorship's version of the events leading to this young man's death:
Around 23:30, a person matching Joachim
Løvschall's description was in a bar named Segundo Dragon d'Oro.
The bar
lies
in the hopeless part of town, around the Revolutionary Plaza which is
dominated
by ministry and other official buildings of harsh concrete architecture,
and
lies empty in at night.
At 2:45am he left the bar, after becoming intoxicated. Around 20 minutes
later, he was walking down the Avenue Territorial, behind the Defense
Ministry. Joachim Løvschall walked, according to the Cuban authorities,
first on
the
sidewalk that lies opposite the Ministry. Midway he crossed over to the
other
sidewalk, considered to be a military area, though it is not blocked
off.
The Cubans have explained that Joachim Løvschall was shouted at
by two
armed
guards, who in addition fired warning shots, which he did not react to.
Therefore, one guard shot from the hip with an AK-47 rifle. The first
shot hit
Joachim in the stomach and got him to crumble down. The second shot hit slanting down the left side of the neck.
Joachim
Løvschall gunned down in Cuba in 1997
Fourteen years ago On June 12, 2007 Christian Løvschall, Joachim's father, at a parallel forum at the United Nations Human Rights Council spoke about his son's disappearance and the struggle to find out if Joachim was dead or alive:
"Although the killing took place on the
29th of March, we only came to know about it on the 6th of April - i.e.
after 8 days were we had the feeling that the Cuban authorities were
unwilling to inform anything about the incident. Only because of good
relations with Spanish speaking friends in other Latin American
countries did we succeed in getting into contact with the family with
whom Joachim stayed and the repeated message from their side was that
they could reveal nothing, but that the situation had turned out very
bad and that we had to come to Cuba as soon as possible. At the same
time all contacts to the responsible authorities turned out negatively... Only after continued
pressure from our side on the Cuban embassy in Copenhagen, things
suddenly changed and the sad information was given to us by our local
police on the evening of the 6th of April. We are, however, 100% convinced that had we not made use of our own
contact and had we not continued our pressure on the embassy in
Copenhagen, we might have faced a situation where Joachim would have
been declared a missing person, a way out the Cuban authorities have
been accused of applying in similar cases."
Ten years laterChristian Løvschall outlined what he knew concerning his son's untimely death:
We do feel we were (and still are) left with no answers except to maybe one of the following questions: Where, When, Who, Why Starting out with the where we were told that Joachim was killed by the soldiers outside the Ministry of Interior.
Where
What we do not
understand is why no fence or signs did inform that this is a restricted
area? I have been on the spot myself, and the place appears exactly
like a normal residential area. So you may question whether this in fact
was the place of the killing? Contrary to this the authorities keep
maintaining that the area was properly sealed off, and the relevant sign
posts were in place.
When
As to when Joachim
was killed we only have the information received from the police because
of the delay informing one might believe that this is another forgery
made up to cover the truth.
Who
The
who was in our opinion has never been answered by the Cuban
authorities. We understand that a private soldier on duty was made
responsible for the killing, and also it has been rumored that his
officer in charge has been kept responsible. This is of course the easy
way out, but why can't we get to know the whole and true story? Why
Why did the soldiers
have to fire two shots, one to his body and one to his head, to murder
him? Was Joachim violent and did he, an unarmed individual, attack the
armed soldiers? Or is it simply that the instruction to Cuban soldiers
are: first you shoot and then you ask? But again: Who can explain why
two shots were needed?
Despite the claims made by the travel industry there have been other travelers to Cuba who have been killed or gone missing under suspicious circumstances. Others have been falsely imprisoned in legal proceedings that fall far short of international standards. Like North Korea, but with a tropical twist, Cuba suffers a dictatorship where both nationals and foreigners have no legal protections locally if they run into trouble with the regime. The ongoing plight of Benjamin Tomlin, who has spent three years in a Cuban prison, should lead others considering a holiday in Cuba to think twice. So should what happened to Joachim
Løvschall on March 29, 1997 when he was gunned down by an AK-47 wielding Cuban soldier for allegedly walking on the wrong sidewalk.
Revisiting the nonviolent victory over Apartheid, Castro's genocidal crimes in Africa, and the show trial of the Cuban general that spent months battling the South African Defence forces.
UDF boycotted elections
Communists reject nonviolence as a means to achieve lasting change, because civil disobedience to them is incompatible with Karl Marx's theory of class struggle. This is why they demonize and misrepresent Mohandas Gandhi, downplay the real events that brought an end to Apartheid in South Africa, highlight a dubious military victory in 1988 involving Cuban troops and falsely celebrate it as the agent of change.
Today the communist networks led by their Cuban allies are celebrating the "victory" at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale on March 23, 1988. This presents a great opportunity to reflect on the role played by the Castro regime in South Africa, and what happened to the Cuban general who headed the Cuban military mission in Angola and prosecuted the battles against the South African Defence Forces, and their allies.
General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez walking with Fidel Castro
General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, who organized and led Cuban troop build ups in Angola (1976) and Ethiopia (1977), led Sandinista and Cuban troops in Nicaragua against Contra forces in the early 1980s, and distinguished himself in Southern Africa
in a months long military campaign against the Apartheid regime's army in Angola from August 1987 to March 1988. Unfortunately for General Ochoa, it is believed that he had grown too
popular among the troops, and had the mistaken idea that he had the
right to an opinion.
Arturo J. Cruz's article in the November 1989 issue of Commentary Magazine titled "Anatomy of an Execution" outlined what cost General Ochoa his life.
"On Wednesday night, June 14, Raul Castro addressed the nation on radio
and television. He spoke for two hours, at times almost incoherently,
and his words betrayed a barely suppressed hatred for Ochoa—an envious
passion toward a colleague who was a senior general officer in the
fullest, most professional military sense. Raul accused Ochoa of being
irreverent; he complained about Ochoa’s jokes; he derided what he called
Ochoa’s “populist deviations” with the troops (referring, evidently, to
the one thing which Raul himself has never enjoyed with the Cuban
enlisted man—genuine popularity)."
This was in a sensitive moment for the regime. Panamanian strong man Manuel Noriega, who had been involved, together with the Castro brothers, in drug trafficking has been indicted in U.S. courts and the American military invaded Panama captured him had been Others like Tony de la Guardia were executed
because they could have testified to the direct involvement of the
Castro brothers in the drug trade. Bad luck for his twin brother Patricio, who ended up sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Antonio de la Guardia and Arnaldo Ochoa during their show trial in 1988. (CodigoAbierto)
Nationalist narratives tend to glorify violent narratives, at the
expense of successful nonviolent initiatives. In India for example, the
3,000 nationalists who joined ranks with Hitler and the Third Reich to fight the British get credit with speeding up Indian Independence. However the millions who took part in nonviolent actions in Gandhi's movement get short shrift as the Hindu nationalists grow in power in India.
The same holds true in South Africa. Piero Gleijeses. a professor of
American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies writing in The National Interest in 2014 gives a positive assessment of the Cuban intervention in Angola quoting Nelson Mandela that their victory “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ...
[and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa ... Cuito Cuanavale
was the turning point for the liberation of our continent—and of my
people—from the scourge of apartheid.”
For the record both sides claimed victory in the battle of Cuito Canavale.
Professor Gleijeses failed to look at the historical context, and Nelson
Mandela's commitment to the violent overthrow of the Apartheid regime.
In the case of South Africa the decision of the African National Congress (ANC) to adopt violence as a means to end Apartheid in 1961 may in fact have prolonged the life
of the racist regime by decades. It also led to Nelson Mandela spending
decades in prison refusing to renounce his violent stand.
Mandela became a symbol of resistance, and later an agent of national reconciliation, but he was not the agent of regime change in South Africa.
It was not
the armed struggle of the ANC that brought the Apartheid regime to the
negotiating table but the United Democratic Front
(UDF). The history of how the Apartheid regime was brought to an end is often overlooked. This is the
history of the UDF and the successful nonviolent struggle it carried out that is documented in A Force More Powerful:
In the city of Port Elizabeth, Mkhuseli Jack, a charismatic 27-year-old youth leader,
understands that violence is no match for the state's awesome arsenal. Jack stresses the
primacy of cohesion and coordination, forming street committees and recruiting
neighborhood leaders to represent their interests and settle disputes. Nationally, a
fledgling umbrella party, the United Democratic Front (UDF), asserts itself through a
series of low-key acts of defiance, such as rent boycotts, labor strikes, and school
stay aways.
Advocating nonviolent action appeals to black parents who are tired of chaos in their
neighborhoods. The blacks of Port Elizabeth agree to launch an economic boycott of the
city's white-owned businesses. Extending the struggle to the white community is a
calculated maneuver designed to sensitize white citizens to the blacks' suffering.
Beneath their appeal to conscience, the blacks' underlying message is that businesses
cannot operate against a backdrop of societal chaos and instability.
Confronted by this and other resistance in the country, the government declares a
state of emergency, the intent of which is to splinter black leadership through arbitrary
arrests and curfews. Jack and his compatriots, however, receive an entirely different
message: the country is fast becoming ungovernable. Apartheid has been cracked.
Undaunted by government reprisals, the UDF continues to press its demands,
particularly for the removal of security forces and the release of jailed African
National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. White retailers, whose business districts have
become moribund, demand an end to the stalemate. The movement also succeeds in turning
world opinion against apartheid, and more sanctions are imposed on South Africa as
foreign corporations begin to pull out many investments. In June 1986, the South African
government declares a second state of emergency to repress the mass action that has
paralyzed the regime.
End of the Cold War coincides with End of Apartheid
The negotiations to
end Apartheid began in 1990 after the collapse of the East Bloc and ended in 1991 the year the Soviet Union peacefully dissolved. The ANC no longer had the weapons and financial support provided
by Havana and Soviets from the 1960s into the early 1980s. There are those in South Africa who in 1989 mourned the passing of the Berlin Wall but if not for the end of the Cold War things may not have changed. Paul Trewhela in politicsweb offered the following analysis:
On 9 November 1989, twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall cracked open, the Cold War in Europe
came to an end, the Soviet empire tottered to its grave and the ANC
military option lost whatever teeth it might have had. The
military/security state erected by the National Party never lost a
centimeter squared of its soil. Umkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of
the ANC and the South African Communist Party, never won a centimeter
squared of soil. True, the repeated mass mobilizations and popular
uprisings within South Africa
through the Seventies and the Eighties placed a colossal strain upon
the regime, and, true, the economic strain upon the state - especially
in conditions of attrition exercised against it by the US
banking system - placed it under further serious pressures.
Nevertheless, honest accounting must say that, given the continuation of
the Cold War system in Africa, this nuclear-armed state at its southern tip was nowhere near collapse.
The international situation that undermined the ANC's armed struggle,
combined with the successful nonviolent campaigns of the United
Democratic Front (UDF) facilitated the end of Apartheid in South Africa.
In South Africa there was a older tradition going back to 1893 - 1914 with Mohandas Gandhi's experiments with nonviolence against anti-Indian racism there. It was in South Africa on September 11, 1906 that the word Satyagraha came into existence. It is
this legacy of nonviolence that has endured and gives hope for the
future.
Left to right: Ramiro Valdes, Raul Castro, Fidel Castro and Mengistu Haile Mariam
Unfortunately abandoning nonviolence and embracing the false and violent
narrative of Castroism is a recipe for endangering South African
democracy. There lies the way of mass murder and genocide. This is not conjecture. General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez was sent to Ethiopia in 1977 to build up Cuba's military presence. Fidel and Raul Castro were both deeply and personally involved in sending 17,000 Cuban
troops to Eastern Africa in order to assist Mengistu Haile Mariam consolidate
his rule, eliminating actual and potential opposition.
In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time
including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically
directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning
and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”24
Militarily, the counter-insurgency operations succeeded in greatly
weakening the insurgents or driving them across the border into Somalia.
Charles Lane of The Washington Post raised the issue of the Cuban role in Ethiopia's famine:
The last Cuban troops did
not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as
hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by
Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture.
Cuban
troops were complicit
in Mengistu's engineered famine in Ethiopia. Also present was Ramiro Valdes, the founder of Castro's police state, who decades later would play an important role in Venezuela.
Meanwhile South African medical students in Cuba join those of other African nations in protesting their treatment by both African and Cuban
officials. They have more rights in their home countries, and are in a relative position of privilege, compared to the average Cuban living in Cuba. This is thanks to South Africa's legacy of civic, nonviolent resistance that drove out Apartheid, and established an imperfect democratic order, but one that is far superior to the systems of terror visited upon Cubans and Ethiopians.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
On March 22, 2016 the President of the United States did the wave with a dictator
President Barack Obama had good intentions with his outreach to Cuba, but was ill served by those who presented him a false history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the intentions of Cuba, led by a regime driven by an ideological mission that views the United States as existentially hostile. Below are some lessons from President Obama's detente with the Castro regime: :
President Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 and commuted the sentences of three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez who was serving a life sentence for his role in a murder conspiracy that claimed four innocent lives in 1996. They returned to Cuba the same day, and Alan Gross, an innocent mas, was finally freed. This submission to blackmail only encouraged the hardliners in Havana.
Trade between the United States and Cuba collapsed during the Obama opening, and worsened after the December 17, 2014 announcement that the two governments would seek normalized relations. Peak year of trade was the last year of the George W. Bush Administration ($711.5 million) versus ($185.7 million) in 2015. Worse yet, the Cuban military seized control over larger sections of the Cuban economy during the US-Cuba detente.
“Don’t be confused about this. I will maintain the embargo,” Mr. Obama said. “It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: If you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.”
On January 2, 2017, Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in which Cuban soldiers chanted:
“Obama! Obama! With what fervor we’d like to confront your clumsiness,
give you a cleansing with rebels and mortar, and make you a hat out of
bullets to the head.”
Cuba policy is now being reviewed, and there is always room for improvement, but one must also learn from the past and recognize the nature of the regime in Havana. There are scores of brain damaged U.S. diplomats that are apparent casualties of not doing this. Doing the wave with Raul Castro, a dictator who killed Americans, at a baseball game in March 2016 legitimized his dictatorship, but did not advance U.S. interests.
President Barack Obama and his family arrived in Cuba on March 20, 2016 with high expectations. Much was made in 2016 of the shift from decades long imprisonment to shorter
term detentions in the press and by U.S. officials but little was
said with regards to the simultaneous escalation in knife attacks, breaking bones,machete attacks and extrajudicial killings of high profile human rights activists since 2010. Five years later and the failure of this visit and the overall policy becomes ever more evident.
On May 14, 2015 Sirley Ávila León lost her left hand, had her right arm broken by a second machete blow, and her knees slashed by several more machete blows by a married couple in an attack orchestrated by Cuban state security. The husband wielding the machete and the wife throwing the severed hand into a pigsty. Cuban
doctors told her that because of the contamination in the pigsty that
the hand could not be reattached. She was left completely incapacitated,
not even able to bend her knees.
Human rights defender machete attacked on May 24, 2015
The reason for the attack? Sirley Ávila León had been an elected delegate of the municipal
people's power assembly and taken seriously the pledge to represent her
constituents. When the order came from on high to shut down schools in the country side (as a cost saving measure) and one of those schools was in her area, Sirley began to lobby first through official channel. When the official channels ignored her entreaties she went to the international media. This got her booted out of her position through a series of machinations by Castro
regime officials. She responded by joining the opposition and the
repression against her escalated into harassment, threats of violence, home invasion and beat down by state security, arson, and the machete attack that nearly killed her.
In an interview on March 21, 2016 with the Spanish Daily ABC the human rights activist declared: "After they began relations with Obama, the totalitarian regime tightened up against those who truly fight for the rule of law in Cuba." ... "All this" - in allusion to the trip of the US president to the island- "is a fallacy." For her, "this friendship of Obama [with Raul] will not bring anything good to the Cuban people." Five years later, and scores of U.S. diplomats with brain injuries, and a shuttered embassy indicates that Sirley was right. The attacks began in November 2016, just months after the President's historic visit.
President Barack Obama and Dictator Raul Castro at press conference
The U.S. English speaking press did not reported on this preferring to focus their questions to Raul Castro on the issue of Cuban political prisoners while going along with the lie that education and healthcare in Cuba are rights and not privileges, given and taken away on the whims of the dictator.
On March 21, 2016 at a joint press conference with President Obama, General Raul Castroclaimed not to have political prisonersand then announced that if he were provided a list of political prisoners that he would immediately free them. That same day Cuban human rights organizations presented lists to the international media in the hope that long term political prisoners would be freed. Some are now trying to spin the joint press conference as Obama laying a trap for Raul Castro. This is highly unlikely.
The Castro regime has trafficked in political prisoners for over a half
century. Freeing with one hand while imprisoning with another and using
human beings as currency for their propaganda campaign.
However the silence by President Obama, the U.S. press corps
on the escalating violence and murder of opposition activists speaks
volumes on the moral failings of the Cuba policy of the United States that is assisting in a dynastic succession of the Castro regime by meeting with Alejandro Castro in the official sit down with Raul Castro while ignoring the terrible price being paid by Cubans who want to be free.
Murdered dissidents was part of the price of appeasement with Castro
Three days prior to the visit the true significance of the visit was tweeted by Chile's former Minister of Culture and former Ambassador to Mexico tweeted in Spanish: "Paradoxes: After decades backing right wing dictatorships in Latin America, now the United States could end up backing a left wing dictatorship."
This is the trouble, rather than abandon a bad practice, supporting right wing dictatorships - such as Saudi Arabia, the Obama Administration expanded this practice to include dictatorships hostile to the United States. The policy was not a step forward, but back to an era of backing dictators in Latin America.
Earlier today this blog published a reflection on the nationwide crackdown on Cuban dissidents that took place on March 18, 2003, and the execution of three young black men by firing squad on April 12, 2003 for hijacking a ferry to flee Cuba (no one was harmed during the incident that took place on April 2, 2003). This became known as Cuba's Black Spring.
75 of these Cuban dissidents were recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, spent years in prison, and the last were released eight years later in 2011. One of the last freed was Librado Linares, because he refused to go into exile.
This evening saw a video by Librado. This courageous man is speaking out about COVID-19, the economic crisis, and the failure of the elites in Cuba.
Below is the video ( in Spanish) of him speaking on these issues:
Remembering the Black Cuban Spring, the long winter, and the future spring
2003 - 2021 Spring will return
Eighteen years ago on March 18, 2003 a crackdown began in Cuba on the eve
of the United States going to war in Iraq. Scores of Cuban dissidents
were rounded up and subjected to political show trials. 75 were
condemned to lengthy prison terms of up to 28 years in prison. This
became known as the Black Cuban Spring.
The majority of the imprisoned activists had participated in the Varela Project, a petition drive that called
for a referendum under the terms of the Cuban Constitution on
whether there should be more freedom of expression, an amnesty for
political prisoners and a chance for ordinary citizens to own small
businesses. 11,020 signatures had been turned in 10 months earlier on May
10, 2002.
The regime responded with its own mandatory petition drive
to make the Cuban Constitution unchangeable.
The Economist in its December 14, 2005 issue published a conversation with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas titled "An unsilenced voice for change" that outlined what had taken place:
Between 2001 and 2004, Mr Payá's movement gathered 25,000 signatures in a
vain attempt to persuade Cuba's National Assembly to change the
constitution to allow multi-party democracy. Activists of his Christian
Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of the 75 dissidents
and journalists rounded up and jailed for long terms in April 2003.
[...] Spain is “complaisant” with Mr Castro's regime, Mr Payá says. “We
need a
campaign of support and solidarity with peaceful change in Cuba” of the
kind that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and to the
Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
It took over eight years, but the last of the group of the 75 were
eventually released. Oswaldo was murdered along with the Christian
Liberation Movement's youth leader Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012. His
successor Eduardo Cardet was a prisoner of conscience from November 30, 2016 through September 3, 2019. He was jailed for giving a frank assessment of Fidel Castro's legacy following his death on November 25, 2016.
11,020 Varela Project signatures turned in on May 20, 2002
On April 2, 2003 three young black men were arrested, tried and executed by firing squad nine days later on April 11, 2003 for trying to flee the island in a hijacked ferry, in which no one had been physically harmed. This drew worldwide condemnation at the time, and became known as Cuba's Black Spring, but it did not prevent the end of the mandate for monitoring human rights violations in Cuba in a backroom deal for the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council on March 15, 2006.
Fifteen years ago the United Nations Human Rights Council was founded on a small moral compromise that sacrificed human rights oversight in Belarus and Cuba in what U.N. officials called the dawn of a new era. Special rapporteurs with mandates to specifically monitor the human rights situation in those two countries were formally gotten rid of in 2007 and a code of conduct established that undermined the independence of all special rapporteurs.
Ending oversight of Belarus and Cuba not only left the victims of these dictatorships exposed to more repression, with impunity by their oppressors, but emboldened these dictatorships not only to worsen their practices at home but to undermine human rights abroad. Worse yet, both would be elected to serve on the UN Human Rights Council with other outlaw regimes.
These failings have real world consequences.
UN Human Rights Council member 🇨🇺 Cuba gives speech justifying genocide by UN Human Rights Council member 🇨🇳 China. On behalf of 64 countries.
We urged 🇪🇺 European Union & member states to oppose the election of China & Cuba to the UNHRC. They did nothing. This is the result. pic.twitter.com/y4ktdGH3nJ
Cuba led the charge to back up China's new security law for Hong Kong that strips citizens of Hong Kong of their human rights last year. On July 1, 2020 the Cuban dictatorship introduced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council praising China for passing the Hong Kong National Security Law, also known as the 66 article law. 53 governments backed this resolution, endorsing the death of a free Hong Kong. Official Chinese media "celebrated" their victory at the human rights body. Belarus has also continued to back the new security law at international forums.
In spite of Cuba's terrible human rights record at home, and leading the charge to back China stripping Hong Kongers of their rights the Castro regime was re-elected to the UN Human Rights Council on October 12, 2020 with 170 out of a possible 192 votes at the General Assembly.
This did not improve Havana's behavior.
"Cuba, speaking on behalf of 64 countries including China [on March 12, 2021], said Xinjiang is 'an inseparable part of China' and urged states to 'stop interfering in China’s internal affairs by manipulating Xinjiang-related issues, (and) refrain from making unfounded allegations against China out of political motivations'." These countries led by the Castro regime are defending an ongoing genocide.
Spring will return to Cuba, but the struggle continues today in 2021 and the failures of solidarity by the international community with free Cuban is having a negative impact on human rights globally as the Castro regime backs the end of a free Hong Kong, and defends genocide in Xinjiang.
100 days and counting for carrying a poster calling for Denis Solis's freedom, and an end to dictatorship.
Earlier today the Acting Assistant Secretary for U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Chung tweeted that it has been a hundred days since a young Cuban was jailed for holding up a poster in central Havana.
Today marks 100 days since Luis Robles Eliazastegui was imprisoned for simply holding a sign. He was protesting musician Denis Solis' unjust imprisonment in Cuba. Freedom of expression is a human right.
One hundred days in prison and counting since Luis Robles Elizastigui walked along the San Rafael Boulevard in central Havana on December 4, 2020 with a piece of cardboard converted into a poster calling for the freedom of Denis Solis, an end to repression, and freedom. Videos were taken by passersby and uploaded to the internet.
He was arrested without resistance by the police,and charged "with 'acts against state security.' According to Diario de Cubathe charge was filed by First-Lieutenant Roberto Batista, who issued an order for 'temporary detention.'"
14ymedio identified the "young man as 28-year-old Luis Robles Elizastigui, originally from
Guantanamo, who is the father of one son. Bystanders rushed to his
defense when police tried to arrest him for holding up a cardboard sign
that read, “Freedom, no more repression.” The sign also included the
hashtag '#FreeDenis,' a reference to the rapper Denis Solis, who was sentenced to eight months in jail for alleged contempt."
Luis Robles with his son
A Habeus Corpus motion filed on December 14, 2020 was rejected by Popular Provincial Tribunal of Havana and he remained held at the headquarters of the secret police in Villa Marista. He was transferred to the maximum security prison of Combinado del Este in Havana. Activists reported that a prison official has instructed other prisoners to repeatedly physically assault him, and expressed their concerns for his safety.
The Castro regime declared war against human rights in 1959, and freedom of expression was one of its first victims, and continues to the present day. It got worse in 1996 with Law
88, also known as the gag law, when restrictions on freedom of expression
and association were expanded increasing prison sentences to 20-years.
There are currently 180 identified political prisoners in Cuba. According to a January 13, 2020 article in The New York Times
a former high-ranking judge in Cuba
provided
documents showing that there are nearly 4,000 Cubans every year accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Castro regime
uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having
committed a crime." Furthermore, the article says that "records show
that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. The Cuban
government only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed."
Before getting lost in the statistics it is important to remember that among the thousands jailed for challenging the status quo are Luis Robles Elizastigui and Denis Solís Gonzalez. They are jailed for simple defending human rights, and there are many others like them behind bars in Cuba.
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