Remembering Václav Havel, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and nonviolent action

 "A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and President Václav Havel in Prague (2002)

Twenty three years ago on December 17, 2002 Oswaldo Paya addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg at a ceremony awarding him the the Sakharov Prize where he outlined his nonviolent vision for change in Cuba.

"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.’"

 Václav Havel passed away fourteen years ago today, on December 18, 2011. His nonviolent resistance and dedication to truth in successfully resisting totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia remain powerful legacies and examples that are relevant today. In 2002, President Vaclav Havel addressed the Cuban people and offered words that should be heeded now:

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

Nonviolence requires recognizing these extreme injustices and the justifiable anger that it generates but at the same time channeling it into creative and productive means to end the injustices. Some would argue that one must remove their anger, as one takes off a back pack, but that is profoundly mistaken. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different approach that has proven more powerful: 

"The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." 

Mohandas Gandhi spoke in 1920 of learning "through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."
 
This is not hating but harnessing a powerful spiritual energy and channeling it productively. Blowing up and screaming at someone is a waste of that energy that can be channeled into creative solutions to end the injustice.

Nonviolence theoretician Gene Sharp also recognizes that there is a moral dimension that cannot be ignored without dire consequences (as efforts to normalize relations with the Castro regime in Cuba demonstrated): "It is unreasonable to aim for a 'win- win' resolution. Brutal dictators and perpetrators of genocide do not deserve to win anything."

Today we mark the anniversary of the passing of Václav Havel, the president who led Czechia back into the community of free nations and whose name continues to be respected around the world. pic.twitter.com/VuCGIN9BzG

— Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CzechMFA) December 18, 2025

Nonviolent thought can be divided into two general categories: strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence but although emphasizing different perspectives they need not be in conflict.
Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence. 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence. Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones. 

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner that assists in carrying out a strategic nonviolent plan.

Critics of nonviolence often argue that nonviolence works well against democracies but not brutal regimes, often citing the Nazis. Nevertheless in 1943 in Germany on Rosenstrasse street German wives married to Jewish men, who had been taken to concentration camps, organized a series of strikes and protests that forced the Nazis to return their Jewish husbands back from the death camps. Those men survived the Holocaust thanks to their wives courageous and nonviolent action.  

The disturbing questions that should arise are: What would have happened if instead of the violent Antifa movement, that fought the Nazis in street battles throughout the 1930s that escalated violence, opponents of the Nazis had followed Gandhi's advice at the time and resisted them nonviolently? What would have happened if the Weimar Republic instead of attempting to silence the Nazis by repeatedly prosecuting them for violating hate speech laws had challenged their evil ideas in the court of public opinion?

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition in Cuba:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence." 

The reason for the greater success rate of nonviolent resistance is that it is easier to mobilize large numbers of people to take nonviolent action than to engage in violent action. Success is not only defined by overthrowing the existing regime, but having a transition that ends in a democratic regime. The methods used in nonviolent struggle translate better to democratic practices then violent resistance because they involve nonviolent discipline, the mobilization of large numbers and the encouragement of civic virtue.  

Vaclav Havel talks about the Communist dictatorship in Cuba and the position he was in to promote free thought and other freedoms Cubans are still deprived of in their own country. ( Recorded 2007) https://t.co/EuwaqttG7E #Cuba #CzechRepublic #VaclavHavel #DeathAnniversary

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) December 18, 2025

Furthermore the use of humor is not to be underestimated. Václav Havel in an address to the Central European University on June 24, 1999 at a difficult moment on the international scene made the case for laughter.

"The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world."

Following his death in 2011, every year on the anniversary of his passing admirers of Václav Havel the world over wear short trousers in his memory. 

On December 18th roll up your trousers to honor Vaclav Havel

Organizers explained its historic significance along with its particular Czech sensibility.

The “Short Trousers for Václav Havel” initiative started in 2012 to honor the memory of Václav Havel with a gesture that was unique, memorable and easily achieved by supporters of this exceptional person in modern Czech and European history.  Short Trousers is a reference to Havel stepping into political life in 1989 and his inauguration to the presidency in visibly short trousers. He explained vainly that rather than a tailor’s mistake it was his habit to pull his pants up at every dramatic situation. To this, one might say global mythology of his short trousers, he added with a smile: "I must say that I am glad of it, more or less. From my point of view it’s a pretty gentle way of mocking myself."  An effort to honor such a respectable person by a gesture that points to this humorous episode might appear, at first sight, as a contradictory act. But the opposite is true. We believe that rolled up trousers on the anniversary of the death of Václav Havel is a gesture which is Czech, slightly satirical and which can be easily joined by anyone who wants to honor the memory of the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president Havel in a cheerful way.

This method of spontaneous remembrance contrasts dramatically with how dictators forcibly demand that they be remembered on penalty of imprisonment for dissenting as has been the case following the 2016 death of Fidel Castro.  

Marking Vaclav Havel's 14th death anniversary wearing short trousers.

#OTD in 2002 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was awarded the Sakharov Prize at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France where he gave this historic acceptance speech.

 

SPEECH DELIVERED BY MR. OSWALDO PAYÁ UPON ACCEPTING THE SAKHAROV PRICE FOR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

 

Strasbourg, December 17, 2002

English translation below:

First of all, I should like to express my thanks to Mr. Pat Cox, President, and to this Parliament in which the many peoples of Europe are represented.

You have awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize to the people of Cuba. I say “the people of Cuba” because they are the ones who so richly deserve such an award. I say it without excluding any of my fellow countrymen, irrespective of their political stance, because rights have no political, racial or cultural hue. Nor have dictatorships any political color: they are neither right-wing nor left-wing, they are merely dictatorships. In my country there are thousands of men and women who are fighting in the midst of persecution for the rights of all Cubans. Hundreds of them have been imprisoned solely for having proclaimed and stood up for those rights, and this is why I am receiving this award on their behalf.

I say that this prize is for all Cubans because I believe that, in awarding it, Europe wishes to say to them: “You too are entitled to rights.”

This is something which we have always firmly believed, but there are times when this truth has seemed to be less than self-evident to many of the world’s people.

I have not come here to ask you to support those who oppose the Cuban Government or to condemn those who persecute us. It is of no help to Cuba that some people in the world side with the country’s government or with the latter’s opponents on the basis of an ideological standpoint. We want others to side with the Cuban people - with all Cubans – and this means upholding all their rights, supporting openness, supporting our demand that our people should be consulted via the ballot box regarding the changes we are calling for. We are asking for solidarity so that our people can be given an opportunity to speak through the ballot box, as proposed in the Varela Project.

Many people have linked this prize to the Varela Project, and rightly so, since the thousands of Cubans who, in the midst of repression, have signed the petition calling for a referendum are making a decisive contribution to bringing about the changes which Cuba needs. Those changes would mean involvement in cultural and economic life, civil and political rights, and national reconciliation. That would constitute a genuine exercise in self-determination by our people. We must reject the myth that we Cubans have to live without rights in order to support our country’s independence and sovereignty.

Father Felix Varela has taught us that independence and national sovereignty are inseparable from the exercise of basic rights. We Cubans – whether we live in Cuba or in the diaspora – are a single people and we have both the determination and the ability to build a just, free and democratic society, without hatred and without the desire for revenge. In the words of José Marti, ‘With everyone and for everyone’s benefit’.

We have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal for which our people are striving. Experience teaches us that violence begets more violence and that when political change is brought about by such means, new forms of oppression and injustice arise. It is our wish that violence and force should never be used as ways of overcoming crises or toppling unjust governments. This time we shall bring about change by means of this civic movement which is already opening a new chapter in Cuba’s history, in which dialogue, democratic involvement, and solidarity will prevail. In such a way we shall foster genuine peace. Cuba’s civic combatant heroes – the ordinary people who have signed the Varela Project – carry no weapons. Not a single hand is armed. We walk with both arms outstretched, offering our hands to all Cubans as brothers and sisters, and to all peoples of the world.

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 Payá Sardiñas addressed European Parliament  in 2002

There are still those who perpetuate the myth that the exercising of political and civil rights is an alternative to a society’s ability to achieve social justice and development. They are not mutually exclusive. The absence of any civil and political rights in Cuba has had serious consequences such as inequality, the poverty of the majority and privileges of a minority and the deterioration of certain services, even though these were conceived as a positive system to benefit the people. In this way, although many Cubans have for years worked out of love and in good faith, the situation as regards civil and political rights is now serious, quite apart from a widening inequality and the deterioration in the quality of life of the majority of the population. Among other things, the freedom of action of the citizens of Cuba has been limited, which has neutralized their huge potential for creativity and productiveness and is the main reason for the country’s poverty.

This state of affairs cannot be justified by saying that the Cuban people have adopted this system out of choice. You all know that none of the peoples represented in this Parliament, and no people in the world, would ever give up the right to exercise their fundamental freedoms.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that well-being and economic and social progress are the fruits of being able to exercise one’s rights. In the same way, a democracy is not genuine and complete if it cannot initiate and sustain a process that raises the quality of life of all its citizens, because no people would freely vote for the kind of poverty and inequality that results in the masses becoming disadvantaged and marginalized. The peoples of Latin America are calling for a genuine democracy which will enable justice to be established. It is scandalous that methods intended to overcome a crisis and end poverty can be applied in the name of efficiency when in reality they threaten to obliterate the poor. I cannot claim to herald new positions or propose new models, but the people of Cuba have lived and suffered under various political and economic systems.

We now know that any method or model which purportedly aims to achieve justice, development, and efficiency but takes precedence over the individual or cancels out any of the fundamental rights leads to a form of oppression and to exclusion and is calamitous for the people. We wish to express our solidarity with all those who suffer from any form of oppression and injustice, and with those in the world who have been silenced or marginalized.

The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized. If there is no solidarity between people we will be unable to preserve a fair world in which it is possible to continue living as human beings. I therefore humbly believe that rather than new models, both for societies and for relations between countries, what we need is a new spirit.

This new spirit, which should find expression in solidarity, cooperation, and justice in the relations between countries, will not impede development, because if policies and models are made secondary to personal realization and the establishment of justice and democracy, and if policies are humanized, we will bridge the gulfs that divide peoples and will become a true human family.

We bring from Cuba a message of peace and solidarity for all peoples. The people of Cuba accept this prize with dignity and in the hope that we can rebuild our society with love for all, as brothers, and as children of God. Cubans are straightforward people and want nothing more than to live in peace and progress in our work, but WE CANNOT, WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO, AND WE DO NOT WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT FREEDOM.

We dedicate this prize and our hopes to the Lord Jesus, born in a lowly manger.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

 

Does Cuba pose a threat to U.S. national security?

The case for the affirmative.

The first victims of Cuban communism are the Cuban people.

They were the ones that suffered the terrorism of the July 26th Movement that carried out a hundred bombings in Havana in one night.

They were the ones that suffered the summary executions in the early days of the revolution.

There are over a thousand political prisoners currently in Cuba’s prisons today.

Jose Daniel Ferrer was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement that sought through the existing legal system to pursue change through the Varela Project.

The response of the dictatorship was to lock up Jose Daniel Ferrer and 74 others in 2003 to long prison terms.

In his case they threatened him with a death sentence for gathering signatures in a citizen petition drive.

Oswaldo Payá who was the head of the initiative together with his youth leader Harold Cepero were murdered by agents of the Cuban government in 2012.

We also cannot forget that next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the shoot down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.

Brothers to the Rescue was an effort by Cubans and Cuban Americans to save the lives of Cubans in the Florida Straits.  Because they were nonviolently engaging with the dissidents on the island the regime felt  it was unacceptable and they sent out MiGs that blew two civilian planes out of the sky in international airspace.

However that is not our focus today but the harm Havana has done to U.S. national security, and the role the Cuban dictatorship has played in destabilizing the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba remains a threat to U.S. national security

I would like to begin by dispelling some myths that all too often are spread in the Academy. One is that Fidel Castro was driven into the arms of the Russians by the Americans.

This is not true. We now know thanks to the Soviet archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the initial contacts with the KGB and the Castro brothers was in 1953.

Early contacts with the KGB (1953)

Leonov (c). On his right, R. Castro. To his left, Bernardo Lemús

“The KGB’s leading Latin American expert, Nikolai Leonov, who was the first to make contact with [Raul] Castro, wrote later, ‘Cuba forced us to take a fresh look at the whole continent, which until then had traditionally occupied the last place in the Soviet leadership’s system of priorities.’- The charismatic appeal of Castro and ‘Che’ Guevara extended far beyond Latin America,” wrote Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin in The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World – Newly Revealed Secrets from the Mitrokhin Archive published in 2006.

Raul Castro and Nikolai Leonov first met in 1953, and struck up a relationship that would endure for 69 years, until Leonov’s passing in 2022. On March 11, 2016, Leonov was interviewed on official Cuban television in the Mesa Redonda program about his supposed first encounter with Raul Castro on a trans-Atlantic voyage. Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992, offers a different report obtained from classified files. Leonov and Raul Castro “became ‘firm friends’ in Prague in 1953 and then worked together with Fidel from 1956 and after he took power in 1959.”

The U.S. Arms Embargo on Batista

At the same time that the United States was placing an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in early 1958, and receiving representatives of Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement in Washington DC, the Soviet KGB already had a firmly established relationship with the Castro brothers.

On March 17, 1958 Fidel Castro’s future candidate for provisional president, Manuel Urrutia, along with a delegation of other supporters in exile of the July 26th movement, met with officials at the State Department. They successfully lobbied the U.S. government arguing that arms shipments to Cuba were for hemispheric defense, and they claimed that Batista using them against Cuban nationals was in violation of the conditions agreed to between the two countries.

Batista’s regime presented to the U.S. Embassy in Havana a formal note protesting the delay in the shipment of M-1 rifles to the Cuban Army, and warned that it would weaken the Cuban government and lead to its possible downfall.

The United States placed an arms embargo on the Batista dictatorship in March 1958.

On March 26, 1958 in another telegram from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Havana the view was expressed how the arms embargo could lead to the fall of Batista’s regime:

“Department has considered the possibility its actions could have an adverse psychological effect on GOC and could unintentionally contribute to or accelerate eventual Batista downfall. On other hand, shipment US combat arms at this time would probably invite increased resentment against US and associate it with Batista strong arm methods, especially following so closely on heels of following developments:
Government publicly desisted from peace efforts.Government suspended guarantees again.Batista expressed confidence Government will win elections with his candidate and insists they will be held despite suspension guarantees but has made no real effort to satisfy public opinion on their fairness and effectiveness as possible means achieve fair and acceptable solution.Batista announced would increase size arms and informed you he would again undertake mass population shift Oriente, and otherwise acted in manner to discourage those who supported or could be brought to support peaceful settlement by constructive negotiations.”

The United States would continue to pressure Batista to hold free elections and leave office for the remainder of 1958. Earl E. T. Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba, on December 17, 1958 delivered a message from the State Department to Fulgencio Batista that the United States viewed “with skepticism any plan on his part, or any intention on his part, to remain in Cuba indefinitely.”

The U.S. government had dealt the Batista regime a mortal blow, and fourteen days later the Cuban dictatorship fell.

Fulgencio Batista fled into exile on January 1, 1959, and the United States quickly recognized the revolutionary government of the Castro brothers.

The Castro brothers’ newly established Cuban government was acknowledged by the U.S. on January 7, 1959. The new regime was recognized in a mere seven days. Comparatively, after Fulgencio Batista’s March 10, 1952 coup, it took the US seventeen days to recognize his government.

Fidel Castro visited Caracas on January 23, 1959 and met with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a social democrat, “to enlist cooperation and financial backing for ‘the master plan against the gringos.’”In April 1959 Fidel Castro visited the United States on an eleven day trip that concluded with a three hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959.

The Castro brothers carried out mass executions, expropriated U.S. companies, and sent armed expeditions to overthrow governments in Latin America beginning in 1959.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing Fidel Castro’s new regime, visited Gaza in June 1959, and encouraged Palestinian refugees to “continue the struggle to liberate their land” “through resistance to occupation,” according to the publication Palestine Land Society. He asked, “where are the training camps? Where are the factories to manufacture arms? Where are people’s mobilization centers?” … According to the publication Palestine Land Society, “Guevara was accompanied by General Caprera, an expert in Guerilla warfare. Caprera met with community leaders to advise on methods of resistance.”

 

Soviet Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited Havana in February 1960. The Soviet Vice Premier arrived in Cuba on February 4, 1960.

Regime insider Carlos Franqu in his book Family Portrait with Fidel described the visit as follows.

In the early days of February, Anastas Mikoyan, vice-prime minister of the Soviet Union, came to Cuba. Fidel Castro, Raúl, Che Guevara, and President Dorticós met him at the Havana airport. He was given a huge reception and an extended tour of the island-with Fidel at his side-which lasted for weeks. A major topic was the Soviet Union’s purchase of Cuban sugar and our purchase of Russian oil.

Castro diplomatically recognized the Soviet Union on May 8, 1960.

To say that the United States pushed the Castro brothers into the arms of the Soviet Union is absurd. The Castro brothers had already been conspiring with Moscow for six years in 1959.

[ Continue here ] 

First Secretary, President, Prime Minister, and Secretary-General, Comandante Fidel Castro is still dead.

 Breaking news. Lying communist thug and tyrant Fidel Castro is still dead.

Fidel Castro: Cuba's tyrant turned power over to his brother

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister, and Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, Comandante Fidel Castro is still dead.   

Nine years ago, on a Black Friday that fell on November 25, 2016, Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro died at the age of 90 never having had to answer for his many crimes against humanity both in and out of Cuba. From Nicaragua, to Ethiopia, to Venezuela, and in many other places Fidel Castro assisted tyrants and dictators to take power, hold on to it, and consolidate their rule while terrorizing and murdering dissenters. One day later in a blog post I predicted what would come next.

"Predictably over the next few weeks inside Cuba the world will see spectacles organized by the totalitarian dictatorship to "mourn the great leader." The regime has already started with nine days set aside for official mourning. This will not be the first time that monsters are mourned by an oppressed people through different methods of command, control and manipulation. The world has witnessed it before in the Soviet Union in 1953 and more recently in North Korea with the Kim dynasty. The death of Stalin as dramatized in the film "The Inner Circle" is recommended viewing for those about to follow the circus in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro's death.  Meanwhile in Cuba as the regime prepares its state funeral the Castro dictatorship's secret police begin to make threats, round up and take dissidents to undisclosed locations and commit acts of violence." 

Nine years later the fans of the late Cuban dictator are out trying to defend his legacy and repeating the lies to maintain him in a positive light in Leftist circles. These apologists of the dictator are silent on the role played by the United States government and The New York Times in undermining Fulgencio Batista's rule and helping to bring Fidel Castro to power.

IN TODAY’S MIAMI HERALD: When Cuban leader Fidel Castro died, exiles flooded Miami’s streets, unloading complicated emotions at the news that the man responsible for the upheaval of their lives was gone. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/cMls3NPcUP

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) November 24, 2021

There are other inconvenient truths that are well documented and available for those seeking facts about the Cuba that existed prior to 1959 with warts and all, and what came after.

On this ninth anniversary of the tyrant's death it is a good time to remember some of his more memorable statements.

Relationship with the truth

Fidel Castro in the 1950s repeatedly claimed that he was not a communist because he knew that advocating a communist revolution would lead Cubans to abandon him. On December 2, 1961 he explained his reasoning.

 

"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."

 

On March 26, 1964, after announcing that he had always been a Marxist Leninist, Castro explained: 

"I conceive the truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth, as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist."  

Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from school and afterwards concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

 

Denied universality of human rights 

 

 

Fidel Castro in the above interview in Havana in 1986 divided freedoms i.e. rights as one set being revolutionary liberties and another being bourgeois liberties and claiming that there are two different concepts of liberty he is rejecting the Latin American tradition which was best expounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that there are basic human rights that are universal and not separated by political/ideological or as in the Islamic claim by religious differences but are the same for everyone.

 

In 1961 in a speech that became known as "Words to intellectuals" Fidel Castro labeled dissenters "counterrevolutionaries" and explicitly stripped them of their rights. 

What are the rights of writers and artists, revolutionary or non-revolutionary? Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, no right (applause). And this is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers. It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the Revolution. Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution, because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to develop, and the right to be victorious." ... "In other words: Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing."

 

This is not an original statement, but an echo of speeches and writings made by other tyrants. A close parallel is found in Benito Mussolini's 1935 speech: "Everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State."   

 

Consequences of this policy in Cuba were seen internationally in the Padilla Affair in 1971. 

 

Homophobic: Put Gays into forced labor camps

 

We 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.” - Fidel Castro, 1965

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.”

Both Gays, and rock n rollers were sent to forced labor camps. 

Ended Black Cuban agency 

Castro regime's publication Verde Olivo 1, no. 29 (October 1, 1960)

"In Cuba, the exploitation of man by man has disappeared, and racial discrimination has disappeared, too." - Fidel Castro, quoted in Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel By Lee Lockwood, 1967

Castro’s communist revolution ended Black Cuban's agency in Cuba. Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay "Castro and the Cuban Negro" published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.

“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”

Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian rule. It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while criticizing racism in the United States. 

For decades, the Castro regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official propaganda with racist tropes. Black Cubans who think for themselves are punished.

 On Walls and border controls

 

Castro encouraged East German border guards in their deadly work

 

Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and encouraged the border guards to continue shooting Germans trying to flee to freedom by crossing the Berlin Wall. At Brandenburg gate on June 14, 1972 in the afternoon (pictured above) he addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:

"It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with great admiration for you and for your services."

No doubt this inspired the Cuban tyrant to turn the Florida Straits, and the border of the Guantanamo Naval Base into barriers to kill fleeing Cuban refugees. 

Anti-Black purge in Angola

On November 5, 1975, 30,000 Cuban troops were dispatched to Angola in what was called Operation Carlota, and today pro-Castro sympathizers over social media are celebrating this anniversary with excerpts of a speech the Cuban dictator gave announcing the move at the time. Cuban troops, beginning on May 27, 1977, took part in a massacre in Angola following a split in the governing Communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party. Amnesty International cites reports that 30,000 Angolans "had disappeared" in the purge; other sources place the number at 80,000 killed. 

There was a racial component, with those massacred being young, black revolutionaries, and those in power who Castro allied with: mixed race and white Angolans and Eurocentric, although they were Marxist-Leninists so it was not a problem for Leftists, including those in power in Portugal. The definitive account of this massacre in English is found in Lara Pawson's 2014 book, "In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre." A 2017 review of the book by Fernando Arenas published in Luso-Brazilian Review provides the following summary.

In the Name of the People offers major insights regarding the history of May 1977, including the key role played by Cuban military forces, who defended Agostinho Neto and the ruling MPLA against the attempted coup, in defiance of the Soviet Union, while committing atrocities against Nito Alves's supporters. It also highlights the centrality of racial politics in Nito's movement against the perceived political dominance of mixed race and white Angolans in the MPLA to the exclusion of the majority poor black population, emphasizing the movement's rejection of endemic corruption within the MPLA and its betrayal of the socialist revolution.

Nelson Da Silva on his Youtube channel provided video excerpts of a book talk in 2015 with the author Lara Pawson, and questions and comments by Angolans.

Creating a planned famine in Ethiopia 

Castro with ally and war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia 1977

Fidel Castro on April 3, 1977 met in East Berlin with Erich Honecker about the need to help the revolution in Ethiopia and talked up Mengistu Haile Mariam, a then emerging new Marxist-Leninist leader. Fidel Castro celebrated the initiation of the Red Terror on February 3, 1977 in Ethiopia: 

"Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […] The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints."

Fidel Castro took part in mass murder in Eastern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1977-78, a conservative estimate of over 30,000 Africans perished as a result of a Red Terror unleashed in Ethiopia by Mengistu and his Cuban allies.

 

Ramiro Valdez, Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam

Amnesty International concluded that "this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned." Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries."

 

 Advocating for and actively trying to start a nuclear holocaust

 

Castro freaked out Khrushchev with call for a first strike

 On October 27, 1962, the same day that Fidel Castro ordered artillery to fire on American reconnaissance aircraft, successfully knocking one down, Khrushchev received a letter from the Cuban dictator, that historians call the Armageddon letter, in which he called for a Soviet first strike on the United States, in the event of a US invasion of Cuba.

If an aggression of the second variant occurs, and the imperialists attack Cuba with the aim of occupying it, then the danger posed by such an aggressive measure will be so immense for all humanity that the Soviet Union will in circumstances be able to allow it, or to permit the creation of conditions in which the imperialists might initiate a nuclear strike against the USSR as well.

Thankfully, Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome, but the Castro regime continued to protest and was unhappy with their Soviet allies for not launching the intercontinental ballistic missiles that would have started a thermonuclear war.

Comandante Castro ordered students to the streets to chant "Nikita, mariquita, lo que se da no se quita" ("Nikita, little queer, what you give you don't take away").

 

The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.

 

 

 

Dan Rather:-The incident of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft…But you gave the order.  It was not your brother Rául or a general.

Fidel Castro:-I gave the order to communicate to the Air Force that what happened on the ninth and thirteenth could not be permitted again.  But these operations are very quick.  They enter in a matter of minutes and leave.  It is very difficult to establish a mechanism of communication and consultation.  They had the general order of not permitting them…They acted with full awareness that they were following the order.  At that moment there was not…The air force had the responsibility.  As a rule they can communicate with each other, but everyone is not always there.  In fact, they had the authority to do it, and I assume the responsibility.  I am not trying to elude the responsibility in the least, because they were instructions given in a moment of really great irritation.  They were given to the pilots, I believe, if I remember correctly, on the 14^th of January. 

Source: FIDEL CASTRO INTERVIEW BY DAN RATHER -  MADE PUBLIC SEPT 3, 1996

Detailed investigation into the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown available here.   

 

Alliances with Fascists and Nazis

 

Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons

 

In the early 1960s the Nazi who saved Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1944, Otto-Ernst Remer, had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. The German foreign intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), reported that "evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives." 

 

The Cuban autocrat was friendly with his Spanish counterpart Francisco Franco, and declared days of mourning when the Generalissimo, Prime Minister, Head of State, and Caudillo died on November 20, 1975. 

In the picture below is Fidel Castro with Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez, one of the planners of the Falkland's invasion, of the Argentine military junta that extra-judicially executed and disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentinians between 1976 and 1983 in the Dirty War meeting in Havana at the Non-Aligned Movement gathering. He died of lung cancer on August 3, 1992.

Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez and Fidel Castro

This is not the only member of the junta that Castro commiserated with. The Cuban dictator was also photographed with "President" Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón who, like Fidel Castro then and Raul Castro today , was"President" in name only, but in reality a brutal military dictator between 1982 and 1983. On April 20, 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of 56 people in a concentration camp.

 

Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón with Fidel Castro

 Whereas Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sought to expose and end the Dirty War, as well as later document the crimes committed and demand justice on behalf of the victims, the Cuban government did everything possible at the time to obstruct efforts to investigate the disappearances from their perch at the United Nations Human Rights Commission. 

Drug trafficker

John Simpson of BBC Newsnight interviewed Castro's former bodyguard, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, where he explained how he became disillusioned with Fidel Castro because of his links to drug traffickers, despite the dictator's public denunciation of the practice. Sanchez died within a year of publishing his memoir in May 2015 at the age of 66 in Miami.

What have joint anti-drug operations with Cuba, and sharing intelligence done in concrete terms for US citizens? In 1999, the year when Washington intensified these efforts 3,186 U.S. citizens died of cocaine overdoses. In 2021, after 22 years of this "cooperation" 23,513 Americans died in 2021. 

Anti-Semite

Cuban Jewish family targeted by the Castro regime for being Jewish.

 The Cuban dictatorship has a history of domestic antisemitism. Cuban officials in 2019, in an act of continuity with Fidel and Raul Castro's hatred of Jews, barred Jewish children from wearing kippahs in school. Fidel Castro in 1994 prohibited the importation of kosher meat into Cuba, despite allowing Halal food, which complies with Islamic dietary laws. Castro supported the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism and opposed its repeal in 1991.  

From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966. This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world order in an authoritarian direction.

Fidel Castro compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979. “From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”

In 2014, Castro called Israeli efforts to defend themselves from Hamas terrorism “a repugnant new form of fascism,” and a “macabre genocide against the Palestinian people.” 

The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in direct military action.

Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.  

Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat meet in Havana in 1974.

Good riddance.

Until his death in 2016, Fidel Castro was a consistent enemy of democracy and human rights. He had many titles, including First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Comandante, but tyrant is the most appropriate. Fidel Castro, Cuba's despot, is still dead, and good riddance. 

 

May the death cult that has formed around this tyrant soon join him.