Cuba's new Family Code won't pink wash away the communist regime's ideological aversion to homosexuality

“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
 

The Castro regime held a "referendum" on September 25, 2022 to pass a government-backed “family code" that would allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt. It also outlined the rights of children and grandparents. The new "family law" contains over 400 articles. Critics view it as an exercise in pink washing.

First, this is not a free and fair referendum. There have not been free elections in Cuba for 72 years. Last ones were in 1950. Batista's 1952 coup ended regular free and fair elections. The Castros promised to restore them in 1959, but no free or fair elections were held over the next 63 years. Opposition political parties, and independent civil society were and continue to be outlawed.

Proof of life: Raul Castro featured in official media going to vote.

What the Castro dictatorship calls a "referendum" has some peculiar characteristics.  Can't campaign for the position opposed by the government. No equal time in the public airwaves. This is a "vote" where a single option, the one advocated by the government, is permitted. Efforts to independently monitor voting at precincts to verify the official tally will get you harassed and shutdown by secret police. 

Pinkwashing is "the practice of presenting something, particularly a state, as gay-friendly in order to soften or downplay aspects of its reputation considered negative."

This is particularly ironic in the Cuban context with the current communist dictatorship.

The Cuban government’s leadership, who remain in power today, carried out anti-Gay draconian policies in the past, and they are the same ones now advocating for the change on gay marriage in the new family code.

There is a deep-seated homophobia at the heart of communist ideology that viewed homosexuality as a symptom of bourgeois or capitalist contamination. This resulted in the systematic repression of homosexuals in communist regimes such as China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union homosexuality was criminalized in 1933, "punishable by prison and hard labor, and Stalinist anti-gay policies persisted throughout the 1960s and 1970s." 

In 1949 upon taking power in Mainland China the communists declared homosexuality a symptom of "bourgeois decadence" and set out to eliminate it.

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 degeneracies.”

It didn't take long for the crackdown.

Gays and Lesbians were gathered up and placed in forced labor camps beginning in 1964 in what they called 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. 

On March 21, 1984 the film "Mauvaise Conduite" was released in France. The film was directed by  Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal.  The title of the film in English is Improper Conduct. It examines the "moral purges" of the Castro regime that began in 1964 with  the UMAPs.

Twenty years later with the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in Cuba the regime rounded up all who were HIV positive. Cuba is the only nation in the world that mandated universal HIV testing and enforced isolation of all virus carriers in detention facilities from 1986 to 1994. 

Mariela Castro, General Raul Castro's daughter, has led efforts to Pinkwash the Castro dictatorship. Saul Landau, a Castro apologist who passed away in 2013, worked on a project that highlighted her efforts, Mariela Castro's March: Cuba's LGBT Revolution.

Gay Pride ended violently by Castro regime in 2019.

The reality that all human rights are nonexistent in Cuba was underscored once more on May 11, 2019 when the hollowness of the Pinkwashing  was revealed with images of gay rights activists beaten down, arrested and taken away for carrying out their annual Gay Pride march in Havana. The Castro regime had arbitrarily decided there would not be one in 2019.

The hatred for Gay dissidents in Cuba by the dictatorship has been documented in the case of Cuban biologist and environmentalist Dr. Ariel Ruiz Urquiola. On November 27, 2019 in a conference hosted by the International Society for Human Rights Dr. Ruiz Urquiola publicly accused the Cuban government of purposely inoculating him with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He addressed the UN Human Rights Council on July 3, 2020 and denounced this cruel and unusual treatment by the Cuban government. On July 12, 2022 a video was released with Professor Ruiz Urquiola demonstrating the evidence that he was injected with HIV by agents of the Cuban government.

Cuba's new Family Code is an attempt to recover on the propaganda front what was lost in 2019, but the underlying nature of the dictatorship remains the same.

International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and Cuba: Providing context and Four cases

Today, June 26th is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and sadly there are many in Cuba who are torture victims. 

The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), defines "torture" as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

On May 13, 2022 the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) published findings on Cuba.

Cuba
With regard to reports of harassment, arbitrary arrests, intimidation, imprisonment, and reprisals against human rights defenders, the Committee urged Cuba to end these practices. The Committee also emphasized the importance of an independent and impartial judicial system.

Concerning the crackdowns on the social protests in July 2021, the Committee urged Cuba to promptly and thoroughly investigate arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and ill-treatment, and punish those responsible. The Committee also called for Cuba to establish a national human rights institution and an independent mechanism to conduct regular unannounced visits to all places where people are deprived of their liberty.

Civil society groups presented a report on torture practices of the Cuban government that is available online, and was presented to UNCAT. Below are some cases of torture in Cuba that stretch back 17 years. This is not an exhaustive list.

Prisoner of conscience forcibly injected with HIV in 2018

Sister and Brother: Omara Ruiz Urquiola and Ariel Ruiz Urquiola

In May 2018, Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was arbitrarily detained, sentenced and jailed from early May to early July 2018. He was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment during his imprisonment when Cuban officials forcibly injected him with HIV. The International Society for Human rights has provided evidence that substantiates the charge, and below is his testimony before the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2020. 

 

Lady in White mistreated by prison doctors, left near death (2018 - 2020) .

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz was arrested on April 16, 2016 for speaking out during a human rights demonstration in Havana's Central park. She was placed on parole in January of 2018. She was re-arrested in mid-September 2018 under the charge of being "threatening." On September 19, 2018 she was tried and sentenced to one year and four months in prison. She was sent to a prison 400 kilometers from her home. This was an added hardship for her family to visit her, and keep an eye on her well being.Xiomara was sent to a punishment cell for at least 10 days for speaking to her daughter over the phone.

Dr. Alfredo Melgar, a specialist in Internal Medicine and lead doctor treating Xiomara Cruz Miranda, in a May 2020 interview, believes that she was exposed while in the Cuban prison to "various chemicals." Cuban doctors in the island, at varying times, told her she was either suffering from Tuberculosis or lung cancer as her condition continued to worsen. Dr. Melgar affirms that these substances had possibly caused irreversible lung damage. 

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz in December 2019

Over the course of one year in custody of the Cuban government her health radically declined. Rashes appeared on her body in June 2019 that Cuban medical doctors in Ciego de Ávila claimed to be unable to diagnose.  She was able to finally obtain medical care in the United States in January 2020 when she was near death, and spent seven months in intensive care in Jackson Memorial Hospital, and was finally well enough to continue her treatment as an outpatient.

 

Cuban dissident subjected to a machete attack, denied adequate medical care as punishment. (2015)

Sirley Avila Leon: Before and after the 2015 machete attack.

Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. Cuban officials removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. 

This attack, she believes, was done on the orders of the secret police. Following it she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.

 

Medical mistreatment of Cuban political prisoner left him permanently disabled (2005).

Omar Pernet Hernández August 15, 1945 - October 7, 2017

Cuban dissident and former prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernández passed away in Louisville, Kentucky on October 7, 2017. Beginning in 1965 at age 18 he was imprisoned for the first time in Cuba for political reasons. 

Years later in an interview he would sum up his life in Cuba: "I was tortured in Castros' jails in four processes since 1965, when I was going to turn 19 years old." During his final imprisonment he described how doctors engaged in malpractice against him following a car accident while he was being transferred from one prison to another that left him crippled.

Omar Pernet: Look, the meaning of this, is that this type of boot that you see here....I will show it to you again. This boot was fitted for me in Cuba and it began to damage my hips because one, the left, is longer than the right. Then, one hip went like this 0:30 (shows the way hip is going up). Then, here in Spain, they said I couldn't go on wearing those boots, and they asked me to cut them down, and told me to make the ones I'm wearing. These I'm wearing now are stabilizing my hips.

INT: "How is it possible, since the Cuban doctors are so excellent normally, at least that's what the Cubans say, and promote throughout the world. That they should be so wrong? And hurt you so much? How many months did you stay that way in Cuba?"

OP: Well, in 2005, on the 5th of April, I began to wear these boots until the 17-18. I stayed like that until the 3rd of March of 2008 using those boots. These I'm wearing now are different, from Spain. " Stands up, 2:06, shows. "The only thing they did was to slap a cast on. They had me on a cast from the tips of my toes up to my neck for 18 months. The doctors here [in Spain] say they don't find any logic to it. That it was intolerable, the amount of time I spent in those conditions. The cast was removed twice, and each time it was to break my leg again." 

Omar Pernet Hernández was 72 years old when he passed away, a victim of cancer. He had spent 22 years in Castro's prisons for defying the communist regime and lived in forced exile for the final nine years of his life.

There are numerous other cases that stretch back six decades, and here are a few presented on this blog: Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros (2020), Silverio Portal Contreras (2020), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Sebastián Arcos Bergnes (1995), and Pedro Luis Boitel (1972).

Oslo Freedom Forum 2020: "We Are Resilient"

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”― Confucius

Twelve  years of Oslo Freedom Forums and this year the organizers are demonstrating their resilience and the resilience of the global human rights movement with a free and virtual forum. Register and share with others.

What you need to know
These talks will run from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EDT on September 24 and 25. You can watch live at oslofreedomforum.com and join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #OsloFF.

September 24, 2020

Session I (9:00 – 9:45 a.m. EDT)

• Gulchehra Hoja, Uyghur journalist
• Mohamed Nagi Alassam, Sudanese doctor and pro-democracy activist
• Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, Thai opposition leader
• Musical performance by the Uyghur Ensemble Orchestra

Session II (10:10 – 11:20 a.m. EDT)

• Masih Alinejad, Iranian journalist and human rights activist
• Christopher Balding, “Who Owns Huawei?” author and professor
• Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, Cuban environmentalist and LGBTQ+ rights activist
• Comedy performance by Ahmed Albasheer, Iraqi comedian and political satirist
• Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister

September 25, 2020

Session III (9:00 – 10:25 a.m. EDT)

• Fatou Toufah Jallow, Gambian anti-rape activist and survivor 
• Bryan Fogel, Oscar-winning film director 
• Lyudmila Savchuk, Russian investigative journalist 
• Nathan Law, Exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist 
• Musical performance by the Uyghur Ensemble Orchestra 

Session IV (10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. EDT)

• Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Square CEO
• Eunhee Park, North Korean defector
• Featured Speaker from Belarus
• Comedy performance by Shabana Rehman, Pakistani comedian

Havel Prize Ceremony (12:00 – 12:30 p.m. EDT)

• Garry Kasparov, Chess grandmaster and HRF Chairman
• Musical performance by 2019 Havel Laureate Ramy Essam

International Day Against Torture and Cuba: Why was Ariel Ruiz Urquiola on a hunger and thirst strike outside of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights?

International Day Against Torture

Ariel Ruiz Urquiola suspended hunger and thirst strike today in Geneva

Today we learned the good news that Ariel Ruiz Urquiola stopped his hunger and thirst strike five days after he had started it. He had been trying to draw the attention of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to speak to him.

 He sat there just a short distance from the Wilson Palace, all day and all night in the street, waiting. What would drive a sane man to such extreme and desperate action? Ariel has a PhD in biology. He is an environmentalist, but because of his independent spirit he was banned from teaching and became a farmer. His sister, Omara Ruiz Urquiola, was also targeted, and in her case life saving treatment was compromised to punish her.

Omara Ruiz Urquiola with her brother Ariel

In May 2018, Ariel was arbitrarily detained, sentenced and jailed from early May to early July 2018. He was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment during his imprisonment. For example, according to him and the Frankfurt based International Society for Human rights, that has examined Ariel's claims, there is convincing evidence that he was infected with HIV by Cuban officials during his time in prison. 

"All the officers of the U.N. Human Rights Office pass by & look at me, including High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, but none asks how I am."

—Cuban environmentalist & former political prisoner Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, on 4th day of hunger strike for human rights victims in Cuba pic.twitter.com/R2y2U9D0cJ

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 25, 2020

Today, June 26th is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and sadly there are many in Cuba who are torture victims. 

The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), defines "torture" as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."  

What allegedly has been done to Ariel Ruiz Urquiola and his sister rises to the level of torture, but they are not alone. There is a history in Cuba of prisoners and dissidents being denied health care as punishment or being purposefully misdiagnosed.

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz Miranda less than a year in a Cuban prison.

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz was arrested on April 16, 2016 for speaking out during a human rights demonstration in Havana's Central park. She was placed on parole in January of 2018. She was re-arrested in mid-September 2018 under the charge of being "threatening." On September 19, 2018 she was tried and sentenced to one year and four months in prison. She was sent to a prison 400 kilometers from her home. This was an added hardship for her family to visit her, and keep an eye on her well being.

Xiomara was sent to a punishment cell for at least 10 days for speaking to her daughter over the phone.

Over the course of one year in custody of the Castro regime her health radically declined. Rashes that appeared on her body in June 2019 that Cuban medical doctors in Ciego de Ávila claimed to be unable to diagnose.  She was able to finally obtain medical care in the United States in January 2020 when she was near death, and has remained months in intensive care.

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz in December 2019

Dr. Alfredo Melgar, a specialist in Internal Medicine and lead doctor treating Xiomara Cruz Miranda, in a May 2020 interview, believes that she was exposed while in the Cuban prison to "various chemicals." Cuban doctors in the island, at varying times, told her she was either suffering from Tuberculosis or lung cancer as her condition continued to worsen. Dr. Melgar affirms that these substances had possibly caused irreversible lung damage.

Sirley Avila Leon: Before and after the attack.

 Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. Cuban officials removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. 

This attack, she believes, was done on the orders of the secret police. Following it she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.

Sirley Avila Leon in 2016 shortly after arriving in the USA unable to bend her knees

On March 8, 2016 she arrived in Miami and began a course of treatments over the next six months during which she was able to walk once again although still limited due to her injuries. She returned to Cuba on September 7, 2016 only to find her home occupied by strangers and her attacker free and bragging that he would finish the job. She moved in with her mother and within a short time a camera and microphone were set up across from her mother's home on a post. 

Sirley Avila Leon in Washington DC in 2019

Threats against Sirley's life intensified leading her to flee Cuba to the United States and request political asylum on October 28, 2016. 

Cuban dissident and former prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernández passed away in Louisville, Kentucky on October 7, 2017. Beginning in 1965 at age 18 he was imprisoned for the first time in Cuba for political reasons. 

Omar Pernet Hernández August 15, 1945 - October 7, 2017

Years later in an interview he would sum up his life in Cuba: "I was tortured in Castros' jails in four processes since 1965, when I was going to turn 19 years old."

During his last imprisonment he described how doctors engaged in malpractice against him following a car accident while he was being transferred from one prison to another that left him crippled.

Omar Pernet: Look, the meaning of this, is that this type of boot that you see here....I will show it to you again. This boot was fitted for me in Cuba and it began to damage my hips because one, the left, is longer than the right. Then, one hip went like this 0:30 (shows the way hip is going up). Then, here in Spain, they said I couldn't go on wearing those boots, and they asked me to cut them down, and told me to make the ones I'm wearing. These I'm wearing now are stabilizing my hips.

INT: "How is it possible, since the Cuban doctors are so excellent normally, at least that's what the Cubans say, and promote throughout the world. That they should be so wrong? And hurt you so much? How many months did you stay that way in Cuba?"

OP: Well, in 2005, on the 5th of April, I began to wear these boots until the 17-18. I stayed like that until the 3rd of March of 2008 using those boots. These I'm wearing now are different, from Spain. " Stands up, 2:06, shows. "The only thing they did was to slap a cast on. They had me on a cast from the tips of my toes up to my neck for 18 months. The doctors here [in Spain] say they don't find any logic to it. That it was intolerable, the amount of time I spent in those conditions. The cast was removed twice, and each time it was to break my leg again." 

Omar Pernet Hernández was 72 years old when he passed away, a victim of cancer. He had spent 22 years in Castro's prisons for defying the communist regime and lived in forced exile for the final nine years of his life. He had been jailed in four different instances beginning with being sent to a forced labor camp for refusing military service, then jailed for trying to first leave Cuba, then jailed again for "enemy propaganda" when he denounced prison conditions, and finally sentenced to 25 years in prison for gathering signatures for Project Varela, a petition drive to reform Cuban laws to bring it in line with international human rights standards.

Cuban torture survivor Amado Rodriguez

These practices began in the first years of the Castro regime. The case of Amado Rodriguez who was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba in 1943 illustrates this. At 13, he joined the 26th of July Movement against the Batista regime and was later sent into exile to save his life. At the height of the revolution, he returned and became an activist against the Castro regime.

He was arrested and spent a total of 23 years as a political prisoner during two different terms. He was 18 years old when he was first arrested in 1961 and sentenced to 30 years, of which he served 18. Four years later, Amado was arrested and sentenced to 15 years. He was released in 1989 and sent directly to the United States after serving five years, four of which he spent in solitary confinement.
Amado Rodriguez was considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. His release was the result of personal visits and petitions to the Cuban government from representatives of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross International, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a US Senator.
 
Amado described how by June of 1985 he was the only "plantado" prisoner at Boniato prison in jail cell #2 a small sealed punishment cell. He was only in underwear isolated without knowing whether it was day or night. Nine months later he was moved to a sealed cell within the Boniato prison were prison officials placed him on a new minimal caloric consumption diet but by October of 1986 since he refused to break he was subjected to the use of handcuffs and placed in stress positions.
 
Physical and psychological torture and the denial of medical care or even water as punishment has proven fatal in the past.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Victim of prolonged torture

Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on February 23, 2010 after years of torture, and a prolonged water only hunger strike.Prison authorities, in an effort to break him, denied him water over the course of more than two weeks on and off. 
 
On the day Orlando Zapata died, Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in a heartfelt message explained the circumstances surrounding the Cuban human rights defender's untimely death: 

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died on this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison guards and State Security. Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park. He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced to more than thirty years in prison.

He was moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. Where according to Amnesty International on October 20, 2003 Orlando was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations.

Reina Luisa Tamayo with her son's blood stained shirt

Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following a brutal beating it was published in April of 2004:

My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to... 

There have been other cases were medical treatment was denied as punishment with fatal results.

Sebastián Arcos Bergnes in front of his home on May 31, 1995 following his release

In 1992 Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Sebastian was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province,  more than 130 miles from Havana, where he was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered Sebastian a deal: He would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

After a prolonged international campaign Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for diagnosing Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care. In 1996, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland:

My name is Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, and I am the Vice-president of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization founded in Cuba in 1976 to observe the respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the island.
On the 15 of January 1992 I was arrested in my home by the Cuban political police; the second time in ten years. On October of that year I was sentenced to 4 years and eight months in prison for the sole crime of reporting to this Commission the violations of human rights committed by the government of my country. The labor of those volunteers of this Commission inside of Cuba are considered by the government as "enemy propaganda."

I will not enter into the details concerning the multiple irregularities of the judicial process always against me, nor about the conditions that I had to tolerate for more than three years. I will refer solely to one aspect of this my last experience in Cuban prisons.
When I was arrested in January of 1992, I enjoyed excellent general health for a man my age, 60 years then. I weighed around 170 pounds, and ran 5 to 6 kilometers every morning. Eight months later, when after a campaign of denunciations of my family I was transferred finally to a military hospital, I'd lost over 30 pounds and suffered from multiple ailments.

My stay in the hospital was not long. In December of 1992 I was transferred to the Prison of Ariza in the Province of Cienfuegos, over 300 km from my home and my relatives. All of the medical treatments indicated by specialists of the military hospital were immediately suspended. During the next 30 months that I spent in Ariza my state of health worsened considerably, and I was systematically denied access to the medications that my family sent me.

During those 30 months only occasionally did I see inexperienced doctors that gave me incomplete medical exams and additionally lacked the medication to prescribe me. I have in my possession a detailed chronology of my repeated denunciations concerning the abandonment of my health by the Cuban authorities.

In February of 1994, in an attempt to refute my denunciations, the Cuban government presented before this Commission a strip of video filmed without my knowledge, in which I appeared to be undergoing a medical exam. That was the second and last time that I was taken to the hospital, that time for a cardiological exam which had been ordered with urgency on three previous occasions.

In mid - 1994 I commenced to suffer pains in my left leg, which later spread to the rest of my extremities. After a rapid examination, a doctor in the prison determined that I suffered from polineutritis -a deficiency illness very common in the Cuban jails, and he prescribed treatment with vitamins. The pain continued with me for nearly a year later when I was liberated as a result of a gesture of the humanitarian organization France Liberte.

A few days after being liberated the pain worsened suddenly. Many weeks later I had to be urgently admitted to the hospital, were a doctor (friend) discovered that I had a malignant tumor in the rectum. Finally I had to leave Cuba to receive medical treatment in Miami, where my children live. The medical team which examined me in Mercy Hospital diagnosed a rectal tumor of 8 cm of diameter, with more than a year and a half of growth, with metastasis in the bones of the pelvis. At only 4 cm from the anal sphincter, the tumor could have been easily detectable with a simple feel of the area which is included in a basic medical exam for any man over 50 years old. Attached here are medical diagnosis which confirm what I've been saying.

These conclusions put the Cuban government in a difficult juncture. Or the Cuban government didn't know of the existence of the tumor, and in that case they recognize that they did not give me adequate medical assistance; or I'm lying and the Cuban government did know about the tumor and hid that knowledge for more than a year.Or the Cuban government recognizes itself guilty of criminal negligence in my case, or it recognizes itself guilty of an attempted premeditated homicide against my person.

Mr. President:

Before I finish, I would like to make clear that mine is not an isolated case, but only an example of the regular practice of Cuban authorities in their treatment of prisoners of conscience. Out of the group of 6 political prisoners liberated by the Cuban government after the requests of France Liberte, only two enjoyed good health. In addition to my own case, Reinaldo Figueredo has cancer in his vocal chords, Luis Enrique Gonzalez Ogra has pancreatic cancer, and Ismael Salvia Ricardo is nearly blind. Terrible nutrition, crowded and unsanitary cells, housing with common violent criminals, violent repression, and reluctant medical assistance - if any- are the norm and not the exception in Cuban prisons.

Because of all this, Mr. President, it is urgent that this Commission demand of the Cuban government that it permit without restriction the International Red Cross to all the Cuban prisons, and that Cuba comply with the international statutes about prisoners and the treatment of prisoners. This is the least we can do in the short run to avoid that cases like mine be repeated, in which medical assistance came-tragically-when it was already far too late.

 Sebastián Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.
 The International Center for Transitional Justice explains on its website that "truth can help victims to find closure by revealing the details of the events they suffered, such as the fate of forcibly disappeared loved ones or why certain people were targeted for abuse. Moreover, knowing the truth about past events enables proper mourning practices, essential to most cultures, helping to achieve personal and communal healing."

Most Cuban victims of torture remain unknown, but there are high profile cases that are the tip of the iceberg. Above is a partial sampling of some of those cases. Others are mentioned in the 1987 documentary Nobody Listened (Nadie Escuchaba) that covered the first three decades of the current regime.


Below, in Spanish are a series of interviews of torture victims in Cuba in 2020. The Castro regime has remained constant in the use of sophisticated methods of torture to maintain power through fear.

Cuba’s treatment of gay people is nothing to celebrate

This is a abbreviated version published today in the Tampa Bay Times responding to a November 30th column backing the quarantine of Cubans with HIV between 1986 and 1997 as a successful policy. The long version was published in this blog on November 30, 2019.

 Health Ministry employees paint AIDS/HIV virus awareness mural in Cuba [J GOITIA | Canadian Press]

Gay rights and Cuba’s bad record

Cuban HIV response saved lives | Column, Nov. 30

This column omits both Fidel Castro’s persecution of gay people over decades and Cuba’s faking of epidemic statistics. In 1964 Fidel and Raul Castro rounded up gay people and sent them to Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), forced labor camps for those suspected of “improper conduct.” Cubans with effeminate mannerisms, what Castro called “extravagant behavior,” were interned. 

The 1986-1997 quarantine of HIV-positive Cubans must be considered in this context. Furthermore, claims that AIDS rates are lower in Cuba should be met with skepticism when considering the dictatorship’s failure to accurately report outbreaks.

In 1997 when dengue broke out, Castro tried to cover it up. When a doctor spoke out, he was locked up, sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza as a prisoner of conscience, and he was released from prison in 1998 under condition he leave Cuba. Castro eventually recognized that there had been a dengue epidemic.

A 2012 cholera outbreak demonstrated how the Cuban public health system operates. News of the outbreak broke on June 29, 2012, thanks to reporting by journalist Calixto Martinez. He too was jailed. 

Thousands of Zika virus cases went unreported in 2017, according to an analysis of data on travelers to Cuba, which said “veiling them may have led to many other cases that year.” According to Avert, an NGO that provides information on HIV worldwide, “nearly 90 percent of new infections in the Caribbean in 2017 occurred in four countries — Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.” 

Worse yet, prisoner of conscience Ariel Ruiz Urquiola accused the Cuban government last week of inoculating him with HIV while in its custody in 2018. Castro-ism’s track record of repressing gay people, faking health statistics and covering up epidemics is nothing to celebrate.

John Suarez, Falls Church, Va.

The writer is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2019/12/02/cubas-treatment-of-gay-people-is-nothing-to-celebrate/

Castro rounded up Gays in the 1960s and HIV positive people in the 1980s, and both times it was wrong.

“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

Pride March shut down by Castro regime's state security on May 11, 2019

The state of Academia in the United States grows more worrisome each year. Imagine for a moment a graduate student in Bioethics and a Professor of Practice in Global Health defending a totalitarian dictatorship rounding up individuals with an illness that is not casually transmitted, while using deceptive propaganda that led others to contract the disease in order to get preferential housing conditions.  Morris Fabbri and Kearsley A. Stewart of Duke University in their November 29, 2019 OpEd "Cuba quarantined people with HIV. It was controversial, but it worked" have done just that in the Tampa Bay Times. Their essay also overlooks both the decades long history of the Cuban government's persecution of Gays and falsifying statistics, and jailing doctors and reporters in order to cover up epidemics.

Cuban government officials inoculated him with HIV in 2018.

 HIV-AIDS is present in Cuba and according to Avert,a UK-based charity that has been providing accurate information about HIV worldwide for over 30 years, "nearly 90% of new infections in the Caribbean in 2017 occurred in four countries - Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica." Worse yet, on Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, a scientist, dissident, and former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience publicly accused the Cuban government on November 27, 2019 of having intentionally inoculated him with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while he was in the prison ward of the Abel Santamaría Hospital last year in Pinar del Río.

It is important to look at the wider context. 

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 degeneracies.”

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.

The statistics and numbers that the international community has access to with relation to the Cuban healthcare system have been manipulated by the Castro regime. Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 described how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality.' She observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights. 

In 1997 when a Dengue epidemic broke out in Cuba the dictatorship tried to cover it up. When a courageous doctor spoke out he was locked up on June 25, 1997 and later sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero as a prisoner of conscience. He was released from prison under condition he went into exile in December of 1998. The regime eventually had to recognize that there had been a dengue epidemic.  

 

In 2012 a cholera outbreak in Cuba presented an opportunity to see how the Cuban public health system operates. News of the outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to reporting by the outlawed independent press in the island. Official media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. BBC News reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with Cholera in Havana. The dictatorship stated that it had it under control. Independent journalist Calixto Martínez was arrested on September 16, 2012 for reporting on the Cholera outbreak, and declared an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

Calixto Martinez: Journalist and prisoner of conscience

In July 2013 an Italian tourist returned from Cuba with severe renal failure due to Cholera. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists have been identified who have contracted cholera in Cuba. 

The publication New Scientist reported on January 8, 2019 that "thousands of Zika virus cases went unreported in Cuba in 2017, according to an analysis of data on travelers to the Caribbean island. Veiling them may have led to many other cases that year."

Rounding up people with HIV in Cuba did not work, and worse yet, according to the above mentioned OpEd the government propaganda was so effective that some Cubans injected themselves with HIV to go into quarantine. The Cuban government has a long track record of repression against Gays and Lesbians, faking health statistics, and covering up epidemics. Repeating Cuban government propaganda is not only a disservice to the truth, but in this case endangers lives.

However on top of a poor analysis, that ignores years of repression against Gays that has continued to the present day and a horror show with regards to public health, the authors are guilty of bad timing with the announcement two days earlier alleging that the Cuban government infected a dissident in 2018 with the HIV virus. 

April 11th marked the 35th anniversary of the release of Improper Conduct, the film that exposed communist intolerance to Gays and Lesbians in Cuba, and documents what happened during the first 30 years of the Castro regime.  Hopefully,  Morris Fabbri and Kearsley A. Stewart will view the documentary to obtain a broader vision of what is really happening in Cuba.