35 years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall did not fall, it was torn down by free Germans

  "It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” Order to Border Guards October 1, 1973.

"If we get shot, will you write about us?" - E. German Student, demonstrating against GDR regime 

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Thirty five years ago tomorrow the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961. with barbed-wire fence followed by a 100-mile wall and more than 300 watchtowers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

With their courage & desire for freedom, the people of the #GDR brought down the #BerlinWall-which we will be celebrating tomorrow! The division of #Germany 🇩🇪 is history. The commitment to #freedom is more important today than ever. Freedom cannot be taken for granted.… pic.twitter.com/gRmhbR9VmF

— GIC Africa (@GermanyInAfrica) November 8, 2024

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down, at least 140 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is the Berlin Wall Museum, which offers a complete listing of the 140 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

We should also remember those who celebrated or ignored this scar that ran through the heart of Germany for 28 years and defended or rationalized the murder of unarmed civilians while hobnobbing with the East German leadership. What is their moral responsibility for these horrors?

Fidel Castro on the Berlin Wall in 1972

Fidel Castro's first visit to Berlin began on June 13, 1972 and at various points, the Cuban dictator addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. At Brandenburg Gate on June 14 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." Later in the evening, Premier 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.

Later in the same speech Mr. Castro offered his take on what he saw there and the prospects for the future:

We have no doubt that a great political and revolutionary victory has been won in the GDR. You have created the foundations for the future, a truly revolutionary state, a border state to whom the future belongs. You are the new generation, which will continue this work.

He spent most of his time there, accompanied by Erich Honecker, who, as Central Committee secretary for security matters in 1961, was in charge of constructing the Berlin Wall and, by 1971, had become the dictator of East Germany through a power struggle and Soviet support the de facto head of state.

Erich Honecker and Angela Davis in 1972

Angela Davis also paid visits to East Germany (in 1965 and 1972).  During her 1972 visit, she was received by Erich Honecker. She celebrated the East German communist regime and refused to criticize, or recognize its shortcomings on human rights. She refused to make any mention of the Berlin Wall in her autobiography.

This practice extended beyond East Germany.

Angela Davis also visited Cuba in 1972, and Fidel Castro made her an honorary member of the infamous Committee in the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Neighborhood committees that spied on Cubans to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship.

Innocent people were being killed in Germany until 1989, and are still massacred in Cuba today.

 

Chris Gueffroy killed at the Berlin Wall on Feb 5, 1989

 

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy, was born on June 21, 1968, and shot dead by East German border guards on February 5, 1989, while trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies "Harmonie" and "Sorgenfrei" on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 20, he was executed for the crime of wishing to live in freedom. 

A memorial column in memory of Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.  

Memorial Column for Chris Gueffroy

The process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas, nonviolent resistance, and international solidarity. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped, but others paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past."

Thirty five years have passed, and the words of the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel remain relevant for our times, and in defiance of the inhumanity represented by the Berlin Wall. In 2003, he addressed a gathering at Florida International University that was prescient.

"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."

The legacy of the Berlin Wall reverberates strongly among Cubans because, since 1959, the Florida Straits have been turned into a killing zone by the communist regime in Cuba, along with the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base.  

Finally, let us denounce the watery Berlin Wall in the Florida Straights created by the Castro regime that continues to kill Cubans seeking freedom. Less than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 13, 1994, thirty-seven Cubans were massacred for trying to flee Cuba. The most recent massacre in Cuba occurred a little over two years ago, on October 28, 2022, killing seven Cubans, including a two-year-old.

 

However, we must commemorate the tremendous days of liberation that took place in the heart of Europe in 1989, the winds of change that emancipated tens of millions of people, and the fact that these free societies are still flourishing in freedom after 35 years.

While honoring and remembering tomorrow the events and heroes of November 9, 1989, I will also remember the struggle for liberty and justice never ends.  

From Ukraine, to Taiwan, to Venezuela, to Cuba, and too many other places around the world the struggle for freedom continues. 

34 years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall did not fall, it was torn down by free Germans

  "It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” Order to Border Guards October 1, 1973.

"If we get shot, will you write about us?" - E. German Student, demonstrating against GDR regime 

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Thirty four years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961. with barbed-wire fence followed by a 100-mile wall and more than 300 watchtowers to spot and shoot escapeesand the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

On this day, 34 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. This video helps to explain why this was a liberation for the people of communist East Berlin. pic.twitter.com/72yXuLVnNG

— Communist Terror (@CommunistTerror) November 9, 2023

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down, at least 140 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is the Berlin Wall Museum, which offers a complete listing of the 140 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

We should also remember those who celebrated or ignored this scar that ran through the heart of Germany for 28 years and defended or rationalized the murder of unarmed civilians while hobnobbing with the East German leadership. What is their moral responsibility for these horrors?

Fidel Castro on the Berlin Wall in 1972

Fidel Castro's first visit to Berlin began on June 13, 1972 and at various points, the Cuban dictator addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. At Brandenburg Gate on June 14 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." Later in the evening, Premier 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.

Later in the same speech Mr. Castro offered his take on what he saw there and the prospects for the future:

We have no doubt that a great political and revolutionary victory has been won in the GDR. You have created the foundations for the future, a truly revolutionary state, a border state to whom the future belongs. You are the new generation, which will continue this work.

He spent most of his time there, accompanied by Erich Honecker, who, as Central Committee secretary for security matters in 1961, was in charge of constructing the Berlin Wall and, by 1971, had become the dictator of East Germany through a power struggle and Soviet support the de facto head of state.

Erich Honecker and Angela Davis in 1972

Angela Davis also paid visits to East Germany (in 1965 and 1972).  During her 1972 visit, she was received by Erich Honecker. She celebrated the East German communist regime and refused to criticize, or recognize its shortcomings on human rights. She refused to make any mention of the Berlin Wall in her autobiography.

This practice extended beyond East Germany.

Angela Davis also visited Cuba in 1972, and Fidel Castro made her an honorary member of the infamous Committee in the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Neighborhood committees that spied on Cubans to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship.

Innocent people were being killed in Germany until 1989, and are still massacred in Cuba today.

 

Chris Gueffroy killed at the Berlin Wall on Feb 5, 1989

 

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy, was born on June 21, 1968, and shot dead by East German border guards on February 5, 1989, while trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies "Harmonie" and "Sorgenfrei" on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 20, he was executed for the crime of wishing to live in freedom. 

A memorial column in memory of Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.  

Memorial Column for Chris Gueffroy

The process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas, nonviolent resistance, and international solidarity. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped, but others paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past."

Thirty four years have passed, and the words of the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel remain relevant for our times, and in defiance of the inhumanity represented by the Berlin Wall. In 2003, he addressed a gathering at Florida International University that was prescient.

"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."

The legacy of the Berlin Wall reverberates strongly among Cubans because, since 1959, the Florida Straits have been turned into a killing zone by the communist regime in Cuba, along with the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base.  

Finally, let us denounce the watery Berlin Wall in the Florida Straights created by the Castro regime that continues to kill Cubans seeking freedom. Less than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 13, 1994, thirty-seven Cubans were massacred for trying to flee Cuba. The most recent massacre in Cuba occurred a little over a year ago, on October 28, 2022, killing seven Cubans, including a two-year-old.

 

However, we must commemorate the tremendous days of liberation that took place in the heart of Europe in 1989, the winds of change that emancipated tens of millions of people, and the fact that these free societies are still flourishing in freedom after 34 years.

While honoring and remembering tonight the events and heroes of November 9, 1989, I will also remember the struggle for liberty and justice never ends. 

Remembering when the Berlin Wall went up 62 years ago. Castro's visit in 1972 and how the Florida Straits were turned into a watery Berlin Wall

 The Berlin Wall and the Florida Straits: Deadly barriers to freedom

 Sixty two years ago today, in the early morning hours of August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall went up and divided the old German capital city in two.  Western manufacturers provided the 150 tons of coiled barb wire to imprison East Germans behind the Berlin Wall for an entire generation.

 

In East Germany there are 136 documented cases of German civilians killed by East German border guards between 1961 and 1989 with their names provided. An estimated 1,000 were killed trying to cross.  

Nighttime wall-building on Aug. 13, 1961.  Photo: Rue des Archives/GRANGER

The East German government had given a clear Order to Border Guards on October 1, 1973 that left no doubt to their criminal nature:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West.

Castro encouraged East German border guards in their deadly work

 

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." Later in the evening Premier 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.

The state security apparatus in Cuba was trained by the East German intelligence service, known as the Stasi, the most brutal security apparatus behind the Iron Curtain rivaling the Soviet KGB in brutality and surpassing it in its espionage capabilities.  

The Castro regime and the East German communist regime had a close relationship for three decades. John O. Koehler on page 297 of his book Stasi: the untold story of the East German secret police outlined the relationship between the Cuban and East German intelligence services.

"The Stasi's first major task abroad was in Cuba, after Fidel Castro and Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan signed the Soviet-Cuban pact on February 13, 1960, officially placing Cuba in the Soviet bloc. As Soviet arms shipments began, Mielke sent a number of Stasi officers of General Wolf's HVA to Havana. Led by Colonel Siegfried Fiedler, they assisted in setting up what became a first-rate intelligence service and an oppressive secret police. As a result Cuba's relations with East Germany developed as closely as those with the Soviet Union. Intelligence gathered in the United States by the Cubans was routinely shared with the Stasi. Much of the information contained in the dossier the Stasi maintained on President Ronald Reagan, for example, originated with the Cubans."

The Stasi enforced control at the Berlin Wall, and the Cubans who were trained by them, applied these skills in the Florida Straits and on the border with the Guantanamo Naval base killing many Cubans.

The actions of Cuban border patrols on July 13, 1994, and instances such as the June 1993 use of machine gun fire and hand grenades on defenseless swimmers trying to reach the U.S. Guantanamo Naval base are not aberrations. 

These were not isolated incidents, talking to Cubans randomly in Miami one hears accounts of others who died in the same manner trying to flee the island over the past six decades. It just happened to be one of the few times when it was properly documented and an official complaint lodged.

The men responsible for the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre where given medals and described as heroes by Fidel Castro. This should not be a surprise when considering that he had praised the East German border guards that carried out orders to kill men, women, and children whose sole “crime” was trying to reach freedom on the other side of the Berlin Wall. 

Chris Gueffroy born 1968 and killed at the Berlin Wall 1989

Killings at the Berlin Wall continued until it was torn down in 1989. One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Murdered at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. 

The killings in Cuba continue to the present day, and like in East Germany, to end the homicides will require a change of system. 

33 years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall did not fall, it was torn down by free Germans

 "It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” Order to Border Guards October 1, 1973.

"If we get shot, will you write about us?" - E. German Student, demonstrating against GDR regime 

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Thirty three years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961. with barbed-wire fence followed by a 100-mile wall and more than 300 watchtowers to spot and shoot escapeesand the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down, at least 140 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is the Berlin Wall Museum, which offers a complete listing of the 140 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

We should also remember those who celebrated or ignored this scar that ran through the heart of Germany for 28 years and defended or rationalized the murder of unarmed civilians while hobnobbing with the East German leadership. What are their moral responsibility for these horrors?

Fidel Castro on the Berlin Wall in 1972

Fidel Castro's first visit to Berlin began on June 13, 1972 and at various points, the Cuban dictator addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. At Brandenburg Gate on June 14 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." Later in the evening, Premier 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.

Later in the same speech Mr. Castro offered his take on what he saw there and the prospects for the future:

We have no doubt that a great political and revolutionary victory has been won in the GDR. You have created the foundations for the future, a truly revolutionary state, a border state to whom the future belongs. You are the new generation, which will continue this work.

He spent most of his time there, accompanied by Erich Honecker, who, as Central Committee secretary for security matters in 1961, was in charge of constructing the Berlin Wall and, by 1971, had become the dictator of East Germany through a power struggle and Soviet support the de facto head of state.

Erich Honecker and Angela Davis in 1972

Angela Davis also paid visits to East Germany (in 1965 and 1972).  During her 1972 visit, she was received by Erich Honecker. She celebrated the East German communist regime and refused to criticize, or recognize its shortcomings on human rights. She refused to make any mention of the Berlin Wall in her autobiography.

This practice extended beyond East Germany.

Angela Davis also visited Cuba in 1972, and Fidel Castro made her an honorary member of the infamous Committee in the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Neighborhood committees that spied on Cubans to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship.

Innocent people were being killed in Germany until 1989, and are still massacred in Cuba today.

Chris Gueffroy killed at the Berlin Wall on Feb 5, 1989

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy, was born on June 21, 1968, and shot dead by East German border guards on February 5, 1989, while trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies "Harmonie" and "Sorgenfrei" on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 20, he was executed for the crime of wishing to live in freedom. 

A memorial column in memory of Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.  

Memorial Column for Chris Gueffroy

The process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas, nonviolent resistance, and international solidarity. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped, but others paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past."

Thirty years have passed, and the words of the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel remain relevant for our times, and in defiance of the inhumanity represented by the Berlin Wall. In 2003, he addressed a gathering at Florida International University that was prescient.

"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."

The Berlin Wall reverberates strongly among Cubans because, since 1959, the Florida Straits have been turned into a killing zone by the communist regime in Cuba, along with the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base.  

Finally, let us denounce the watery Berlin Wall in the Florida Straights created by the Castro regime that continues to kill Cubans seeking freedom. Less than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 13, 1994, thirty-seven Cubans were massacred for trying to flee Cuba. The most recent massacre in Cuba occurred less than two weeks ago, on October 28, 2022, killing seven Cubans, including a two-year-old. 

However, we must commemorate the tremendous days of freedom that took place in the heart of Europe in 1989, the winds of change that emancipated tens of millions of people, and the fact that these free societies are still flourishing and enduring after 33 years.

While I am honoring and remembering tonight the events of November 9, 1989, the fight for liberty and justice never really ends. 

Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro is still dead. Ten reasons why this is a good thing.

 With apologies to Chevy Chase and Saturday Night Live

Fidel Castro's gone but when will the dictatorship he created follow him?

 

Five years ago the dictatorship in Cuba announced that Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro had died. Today one can say with full confidence that Fidel Castro is still dead. 

 

This blog entry will list ten reasons why this is a good thing.

1. Lied his way into power. Fidel Castro, secretly a communist since at least 1950, lied to Cubans and the world that he would restore the 1940 Constitution and democracy in Cuba. Castro arrived in Havana in January of 1959 and immediately set upon consolidating power and erecting a totalitarian, communist dictatorship. On December 2, 1961  Castro explained the reason for the lie: "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."  Communism and the communist party were deeply unpopular in Cuba because of its links to the Batista regime.

Matos and Chanes fought with Castro but jailed for questioning communist infiltration

2. Used terror and killed thousands to stay in power. While Fidel Castro talked democracy in 1959 the firing squads were filmed and broadcast and the terror began to consolidate control. Those who had fought by his side in good faith believing the Revolution was a struggle to restore democracy became uneasy with the course of the new regime. Some, like Huber Matos, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, and Mario Chanes de Armas who spoke out spent decades in prison. Many returned to the hills of the Escambray to carry on the struggle for the democratic restoration. This resistance was crushed in 1966 after five years of assistance from 400 Soviet counterinsurgency advisors.

Executed by firing squad in Santiago de Cuba by the Castro regime in 1959

 

3. Killed tens of thousands. The Black Book of Communism states that in Cuba between 1959 thru the late 1990s between 15,000 and 17,000 Cubans were shot. Rudolph Joseph Rummel, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii and an expert in Democide (murder by government) also takes into account the Cuban boat people who have died fleeing the dictatorship and estimates 73,000 dead Cubans between 1959 and 1987. Without opening up archives on the island and an exhaustive search the full number of victims may never be known.

Raul Castro preparing one of his victims for execution

 

4. Twice tried to start WWIII. Fidel Castro twice called on the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear first strike on the United States and plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. The first time was during the October 1962 Missile Crisis in a letter to Nikita Khrushchev and the second time in the early 1980s were Castro pressed the Soviets hard for a nuclear strike against the United States. This revelation became public knowledge on September 21, 2009 and The New York Times quotes the source:

Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning is quoted in the early 1980s, saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.” The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”

Castro encouraged East German border guards in their deadly work

 

5. Celebrated border guards killing fleeing migrants. Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. 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." Later in the evening Premier 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.

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

 

6. Backed genocide in Ethiopia. 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."

7. Sent troops take part in genocide. 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 the Mengistu and his Cuban allies. 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."

 

Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

 

Both Fidel and Raul Castro were deeply involved in sending 17,000 Cuban troops to East Africa in assisting Mengistu in consolidating his rule and eliminating actual and potential opposition. The last Cuban troops did not leave Ethiopia until 1989 and were present and complicit in the engineered famine that took place there in the 1980s. Donald R. Katz in the September 21, 1978 Rolling Stone article "Ethiopia After the Revolution: Vultures Return to the Land of Sheba" gave the following description of the wave of terror and repression unleashed by Mengistu.

"Toward the middle of last year [1977], Mengistu pulled out all the stops. "It is an historical obligation," he said then, "to clean up vigilantly using the revolutionary sword." He announced that the shooting was about to start and that anyone in the middle would be caught in the cross fire. In what came to be known as the "Red Terror," he proceeded to round up all those who opposed the military regime. According to Amnesty International, the Dergue killed over 10,000 people by the end of the year. One anti-government party, mostly made up of students and teachers, was singled out as 'the opposition.'"

 Human Rights Watch in their 2008 report on Ethiopia titled outlined "Collective Punishment War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region" some of the practices carried out by Cuban troops sent there by Fidel and Raul Castro excerpted below: 

Africa Watch (the precursor to Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division) analyzed Ethiopian counter-insurgency operations in this period and found that they followed a four-pronged approach: i) the forced displacement of much of the civilian population into shelters and protected villages; ii) military offensives against people and economic assets outside the shelters; iii) the sponsoring of insurgent groups against the WSLF and Somali government; and iv) attempts to promote the repatriation of refugees. In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”

Manuel Noriega and Fidel Castro: Partners in drug trafficking

 8. Fidel Castro linked to international drug trafficking.  The U.S. State Department on March 1, 1982 declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism whose government was was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government. During General Manuel Noriega's 1992 trial information emerged publicly implicating the Castro brothers as the Sun Sentinel reported at the time:

"Federal prosecutors say Noriega traveled to Havana to ask [Fidel] Castro to mediate a potentially deadly dispute with top members of Colombia`s Medellin cocaine cartel. They say the cartel chiefs were upset because a major drug lab had been seized in Panama despite payment of millions of dollars in protection money to Noriega.
According to the Noriega indictment, Castro negotiated a peace accord between the cartel and Noriega at the 1984 meeting. The allegation forms a cornerstone of the racketeering and drug trafficking charges against Noriega."

 At the same time convicted cartel leader Carlos Lehder directly implicated Raul Castro and U.S. fugitive Robert Vesco "to route cocaine flights through Cuba." Capitol Hill Cubans blogged how two years later, a federal indictment listed General Raul Castro as part of a conspiracy that smuggled seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period but the Clinton administration overruled prosecutors. Regime continues to engage in such practices in the present.

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Raul Castro

 

9. Fidel Castro spent decades trying to overthrow democracy in Venezuela before succeeding with Hugo Chavez and then sought to consolidate a totalitarian regime in the South American country. The Castro regime's interest in Venezuela began from the earliest days of the dictatorship. Venezuelans understood the threat poised by the Cubans by 1960 when Ernesto "Che" Guevara was giving unsolicited advice to Rómulo Betancourt, the democratically elected president of Venezuela. Guevara called for Betancourt to use the firing squad against his "rightist opponents." In 1963 Congressional Quarterly reported on how:

"Riots led by Communists and other pro-Castro elements in Caracas [in the autumn of 1960] took the lives of 13 persons and injured 100. Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Cuba, and Betancourt ordered out the army to end the rioting, which he termed an attempt to “install a regime similar to that in Cuba.”

Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca, told a Havana rally on January 23, 1963 that when the communists gained full control and “make themselves owners of the great riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all of America shall burn.”  A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there. 

 

Fidel Castro would continue to agitate for revolution in Venezuela. A well documented incident occurred on May 8, 1967 and was reported by Francisco Toro in The Washington Post who described how: "two small boats carrying a dozen heavily armed fighters made landfall near Machurucuto, a tiny fishing village 100 miles east of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Their plan was to march inland and recruit Venezuelan peasants to the cause of socialist revolution." An all night gun battle with the Venezuelan military led to nine guerrillas dead, two captured, and one who had escaped.
The Castro regime's efforts would not begin to bear fruit until December 1994 with the arrival of Hugo Chavez in Havana to a hero's welcome following two years in prison for a coup attempt in Venezuela. Four years later Chavez had won the presidency of Venezuela and the Castro regime finally had its entry to Venezuela.  By 2007, Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.”  When Hugo Chavez died in 2013 the succession to Nicolas Maduro was planned in Havana.

 

The name of this "single nation" is Cubazuela and is a term that has been used by mainstream press publications such as The Wall Street Journal. The consequences to the people of Venezuela are well known. Violence has escalated during the Chavez-Maduro era to levels never seen before. There is widespread hunger now in Venezuela. Civil liberties and the rule of law are rapidly disappearing.

 

NY Daily News Photo By Harry Hamburg 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing committed by Cuban backed FALN

 

10. Fidel Castro has a long and shameful history of sponsoring and taking part in terrorism including utilizing the tactic in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista. On New Year’s Eve in 1956 members of Castro's 26th of July movement set off bombs in the Tropicana nightclub, blowing off the arm of a seventeen-year-old girl. From bombings, killings, and arson in 1957 to a botched hijacking to smuggle weapons to the Cuban guerrillas that led to 14 dead and the night of the 100 bombs in 1958 . The organizer of the bombing campaign Sergio González López nicknamed “El Curita” and the terrorist action itself are remembered fondly by the dictatorship that named a park in his honor along with a plaque pictured below. Regime apologists now deny that anyone was wounded or killed but the memories of those who lived through this say otherwise. González López was captured, tortured, and killed by agents of the Batista dictatorship on March 18, 1958. A pro-Cuban dictatorship website recalls some of El Curita's actions:

“He actively participated in the actions of the burning of Standard Oil; the bombing of Bejucal Railway Station cable, the cable from the Bus Station, the explosion of Vento, in the action of the Tunnel and the explosion of 120 coordinated bombings in Havana, which in a telephone phone call on this occasion to the chief of police, he told him “Coward, prepare your ear tonight ... we are going to explode 100 bombs under your own noses.”

The Castro regime has practiced, trained, and even published manuals with chapters on how to engage in terrorism and to never renounce it, and on more than one occasion targeted the United States.

 

Plaque erected by Castro regime to honor bomber Sergio González López “El Curita”

 

The Castro regime organized a 1966 gathering called the Tricontinental Conference where Fidel Castro insisted that "conditions exist for an armed revolutionary struggle." The aim of the Tricontinental, according to Georges Fauriol in the book Cuba:the international dimension, was to promote violent revolution in Africa and Asia as well as Latin America: “At this conference, Cuba and Latin American Marxist Leninist terrorist groups began their collaboration with black militant groups in the United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other radical Arab groups in the training and arming of terrorists."

Gerardo Jorge Schamís in his book War and terrorism in international affairs describes how in the summer of 1975 the disappearance of “Carlos” who killed his assistant and two members of the French secret service led to the expulsion of three Cuban diplomats from Paris and greater surveillance of the activities of Cuban agents in Europe. According to Jorge Schamís the terrorists had concealed their “modus operandi” since 1976 in Paris in offices of the Revolutionary Coordination Board (JCR) which on the surface sought to obtain solidarity from European democracies to condemn authoritarian regimes in Latin America but in reality it was a documentation center producing forged passports; raise money for clandestine operations and were connected to terrorist training camps in Cuba: 

“opened in 1966 by the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) , the Cuban regime's main intelligence agency, under the supervision of the Soviet KGB after the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, to "organize anti-imperialist forces.”

There are links between the Cuban dictatorship and international terrorists such as Uruguayan Tupamaros, the Argentinian Montoneros and ERP , the Chilean MIR, the M19, a Colombian guerilla group that captured the Dominican embassy and Justice building in Bogota assasinating several prominent judges, FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) in 2003, the FARC conducted a February car-bombing of a Bogota nightclub that killed more than 30 persons and wounded more than 160, the Basque terrorist/separatist organization ETA, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which has its Latin American headquarters in Havana and has been linked with the FARC.

The Castro dictatorship a few years later had Cuban agents assisting the Macheteros (FALN) who committed terrorist attacks and bank robberies in the United States including bombings; among them the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York which killed four instantly and injured 63. On December 31, 1982, New York City was the scene of a wave of bombings by the Macheteros (FALN): Federal Courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza; a Police Officer at One Police Plaza lost part of his leg when another bomb went off there; a bomb tore into the Federal Courthouse at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn; two other devices were discovered in St. Andrew's Plaza beside the Federal Courthouse at Foley Square, the NYPD Bomb Squad sealed off the area and was preparing to disarm the device when it exploded severely injuring two officers were. In 1983 the Cuban government provided financial and logistical support for the Wells Fargo armored car robbery which netted the Macheteros $7.1 million dollars of which $2 million made its way back to Cuba via a diplomatic pouch. The whole story is detailed in a Hartford Courant investigative piece published in 1999. Oscar López Rivera, one of the leaders of the Macheteros, granted clemency by President Obama on January 17, 2017 was honored in Cuba with the Order of Solidarity in November of 2017 and he called on the world to emulate Fidel Castro.

 

These are ten reasons and there are many more that have been documented in this blog among them: massacres of fleeing refugees (1993, 1994); the extrajudicial killings of four members of Brothers to the Rescue in the shoot down (1996); and the extrajudicial killings of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero(2012). Fidel Castro is dead, but the regime he built continues to cause harm, and Mr. López Rivera is wrong the world should reject the harmful example of Fidel Castro and his terrible legacy of lies, terror, murder and complicity in genocide.