Déjà vu: Tech firms building the perfect cage in Cuba today as they did in China in the 1990s?

"Companies like Facebook and Google must step up to combat undemocratic forces ... to stop being co-conspirators in their schemes. These companies don’t want to share responsibility or recognize that they are undermining the foundations of the free world." - Gary Kapsparov, Oslo Freedom Forum May 27, 2019

Google's Eric Schmidt signs agreement with the Castro regime in December 2016

News abounds about the internet in Cuba and the latest hype is about the Cuban government "legalizing private WiFi networks" and that "internet restrictions are crumbling," but  the Castro regime's telecom monopoly, Etecsa, remains the only internet provider in the archipelago of islands.

Despite this reality their are voices that insist progress towards freedom in Cuba comes from the economic empowerment of the dictatorship while calling it euphemistically "economic democratization." 

Cuba Internet Taskforce
The State Department's Cuba Internet Taskforce formed in early 2018 was split up into two working groups.

One was composed of human rights organizations and focused on recommendations to improve rights standards and freedoms in Cuba. This working group recognized the Castro regime as "the main obstacle to the free flow of information in Cuba due to its deliberate restrictions" and called for U.S. regulations to strengthen restrictions for filtering and surveillance-related technologies.

This was in stark contrast to the other.

The second was a working group composed of technology firms and industry representatives focused on modernizing and expanding Cuba's internet infrastructure. They also recommended reducing barriers to the export of U.S. technology, subsidizing with taxpayer dollars building up the Castro regime's technological foundation, and companies engaging in a dialogue with the dictatorship.

"Companies like @Facebook and @Google must step up to combat undemocratic forces ... to stop being co-conspirators in their schemes. These companies don’t want to share responsibility or recognize that they are undermining the foundations of the free world." -@Kasparov63 #OsloFF

— Jeffrey Smith (@Smith_JeffreyT) May 27, 2019

Google's troubling history in Cuba
Capitol Hill Cubans on April 7, 2016 reported the following on the presence of Google in Cuba and how engagement with the regime manifests itself:

Reports from Cuba have noted that the center has been given priority use by Ministry of the Interior ('MININT') officials and trainees. The MININT is home to Castro's intelligence services. Thus, the Google + Kcho Mor center has become a playground for Cuba's spies and future cyber-warriors. Furthermore, after passing various security checks, when regular Cubans finally get to enter the center, they are treated to censored online access. Webpages like Cubaencuentro, Revolico and 14ymedio remain blocked. Thus, Google has now officially become an extension of Cuba's censors.

This led to a coalition of independent Cuban civil society organizations gathered in Puerto Rico in 2016 to condemn Google for siding with their oppressor.

"Denounced the indifference of the company Google in violation of its code of corporate conduct and demanded that it establish a correct policy to provide wireless internet service with no censorship and without dependence on the regime in benefit of the Cuban people."

On December 13, 2016 Google signed an agreement with the Castro regime to speed up faster access to the "companies branded content."  Marta Dhanis, a news correspondent, who visited Cuba to see first hand if there has been an improvement in internet access, following Google's partnering up with the Cuban dictatorship, and talked to Cubans inside the island and authored the January 25, 2017 article, "Google entering Cuba is 'Trojan Horse' that could reinforce regime, residents say." A Cuban academic outlined what the internet was becoming in the island:

“We call the internet a ‘Trojan Horse.’ The success of this government has been possible thanks to the people’s lack of information,” said a 57-year-old retired professor who requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the communist regime. “I would have a patrol car at my door tomorrow to monitor my life,” he said. On the other hand, he and others contend, this Trojan Horse is also providing the communist regime with technology that will empower the secret police with detailed reports of the users’ searches and profiles, right down to their location.

Google is working closely with ETESCA, the Castro regime's tech monopoly (that has blocked e-mails of the Ladies in White), and the tech company is now even copying the Cuban dictatorship's strategy of blaming the U.S. embargo for their own bad actions.

On July 22, 2017 Rosa María Payá Acevedo tweeted that CubaDecide was banned in Cuba, describing it as "the error with which Google joins censorship in Cuba."

Google's Brett Perlmutter in a tweet blamed the U.S. embargo.  Former Bush Administration official Jose Cardenas contested Perlmutter's claims tweeting "that is simply NOT true. No US regs block websites in Cuba." Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal set the record straight in her August 27, 2017 column "Google’s Broken Promise to Cubans" after following up with Google and the ISP:

Mr. Perlmutter did not cite any provision of the U.S. embargo that requires the blocking of a nonprofit citizens’ initiative—because there is no such provision. On Wednesday a Google spokesperson told me “we can’t say for sure what’s causing the issue with that site but it isn’t something we’re doing on our end . . . If you want more details, I recommend you check with the ISP.”

By Friday the company was no longer blaming the ISP. Instead, Google told me—in a paradox that must be delicious for Castro—that it is Cuba Decide’s use of Google’s Project Shield that is causing the problem. The shield is offered at no charge for “news sites and free expression” against “distributed denial-of-service” attacks. When it is used, it triggers the use of Google’s App Engine even if Google is not the website’s host—which it isn’t in this case—and Cubans cannot access the site.

Google distanced itself from Perlmutter's statements saying they “do not represent an official Google position” and that the content of his tweet was made “before all the facts of the specific situation were known." 

It is not only tech companies that have collaborated with the dictatorship.

European backsliding on democracy in Cuba
The European Union chose dialogue and engagement with the Castro regime and seeks now to redefine the oldest dictatorship in the Americas declaring “Cuba is a one-party democracy, in which elections take place at municipal, provincial and national level.”  The EU ignores that these are neither free or fair elections, and only municipal assemblies offer a choice of more than one candidate per office (but no campaigning or dissenting candidates that depart from the official line).

The European Union will now seize the assets of those seeking redress for their stolen properties in Cuba to deter action against European firms trafficking in stolen properties.

All of this should give one a sense of déjà vu. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," observed the Spanish scholar, George Santayana. What many  would like to do in Cuba today was tried in China before.

Tiananmen Square prior to the June 4, 1989 crackdown and massacre

Déjà vu
Both Europe and the United States normalized the communist dictatorship in China, and agreed on a policy that subsidized and guaranteed investments in China beginning in the 1970s. Furthermore technology firms and industry led the way collaborating with the Chinese regime in developing ther internet  on the Chinese mainland with the argument that "economic democratization" would lead to political democratization.

Consider the following.

China Education and Research Network's January 1, 2001 article on "Evolution of Internet in China" reveals the origins of China's Internet in the early 1990s when it was known as the Chinanet. In September of 1994, China Telecom and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown signed a Sino-American Internet agreement. Under the agreement, China Telecom would open two 64K dedicated circuits in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively, through Sprint Co. of the United States.

During a debate over the Export-Import Bank in the U.S. Congress in 1999 it was revealed that the People’s Republic of China received billions in credits and this practice continued and expanded into the 2000s. This government subsidized trade guaranteed by the US taxpayer helped to modernize and empower Chinese totalitarianism.

Who Lost China?
Ethan Gutmann answered the question "Who Lost China's Internet?" in 2002 in The Weekly Standard with some unpleasant facts: 

"In China, the government had a unique problem: how to keep a billion people from accessing politically sensitive Web sites, now and forever. . . .To force compliance with government objectives—to ensure that all pipes lead back to Rome—they needed the networking superpower, Cisco, to standardize the Chinese Internet and equip it with firewalls on a national scale. According to the Chinese engineer, Cisco came through, developing a router device, integrator, and firewall box specially designed for the government’s telecom monopoly.

Not be left behind in the race to engage with Chinese totalitarians were Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft who cooperated with the Chinese Communist regime in screening out search terms such as freedom, democracy, human rights or anything connected with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Meanwhile AOL, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems disseminated government propaganda backing China Internet Corp., part of the state-run Xinhua news agency. 

U.S. Tech Companies' repressive role in China
Nortel provided wraparound software for voice and closed-circuit camera recognition, technology that the Public Security Bureau put to good use, according to the Chinese press. Others, according to Reporters Without Borders, such as Yahoo, served as "police informants" identifying dissidents who use the internet to access pro-democracy information or express an opinion to the Chinese authorities. 

Many ended up imprisoned, tortured, or dead. For example both Wang Xiaoning (arrested in 2003) and Shi Tao (arrested in 2005) served 10-year prison sentences in China, and sued Yahoo. Wang Xiaoning because Yahoo provided information that led to his arrest in September 2003 and torture by the Chinese government. Shi Tao joined the lawsuit on May 29, 2007. According to USA Today, “Yahoo has acknowledged turning over data on Shi at the request of the Chinese government.”

 Amnesty International identified 33 prisoners of conscience who had been detained in 2001-2002 for using the Internet to circulate or download information. Three have died while in custody and they are: Chen Qiulan age 47 female detained on July 2001 and died in custody on 24 August 2001; Li Changjun age 33 male detained on May 16, 2001 on a charge of subversion and died in custody on June 27, 2001; and Xue Hairong (age unknown) male detained on March 1, 2001 and sentenced to 7 years in prison reportedly died of leukemia while in custody on March 22, 2001. Amnesty International hasn’t been able to independently confirm the information about his death or if he had access to medical treatment.

Yahoo settled the China torture lawsuit in November of 2007.


Thirty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre and twenty five years after the internet was opened up in China the youth "have large blind spots in their knowledge of the world and their country" and this includes the events that took place during June of 1989. Some media accounts have described it as amnesia. Chinese students studying abroad, after learning what happened, took the brave stand calling for transparency in 2015.

Apple censors music with references to Tiananmen

Sadly, these students have far more courage and moral stature than U.S. tech firms. In April 2019 Apple censored music to comply with Chinese government censors, including a song with lyrics that referred to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest.

Technology firms and industry representatives did in China what they are looking to repeat in Cuba. Cooperate and collaborate with regime authorities while modernizing and expanding the technological infrastructure on the island within the regime's monopoly. 

This has not led to more freedom but a more perfect totalitarian regime with the technological capability to erase history in a manner reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984.

Let us not repeat this failure in Cuba.

Historical Lessons from Engaging Totalitarians: Business and High Technology

 A look back over a shameful and overlooked history

Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number. photo: Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Over the past few months there has been a vigorous debate around continuing economic sanctions on the dictatorship in Cuba and a series of manufactured controversies surrounding democracy promotion programs directed at the island. However, a couple that have gone  unaddressed are the conceits that American tourists, business, and high technology would somehow be game changers in Cuba and that "evolutionary change" would take place within Cuba.

Solidarity with dissidents in Eastern Europe from the West and a policy that took human rights into consideration did achieve great things there 25 years ago: the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union two years later in 1991 with predominantly nonviolent movements.

The end result of ignoring the crimes of totalitarianism and engaging these regimes was one world war, and at least four genocides. Winston Churchill called the Second World War the "Unnecessary War" explaining in the preface to his book, The Gathering Storm:  "How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm." Would sanctions have prevented the death of over 60 million people between 1939 and 1945? When one does not support the nonviolent option for real and profound change that challenges the fundamental injustices of a dictatorship only two options remain: war or collaboration with tyrants. Both are unacceptable.

What did engagement through tourism, business and the exchange of high technology achieve in the early twentieth century? This first entry will focus on the role of engaging totalitarians with business and high technology. In the Cuba debate there is a lot of talk about computers and the internet as the magic bullets that will end the Castro dictatorship but often times attention is not paid to who is empowered in the transfer of technology. History demonstrates that this can be a disaster.

American businessman Armand Hammer played crucial rule in Soviet Union

 Saving the Soviet Union

Armand Hammer, and Henry Ford, both sold tractors to the Soviet Union. Such endeavors facilitated commercial ties between the Soviet Union and the United States, establishing the basis for further cooperation, dialogue, and diplomatic relations between the two countries. Pravda described Armand Hammer as a confidant of Vladimir Lenin and a "red millionaire" in the article titled "The Soviet Union that Hammer Built." Hammer was a key player in Lenin's New Economic Policy that consolidated Soviet rule in the 1920s. The Black Book of Communism estimates that 20 million were killed by the communists in the Soviet Union. The United States established the Export-Import Bank to encourage more trade with the USSR and having US taxpayers assume the risk during the Roosevelt Administration.

In addition to investments in the Soviet Union, Henry Ford had extensive relations and investments in Nazi Germany. This included factories assisting the Nazi war effort that continued through World War 2.

Enabling the Holocaust

Thomas J. Watson, (middle) head of IBM and president of the International Chamber of Commerce, and members of the ICC's board meet with Adolph Hitler in 1937.

Beginning with the National Socialists arrival in power the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provided the equipment with ground breaking technologies, precursors to computers, to identify and categorize holocaust victims. According to a October 8, 2002 article in The Village Voice "the infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number. IBM engineered a strategic business alliance with Nazi Germany and provided the punch card technology that would be used in managing the vast apparatus of the Nazi death camps. More troubling is that the NAZIS were able to arrive in a town with lists of names of people identified as being Jewish. Where did they get the data? From IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM enabled the Holocaust.

Yahoo identified Chinese dissidents for regime who were jailed, tortured and killed

Hunting Dissidents and Building the Great Firewall in China
The optimists would say that was 1933. It couldn't happen now. Wrong. It already has in Communist China. Western companies are assisting Communist China in spying on Chinese nationals and having dissenters rounded up. Amnesty International in 2002 reported on Chinese prisoners of conscience including some who had died and been tortured while in detention. American corporations such as Cisco assisted the Chinese totalitarians in building an internet that serves the interests of the dictatorship and spies on the people of China. American companies have also assisted in targeting independent journalists and activists trafficking in information censored by the dictatorship and providing their location to the Chinese communist regime. Shi Tao, an independent journalist, was imprisoned for a decade because of Yahoo but thanks to having family in the United States he was able to sue and the American technology company settled out of court. Other dissidents were not so lucky and were jailed, tortured and killed. The communist regime in China has been in power since 1949 and according to The Black Book of Communism has a tally of 65 million victims.

Principled diplomacy, international human rights standards combined with nonviolent interventions by civil society have been shown to produce positive change without wholesale bloodshed.  Democracy, or human rights, promotion using principled nonviolent means can always be improved, but should not be discarded.

Unfortunately, the history of the twentieth and twenty first centuries have shown that corporations engaging with totalitarian dictatorships be it the Nazi Third Reich under Adolph Hitler, the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, the Peoples Republic of China under Mao Ze Dong and Deng Xio Peng, or Communist Cuba under the Castro brothers businessmen peddling high tech equipment have not only provided legitimacy to these dictatorships but assisted in systematizing gross human rights violations and prolonging their rule.

CHINA: When trade with totalitarians trumps human rights

Tiananmen Square Massacre and US Policy


"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." -Vaclav Havel

The United States normalized relations with China in 1978. A decade later on June 4, 1989 the Chinese dictatorship engaged in a massive crackdown killing thousands of Chinese students and workers who had been non-violently protesting in and outside of Tiananmen Square. One month later on July 4, 1989 George H.W. Bush sent a secret high level delegation to meet with the Chinese regime and join with them in celebrating American Independence while downplaying any pro-forma criticisms made by the Administration. Candidate Bill Clinton would critique this de-linkage of human rights and commercial interests only to continue the practice during his own administration. This reached a symbolic low point in 1996 when the General responsible for the 1989 massacre was received at the White House with an honor guard.

Both the Bush and Clinton Administrations placed human rights on the backburner in exchange for a realpolitik policy. Human Rights Watch in their 1989 report outlines the Bush Administration’s approach towards downplaying the Tiananmen Square massacre: "The Bush administration, however, has raised hypocrisy to new heights by coupling public expressions of concern with behind-the-scenes efforts to patch things up with those responsible for the slaughter and arrests following the June 4 crackdown. The symbolism of a top-level U.S. delegation meeting in secret on the Fourth of July with the Chinese leadership who crushed the democracy movement, and again on International Human Rights Day, December 10, will stand as the hallmark of the Bush administration's human rights policy in 1989." (1)

In 1992 the Governor Bill Clinton said that he would use trade sanctions to put pressure on the Chinese to respect human rights, and then criticized "Mr. Bush's ambivalence about supporting democracy and his eagerness to befriend potentates and dictators."(2) Nevertheless President Clinton on December 9, 1996 hosted with full honors General Chi Haotian the man who on June 3-4, 1989 was in operational command of the Tiananmen crackdown. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker Pelosi, challenged President Clinton explaining in great detail her objections:

My objection is not to the visit of Chinese Defense Minister General Chi Haotian, but to our country giving full military honors to the person who was in operational command over the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and who directed the Chinese government's military threats against the Taiwanese people during their elections. At the same time that President Clinton will not meet with any of the Chinese dissidents or have an official meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he has an official meeting with the person who crushed and continues to crush dissent in China and Tibet.(3)

What do Chinese human rights activists have to say about the state of human rights in China today? Both Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng have been recognized by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial as Speak Truth to Power Defenders. Harry Wu offers a brief analysis of the overall human rights situation in China over the past five decades:

“Let me tell you a story of the three W’s: Wu, Wei, Wang Dan. I am the first "W." In 1957, while attending university in Beijing, I spoke out against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary. For this I was labeled a "counterrevolutionary" and sentenced to life in the laogai, the Chinese term for gulag. Ultimately, I gave nineteen years of my life to that system. In 1979, the year I was released, the West was applauding China for opening up. Mao was dead, the Cultural Revolution was over, and it seemed that Deng Xiaoping would herald a new era for China. But that same year, the second "W," Wei Jingsheng, was imprisoned for expressing himself, for calling for the fifth modernization of democracy for China. In 1989, when I was in the United States and Wei was serving the tenth year of his sentence, another young man, Wang Dan, was imprisoned for his role in the student democracy movement. The Chinese government imprisoned each of us in three different decades for peacefully expressing our opinions; we all received second sentences in the 1990s. With respect to individual rights, not much has changed since 1957." (4)

Wei Jingsheng describes how the jailers used the policy of engagement to demoralize Chinese democrats: “The second time I was in jail, before I was officially given a fourteen-year sentence, some of my jailers said, "What’s the point of you fighting like this? Your so-called friends in the United States are very good friends with our leader. They are in a pact together. You are wasting your time." At the time I refused to believe them. But, now that I am outside, I am forced to believe because I have seen it with my own eyes.” (5)

Over the past twenty years since Tiananmen both the US government and private business have behaved in an atrocious manner with regards to the people of China colluding with China’s tyrants in covering up their gross and systematic human rights violations, in the case of Cisco, Google, and Microsoft assisting in erecting a wall of censorship denying Chinese nationals access to information and in the case of companies like Yahoo actively assisting in the targeting, arrest, and prosecution of non-violent dissidents using the internet. Since we can not trust government or business to do the right thing with regards to China then we must stand up in solidarity with the Chinese people and their desire to be free.(6)


Sources
1. Human Rights Watch WORLD REPORT 1989: China
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1989/WR89/China.htm
2. Friedman, Thomas Clinton Asserts Bush Is Too Eager To Befriend the World's Dictators New York Times October 2, 1992
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/02/us/1992-campaign-democrats-clinton-asserts-bush-too-eager-befriend-world-s.html
3. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi Statement on Visit of Chinese Defense Minister
December 9, 1996
http://www.house.gov/pelosi/chindef.htm
4. Harry Wu The Laogai
http://www.speaktruth.org/defend/profiles/profile_49.asp
5. Wei Jingsheng Political Participation and Imprisonment
http://www.speaktruth.org/defend/profiles/profile_43.asp
6. Frontline: The Tankman PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/