Cubans in Ethiopia: Castro's unholy and silent alliance with war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam

Castro regime's involvement in mass murder in Ethiopia documented

Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977

Today while attending the Conservatives International gathering in Miami, Senator Ben Murray Bruce of Nigeria praised the Castro regime's role in ending Apartheid in South Africa, of which  I have to admit that I am skeptical of for reasons argued here before in this blog.

Later on in the question and answer period I asked Senator Bruce if he was aware of the Cuban role in genocide in Ethiopia in alliance with later convicted war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam.  The Senator indicated that he had no knowledge of it, but that if someone did something good on Monday and something bad on Tuesday that he would celebrate what was done on Monday and condemn what was done on Tuesday.

Fidel and Raul Castro were both deeply involved in sending 17,000 Cuban troops to Eastern Africa in order to assist 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 1990 traveling on a train through East Germany on my way to Prague I spent some time speaking with an Ethiopian economist who told me how Cuban troops would round up starving Ethiopian farmers when they got close to the cities, with grain stores, and drove them back out into the countryside to starve.

Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

Below are excerpts of some reports done on the Castro dictatorship's involvement in Ethiopia and links to the complete articles. I've highlighted the mention of Cubans in bold.  The first excerpt is taken from the September 21, 1978 Rolling Stone article "Ethiopia After the Revolution: Vultures Return to the Land of Sheba" authored by Donald R. Katz.

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." The Red Terror operated quietly and efficiently under the media cover provided by a vicious desert war that started when Somalia invaded eastern Ethiopia 10 months ago. Around this time, President Carter abandoned a long-term military agreement with Ethiopia on the stated grounds of "gross and systematic human rights violations," and Cuban soldiers and Russian arms poured in to protect and "consolidate the gains" of the revolution. By the time the Somalis were finally chased from Ethiopia's eastern front two weeks before I arrived, the politics of the revolution had been further obscured by Mengistu's determination to fight yet another war against secessionists in the country's northern province of Eritrea. After months of killing Ethiopian youth along with assorted Somalis and Eritreans, Mengistu declared to the world that the "anti-people forces who had lined us up for their lunch – we have had them for breakfast."

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:

Mengistu’s “Secret Wars” in Southeast Ethiopia, 1978-84

Although riven by internal divisions, Ogaadeeni and Oromo insurgencies continued their operations in southeast Ethiopia, sometimes from bases on Somali soil.²¹ By early 1979, the insurgents controlled a substantial part of the countryside.²²
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.²³ In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”²⁴ Militarily, the counter-insurgency operations succeeded in greatly weakening the insurgents or driving them across the border into Somalia.²⁵

Charles Lane of The Washington Post joins with Senator Ben Murray Bruce of Nigeria in placing Cuban involvement in South Africa on the positive side of the ledger in the December 1, 2016 article "Castro was no liberator"  but then the journalist raises the following question that touches heavily on Ethiopia:

Answering it would require broader examination of Castro’s Cold War record in Africa, to include the eastern regions of the continent, where Cuba intervened militarily on behalf of the Ethiopian dictator, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, in the 1970s. Mengistu participated in a successful military coup against the U.S.-backed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, eventually seizing power on Feb. 3, 1977,by massacring his rivals in the officer corps. Castro admired this bloody deed as a preemptive strike against “rightists” that showed “wisdom” and cleared the way for Cuba to support Mengistu “without any constraints,” as he explained to East German dictator Erich Honecker in an April 1977 meeting whose minutes became public after the fall of European communism. [...] With the Cuban forces watching his back, Mengistu wrapped up his bloody campaign of domestic repression, known as “the Red Terror,” and sent his own Soviet-equipped, Cuban-trained troops to crush a rebellion in Eritrea. The last Cuban troops did not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article118362988.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article118362988.html#storylink=c

 There is also video footage of the Castro regime's involvement in Ethiopia along with the testimony of victims.


Fidel and Raul Castro's comrade, Mengistu was found guilty of genocide on December 12, 2006, and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. He was sentenced to death in absentia on May 26, 2008 following an appeal. Mengistu currently resides in Zimbabwe under the protection of African despot Robert Mugabe.

This chapter of the Castro regime's involvement in Ethiopia should not be forgotten when discussing the Cuban presence in Africa.

Fidel and Raul Castro: Lap Dogs of Imperialism

Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with close ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

Democracy Now over twitter yesterday quoting the late Nelson Mandela raises a provocative question that deserves to be answered: "How many nations threatened by imperialism or fighting for their freedom have been able to count on Cuba?"

There are at least three that can respond that the Castro brothers supported the overthrew of their national governments in favor of expanding of Soviet Imperialism in Asia and Europe and a genocidal dictatorship in Africa:



1. Czechoslovakia (1968)

Two days after the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 Fidel Castro publicly supported the invasion and occupation this led to Carlos Franqui, one of the early backers of Fidel Castro's July 26 movement to break with the regime in 1968 over Castro's support of the invasion. Part of Castro's defense of the invasion and occupation was that basic human rights standards such as freedom of expression were being re-established or in Castro's words:

A series of slogans began to be put forward and in fact certain measures were taken such as the establishment of the bourgeois "freedom" of the press. This means that the counter-revolution and the exploiters, the very enemies of socialism, were granted the right to speak and write freely against socialism.

2. Ethiopia (1974 - 1987)

Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I served first as regent of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930 and was emperor from 1930 to 1974. He was the heir to a dynasty that traced its origins to the 13th century, and from there by tradition back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At the League of Nations in 1936, Emperor Selassie condemned the use of chemical weapons by Fascist Italy against the people of Ethiopia. 

Emperor Haile Selassie's internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations, and his political thought and experience in promoting multilateralism and collective security are still viewed as part of his enduring legacy. Despite inspiring the founding of a religion that today has up to 800,000 followers he remained an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian.

Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and killed in a military coup and it is believed that the officers smothered him and that Mengistu Haile Mariam: "ordered the emperor's body to be buried head down in the palace and had a lavatory erected over the grave so that he could express daily his contempt for the monarch."

Castro also supported the suppression of the Eritrean national movement in the 1970s. Beginning in late 1977, the first 5,000 of what would eventually number over 17,000 Cuban military personnel arrived in Ethiopia. By 1987 the Cuban presence had dropped to fewer than 2,000 personnel. During 1977-78, a conservative estimate of over 30,000 Africans perished as a result of the Red Terror unleashed by the Ethiopian Communists and their 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." 

Mengistu Haile Mariam was aided by the Castro brothers.  Mengistu was found guilty of genocide on December 12, 2006, and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007.


3. Afghanistan (1980)

In 1980 Fidel Castro supported the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. This placed him in a very difficult situation at the time as the head of the non-aligned movement. In Cuba the regime delayed reporting in the official news on the invasion for days.

Conclusion: Fidel and Raul Castro supported Soviet Imperialism

The historical record demonstrates that both Fidel and Raul Castro were lap dogs of Soviet Imperialism during the Cold War. Their efforts in Africa should be looked at within the Cold War context. The Castro brothers have been consistent in their anti-Americanism but not in their anti-Imperialism.

How many people will never have another birthday thanks to Fidel Castro?

87 candles but how many others never saw another birthday?

Fidel Castro turned 87 years old today and the dictator's apologists are out in force celebrating on social media, but a question arises:  How many people will never have another birthday thanks to Fidel Castro?

The founder of a dynastic dictatorship that ruled Cuba with an iron grip from 1959 until a health crisis forced the despot to turn power over to his brother Raul, informally in 2006 and formally in 2008.

The accurate body count after more than a half century remains unknown but partial counts place it in the thousands.

Add to this the failure of the regime on the health and hygiene front with mass deaths at a psychiatric facility and return of Cholera at levels not seen since the 19th century and the magnitude of the disaster begins to take shape.

Extrajudicial killings still take place but in Orwellian fashion are denied. Meanwhile nonviolent opposition leaders that could provide a soft landing die under extremely suspicious circumstances with the direct involvement of state security.

Oswaldo Payá: Life cut short by Castro dictatorship

 Cuba's Lech Walesa,  Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas met with an "accident" on July 22, 2012 along with Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement. Evidence points to a state security vehicle crashing into the vehicle the dissidents were traveling in. More disturbing is the mounting suspicion that both men survived the accident and were killed afterwards. Over a year later and the families have still not been provided with the autopsy results.

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, the women with the talent, courage, and popular support to be the next president of Cuba after being repeatedly roughed up, pricked with needles by regime agents became ill and died within the span of a week while under the guard of state security.

Internationally, the regime has been an ally to some profoundly loathsome regimes that have engaged and are engaging in genocide and some of whose leaders are now convicted war criminals on the lam.

The fact that some around the world who believe that the ends justify the means celebrate his example is disturbing especially when observing that not only where his means immoral and profoundly evil but the end result is a country that is an empty shell of what it was before the Castro brothers achieved power and the patterns of repression endure to the present day.

How many people will never have another birthday thanks to Fidel Castro? Too many.

Honoring Bob Marley By Setting the Record Straight

"Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!" - Bob Marley, Peter Tosh

Bob Marley

The totalitarian regime in Cuba seeks to rewrite its past to give the appearance of being relevant and "with it." The trouble for the dictatorship's propagandists is that there is no memory hole to do away with the inconvenient facts. For example, the dictatorship erecting a statue of John Lennon in 2000 after censoring him and his music while he was alive. Now they are at it again with Robert Nesta Marley better known the world over as Bob Marley with a concert in his honor on the 30th anniversary of his death.

Bob Marley performing Get Up, Stand Up for your rights

Bob Marley passed away in Miami on May 11, 1981 from cancer at the age of 36. He was a master singer-song writer who spread both reggae and his religious belief known as Rastafari around the world. When asked about the relationship between the Rastas and the socialist government of Jamaica under Michael Manley in a July 19, 1978 interview with Jeff Cathrow he was direct and to the point:

MARLEY: "No mon! Michael Manley is a Marxist-Leninist-Socialist, Rasta is a monarchy. Dig It!"
JC: "Do you think Manley will be overthrown?"
MARLEY: "I don't know, mon."
JC: "If something happened to Manley, what do you think would happen to Jamaica?"
MARLEY: "ANYTHING that 'oppen, it have to be better!"

In his final interview on September 18, 1980 in New York City doing shows at Madison Square Garden and preparing to embark on a national tour he was asked about the Cubans then in Ethiopia then supporting the now convicted war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam:

M:Well, I did know that this year is the fiftieth year - pass them back to Rasta.

Cole: the fiftieth anniversary of the coronation of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie the First.

M: Is the Golden Jubilee, that's it. November 2nd. Been 50 years now since Christ government set upon earth, returned to earth. The Russians can't take guns and destroy it you know. Bad man.

W: The Russians are trying?

M: Of course them try it in Ethiopia. Mengistu is not a Ethiopian. Mengistu is a Russian.

W: What do you think about the Cubans there?

M: Well them a idiot them is Russians Too. Yeah. Them say there is no God. And me, I know that there is a God. Cause I know who God is. And the guys stick me with a gun and say there is no God. I say yes, there is a God. And them fire it! And it miss. And fire it again and it miss you know. And them fire plenty time and it miss because there is a God.


The Trial of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the Derg

There is reason to Bob Marley's hostility for both Mengistu Haile Mariam and the Cuban regime that backed him. As a Rastafari he believed that Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Selassie had served first as regent of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930 and was emperor from 1930 to 1974. He was the heir to a dynasty that traced its origins to the 13th century, and from there by tradition back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At the League of Nations in 1936, Emperor Selassie condemned the use of chemical weapons by Fascist Italy against the people of Ethiopia.

Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I

Emperor Haile Selassie's internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations, and his political thought and experience in promoting multilateralism and collective security are still viewed as part of his enduring legacy. Despite inspiring the founding of a religion that today has up to 800,000 followers he remained an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian until his death.

Fidel Castro with his comrade Mengistu Haile Mariam

Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in a military coup and it is believed that the officers smothered him and that Mengistu Haile Mariam: "ordered the emperor's body to be buried head down in the palace and had a lavatory erected over the grave so that he could express daily his contempt for the monarch." Winston Churchill had described Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I as "the only enlightened Abyssinian prince."

Less than a decade after Mengistu fled into exile on November 5, 2000, Haile Selassie was given an Imperial funeral by the Ethiopian Orthodox church. Bob Marley's widow, Rita Marley, participated in the funeral.

Raul Castro & Fidel Castro with close ally Mengistu Haile Mariam

Fidel and Raul Castro's comrade, Mengistu was found guilty of genocide on December 12, 2006, and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. He was sentenced to death in absentia on May 26, 2008 following an appeal. Mengistu currently resides in Zimbabwe under the protection of African despot Robert Mugabe. Fidel Castro in a conversation with the then East German dictator Erik Honecker about Ethiopia praised his comrade in arms:

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 3 February. [...]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 3 February in Ethiopia. The political landscape of the country changed, which has enabled them to take steps that were impossible before then. Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints.

Bob Marley's response was to speak truth to power when he said: "Mengistu is not a Ethiopian. Mengistu is a Russian." When asked about the Cubans, Marley's response was that they were Russians too. They were outsiders that had deposed and murdered the great king that the late reggae artist worshiped as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. That combined with his music and bohemian lifestyle both a rejection of all that the dictatorship in Cuba represents.

The best way Cubans can honor Bob Marley is to get up and stand up for their rights. Something that terrifies the dictatorship seeking to exploit this great artist's memory.

The tyrant, the super model and the blood diamonds

“Ms Campbell's testimony reminds us of the damage that can be done by power-hungry individuals who illegally exploit their country's natural resource wealth to wage campaigns of violence and brutality against civilians. The Taylor trial is an important moment in the history of international justice, when the survivors of his regime may finally see some reparation.” Oliver Courtney, Global Witness spokesperson.

Naomi Campbell & Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor has been described by Spiegel Online as part of the "Slaughterers' Society" of African dictators. A society in which members feed opponents to crocodiles, hack their feet off, and allow their people to starve. Supermodel Naomi Campbell over dinner flirted with "President" Taylor and enjoyed his company. Then again she's also enjoyed the company of dictators in other continents and said so proudly. For example, back in 1998 Naomi Cambpell described Fidel Castro as an "inspiration" and meeting him as "very spiritual." She's also hung out with Castro's disciple Hugo Chavez. describing him as a "rebel angel" that poses "no threat to democracy." Now it seems that her encounter with another tyrant she met in 1997 Liberia's Charles Taylor is coming back to haunt the supermodel.





Charles Taylor is now on trial for war crimes committed while he was president of Liberia. Ms. Campbell has testified denying that she knew that the former Liberian president and mass murderer Charles Taylor had sent her blood diamonds. Now other witnesses, among them her friend Mia Farrow and Carole White, her former agent are now contradicting her testimony.

"As we were eating, Naomi leaned back and Charles Taylor leaned forward, and Naomi was very excited and told me he was going to give her some diamonds." - Carole White

Whereas, Naomi Campbell only flirted with an alleged war criminal over dinner and later received contraband diamonds as a gift . Fidel Castro was also closely involved in a working relationship with the convicted genocidal war criminal former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, now a fugitive hiding out with another of Castro ally Zimbabwe's brutal Robert Mugabe, and sent thousand of Cuban troops to assist in killing Ethiopians and spreading terror.
Hopefully one day the world will demand that Fidel Castro answer for that relationship and the Ethiopians murdered with his assistance.

At the same time one cannot underestimate the seriousness of blood diamonds and what they signify. Blood or conflict diamonds are subject to an international sanctions regimen that aims to undercut a funding source for armed conflicts in Africa. A more detailed description is provided by the Security Council Affairs Division which is part of the United Nations and based out of New York which states:

On 1 December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, unanimously, a resolution on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict, breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict, as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts (A/RES/55/56). In taking up this agenda item, the General Assembly recognized that conflict diamonds are a crucial factor in prolonging brutal wars in parts of Africa, and underscored that legitimate diamonds contribute to prosperity and development elsewhere on the continent.

The story is still developing, and offers an insight into the relationship between economic sanctions and attempting to improve the human rights situation in a regional context. Below on the Colbert Report, although humorous, makes a serious point about human rights and economic interests looking at business practices in China followed by the Naomi Campbell controversy.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Foxconn, Charles Taylor & Naomi Campbell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Join the group to boycott supermodel Naomi Campbell http://bit.ly/c7dVgy

Cuba’s Role in an African Genocide and Revolutionary Racism on the Island

Cuba’s Role in an African Genocide and Revolutionary Racism on the Island

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

Fidel Castro celebrating initiation of Red Terror on February 3, 1977
and implicating later Cuban involvement in later waves of the Terror.

“Mengistu, who fled to Zimbabwe after he was deposed in 1991, was sentenced to death on Monday after he was found guilty in absentia of committing genocide during his 16-year rule.” - Melissa Gray, CNN May 28, 2008

The Cuban government finds itself on the defensive faced with charges and ample evidence that it is a racist regime. Worse still, a former supporter of the regime Abdias Nascimento has sent out an open letter that denounces political intimidation against those protesting against racism in Cuba and against citizens “who dare call for the establishment, in their country, of a State that is respectful of Civil Rights.” This letter has inspired dozens of prominent African American to join in the denunciation of institutionalized racism in Cuba and the demand for the immediate release of Afro-Cuban civil rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer. The dictatorship’s response: an orchestrated campaign attacking that “the signatories of Statement on Civil Rights in Cuba Are Misguided and Hypocritical.”

For over five decades the Cuban government has nearly perfected terror, manipulation, and propaganda in the pursuit of the maintenance of power. The regime has adapted to changing circumstances both internally and externally in the service of maintaining absolute power and magnifying its influence internationally. Twenty years ago the Cuban dictatorship conducted a tribute to the fallen and on December 7, 2009 remembered the 20th anniversary of Tribute Operation or as official Cuban press accounts referred to it as “a posthumous homage paid to the more than two thousand Cubans fallen on international missions. “

According to official data, during the more than 13 years of Cuban military involvement in countries like Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, 2,085 Cuban soldiers were killed in combat missions, and another 204 died while performing civilian tasks bringing the total number to 2,289 Cubans killed on “internationalist missions.”

In the case of Africa, Cuba projected its military forces on the continent for decades with two high profile “victories” according to government news sources: Ethiopia and Angola. The reliance on military force and successes on the battlefield obscured some hard truths that over time are revealed by history.

Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro and Ex-Ethiopian Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam convicted of genocide

African Genocide
One of the deeds that the dictatorship in Cuba wants to keep hidden from the world and African Americans in particular, is its role in the mass killings in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s. Beginning in late 1977, the first 5,000 of what would eventually number over 17,000 Cuban military personnel arrived in Ethiopia. By 1987 the Cuban presence had dropped to fewer than 2,000 personnel. During 1977-78, a conservative estimate of over 30,000 Africans perished as a result of the Red Terror unleashed by the Ethiopian Communists and their 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." Fidel Castro offered a different view of the terror addressing Cuban and Ethiopian troops in Ethiopia in September of 1978:

"Comrade Cubans, I can recall those days of December 1977 and January 1978 when we said farewell to the first Cuban internationalist combatants who were leaving for Ethiopia. [...]Eighteen months later we have returned to a Ethiopia which is victorious be cause of its combative sons' heroism and the support of international solidarity, as Comrade Mengistu stated 2 days ago. Moreover, it is also an already powerful Ethiopia. Tuesday's popular parade confirmed the enormous popular support for this revolutionary change. Yesterday's military parade tells us of the degree of organization and discipline achieved by the combative and courageous fraternal Ethiopian people. The rapid revolutionary offensive of the Ethiopian and Cuban troops practically annihilated the enemy. [...]Ethiopian brothers, together with you we have fought and we have won. Together with you we are ready to fight again and to win again. Together with you we pledge: Fatherland or death, we shall win!

The last few years of the Cuban government's collaboration with the Ethiopian communist regime were particularly brutal, and reminiscent of Stalin's treatment of the Kulaks in the 1930s. During the 1984-85 famine in northern Ethiopia, which shocked the conscience of the world and led Bob Geldof to organize the 1985 international rock concert "Live Aid," Cuban troops, following the lead of their ally, made the famine worse by refusing to allow food to be distributed in areas where inhabitants were sympathetic to opposition groups and engaging in a policy of "forcibly resettling people." This strategy resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. According to a report issued by an international medical group as many as 100,000 Africans died.


Angola: Did Cuban involvement delay or speed up Apartheid's end?
Secondly, the military assistance to the African National Congress in the struggle against the South African apartheid state did not bring about the end of the racist apartheid regime, but may have in fact lengthened its lifespan. During the Cold War the goal of a Marxist-Leninist revolution in South Africa fit into Cuba's and the Soviet Union's geopolitical calculations. This terrified white South Africans, who at that time had acquired nuclear weapons and a willingness to use them to avoid a communist revolution backed by the black majority. Victories on Border States such as Namibia and Angola by Cuban troops served to aggravate those fears. The end of communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union demoralized the African National Congress who lost their main backers but it also ended the fears of the white minority that the transfer to black rule would mean becoming another satellite of the Soviet Empire.
This along with a new non-violent based anti-apartheid movement led both parties to the negotiation table and to Nelson Mandela’s release and subsequent election. Mandela's arrival to power in a post-Cold War setting set the groundwork for a democratic transition from the previous minority-white ruled regime. Civil rights leaders have celebrated Cuba's role in the wars in South Africa, Angola, and Namibia for nearly two decades, but the reality is that those wars probably prolonged the life of Apartheid by bolstering fear of a communist takeover.


Racism in Cuba
What of the plight of Cubans of African descent? Have things improved for the average Cuban of African descent? Cuba never had government enforced segregation and Jim Crow as in the United States. Racism did and does still exist despite the claims of the Cuban government and their apologists. Cuban blacks were found in Cuba's democratic political class and a number made it to positions of great power during the democratic era.

Black Panther William Lee Brent , a U.S. fugitive from justice who live in Cuba until his death on November 4, 2006, came to Cuba hoping that they had found the "antidote to racism." He discovered that Cuban blacks still suffer racism but no longer have the freedom to speak about it openly. "If a Cuban raises his voice to say, 'I am being discriminated against because I am black,' then he would be labeled a dissident." Cuban blacks, along with the rest of the Cuban people, do not have the right to their own opinion if it runs contrary to the permitted government line that Cubans are expected to take.

Jorge Luis García Pérez and his wife Iris Perez Aguilera

Nevertheless, many are speaking out and sometimes paying a terrible price. Jorge Luis García Pérez, an opposition leader in the locality of Placetas, was imprisoned on March 15, 1990 for speaking his mind openly and without fear in Cuba that is called "oral enemy propaganda." García Pérez was finally released more than 17 years later on April 22, 2007, having served one of the longest sentences for the present generation of prisoners of conscience in the island. While in prison he founded along with other prisoners of conscience, an organization called the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner’s Movement, to denounce the situation of prisoners inside the dictatorship's prisons and to promote civil disobedience in response to the jailers' brutality.

The letter denouncing those speaking up for the imprisoned medical doctor Darsi Ferrer, who like Jorge Luis, is only guilty of speaking his mind and exercising his rights claims in a patronizing tone that:

The elimination of racism, illiteracy and sexism as official state policy is commendable and sets an example for capitalist societies like the U.S. The Cuban government sent hundreds of thousands of its own people to fight for the liberation of southern Africa. Many of the African-Americans who signed this statement against Cuba were just as confused about the struggle for African liberation.

The critics of Cuban government intolerance for dissent, and the right of Cubans of African descent to be able to speak out against racism in Cuba are not "confused" and if anything it is the Cuban government's take on the "liberation of southern Africa" that is confused. The Cold War and the Cuban presence in the region probably prolonged Apartheid in South Africa and in the case of Ethiopia led to the Cuban government's complicity with genocide.