Correcting Reuters on the Cuban Adjustment Act

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. 

 Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 Reuters has published a misleading article describing the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act as a "perk" despite the fact that Cuba remains the only nation in the Western Hemisphere in which its citizenry is not free to enter and exit their own country.

This is the fundamental reason why the Cuban Adjustment Act was originally enacted on November 2, 1966 and remains relevant and needed today. 

Despite the newest regulations, the fact remains that the granting, now of passports [instead of the hated white card], remains arbitrary in addition to restricting entire groups of people that are considered "assets" of the government.

At the same time it would be important to identify those who are regime elites or state security agents seeking to advance the dictatorship's totalitarian agenda abroad.  The Clinton Administration's 1995 Immigration Accord with the Castro government and the lottery it generated which was controlled by the regime in Cuba has meant that regime agents and elites have been able to abuse the process. At the same time actual Cuban refugees have been deported back to Cuba and prison under the infamous wet foot, dry foot policy that sought to subvert the spirit of the 1966 Law.

Carl McGill offered a succinct explanation as to the immorality of the 1995 Accord stating:

"Clinton's policy to return 'rafters' to Cuba is like returning a slave in pre-Civil War America back to his enslaver. This would have condoned civil rights violations and slavery, as returning a 'rafter' to Cuba condones human rights violations and communism. Clinton's decision on this issue is wrong." 

 This needs to be addressed and repressive communist party members barred from entering the United States, but the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act needs to be maintained and restored so that refugees are no longer returned to their oppressor until Cubans are finally free to enter and exit their own homeland.

This systematic denial of a basic human right to all Cubans is the reason why the Cuban Adjustment Act is not a "perk" but the response of the United States of America to a situation that effectively makes all Cubans leaving the island without permission, a political refugee. In the case of athletes, and others considered of strategic value - deciding to remain abroad - is considered an act of treason and the Cuban in question, a defector. Baseball players suspected of wanting to leave were banned from playing the sport in Cuba.

Human Rights in Cuba: An endangered species

Human rights under siege in Cuba for over five decades

Human Rights Defenders in Cuba are a suspect class defined as mercenaries by the regime and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the Cuban government was a signatory on December 10, 1948 is a subversive document to be confiscated. Thousands of Cubans have been arbitrarily detained in 2012 alone for trying to exercise their human rights. Human rights defenders have been killed while in regime custody or died under suspicious circumstances.

It would not be a stretch to say that human rights are an endangered species in Cuba. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a generation as "the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring." A generation is about 30 years.

Cuba has been under some form of dictatorship since March 10, 1952 and under a totalitarian dictatorship since January 1, 1959 that means for the past 61 years human rights have been systematically violated and for the past 54 years human rights discourse has been systematically removed from the public sphere.

This means that two generations of Cubans have been born and grown up in a society where human rights have essentially been unknown. There have been times, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s when one might have thought human rights in Cuba extinct.

They would be wrong. From inside of the prisons and at the margins of society old activists who remembered and revered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and new generations of young activists, who although not knowledgeable of the history, found the desire for fundamental human rights hard wired in their conscience.

These factors led to the re-birth of Cuban civil society's defense of human rights in 1976 with formation of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.

Over the next 37 years what began as a single organization formed behind prison walls and later situated in Havana grew into a nationwide movement and despite the brutal efforts of the dictatorship to destroy it - so far it has survived and thrived because human beings have an innate desire to be free and live with dignity. 

Despite the wishful thinking of the totalitarian despots in Cuba and their allies elsewhere: Cubans are human beings and have a right to their rights.

Courageous Cubans such as Jose Antonio Echeverria, Pedro Luis Boitel, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, Mario de la Peña,Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Armando Alejandre Jr.,Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar Mendoza, Juan Wilfredo Soto García, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, Harold Cepero Escalante and many more have given their lives in struggle for human rights and freedom in Cuba.  

With their sacrifice the world can bear witness that although endangered the struggle for human rights in Cuba continues via nonviolent means.

Voices in Cuba such as the Cuban rock n roller Ciro Diaz understands this reality and the sacrifice carried out by many and wrote a song about it called "El Precio" (The Price).  Here it is:

Dr. Biscet and questions about the Cuban healthcare system

A Cuban doctor in Havana exposes poor conditions in a Cuban hospital. Why is it that in 2013 this reality still takes many by surprise? 

One of the myths of the Castro dictatorship that refuse to be brought to an end by the harsh reality is that of the Cuban health care system. The infrastructure has been steadily decaying for decades, even when heavily subsidized for decades by first the Soviet Union and then until today by Venezuela.

One just needs to scratch the surface and ask themselves if the health care system in Cuba is so great:  

Why is there a cholera epidemic underway when the last one to hit Havana was in 1883? Why did 26 mental patients die from negligence and exposure in January of 2010?

Why did the son of one of the commandants of the regime, Juan Juan Almeida, go on hunger strike to try to obtain needed healthcare? 

Why is their a two tiered system for elites and those with tourist dollars that is top notch and a substandard one for most Cubans?

Why do international organizations ignore this reality and accept the doctored statistics provided by the dictatorship? Why do they not listen first hand to those brave souls willing to talk about the actual state of prenatal care?

At the end of the day, the divorce between the dismal reality of the Cuban healthcare system and the myth erected by the dictatorship and maintained by many others raises other troubling questions.

Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet on the death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Evidence contradicts the Cuban regime's official story

Óscar Elías Biscet on the death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

In the commentary below, Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet González discusses the contradictions between the version presented by Cuban officials and the evidence at hand. Dr. Biscet goes on to speculate that in the attempt to psychologically terrorize Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas regime agents caused his death in what he describes as a felony homicide.




The commentary is part of a news program hosted by Dr. Biscet.

Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet González and the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights today made public the second episode of the program "Revelando Cuba" (Revealing Cuba). They are asking viewers to support the distribution of this program, both within and outside of Cuba by downloading and duplicating the video. 

This episode (in Spanish) can be downloaded for distribution below. 

Episode 2:
http://goo.gl/Rlw6b (PC)
http://goo.gl/PXK71 (Mac)

No: A film about the nonviolent campaign that brought down Pinochet

Keep an eye out for the 2013 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Film. It's "NO" a film by Pablo Larraín that offers a fictionalized account of the 1988 Plebiscite that decided the future of the Pinochet regime. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on February 21, 2013 and will make its way down to Miami in short order.


The story has been told in film in a documentary format in A Force More Powerful and there is lots of information on this successful nonviolent campaign that brought an end to the Pinochet dictatorship at the ballot box.

The official website for the film offers the following description:

 In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote YES or NO to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and under scrutiny by the despot's minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.