Celia Cruz still banned in Cuba but International media remains silent

Celia Cruz's music remains banned in Cuba by the dictatorship

On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.

There is only one problem. It is not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: "All those who had allied with the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio "

Olga Guillot's music is still banned on Cuba radio

 Cuba's cultural genocide continues in 2012 and icons of Cuban music such as Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot remain banned from the airwaves and must be discovered on the black market and in the underground. 

The Castro regime has demonstrated a great ability to distract attention from the real news in the country with non-stories such as this one.  It is one of the tools that they have used to remain in power. Unfortunately, when an activist on the island succeeds at exposing the true nature of the regime and exposes the smoke screen of distraction and demands concrete progress they are terrorized, imprisoned, become suddenly ill and die, or die in a car "accident."

Sadly international journalists on the ground in Cuba do not report on these patterns because if they do they are expelled from the country by the dictatorship as many have been over the years for even mild critical reporting of the regime.

Nevertheless, one needs to ask reporters that published articles that the music of Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan would be heard over the airwaves in Cuba now that the regime has confirmed that is not the case will they print a retraction or a clarification? Or will the dictatorship get away with using the press once again?

Speaking truth to power can save your life in Cuba

"What’s past is prologue" - William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I

 @RosaMariaPaya Angel is in danger. Will the world once more accept the rules of the Cuban government?

There are important lessons to be drawn from the past 53 years of totalitarian rule under the Castro brothers but despite this people of good will fail to see the patterns or learn the lessons of history. Our friends in Europe who co-existed with these type of regimes and had in their midst men of the caliber of Václav Havel who understood the power of the truth against a system built on lies.

In the case of Cuba the power of the truth was able to shake the regime from the its very beginnings while going along with the regime’s lies would destroy the complicit liar. It is not easy to hold on to the truth when one has been subjected to the techniques of interrogation, manipulation, torture and blackmail that Cuban state security are experts in. Even democratic governments can be duped into thinking that remaining silent and going along with the lie will benefit an imprisoned citizen or subject.

They could not be more mistaken.

Cuban history provides two parallel examples in which high ranking military officials in the regime were told that if they went along with the lie and pleaded guilty to the charges made against them that they could go home.

Towards the end of 1959, less than a year into the Castro regime, as it was still consolidating power and holding mass executions by firing squad the regime wanted to eliminate Huber Matos. Matos was one of the Commandants of the revolution who had entered Havana at Fidel Castro’s side but he was a fervent anti-communist who had fought Batista’s regime to re-establish democracy in Cuba not install a communist dictatorship. He had tried to resign his position but was repeatedly refused by Fidel Castro. Until the moment came to accuse Huber Matos of conspiracy and treason and set up a summary military trial in order to have him speedily executed. While being held in custody Fidel Castro sent a messenger to Huber Matos to tell him that if he confessed to everything that he had been accused of over the proceeding days and remained silent during the trial that he would not be executed and could go home.


Huber Matos in the above video describes how they asked him to go along with the lie to save himself

Huber Matos rejected the offer and said he would defend himself. He went on to do so at his military trial and was able to shift the opinion of military officers in the room who applauded his courage during the trial. The Castro brothers had planned to execute him but instead, fearing they would make him a martyr, sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Monsignor Agustin Roman in an important essay on the importance of the Cuban dissident movement in Cuba described the role that the truth played in its genesis:

The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its transcendence for the future of Cuba.

If the truth shall make you free then what does the lie offer? The Ochoa case offers a dramatic answer. Nearly 30 years later in June of 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa is arrested. He had been declared a “Hero of the Revolution” by Fidel Castro in 1984 but was deemed too dangerous by the dictatorship because he had been contaminated with ideas of Glasnost and Perestroika while visiting the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era. He was also popular within the ranks of the military due to his exploits in Africa. As was done with Huber Matos he was slandered and accused of conspiracy and treason this time tied to drug smuggling and corruption. He was also approached with the offer that if he confessed to everything he had been accused of and did not mount a vigorous defense that he could go home into retirement.


Confession of General Arnaldo Ochoa during military trial 

Unlike Huber Matos he went along with the lie and pled guilty in an abject fashion reminiscent of the 1930s Stalinist show trials and was executed days later by firing squad on July 13, 1989.

These are two high profile and historic examples but there are many others in which the families of political prisoners have been told that if they remain silent and behave that their loved ones would be sent home to them.

Years and in some cases decades would go by before the family would understand that it was a lie. At the same time those who organized international campaigns and spoke out were able to obtain improved conditions for their imprisoned relatives and in many cases an early release. The most high profile examples of this practice are the Ladies in White. Their husbands, fathers and sons had unjust prison sentences that ranged up to 28 years yet thanks to their efforts all were out of prison within eight years.

The obvious questions raised by the previous examples outlined are why is the truth uttered by an individual so powerful and how can it possibly protect an individual instead of going along with the regime’s desire that one lie?

Václav Havel in his 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless which he dedicated to the memory of Jan Patocka explained the power of confronting the lies with the truth saying:

As long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations.

Living in truth is a powerful shield of protection within a totalitarian regime but it doesn’t mean that one is still not in danger. Jan Patocka, a great Czech philosopher and dissident and Charter 77 signatory, that Havel dedicates his essay to, died after an 11 hour interrogation at the hands of state security in his country on March 13, 1977.

However, once one goes along with the lie their life is in greater danger because as long as the one who has gone along with the lie lives they can still recant and for the dictatorship it is more convenient to silence them. They have the video confession giving their version of events and no one to contradict it.

This is why when Rosa Marie Paya tweets that Angel [Carromero] is in danger she is telling the truth.

Documentary on Chinese Artist and Dissident Returns to Miami

"To live your life in fear is worse than losing your freedom." - Ai Weiwei

Powerful documentary on Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei returns to screens in South Florida this weekend in Miami at the Cosford Cinema and on Miami Beach at the Cinematheque.

If you didn't see the film at the Miami International Film Festival back in March 2012 then be sure not to miss it now. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a 2012 documentary that follows and gains complete access to Ai Weiwei.

The documentary demonstrates the power of nonviolent action when applied creatively. Protesting the Beijing Olympics, documenting the number of school children killed in the May 12, 2008 Sichuan Quake, and pursuing justice after he was physically assaulted by a Chinese police officer applying creative and artistic sensibilities in an effective manner combined with great courage.

                       AI WEIWEI photographing himself at a Munich hospital in September 2009, with a bag containing fluid that was surgically removed from his skull. Courtesy the artist and Haus der Kunst, Munich.

Ai Weiwei has been beaten, detained, disappeared for 81 days and prosecuted for his outspokenness despite being one of the better known Chinese artists in the world.  He was so badly beaten that he required fluid to be surgically removed from his skull.

Despite this he continues to speak out and make China his home.  He has also received powerful demonstrations of solidarity from the Chinese populace which are seen in the documentary.

He is the son of a prominent Chinese poet who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and comes from the ranks of China's elite.



The official website of this documentary offers the following description of its main subject and the film:

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China. Her detailed portrait provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

Oswaldo Paya's daughter tells the Castro regime: Leave my family alone!

Rosa Maria Acevedo Payá

Last Friday, a Blue Lada car  of state security with the license plate HS 3133 followed my brother while he drove our VW in the Cerro neighborhood.

The car that followed him was driven by a major in uniform traveling along with two state security officers.

THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE LIFE OF MY FAMILY

-According to other witnesses, a LADA car with three people traveled next to the car where my father and Harold Cepero died.

Why does state security pursue us?

LEAVE MY FAMILY ALONE!
 



Rosa Maria Acevedo Payá


Original Spanish text below taken from the official MCL Oswaldo Paya website. 

Rosa Maria Acevedo Payá

El viernes pasado, un auto Lada Azul, de la seguridad del estado con chapa HS 3133 seguía a mi hermano mientras conducia nuestra VW por el barrio del Cerro.

El auto que le seguia estaba manejado por un mayor de uniforme  que viajaba junto con dos oficiales de la seguridad del estado

EL GOBIERNO DE CUBA ES RESPONSABLE DE LO QUE  SUCEDA  CON LA VIDA DE MI FAMILIA

-Según otros  testigos, un auto LADA con tres personas viajaba junto al auto donde murieron mi padre y Harold Cepero

¿Por qué nos persigue la seguridad del estado?

¡ DEJEN A MI FAMILIA EN PAZ !

Rosa  Maria Payá Acevedo

Oswaldo Payá's letter to Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in 1990

Oswaldo Payá sent a letter to Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in 1990

Eng. Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
Peñón 276 e/ Ayuntamiento y Márquez
Cerro, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba

October 1, 1990

 To Mr. Lech Walesa,

Dear Brother:

How close you and "Solidarity" have been to us in these years. Receive our fraternal greetings.

I write on behalf of the Christian "Liberation" Movement. We are a Christian and patriotic movement that by peaceful means are working for freedom and democracy in our nation.

We have no legal status, rather we are persecuted and harassed and we have no voice.

Senator Zbigniew Romaszewski sent me the form of participation in the 2nd. International Conference of Human Rights, but the Cuban mail only gave it to me on September 18. I don't think further explanations are needed.

Enclosed is our proclamation and Proposition of National Dialogue that we have made to the Cuban government. It is very difficult for us to disclose our objectives due to difficulties well known to you. I hope this gets to you and that the Poles might know of our struggle inspired by the Gospel.

I cannot conclude without expressing our gratitude to you, the Movement "Solidarity" and all the Polish people that knew how to open the path of freedom for subject peoples.

As Catholics we feel that we are in communion with you and that overcomes the difficulties of communication.

God bless you, your family and all the Polish People.

Fraternally in Christ, 

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas  Coordinator of the Christian Movement "Liberation"

 Ing. Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
Peñón 276 e/ Ayuntamiento y Márquez Cerro,
Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba La Habana,

1 de Octubre de 1990

 Al Señor Lech Walesa

Querido Hermano:

Cuán cercano nos ha sido Ud. Y “Solidaridad” en estos años. Reciban nuestro saludo fraternal.

Escribo a nombre del Movimiento Cristiano “Liberación”. Somos un movimiento cristiano y patriótico que por vías pacíficas trabajamos por la libertad y la democracia en nuestra Nación.

No tenemos status legal, mas bien somos perseguidos y hostigados y no tenemos voz.

El Senador Zbigniew Romaszewski me envió planilla de participación en la 2da. Conferencia Internacional de Derechos Humanos, pero el correo cubano solo me entregó el 18 de septiembre. Creo que no es necesario más explicaciones.

Le adjunto nuestra proclamación y la Proposición de Diálogo Nacional que hemos hecho al Gobierno cubano. Nos es muy difícil divulgar nuestros objetivos por dificultades que Usted bien conoce, espero que ésta llegue a sus manos y que los polacos puedan conocer de nuestra lucha que se inspira en el Evangelio.

No quiero terminar sin expresar nuestra gratitud a Ud., al Movimiento “Solidaridad” y a todo el pueblo polaco que supo abrir el sendero de libertad para los pueblos sometidos.

Como católicos nos sentimos en comunión con ustedes y eso supera las dificultades de comunicación.

Dios le bendiga a Usted, a su familia y a todo el Pueblo Polaco.

Fraternalmente en Cristo,

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
Coordinador del Movimiento Cristiano “Liberación”