International Human Rights Day 2014 and the Enduring Legacy of Dr. Ricardo Bofill

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas." - Dr. Ricardo Bofill, 1987 in Nobody Listened documentary

International Human Rights Day in Cuba 2014 and men and women in Cuba continue to be arbitrarily detained, harassed and beaten for peacefully demonstrating in favor of human rights. Thanks to courageous activists across the island the world learned about these injustices today via twitter moments after the repression unfolded and at the same time the nonviolent actions of nonviolent opposition and human rights activists. Here is a brief sampling of some of those voices:

Sayli Navarro reported tonight that "in Colon 5  Ladies in White gathered together where Caridad Burunate  lives and handed out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Angel Juan Moya at 8pm described over twitter how today, on December 10th, police beat Lady in White Adisnidia Dallet with a pistol while arresting her. He attached the above photo.

At 5:14pm the Ladies in White reported that the latest news was that hundreds had been detained and their counterparts abroad posted a press release.

Yoani Sanchez reported at 3:21pm over twitter that "police arrested and warned 14 y medio reporters for 'doing something illegal' ... but [Yoani exclaimed] they are doing journalism!"

 Rosa María Payá Acevedo at 1:24pm over twitter provided the context for what was taking place: "December 10th will go down in history as the day of State Security brutality. This is how the Government makes a mockery of human rights in Cuba."

At 12:36pm today the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) tweeted that "communist hordes assaulted the home of Elder Perez, of MCL in Majibacoa and beat up his wife who is pregnant."

Via telephone the Cuban Democratic Directorate today documented numerous demonstrations taking place across the island and also interviewed Sonia Garro who was sent home yesterday after spending two years, eight months and 22 days along with her husband and neighbor arbitrarily detained and is currently under house arrest. None of the three activists have undergone a judicial proceeding.

Ricardo Bofill, Cuban human rights pioneer

Regis Iglesias, spokesperson of the Christian Liberation Movement at 1:40pm over twitter posted a picture of Ricardo Bofill with the text: "Honoring honor. Ricardo Bofill, an essential reference in the defense of  Human Rights of Cubans."

These courageous activists are the disciples of Dr. Ricardo Bofill. Dr. Ricardo Bofill along with Martha Frayde and Eddy Lopez founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. In 1987, Nobody Listened, the documentary directed by Néstor Almendros and Jorge Ulla first introduced the world to Ricardo Bofill and the nonviolent human rights movement in this video.

Later in the same documentary, in the video above,  Dr. Bofill is interviewed and discusses his circumstances as a dissident in Cuba engaged in the battle of ideas:

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas. In this field I’ve had no response just prison and the police. And I don’t know why because the revolution controls all mass media. They have editorials, journalists, even many writers in the world. I don’t know why the response, time and again, has been jail. The response should come in the field I fight in, with ideas. I was arrested again in 1983. On that occasion, I was sentenced to 17 years in jail accused of activities in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the last period of prison began. For reasons of health and others I know not of in 1985 I was placed in the status I’m now in which is “conditional liberty with restriction of movement.”

 Following the interview with Bofill in an interview with Fidel Castro the name of the human rights defender is raised. Castro dismisses his importance, but it is obvious in the context of the interview that he knows very well who this lone activist is.  Bofill went into exile and the leadership of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights passed to Gustavo Arcos who died of natural causes in 2006, but remains an icon of the Cuban human rights movement.

What started in 1976 as three activists based in Havana, in and out of prison, is now 38 years later a nationwide movement of thousands who are nonviolently engaged in the battle of ideas and the defense of human rights. Today's repression across the island continues to demonstrate that the Castro regime is terrified of them.

International Human Rights Day in Cuba is the Castro Regime's Day to Target Human Rights Defenders

We cannot celebrate Human Rights Day here in Cuba. We can't because they repress us and beat us. Right now there's an act of repudiation in front of the Ladies in White headquarters." - Bertha Soler, Lady in White, The Associated Press, December 9, 2011 

Today is International Human Rights Day in Cuba and over the past several years it has been a day in which the regime in Cuba does not celebrate human rights but carries out systematic and nationwide acts of repression to impede Cuban nationals from observing and celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. It is a day when human rights defenders are specially targeted in order to silence and terrorize them, but it starts before that.

According to independent journalist Robert Guerra in a tweet published on December 4, 2014 state security agents arrested activists in order to threaten them for organizing activities on December 10th.


Today at 11:00am EST in Havana, Cuba the Ladies in White have announced that a human rights activity will be held on L and 23. In years passed the Castro regime has organized violent acts of repression to stop activists from peacefully assembling and exercising that fundamental right: the right to assembly.

2014 saw the Castro regime working hard both inside and outside of the United Nations to defend one of the few regimes in the world with a worse human rights record then Cuba's: North Korea. In March of 2014 a United Nations report confirmed that the dictatorship in Cuba had violated international sanctions smuggling weapons to North Korea that included rockets and MiG jet fighters hidden under bags of sugar. At the United Nations General Assembly the Cuban dictatorship worked hard to defend the regime in North Korea leading the fight to to block, the regime's referral to the International Criminal Court for its gross and systematic human rights violations. Thankfully the Castro regime failed on this occasion.

Cuba wasn't always this way. 63 years ago Cuban diplomats representing a democratic Cuba assisted in the drafting and passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR). Despite the claims of the dictatorship in Havana, the UNDHR is a document profoundly influenced by the Latin American tradition.

Sonia Garro Alfonso and Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González

Amidst the dreary news this year there is one positive item: Yesterday, December 9, 2014 Sonia Garro and her husband Ramon Alejandro Muñoz were released from their arbitrary detention after being unjustly imprisoned for 2 years, 8 months, and 22 days. They are now under house arrest.

Amnesty International reported on July 18, 2012 that "Lady in White Sonia Garro Alfonso, and her husband, Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González, were arrested at their home in Havana [on March 18, 2012]: around 50 police forced their way into the house and fired rubber bullets at them. According to her sister, Sonia Garro Alfonso was wounded in the foot by one of these bullets." The same document revealed that "Sonia Garro Alfonso was suffering a kidney problem before her arrest that may require surgery. "

Elaine Muñoz Garro

Sonia Garro Alfonso and her husband should never have been arrested, much less arbitrarily detained over these past 997 days. The human cost of the dictatorship is difficult to measure but take into account that Sonia and Ramón have a young daughter who has not been able to live with her parents for all this time. Her name is Elaine Muñoz Garro and she is also a victim of the Castro regime's tyranny.

All eyes on Cuba today. Human rights defenders, pro-democracy activists and independent civil society need your solidarity and vigilance.

A reasonable and effective Cuba policy

Response to Daniel Larison's article on U.S. Cuba policy in The American Conservative

 

Maintaining economic sanctions and not resuming normal relations with Cuba has been a responsible and sensible policy that has served the just interests of the United States for more than a half century. U.S. policy on Cuba has not been static over these past 55 years but has shifted course and sought new opportunities to advance American interests.

However, from its inception the embargo policy never sought regime change in Cuba. Its objectives in the early 1960s were : 1) Reducing the capabilities of the Castro regime to direct and support subversion and insurrection within the other OAS states; and 2) Maximizing the cost to the Soviet Union of supporting the Castro regime.

During the Carter (1977 – 1981) and Clinton (1993 – 2001) Administrations’ efforts were undertaken to loosen sanctions unilaterally that correlated with disastrous results in both cases. During the Carter Administration the Castro regime achieved a totalitarian beach head in Nicaragua and during the Clinton Administration the Castro regime was able to project itself into Venezuela with the presidency of Hugo Chavez. This has had a profound impact on the entire region with the Cuban military and state security service combined with Venezuelan petrodollars achieving regional goals that it had wanted to undertake since 1959. In both cases the United States back tracked on fully normalizing relations, but failed to pursue the policy of isolation and containment that had existed in the 1960s.

An interesting comparative analysis is to look at a country who ended its policy of isolation and fully engaged with the Castro regime. For example, diplomatic relations were restored between Venezuela and Cuba in December of 1974, oil deliveries resumed, and the democratic government of Venezuela under Carlos Andres Perez's first presidency advocated Cuba's readmission to the Organization of American States. At the start of his second presidency (1988 - 1993), Carlos Andres Perez invited Fidel Castro to his inauguration. In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the Andres Perez government. Pardoned by Andres Perez's successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter. Four years later, in a reaction to generalized disgust with the corruption endemic to the Venezuelan democratic order epitomized by the Carlos Andres Perez administration the former coup plotter was elected president. Caldera, who had pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the totalitarian regime it is becoming today.

Strategic policy towards Cuba more sound than China
 
Mr. Larison claims that the sanctions policy stopped making sense 20 years ago but just 18 years ago following the shoot down of two civilian planes over international airspace by Cuban MiGs on the orders of Fidel and Raul Castro killing four (three of which were U.S. citizens) gave policy makers three options: 1) a military response 2) toughening sanctions or 3) doing nothing. Codifying sanctions into law seemed a prudent and conservative response.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the embargo was overhauled first in 1992 and again in 1996 following the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down and its objective to the present day is to: 1) To maintain sanctions on the Castro regime so long as it continues to refuse to move toward democratization and greater respect for human rights; 2) To be prepared to reduce the sanctions in carefully calibrated ways in response to positive developments in Cuba;

If the Castro regime has been a “minor nuisance” for the past half century, as Mr. Larison claims, then he should take a closer look at U.S. Cuba policy. On the other hand the decision to normalize relations with the totalitarian communist regime in China combined with trade has had terrible consequences for both strategic and economic concerns of the United States. At the same time the behavior of the United States and much of the rest of the world with regards to the dismal human rights situation there has been one of complicity.
Patrick Buchanan, one of three founders of The American Conservative, has this to say about relations with China:

“Today, someone should write a speech titled, ‘The Conquest of the United States by China.’ For consider how we are corrupting ourselves, chasing the receding rainbow of “the China trade. Scientists at U.S. satellite companies have gone up to the line, maybe over it, in helping China perfect rockets that can carry nuclear warheads. U.S. corporations like Boeing have become lobbyists and apologists for Beijing. Republicans, who once prided themselves on standing with the Reagan Doctrine of containment-and-rollback of the Evil Empire, now prattle about how trade will transform China.”

Apologists for de-linking human rights concerns often cite national interests and strategic concerns. President Clinton took it to a new level in 1998 when having to justify a second waiver involving the Loral Corporation providing technical information to the People's Republic of China that Clinton justified at the time saying: "I believe it was in the national interest and I can assure you it was handled in the routine course of business, consistent with the 10-year-old policy." However CNN in  1998 reported that "[a] Pentagon office concluded in a still-secret report that 'United States national security has been harmed," according to government officials.' 

Shameful human rights policy in China

June 3, 1989 marked the beginning of the Tiananmen Square massacre where estimates placed the number of dead at 2,600. At the time the Bush Administration announced a package of cosmetic sanctions while secretly sending on July 1, 1989 a high ranking delegation consisting of Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who met with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing to explain "Bush's view of the importance of the long-term relationship between the US and the Peoples Republic of China." Part of the reason for this approach was a call from Henry Kissinger discarding human rights concerns as "fuzzy-headed liberals/bleeding hearts" whose successful consulting group Kissinger Associates represents companies that deal with China.

Scowcroft and Eagleburger returned to Beijing in December 1989 to "explore the possibility of developing a ‘road map’ toward better relations with Chinese leaders." In the meantime, Bush "vetoed legislation permitting Chinese exchange students to remain in the US until the Chinese government improved its human rights record."In the aftermath of Tiananmen 1,000 Chinese were sentenced to death and executed.

Clinton went further than the Bush Administration when he de-linked human rights concerns in China's Most Favored Nation (MFN) status renewal criteria on May 26, 1994.


Sound economic policy that benefits U.S. taxpayers
 
 The ban on U.S. imports from Cuba remains but U.S. exports to Cuba have been going on since 1992 with the amounts dramatically increasing since 2002 reaching its peak in exports to Cuba under the Bush Administration in 2008.

President Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in September of 2000 and a month later signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act and opened cash and carry trade with the Castro dictatorship at the end of his Administration. At the time of its passage, Fidel Castro said "his country would not buy 'even a grain of rice' under the current terms."

The Cuban dictator ended up buying much more than a grain of rice under those terms. Between 2000 and 2013 American companies have sold $4.689 billion dollars in goods to the Castro regime on a cash and carry basis. Despite the 2003 crackdown on dissidents known as the Black Cuban Spring where the Bush Administration tightened sanctions on being able to travel to Cuba and set limits lower on remittances sent to the island. However, nothing was changed in the cash and carry sales made by U.S. companies to the Castro regime. Towards the end of the Bush Administration in August of 2008 the Cuban government announced that the United States was its fifth leading trading partner.

Meanwhile countries that do not have restrictions on granting credits to the Castro regime such as Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, Argentina, France, Romania, Brazil, Italy, and Mexico are owed billions of dollars. Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it and Mexico is waiving 487 million dollars of debt owed it by the communist regime in Havana.
 
Where do you think the United States would be on this list if sanctions were lifted and credits became available to the Castro regime? How much would U.S. taxpayers have to shell out?
  
Bottom Line

Bottom line if sanctions are completely lifted and trade with credits takes place the Castro regime wins, American corporations win and U.S. taxpayers are left holding the bag. In the meantime the 2000 change in embargo policy by the Clinton Administration has created a lobby not interested in human rights in Cuba but in business with the Castro dictatorship, and unlike a scattering of ideological fellow travelers, they have deep pockets, access to corporate media and the ear of the White House and Congress. The shameful and failed policy in China is the future the business lobby has in mind for Cuba. 

Principled and Strategic Nonviolence are the path for a Free Cuba

"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

On December third at the Paths for a Democratic Cuba international conference organized by the Christian Democrat Organization of America and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation spoke on the afternoon panel "Political Opposition: Towards a unity of action and strategies for Change." Below is an abbreviated version of the presentation.

Listening to the panels this morning on civil society and the political opposition led to a re-think on this presentation. But first would like to address what my colleague Andres Hernandez of the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba concerning the international situation with regards to Cuba.

In 2013 a cargo ship that left Cuba bound for North Korea was discovered to be full of weapons: including rockets and MiG fighter jets hidden under bags of sugar which it tried to smuggle through the Panama Canal. Despite an investigation by the United Nations that demonstrated that the Cuban government had violated international sanctions against North Korea no action was taken. The regime in Cuba has expanded its power and influence in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and exporting its repressive model.

Meanwhile the Obama Administration has had a policy of loosening restrictions despite an American being held hostage, Alan Gross, since December 2009 and escalating high profile deaths of opposition figures beginning with Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010 followed by Lady in White founder Laura Inés Pollán Toledo in 2011 and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero in 2012. Not to mention escalating violence against opposition activists including machete and knife attacks in 2013 and 2014. These are difficult times.

However, lets return to this morning's focus on how to achieve change inside Cuba.

Vladimiro Roca in the second panel this morning stated that there was no top down change in the island: "No change in Cuba. There are adjustments that are reversible. ...When there is change there is no regression."

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

There is common agreement that the best and most effective manner to confront the totalitarian system in Cuba is with non-violence.

In the second panel this morning Cuesta Morua said that "the means are as important as the ends." This brought to mind Mohandas Gandhi's observation on ends and means:  "They say ‘means are after all means’. I would say ‘means are after all everything’. As the means so the end."

Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina in this morning's first panel explained that "the populace is obtaining information but there are still deficiencies in the knowledge of democracy and human rights." Rolando went on to explain that "the nonviolent struggle is not sufficiently known either within the population or the resistance itself," and he also observed that there needs to be not only more struggle but more preparation.

This presents a challenge because if non-violence is just a buzzword that is not understood then the reality is that the opposition may have multiple meanings on what nonviolence is but without internalizing its meaning. Unfortunately, nonviolence is often confused with passivity.

Nevertheless there are specific areas of consensus, for example Reinaldo Escobar this morning mentioned four points of minimum consensus now circulating in the island:

1. Freedom of political prisoners in Cuba including activists on probation
2. End repression against nonviolent organizations: this includes ending arbitrary detentions, acts of repudiation, etc.
3. Ratification of human rights and labor covenants
4. Recognize the legitimacy of the emerging Cuban civil society

At the same time the 1998 Agreement for Democracy signed by 121 organizations inside and outside of Cuba has 10 points of which three coincide with four points mentioned by Rolando: 

2. Immediately issue a general amnesty for the liberation of all political prisoners, including those who have been sentenced for fictitious common crimes, and cancel the pending political causes against Cubans in exile, so as to facilitate their return to the homeland and their reintegration into the national society.
4. Recognize and protect the freedom of expression, the press, association, assembly, peaceful demonstration, profession, and religion.
6. Immediately legalize all political parties and other organizations and activities of civil society.

This lists concern outcomes, the ends which everyone agrees on, but the lack of understanding of what nonviolence means both on a strategic and individual level is more problematic because it addresses the means to achieve the ends. Within academic circles there are two broad areas of nonviolent thought: strategic and principled nonviolence. Strategic nonviolence has been advocated by among others, Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institute and principled nonviolence by Michael Nagler of the Metta Center for Nonviolence.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence.

Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones:

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion: 

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner. Metta Center defines it as follows:

Principled nonviolence is not merely a strategy nor the recourse of the weak, it is a positive force that does not manifest its full potential until it is adopted on principle. Often its practitioners feel that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, and who they wish to become as individuals. To adopt principled nonviolence is not a quick and easy decision one can make through logic but a slow, perhaps lifetime endeavor. Nonetheless, we focus on principled nonviolence because we think it has the potential for creating permanent, long-term change.  Ultimately it can rebuild many of our institutions on a more humane and sustainable foundation. In the long run nonviolence is, as Gandhi said, an “experiment with truth.” We have all to experiment with nonviolence in the way that seems best to us, because in the end the world will need all our experiences to arrive at a new order based on nonviolence.

Michael Nagler provides the following Six Principles of Nonviolence that can serve as a guide for individuals to empower themselves:

1. Respect everyone – including yourself. The more we respect others, the more effectively we can persuade the m to change. Never use humiliation as a tool — or accept humiliation from others ; that degrades everyone. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) . Remember, nobody can degrade you without your permission. The real success in nonviolence , which violence can never achieve, is to heal relationships. Even in a case of extreme violence, Gandhi felt it was possible to hate the sin, not the sinner.

2. Always include ‘Constructive Programme’. Concrete action is always more powerful than mere symbolism, especially when that concrete action is constructive: setting up schools, cottage industries, cooperative farms, etc. [...] Constructive work has many advantages:

• It enables people to break their dependency on a regime, by creating their own goods and services. You cannot get rid of an oppressor when you’re depending on him for something essential.
• It’s proactive ; you are not just reacting to offenses but taking charge. This helps you shed passivity, fear, and helplessness.
• It gives a movement continuity , as it can continue when direct resistance is not advisable.
 • It builds community . Studies have shown that working together is the most effective way to unite people. CP also reassures the general public that your movement is not a danger to the social order

And, most importantly,

• CP builds the infrastructure that will be needed when the oppressive regime falls. Many an insurrection has succeeded only to find a new set of oppressors rush into the vacuum. So a good guideline to follow is:  Be constructive wherever possible, obstructive wherever necessary. [...]

4.  Look for “win/win” solutions that will satisfy the real needs of all parties . Remember that you are trying to rebuild relationships , if at all possible, not score “victories.” In a conflict , we can feel that in order for one side to win, the other has to lose ; but this is a not true . Therefore, in nonviolence we do not seek to be winners, or rise over others; we seek to learn and to make things better for all.

5 . Use Power Carefully. We are conditioned (especially in the West) to think that power “grows out of the barrel of a gun.” There is indeed a kind of power that comes from threats and brute force – but it is powerless if we refuse to comply with them. There is another kind of power that comes from truth. Let us say that you have been petitioning to have an injustice removed; perhaps you have made your feelings known in polite but firm protest actions, but the other party is not responding. Then you must, as Gandhi said, “not only speak to the head but move the heart also.” And this we can do by taking upon ourselves, to make it clear, the suffering inherent in the unjust system . This is known as Satyagraha, or ‘truth force.’ In extreme cases we may have to do it at the risk of our life (which is why it is good to be very clear about our goals!).

[In the Cuban context there are examples of activists such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas who were threatened with death but continued their nonviolent activism risking their lives for their fellow citizens and paid the ultimate price.]

Do this with care. History, and often our own experience, has shown that even bitter hostilities can melt with this kind of persuasion that seeks to open the eyes of the opponent rather than coerce him or her. Nonetheless, there are times when we must use forms of coercion, for example, when a dictator refuses to step down, and we have to act immediately to end the vast amounts of human suffering that is caused by that person misusing power. Even then, it requires strategic thinking and nonviolent care to do it right. But when time does allow we use the power of patience and persuasion, of enduring rather than inflicting suffering. The changes brought about by persuasion are lasting: one who is persuaded stays persuaded, while someone who is coerced will be just waiting for the chance for revenge.

6 . Claim our Legacy . Nonviolence no longer needs to take place in a vacu um. To know the history of the many nonviolent movements we referred to at the beginning, and be in touch with others involved in similar efforts today, can be very helpful. 

Colleague on my right spoke about the nonviolent revolution in Burkina Faso, but today in Hong Kong a nonviolent movement born in 1989, in reaction to the massacre of students in Beijing in June of that year, anticipated the British handover to main land China in 1997 demanding democratic reforms and an agreement for the transfer that protected the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents. Since 1997 when the Chinese communist regime has sought to renege on its agreements: taking over education in order to indoctrinate Hong Kong youth; passing anti-subversion laws that would've gutted civil liberties hundreds of thousands took to the streets nonviolently with concrete demands and succeeded in stopping the power grab. Now in 2014 the announcement was made that the selection of candidates and the universal suffrage of Hong Kongers would not be respected and hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets and key areas of Hong Kong have been occupied.  These are movements worth studying.

Unfortunately, the temptation to embrace violence, especially after provocations with the belief that it will speed up change has been demonstrated time and time again to be a failure. For example following the Sharpesville massacre in 1960 the African National Congress abandoned its nonviolence stance and prolonged the existence of the Apartheid state for another three decades. It was not the African National Congress and the armed struggle that brought the Apartheid regime to the negotiating table but the United Democratic Front (UDF) and mass civic nonviolent action combined with international sanctions.

The path to a free Cuba is to be found in the intersection of principled and strategic nonviolence.

In solidarity with human rights defenders in Venezuela

I too am with Maria Corina Machado

Exiled Venezuelan human rights defender's solidarity with Maria Corina

 2014 has been the latest bad year in the decade and a half downward spiral of Venezuelan rights and freedoms. Venezuela with a population of 30.41 million according to the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, estimates that 24,000 people were murdered in 2013, according to the United Nations and the World Bank the number per capita is 54 per 100,000 inhabitants and is considered the second most likely place to be murdered on the planet with Honduras in first place. If trends hold the numbers in 2014 will be even worse.

Venezuelans who protested the rising insecurity and violence were themselves subjected to government repression and violence. The series of events that sparked the student demonstrations in Venezuela began in Táchira on February 4, 2014 when a student at the University of Los Andes in the Botanical Garden of the University was the victim of an attempted rape. Students protested that "insecurity had taken over the campus." The protest was repressed and a number of students arrested and physically mistreated by the authorities. The news of the abuse by government officials sparked additional protests. 

On February 10th in an open letter tweeted by student leader Juan Requesens, who has more than 528,000 followers called for dialogue with the government under two conditions 1) that students who were arrested exercising their legitimate right to protest be freed and 2) that calling them "coup plotters" or "terrorists" for engaging in nonviolent protests to demand their rights is unacceptable.

February 12 in Venezuela is a national youth day and students across the country in 2014 organized nonviolent mass demonstrations in response to the earlier repression and were met with violence by regime officials working in coordination with paramilitary groups known as "colectivos." Students were shot in the head and killed. 

On February 18, 2014 opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, who had advocated nonviolent protests and civil disobedience turned himself over to authorities and as of December 5, 2014 remains imprisoned unjustly in what the United Nations and Amnesty International have described as an arbitrary detention. There is no longer an independent judiciary in Venezuela.

Rodrigo Diamanti, president of the human rights organization, A World Without A Gag ( Un Mundo Sin Mordaza), denounced that his office had been raided on May 1, 2014. On May 3, 2014 he was detained and held for a week.

On June 11, 2014 the Venezuelan secret police, otherwise known as the Sebin, called human rights defender Tamara Suju in for questioning. This was another example of a systematic pattern of harassment and repression against human rights defenders. On December 1, 2014 she outlined the reasons for her exile from Venezuela in Prague in La Razon.

On December 3rd a Venezuelan judge charged opposition leader and human rights defender Maria Corina Machado with conspiracy to kill President Nicolas Maduro. The "judge" told her that she faces a maximum prison sentence of eight to 16 years if convicted. This is the latest outrage in a long series of acts of intimidation and violence against this courageous woman outlined in Caracas Chronicles:

Since 2010, María Corina Machado has been accused of ordering buses burned. Of instigating lawlessness. Of seeking to generate chaos and panic. Of infiltrating provocateurs into queues for scarce basic goods. Of palling around with Lorent Saleh. Of killing six guards. Of killing Robert Serra. Of plotting to kill the president, (on the basis of forged evidence). Of paying a hacker to delete the evidence against her.  Of “plotting a silent coup.” Of “seeking a civil war.” Of conspiracy. Of murder. Of terrorism. Of treason.

She’s been called an “enemy of the people.” A “shake-down artist of the empire.” A “whore of the empire“. A “hydra-headed monster of coup-plotting“. An “imbecile sell-out lackey.” “Evil for the people.” “The worst the homeland has borne.” “The face of fascism.”

She’s been threatened with detention at INOF, the notoriously violent women’s prison in Los Teques. She’s been told a jail cell is ready for her.

She’s been banned from leaving the country. Stripped of her parliamentary immunity. Stripped of her seat in parliament. Denied any forum to defend herself or present evidence to challenge this decision.
She’s been openly spied on. She’s had her private emails read out on state TV. Her phone calls tapped and the recordings played on state TV. She’s been spied on inside a private home (not on the phone) and had recordings of her conversations broadcast on state TV.

She’s been assaulted in Caricuao. Detained in Maiquetía. Shoved in Chacao.  Attacked in Puerto Ordaz. Assaulted in Turmero.

She’s had her followers’ motorbikes burned in Sabaneta de Barinas. She’s had bottles thrown at her in a military parade in Los Próceres. She’s had her face kicked in on the floor of the National Assembly. She’s been threatened with war.

She’s been threatened with the death penalty.  In a country that doesn’t even have the death penalty.

How did it come to this?

Tamara Suju in the photo above demonstrates her solidarity with María Corina Machado and at her side is a placard with the image of the late Czech president Vaclav Havel and the words "thank you." 
The world owes the late dissident, statesman, and writer a debt of gratitude for his good works. However, he should also be thanked for his insights into the importance and need for principled and moral politics. 

In 1968, after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, an effort by Czechoslovak communist reformers to build socialism with a human face, Havel wrote the following to the Czechoslovak President Alexander Dubcek who had been one of the reformers later purged: "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."

Havel believed that moral actions, no matter how small or futile they may appear at the time can have profound consequences for both freedom and a just society. It is because the world is not a puzzle to be solved but incredibly much more complex that decisions of right and wrong made by each person have such great importance.

Over 40 years later, when President Barack Obama backed out of meeting with the Dalai Lama due to an upcoming trip to China, Havel offered the corollary to the theorem expounded to Dubcek in 1968 at the October 12, 2009 of the Forum 2000 conference he had organized:

I believe that when the new Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize postpones receiving the Dalai Lama until after he has accomplished his visit to China, he makes a small compromise, a compromise which actually has some logic to it. However, there arises a question as to whether those large, serious compromises do not have their origin and roots in precisely these tiny and very often more or less logical compromises.

Sadly the current government in the Czech Republic appears bent on abandoning Havel's moral foreign policy and follow the rest of the world in prioritizing economic interests over human rights with the result being a general deterioration of both.

During a conference in Mexico related to Cuba, a speaker made the case for the need of Latin America to open to Cuba and re-insert it into the family of nations in the Americas regardless of the moral implications.

Carlos Andres Perez's small moral compromises with Castro

 Unfortunately, for Venezuela, the speaker was 40 years too late. Diplomatic relations were restored between Venezuela and Cuba in December of 1974, oil deliveries resumed, and the democratic government of Venezuela under Carlos Andres Perez's first presidency advocated Cuba's readmission to the Organization of American States. At the start of his second presidency (1988 - 1993) ,Carlos Andres Perez invited the tyrant Fidel Castro to his inauguration. These small compromises that overlooked the systematic denial of human rights and freedoms for the Cuban people in favor of a political opening to the Castro dictatorship did not even register on the radar of Machiavellian realpolitik. However these small compromises combined with corruption and rising disgust with the Venezuelan government would lead to disastrous consequences.

Coup plotter Chavez greeted by Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1994

In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the democratic government. Pardoned by Andrez Perez's successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter. Four years later, in a reaction to generalized disgust with the corruption endemic to the Venezuelan democratic order epitomized by the Carlos Andres Perez administration the former coup plotter was elected president. Caldera, who had pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the totalitarian regime it is becoming today.

Twenty years ago human rights victims sought refuge in Venezuela today Venezuelan human rights defenders seek refuge in the Czech Republic. Hopefully the small compromises of the Czech government today will not lead to Venezuela like results in their country.

In the meantime, I raise my voice on behalf  Leopoldo Lopez, María Corina Machado, Tamara Suju, the students arbitrarily detained, tortured or extra-judicially executed in Venezuela.