Will Castro regime use new internet censorship law to target Cuban doctors who spoke out on public health system collapse in Cuba?

 Providing some context to a troubling question.

Castro's PM Marrero tried to scapegoat Cuban doctors, but they pushed back

Earlier version found here.

Frances Robles reporting in The New York Times described how "after Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, said that Cubans were complaining more about doctors and their poor service than they were about the shortages ... nearly two dozen young physicians and medical students took to social media to state, one by one: “I am publicly declaring that doctors are not to blame for the collapse of the public health system.”

Sarah Marsh of Reuters described it as a "rare public denunciation of conditions in the island's hallowed health care system" and made reference to consequences for speaking out critically, but did not provide a specific example. 

There are more than one. Here are three well documented cases of doctors who spoke out. The first being abroad didn't suffer consequences. Two others were not so lucky.

Ernesto Londoño reported on September 29, 2017 in The New York Times that "scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a 'form of slave labor.'" Further on in the same article appears the following powerful quote. “When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” said Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez, one of the doctors who filed suit. “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.” 

Dr. Omar del Pozo

Dr Omar del Pozo, a 47-year-old physician and prisoner of conscience, was imprisoned in 1992 and sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence in Combinado del Este Prison for “revealing state secrets”. Amnesty International in 1997 expressed "concern that according to the latest reports his health has deteriorated and in addition to suffering from high blood pressure, apical abscesses, a stomach ulcer and heart and kidney problems, he is also suffering from malnutrition. He is reported to have received harsh treatment and lack of medical treatment in prison."  

Desi Mendoza Rivero, a 43-year-old doctor and father of four children, was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in connection with his critique of the authorities' handling of a dengue fever epidemic in Cuba in 1997. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience, and eventually he was able to leave prison for forced exile in Spain.

Doctors speaking out today, like Dr. del Pozo, and Dr. Mendoza Rivero in the past, risk prison sentences for what they have done.  

Giving voice to "fake news" in Cuba, disseminating it, publishing offensive messages or defamations that harm "the prestige of the country" are now a crime. The Castro regime with its own history of propagating fake news decides who is "guilty" of it over social media. This new decree issued by the dictatorship entered into force today, Wednesday, August 18, 2021. Decree-Law 35 penalizes "ethical and social" harm done "or incidents of aggression " on social media, reported 14ymedio yesterday. The text entering into force was approved back on April 13, 2021, but the content was not known until Tuesday, August 17, 2021 noted 14ymedio.

Among its novelties, this ministerial decree contains the "classification of incidents of cybersecurity and their level of dangerousness", such as the "dissemination of false news, offensive messages, defamation with an impact on the prestige of the country." The level of dangerousness is classified as "high" in Annex II taken from the regime's Gaceta Oficial and reproduced below.

The claims made in the media that Decree-Law 35 is the first cybersecurity law passed in Cuba are wrong. This is the latest Decree passed to restrict speech on the internet, with some new elements but not the first. Decree 370 issued by the Cuban government on July 4, 2019 threatens fines and imprisonment for any Cubans expressing themselves over the internet in a manner that the authorities find objectionable. The decree also prohibits foreign web hosting while law existing prior to Decree 370 already prohibited critical content on domestic servers. Less than a year later on May 6, 2020 over forty national and international NGOs signed a joint statement denouncing the consequences of Decree 370.

Although repression of freedom of expression and freedom of press has been long-standing and systematic, the current wave of repression has been intensified by the application of Legal Decree 370 “ON THE COMPUTERIZATION OF CUBAN SOCIETY,” in force since July 4, 2019. At least 30 people have been subjected to interrogation, threats, and seizure of work equipment (especially that of journalists) for broadcasting their opinions on social media, 20 have been victims of 3,000-peso fines (120 US dollars), an amount triple the average monthly salary. Failure to pay these fines constitutes a crime punishable by six months in prison, a systematic approach that has enabled the Cuban State to sentence 7 civil society actors who are currently in prison.

The totalitarian nature of repression in Cuba has not changed in decades nor the efforts of the dictatorship to ever perfect their panopticon on a national scale. What changed was the spontaneous protest of tens of thousands of Cubans across more than 50 cities and towns, knowing what awaited them, shouting that they were not afraid, down with the dictatorship, down with communism and homeland and life. The brutal and violent response by the dictatorship that still continues and is reflected in this new legislation is not new, but the widespread resistance to it is.

The future of these Cuban doctors who spoke out will depend in large part to the vigilance of the international community, and the response of Cubans on the island.

Repression is not new, but the refusal of Cubans to continue tolerating it is. Witnessing the events across Cuba that began on July 11, 2021 with a national cry of defiance that brought to mind the words of Frederick Douglass: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Remembering when the Berlin Wall went up 60 years ago. Castro's visit in 1972 and how the Florida Straits were turned into a watery Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall and the Florida Straits: Deadly barriers to freedom

Sixty years ago today, in the early morning hours of August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall went up and divided the old German capital city in two.  Western manufacturers provided the 150 tons of coiled barb wire to imprison East Germans behind the Berlin Wall for an entire generation.

 

Nighttime wall-building on Aug. 13, 1961.  Photo: Rue des Archives/GRANGER

In East Germany there are 136 documented cases of German civilians killed by East German border guards between 1961 and 1989 with their names provided. An estimated 1,000 were killed trying to cross.  The East German government had given a clear Order to Border Guards on October 1, 1973 that left no doubt to their criminal nature:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. 

Castro encouraged East German border guards in their deadly work

At Brandenburg gate on June 14, 1972 in the afternoon (pictured above) he addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Later in the evening Premier Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:

It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with great admiration for you and for your services.

The state security apparatus in Cuba was trained by the East German intelligence service, known as the Stasi, the most brutal security apparatus behind the Iron Curtain rivaling the Soviet KGB in brutality and surpassing it in its espionage capabilities.  

The Castro regime and the East German communist regime had a close relationship for three decades. John O. Koehler on page 297 of his book Stasi: the untold story of the East German secret police outlined the relationship between the Cuban and East German intelligence services.

"The Stasi's first major task abroad was in Cuba, after Fidel Castro and Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan signed the Soviet-Cuban pact on February 13, 1960, officially placing Cuba in the Soviet bloc. As Soviet arms shipments began, Mielke sent a number of Stasi officers of General Wolf's HVA to Havana. Led by Colonel Siegfried Fiedler, they assisted in setting up what became a first-rate intelligence service and an oppressive secret police. As a result Cuba's relations with East Germany developed as closely as those with the Soviet Union. Intelligence gathered in the United States by the Cubans was routinely shared with the Stasi. Much of the information contained in the dossier the Stasi maintained on President Ronald Reagan, for example, originated with the Cubans."

The Stasi enforced control at the Berlin Wall, and the Cubans who were trained by them, applied these skills in the Florida Straits and on the border with the Guantanamo Naval base killing many Cubans.

The actions of Cuban border patrols on July 13, 1994, and instances such as the June 1993 use of machine gun fire and hand grenades on defenseless swimmers trying to reach the U.S. Guantanamo Naval base are not aberrations. 

These were not isolated incidents, talking to Cubans randomly in Miami one hears accounts of others who died in the same manner trying to flee the island over the past six decades. It just happened to be one of the few times when it was properly documented and an official complaint lodged.

The men responsible for the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre where given medals and described as heroes by Fidel Castro. This should not be a surprise when considering that he had praised the East German border guards that carried out orders to kill men, women, and children whose sole “crime” was trying to reach freedom on the other side of the Berlin Wall. 

Chris Gueffroy born 1968 and killed at the Berlin Wall 1989

Killings at the Berlin Wall continued until it was torn down in 1989. One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Murdered at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. 

The killings in Cuba continue to the present day, and like in East Germany, to end the homicides will require a change of system.

 

 

Remembering Cuban political prisoner Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros one year after his untimely death

"All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings." - Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, United Nations 1990

Yosvany Arostegui died on hunger strike on August 7, 2020

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his 1861 book, The House of the Dead  that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." What does this say about the Cuban government that has barred the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting Cuba's prisons for decades?

Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died last year on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship.
Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:

It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.

Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:

I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.

On Friday, August 7, 2020 State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days. 

Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros

Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom.

As in the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo (February 2010), Aróstegui Armenteros was transferred to Kilo 8 prison from another prison and then transferred to the Prison ward of the Amalia Simoni Hospital in the city of Camagüey. Authorities at the Kilo 8 Prison have a torture system to subject prisoners who go on strike: they isolate them, and take away their water, the only sustenance of any striker.

In the case of Zapata and thanks to pressure from opposition groups outside the Amalia Simoni hospital, his mother was able to see him and learn from his lips about the torture and denial of water to which he had been subjected. 

Yosvany Aróstegui did not have the same luck. His brother, Yaudel Aróstegui Armenteros was not allowed to see him.

“Ten days before he died, they called my brother Yaudel Arostegui Armenteros, at the hospital to appear there, when he arrived at Amalia Simoni they told him that my brother was very ill. My brother couldn't see him. A doctor who was there told my brother that the next call they were going to make would not be good, it was because he was going to die. And so it was,” Raidel Aróstegui Armenteros, who lives in exile in the state of Washington, United States, told the Center for a Free Cuba.

According to Raidel, his brother always said he was innocent of the common crimes he was accused of. The family hired an attorney who conducted investigations into the case, but a week before the trial, the attorney mysteriously died in a traffic accident.

For Solidarity with Freedom of Cubans Campaign | Christian Liberation Movement

Eleven concrete actions to isolate the regime.

The Liberation Christian Movement has begun a campaign to condemn and isolate the Cuban dictatorship. We believe the international community should have a strong answer to the Cuban regime’s repression. It is imperative to condemn the dictatorship in the strongest terms. But we also believe that these much needed condemnation statements are not enough to let the ruling military junta know that the international community would not tolerate the dictatorship’s impunity. That is why concrete international isolation measures, like those imposed upon the South African apartheid regime, are needed.

We propose that until the dictatorship unconditionally releases all those arrested for the peaceful demonstrations and all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and holds free and plural elections:

– The Cuban regime should be excluded from participating in any international forum, Summit and event.

– Cuba should be investigated and condemned for its human rights violations by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

– All economic and military cooperation agreements with the Cuban dictatorship, like the EU-Cuba cooperation agreement, should be suspended.

– Lines of credit should not be granted to the Cuban regime.

– Foreign investments and tourism to Cuba should be discouraged.

– All products exported from Cuba, either directly by the regime or through foreign companies associated with Cuban tyranny, should be boycotted.

– An international arms and repression equipment embargo on Cuba should be imposed

– Cuba should be banned from all international sporting, cultural and academic events.

– Visas to military junta officials and relatives, and to members of the Cuba’s Communist Party and all organizations and institutions who take part in repressive actions or support the repression, should not be granted or should be revoked.

– Channels to send humanitarian aid should be facilitated as part of this campaign to isolate the regime and in solidarity with the Cuban people.

– An international commission to support democracy in Cuba should be created. It should promote that these and other measures are executed, and should watch over its implementation.

The Liberation Christian Movement invites governments and parliaments of all freedom loving countries, all international institutions and all people of goodwill, to join this campaign for solidarity with the freedom of Cubans.

All Cubans, all brothers, and now, freedom!

July 27th, 2021

On behalf of the Liberation Christian Movement,

Eduardo Cardet, National Coordinator

Antonio Diaz, General Secretary

Regis Iglesias, Spokesman

https://mcliberacion.org/2021/07/por-la-solidaridad-con-la-libertad-de-los-cubanos/

Maleconazo at 27: When Castro's secret police shot into crowds of non-violent protesters with live ammunition and the world looked the other way

 "Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future." - Elie Wiesel  

 

Secret police in plain clothes firing live ammunition at protesters

27 years ago on August 5, 1994, a thousand Cubans marched through the streets of Havana chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro!" They were met with brutal repression, including regime agents dressed in plain clothes shooting live rounds at unarmed demonstrators.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Castro" on 8/5/94 in Havana

On July 11, 2021 it happened again, but this time it was not just in Havana, but across the island with hundreds of thousands of Cubans participating from over 50 cities and towns. The response of the dictatorship was the same as 1994, but this time the images reached the world almost immediately.

Cubans chant "Freedom" and "Down with Communism" on 7/11/21 across Cuba 

 

In 2013 photographs taken during the 1994 protests by Karel Poort, a Dutch visitor, were made public and confirmed the anecdotal accounts of that day. Cuban dissident Regis Iglesias described how the dictatorship militarized the streets in an effort to terrorize the populace: 

A convoy of trucks crammed with repressive special troops and a vehicle with a 50 caliber machine gun on top patrolled up and down the long street.

Little has been reported on this, but some of the images and sounds remain. This combined with testimony of those who were there provide a better idea of what took place.

What happened?
Five hundred of the Cubans had arrived at the Havana sea wall (El Malecon) to board a launch that was rumored was going to be taken to Miami.  These people were not seeking to overthrow the dictatorship but did want to live in freedom.

They were met by the Castro dictatorship's secret police who told the crowd to disperse.

Instead of diffusing the situation another 500 Cubans joined in and  they began to march along the Malecon chanting "Freedom!"and "Down With Castro! After marching for a kilometer, a hundred Special Brigade members and plain clothes police confronted the protesters firing live rounds into the crowd.

 

Secret police aiming handgun at protesters on August 5, 1994

 

27 years later and the full details of what transpired remains mostly silenced despite the pictures of regime officials pointing their handguns at the demonstrators combined with reports of the sounds of gun shots and wounded protesters echoing down through the years in anecdotal stories about that day. 

Eyewitness account  

 

Ignacio Martínez Montero

 

Ignacio Martínez Montero posted on la Voz del Morro a first hand account of what happened that day that is translated to English below:

Then came the year 94 One hot August of that year's day, I'd arrived at my mother in laws home in Cuba and Chacón in the heart of Old Havana, near the Malecón, for that reason alone, after visiting my mother in law, I sat , like many, on the wall of the bay, very close to where still today the famous Casablanca launch travels in and out. That year was turbulent, constantly talking about boats diverted to Miami, and the tugboat. Maybe that's why the special brigade trucks arrived and attacked all of us who were sitting. 

Our response to this aggression was only to clamor for freedom. It has been said that we threw stones; but all that is a lie, the truth was that we were tired of so much aggression and without agreeing to we began to walk together screaming, Enough, Down with the revolution ... And before reaching Hotel Deauville, a battalion waited for us that attacked us with sticks and iron rods. It was they who made the big mess. They broke my left eyebrow and left me semi-lame. Yes, there were assaults and the aggressors had guns, but not among the civilians. One of the boys who went with us, who was called the Moor, even while handcuffed, they shot him in the torso and it was a miracle that he did not die. Who do you think paid for that? No one. 

They put us in a truck where they received us with beatings only to convince us to scream "Viva Fidel." They took us to the police station located at L and Malecon. Hours later I was taken to Calixto García hospital. There they attended to my foot and I treated the eyebrow wound; the medical certificate, never appeared. From there we boarded another bus and were taken to the prison 15/80, I could say "kidnapped" because nobody knew where we were. Some kids and nephews of my dad, who were with us, were released immediately. A boy could not take it and ended up hanged. No one learned of this; but we are many the witnesses who know what really happened that August 5th 1994, the day of Maleconazo.

Twenty seven years later and the Castro regime continues in power terrorizing, beating, torturing and murdering nonviolent dissidents, and shooting young black men in the back, but some Progressive Americans want to apply Cuban style policing in the United States, and claim that there is a lot we can learn from them. Hopefully, the events of July 11, 2021 will wake up many more to the true nature of the Castro dictatorship, and the need to be in solidarity with the Cuban people, not their oppressors.