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Cuba Cracking Down Hard on Dissidents

headscratcher4

Philosopher
headscratcher4
Joined
Apr 14, 2002
Messages
7,776
I write this as someone who has not supported the Bush Administration and how it has handled its international relations. However, I write this as someone who is, contradictorilly, horrified by human rights abuses throughout the world, and one who often wonders why those who so easilly compare Bush to Hitler or some other global tyrant (a fatuous analogy on any rational, logical or honest level) seem so late to condemn civil rights abuses by some of the most appalling dictators currently in operation.

THe excuses are legion...they're protecting their revolution, they're under constant threat from their neighbors, we (Western democracies) don't understand their culture, nationalism, history...and on and on. However, the bottom line is that people who speak out about what is wrong with their socieites are tortured and imprisoned (if lucky), and in many places are murdered.

I write this noting that Castro is now on a new binge of repressing dissent. See this article:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../ap/20030403/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_crackdown

Excuses will now be made for that regime. The Embargo makes them parinoid, maybe the dissenters really were working for the Americans, it is an internal matter, Cuba has near universal literacy and free medical care. Indeed, with excuses and rationalizations like that, what need for Cuba to ever change or improve...

THe point here is that these men and women are going to jail for efforts to report freely (as well as exersizing their right to be both right and wrong) about their country, its condition and economic issues. THey are going to jail for trying to petition their government. THey are going to jail because they question the direction that their leader is taking them in.

This is a tradgedy. The US embargo on Cuba is wrong. Period. But so long as thoughtful people glabally excuse this sort of repression (while self-rightously comparing Bush to Hitler) and planning to spend a week at a Cuban beach smoking cigars made by men and women who can not strike, or sipping drinks served by men and women who can not strike...etc. The left will have little credibility.

There is universal outrage on the left (and I often count myself as a person of the left) over Israel, over the US war in Iraq and on and on...but there is no balance. Romantic Castro and his thugs (for after all, if you suppress freedom of thought and speech, are you not a thug?) continue to get a pass...Just like Saddam and the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children he has killed or ordered killed...

Just my incoherent rant for the day...
 
The focus of the world is on the USA and Iraq. Is anyone surprised that Castro is cracking down on dissidents? I expect a lot of other leaders will be doing so now that they can do it with little attention.
 
I wonder if one of those stray precision guided weapons could take him out one night.
 
Wow, a thoughtful, informed post in the PC&E forum. Somebody inform the moderator.

"Reason" and "Logic", uninflamed by vitriol, hate, and partsian rhetoric have no place here. Haven't you been reading the threads?

Speaking as someone who is definitely to the right on several issues, and who would have probably voted for Bush if he weren't so damn lazy, I have very mixed feelings about this war, and am not sure we should be in Iraq right now.

That being said, like you, I am also completely perplexed as to why thugs like Castro get off so easy from people who should really know better. It reminds me of the Western apologists for Stalin back in the thirties during the show trials.

But anyway, I've alerted the moderators to your post, and it should be removed shortly. Only extreme viewpoints and vicious name-calling are allowed here.
 
headscratcher4 said:

This is a tradgedy. The US embargo on Cuba is wrong. Period. But so long as thoughtful people throught the globe excuse this sort of repression (while self-rightously comparing Bush to Hitler) and planning to spend a week at a Cuban beach smoking cigars made by men and women who can not strike, or sipping drinks served by men and women who can not strike...etc. The left will have little credibility.
Click to expand...

VERY well said. That the embargo is wrong is beyond question (as well as giving FC a convenient excuse to avoid any positive changes). Too many on the right fail to see that engagement can work wonders at times and a policy of - only - "demonizing" can be counter-productive in the long run (China anyone??) Too many on the Left, predictably, see FC as a guy who continues to "stick it" to the US. That he does a far better job of sticking it to his own people seems beside the point to them.

Finally, one has to wonder how universal literacy and free medical care became legitimate trade offs for the denial of basic human rights/dignity. The mind bogles.

Barkhorn.
 
Finally, one has to wonder how universal literacy and free medical care became legitimate trade offs for the denial of basic human rights/dignity. The mind bogles.
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On the cynical side, I've long wondered -- and would appreciate the views of a Castro apologist on this -- what is the value of universal literacy if you can't/won't let people read anything they want to, write anything they want to or say anything they want to...

A cheap analogy, its like issuing driver's licences but keeping everyone from owning a car....

Further afterthought...indeed, Hitler built great highways and Il Duce' made the "trains run on time" and both promoted universal employement (at least for the right kind of citizens, the ones they weren't trying to murder) ... those seemingly positive social attibutes would not win them praise from the left...but they will praise exactly the same kind of results (with repression) from Castro...strange.
 
THe excuses are legion...they're protecting their revolution, they're under constant threat from their neighbors, we (Western democracies) don't understand their culture, nationalism, history...and on and on. However, the bottom line is that people who speak out about what is wrong with their socieites are tortured and imprisoned (if lucky), and in many places are murdered.
Click to expand...

I too wonder why, when there are real abuses in the world, people march and shake their fists at America.
 
Update
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../ap/20030408/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_crackdown

Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s government sentenced activists, journalists and an economist to up to 27 years in prison Monday for allegedly collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist state.

...

Sanchez's non-governmental Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said prosecutors originally sought life sentences for a dozen of the dissidents, among 80 facing closed trials that began Thursday.


It was unclear how many dissidents have been sentenced so far, but activists have been unable to confirm any life sentences. The shortest sentence was 15 years.

...

The longest sentence confirmed by Monday was 27 years for independent journalist Omar Rodriguez Saludes. A familiar figure in the dissident community, Rodriguez Saludes often rode his bicycle to news conferences, a camera dangling from a strap around his neck.


Opposition political party leader Hector Palacios, among those originally recommended for a life sentence, received 25 years, said his wife, Gisela Delgado.


Palacios is a leading organizer of the Varela Project, which gathered more than 11,000 signatures supporting a referendum on new laws guaranteeing civil liberties such as freedom of speech and private business ownership. The island's parliament shelved the request.

...

Jose Miguel Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, urged the United Nations (news - web sites) Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva to condemn Cuba for the sentences.
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I am pleased to see Human Rights Watch condemn this horrific behavior- I always liked that organization. I now wonder
1. Will the UN condemn Cuba for this
2. Will the human rights activists throughout the world demonstrate vigorously against this action.
 
The "embargo" is only supported by the US and The Marshall Islands.
Cuba's current state is a direct result of it's political system.
 
The Cuba embargo is counter-productive and only exists to appease an influential group of voters (Cuban exiles) in a politically sensitive state w/ many electoral votes (Florida).
That said, Castro is evil. But you won't see ANSWER organizing any demonstrations against him because he's one of their own. Far better to compare Bush to Hitler than to protest the real-life Stalin next door. :rolleyes:
 
Castro appears to have had the intelligence to be one of the more benign dictators around. The more extreme dictators have been kicked out the first chance that people could remove them in other countries. Perhaps he is not hated so much.

The collapse of the rest of the communist world would have been expected to destabilise his own regime.

That said, the crackdown may be a sign that he believes the time has come for 'people power' to bring about the end of his own regime. With any luck, a peaceful changeover will occur. I think it is important for the US to not interfere while people are not being slaughtered. Such interference may just stir things up to be violent. I doubt that any comparisons with Saddam, for example, would be valid.

Such an event would have interesting side effects in Florida politics.
 
After the tyrant Castro is dead, I vote we make Cuba the 51st state.
 
Tony said:
After the tyrant Castro is dead, I vote we make Cuba the 51st state.
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Maybe the people there have a vote, not we? :confused:

I vote for Iraq. The tyrant there might be dead already, and they have more oil. Colonizing should be done first and foremost with economy on our minds. If not, we should vote for North Korea. :p
 
Tony said:


Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. :)
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The EU just decided (only France against) to make the US their next member. We'll get one vote in the European Parliament, of course. :p
 
Bjorn said:
The EU just decided (only France against) to make the US their next member. We'll get one vote in the European Parliament, of course. :p
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Does that mean I can legally smoke a joint now? :D
 
a_unique_person said:


How about, just once, all the conservative pot smokers vote for a candidate who will legalise pot. Get the whole stupid issue out the way. Then you can go back to voting republican again.
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1. Im not conservative.

2. Nobody running for office in Texas is looking to legalise indo. If there was someone who was running, I would vote for them.

3. Texas has relativly lax drug laws. Drugs are also cheaper in Houston compared New Orleans or cities up north.
 
I really don't think there is a problem with wanting to read anything you want to in Cuba. There are quite a few cuban students who visit the local university every year. A friend also did a course at the film institute thereand this is the first I have heard that books aren't allowed in Cuba. In fact they say that the problem is that very few books come to Cuba...publishers don't find it a lucrative market.

100% literacy apart, what are your opinions on health care plan...supposedly (by IMF's grudging admission no less) one of the best in the world.
 
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