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Facts on Castro's Oppression: terrifying realites of life inside totalitarian regime.
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | By Lorne W. Craner

Posted on 04/21/2003 10:55:04 PM PDT by JohnHuang2

The Facts on Castro's Oppression
By Lorne W. Craner
U.S. State Department | April 22, 2003


Testimony before the House International Relations Committee in Washington, D.C., given on April 16, 2003.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, you are to be commended for holding this hearing to spotlight the recent crackdown in Cuba. The committee's continuing interest in the situation in Cuba is particularly well timed and welcome, given the growing international concern over the efforts of the repressive regime to stifle independent voices and a growing demand for democracy.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I want to address two issues, first the worsening human rights situation in Cuba, and second the growing democratic movement in Cuba.

At the same time U.S. forces moved to liberate the people of Iraq from a brutal regime, the sole survivor of totalitarianism in this hemisphere -- the dinosaur dictatorship of Fidel Castro -- moved to brutally repress political dissent among its citizens. Beginning on March 18, the government of Cuba has sought to decapitate the democratic opposition and the strongest voices of independent expression on the island, arresting over 100 persons on spurious charges of subversion and treason and sentencing 75 to long prison terms in secretive and summary tribunals. Prominent targets included independent journalists such as Raul Rivero, independent economists like Maria Beatriz Roque, and a number of independent librarians and labor leaders. Twenty of those arrested had supported the Varela Project, a peaceful and constitutional call for a national referendum on political and economic reforms in Cuba that had obtained over 11,000 signatures and international praise and recognition.

Many of these prisoners of conscience faced charges of collaboration with diplomats at the United States Interest Section in Havana. They were called traitors for their courage in speaking to official Americans such as Jim Cason. Like his predecessors, as chief of the Interest Section, Jim does in fact talk to independent Cuban citizens: an activity hardly worthy of comment, much less alarm, in a free and democratic society but a direct threat to the iron control of information under a dictatorial regime. Like American and other diplomats around the world, Jim and his colleagues work to promote peaceful and democratic changes, provide information about our country, and encourage and strengthen fundamental -- and internationally acknowledged -- freedoms. Only Cuba, and a diminishing number of its totalitarian counterparts, could tremble at the "threat" of library books and free access to the Internet, and call them subversion. In Cuba, a reporter's office files, including envelopes of newspaper clippings, become evidence of treason.

It can be no surprise to any of us that much of the evidence in these so-called trials was provided by agents of the Cuban intelligence service who had successfully infiltrated the Cuban opposition. The fact that government agents successfully infiltrated the Cuban democratic movement is testimony to the regime's fear of this movement, and the resources it is willing to bring to bear in its efforts to intimidate its citizens, to control information, and to stifle freedom of thought and expression. The brave men and women confronted with these betrayals cannot have been surprised either, knowing the very real threat peaceful dissent and independent thought pose to an authoritarian regime. It is testimony to their true courage that this knowledge did not sway or intimidate them. Indeed, this action of the Cuba regime against its own citizens is a stark example of Castro's failure to silence dissent, to establish "revolutionary legitimacy" -- legitimacy of any kind, for that matter. It is further proof of a failed and empty regime.

This brutality, this repression, is nothing new. Systemic violations of fundamental freedoms have long been the hallmark of the Cuba regime, violations denounced by a wide range of independent international organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders, and recognized in the State Department's annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices released on March 31.

Ironically, at the same time as the secretive trials and convictions of these political prisoners -- many facing prison terms of 20 years or more for the non-violent exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association -- Cuba sits on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. A team of representatives of that regime attends the current session working to block condemnation of their own and other repressive regimes. This team is accepted despite what the NGO Human Rights Watch characterized as the flouting of fundamental human rights norms, despite their indifference to that same Commission's 2002 resolution and rejection of the High Commissioner's personal representative, and despite worldwide outrage at the latest brutal crackdown.

Secretary Powell was not alone when he called for an end to the repression in Cuba and insisted that Cubans who seek peaceful change -- and basic human rights and freedoms -- be permitted to do so. His call has been echoed by many others: the European Union, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio de Mello, and prominent figures across the world, including more than 300 artists, intellectuals, and politicians -- Gunter Grass, Pedro Almodovar, and Mario Vargas Llosa among them -- who recently published a letter protesting the recent arrests. Even the French and Portuguese Communist Parties spoke out against the repression, while the Catholic Bishops in Cuba -- who must operate cautiously in the best of times -- issued a statement "profoundly lamenting" the arrests of Cuban citizens for "thinking and acting differently than the official ideology." Despite the bluster and threats of Cuban officials, tree Latin American countries (Costa Rica, Peru, and Uruguay) have drafted another resolution on the human rights situation in Cuba, and many other countries at the commission have voiced their support and their outrage at the recent wave of arrests and trials of political dissidents, and at the summary trials and executions of three ferry hijackers this past week.

This egregious act of political repression is an admission of failure by the regime, an expression of fear directed at the most basic and peaceful expressions of independent thought -- at journalists, librarians, even economists. The regime has sought to characterize members of this movement as the mercenaries of a foreign power, to call the natural demand for freedom "treason." It is the ordinary citizens of Cuba -- like the ordinary citizens of Iraq -- who are finding the individual strength to look past years of repression, to strive for a democratic future and voice their desire for a peaceful transition and a better life. We must continue to support that effort wherever and whenever we can, whether through our outreach to ordinary Cubans or in partnership with like-minded members of the international community. I would like to conclude by stressing that promotion of democracy is and will continue to be a central, defining element of our foreign policy. We will continue to use all available bilateral and multilateral tools at our disposal to combat threats to democracy and to institutionalize democratic reforms toward a stable Western Hemisphere.



TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: castro; cuba; dictators; totalitarianism
Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Quote of the Day by Texas Eagle

1 posted on 04/21/2003 10:55:04 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
Castro must be toppled!
2 posted on 04/21/2003 11:05:03 PM PDT by TLBSHOW (The gift is to see the truth.....)
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To: Luis Gonzalez
ping
3 posted on 04/21/2003 11:49:52 PM PDT by agitator (Ok, mic check...line one...)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; Victoria Delsoul; Luis Gonzalez; Ragtime Cowgirl
Ping...
4 posted on 04/21/2003 11:52:47 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
I hope someone is listening.

Bump!!

5 posted on 04/21/2003 11:56:42 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Me too, friend.
G'morning to ya.
6 posted on 04/21/2003 11:57:13 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
Hi JH2.
7 posted on 04/21/2003 11:58:41 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: JohnHuang2
Oliver Stone's flic is a propatery in the tradition of Leni Riefenstahl. Yup, I coined up a new word there. ;-)
8 posted on 04/22/2003 12:00:05 AM PDT by goldstategop ( In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: JohnHuang2
but..but...Carter says Cuba is wonderful...Castro is a great guy....how can this be??!! < sarcasm/>

Red

9 posted on 04/22/2003 12:25:21 AM PDT by Conservative4Ever (got the new computer, touch pad, keyboard learning blues)
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To: JohnHuang2
Thank you for the ping, JH. Castro has been in the news more in the last month than in the past decade....mostly anti-Castro voices calling for a regime change, finally allowed to share the national soapbox.

One more unintended benefit of the war in Iraq.

10 posted on 04/22/2003 5:40:43 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl ("Don't ever underestimate Bush," - Ma' Richards)
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To: Conservative4Ever
And And, they all have wonderful FREE healthcare!
11 posted on 04/22/2003 5:42:29 PM PDT by Black Agnes
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To: JohnHuang2
The regime has sought to characterize members of this movement as the mercenaries of a foreign power, to call the natural demand for freedom "treason."

Unbelievable! Castro calls basic freedoms "treason," he is as bad as Saddam.

12 posted on 04/22/2003 5:44:21 PM PDT by Victoria Delsoul
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To: Black Agnes
and ya need it after a trip through a chipper...oh sorry, wrong regime.

Red

13 posted on 04/22/2003 11:01:50 PM PDT by Conservative4Ever (got the new computer, touch pad, keyboard learning blues)
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To: JohnHuang2
Willful blindness shattered by Cuba's crackdown - Castro shows the brutal face of his regime***The wilful blindness to President Castro's repression has been underlined by the shock at the recent crackdown. The Pope, who insisted on his controversial visit to Havana five years ago that he had won significant human rights concessions, spoke of his "deep sorrow" at the executions and urged Señor Castro to consider a "significant gesture of clemency" toward those convicted. Perhaps the biggest shock was felt by the writers, poets and artists who have long defended Cuba and its autocratic ruler. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes called the country "a suffocating dictatorship", the Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago said Fidel Castro "cheated his enemies" and the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who once praised him as a "symbol of national dignity", acknowledged that the crackdown had fuelled opposition claims that he was a dictator. There have been demonstrations in Caracas and Madrid.***
14 posted on 04/30/2003 3:49:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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