''This is as far as I go'' - Disgusted by executions, Castro ally cuts ties to Cuba

In a bitter criticism of the executions carried out last week in Cuba, José Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer considered Fidel Castro's best friend among European intellectuals, broke with the regime Monday.

''This is as far as I go,'' Saramago wrote in a short but powerful essay printed in Spain's leading newspaper, El País, as the European Union, various countries and organizations around the world continued to offer public repudiations.

Killing three men by firing squad at dawn Friday for trying to spirit a ferry boat is unacceptable -- especially since the would-be hijackers didn't hurt anybody, wrote Saramago, a communist.

``Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions.''

Meanwhile, groups ranging from France's Socialist party to the foreign ministers of the EU condemned the killings -- part of a dissident crackdown that began in March as the war unfolded in Iraq.

Leaders of the EU, which opened a Havana mission earlier this year, alluded to rejecting Cuba's petition to join the Cotonou Agreement, a trade accord that offers economic help to more than 70 developing nations.

The recent arrests signal a further deterioration of the human rights situation and ''will affect Cuba's relations with the European Union, and the perspective of increased cooperation between both groups,'' the statement read.

Cuba, which withdrew an application two years ago over concerns about its human rights record, reapplied to join the trade accord in January.

The executions, the first for a terrorism offense in Cuba in more than a decade, could also give momentum for a condemnation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, a measure that could be heard in Geneva as early as Wednesday. A group of nations led by Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua had planned on again asking the commission to send a special representative to the island to report on violations -- something Cuba rejected last year.

But the executions could give steam to an even stronger measure -- an outright condemnation of Cuba. Some Latin American countries, however, have been wavering.

On Monday, Mexico issued a statement condemning Friday's killings but staying mum on the U.N. resolution. Chile's foreign minister said the South American country was willing to consider a rebuke.

Yet even if the EU keeps Cuba out of the trade agreement, and the U.N. resolution is approved, neither will have an effect on the life of average Cubans, said Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami. Castro expected international outcries before rounding up members of the fledgling opposition movement, he said. That wasn't enough to sway him from his goal, Suchlicki said.

''He's more interested in cleaning out dissidents, so that he can leave a legacy for his brother. If he was worried about Cubans eating more, he wouldn't have done this,'' Suchlicki said.

Friday's executions capped weeks of tension on the island of 11 million that included a flurry of attempted hijackings, dozens of arrests and stiff jail sentences for dissidents. Last week, 75 dissidents were sentenced with terms up to 28 years. They were accused of collaborating with, or taking money from, U.S. officials.

The measures were necessary, the Cuban government has claimed, to protect Cuban national security. The United States has no right to criticize Cuba, Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón said Monday, since it violated the rights of detainees after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The United States is losing an ''opportunity to stay quiet,'' Alarcón said, because more than a year later many are still detained without charges.

BARLOVENTO: THE MASSACRE OF CUBAN-CHINESE

By Agustín Blázquez
and Jaums Sutton*
ABIP.USA@verizon.net
La Nueva Cuba
July 11, 2003

Barlovento is a marina development that flourished before 1959 near Jaimanitas Beach northwest of Havana.

When Castro was in need of U.S. dollars to prop-up his regime he converted that area into “Hemingway Marina” which became popular among rich and famous foreigners, including yachting Americans, all of whom find dubious amusements and business deals while spending the coveted U.S. dollars, to this day, oblivious that the blood of innocent civilians taint the waters.

This is the area where U.S. fugitive Robert Vesco lived in luxury on his stolen U.S. dollars until he fell out of favor with Castro (perhaps because he ran out of dollars). He was put in jail under the pretext of some shady pharmaceutical deals with a visiting relative of the late president Richard Nixon who worked for one of the powerful pharmaceutical companies in the U.S.

But today, Armando Lago, a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, continues working on his book “CUBA: The Human Cost of Social Revolutions. The Black Book of Cuban Communism,” documenting the deaths caused by Castro’s regime from 1959 to the present. According to Dr. Lago’s ongoing research, the total currently ranges between 90,827 and 102,722 deaths (much higher than the 3,000 attributed to Chile’s Augusto Pinochet).

Every one of the deaths Castro has caused deserves to be documented and presented to the world for its review.

But, unfortunately, very few are known to the American public because of the bias and censorship of the U.S. media and academia.

One of the individual incidents has been known only to the Cuban exile community and due to the lack of documentation seemed to be at risk of becoming mere folklore.

Dr. Alberto Fibla in his 1996 book in Spanish “Barbarie” (Barbarism) describes this incident on page 36 for the first time. Dr. Fibla, was in prison in Cuba from 1962 to 1988 for opposing Castro’s tyranny.

But, in the course of his exhaustive research, Dr. Lago finally uncovered the documentation of that incident.

It was thanks to former political prisoner Ela Castro. When about to be released from prison a fellow inmate gave her a copy of the court sentencing documents of the survivors for her to smuggle out. Ela Castro was then able to smuggle the document out of Cuba when she came to exile in the U.S.

As Dr. Lago worked on a chapter of his book that deals with the crimes perpetrated by Castro’s regime against unarmed civilians who attempt to escape Cuba in boats or makeshift rafts, he decided that now that the credentials are available the story should be told mmediately, rather than wait for the release of his book. So he shared the details of the story with me, complete with the names of the victims.

So now, for the first time, the complete story.

On January 15, 1962, the Cuban Coast Guard, following Castro’s standing orders, massacred a group of 29 civilians whose terrible crime, so damaging to Castro’s revolution, was wanting to leave Cuba for the U.S.

Among them were eight Cuban-Chinese from the town of Bauta and the neighborhood of Marianao, near that rich-man’s-paradise renamed “Hemingway Marina.”

On that winter night, the group went aboard the 31-foot ented boat “Pretexto” (Pretext) anchored at the marina.

But Castro’s Gestapo-type State Security (SS) was already very well prepared and because of its pervasive web of informants, knew of their plans well in advance and had time to organize a dramatic ambush, rather than peacefully apprehending the participants. Castro’s rule-by-fear depends on bloody spectacles as a deterrent lesson to repress others. As the boat began to head out of the marina in Channel No. 1, the main deep-water channel, it was abruptly halted by a heavy steel chain that had been strung across the channel. The refugees looked ahead and saw a Cuban Navy vessel anchored at the entrance of the channel that opened fire on them with 30-caliber machine guns. And from one side, more machine gun fire began, completing a multisided attack.

Since the “Pretexto” was unarmed, it was unable to defend itself.

The result of this cowardly and unjustified attack against 29 unarmed civilians was five dead, including three Cuban-Chinese.

According to the court documents Dr. Lago received, the 24 survivors of this crime were sentenced to 20 years in prison in the Judicial Docket (Causa) No. 60 of 1962 by the Revolutionary Tribunal of La Cabana Fortress. This episode came to be known in the Cuban-exile community as “The Chinese Massacre at Barlovento.”

The names of the five assassinated by Castro’s forces can now be given; they are: Amalia-Cora Corzo, Fernando Gil Garcia, both from the Marianao neighborhood and Cuban-Chinese Lee Suey Chuy, Guan Xi Lui and Yak Yim Pan, all from the town of Bauta.

In addition to Dr. Fibla’s book mention, the second source for Dr. Lago’s report is the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Revolutionary District of Havana; the Judge was Vicente Alvarez Crespo in Judicial Docket (Causa) No. 60 of 1962, July 4, 1962, pp 1-2.

This case at Barlovento Marina --now the bloody waters of the “Hemingway Marina” - was not the first or the last incident in the sad history. There are many more cases. Among the most infamous cases are at the Canimar River in the province of Matanzas on July 6, 1980 where 11 unarmed civilians died and the July 13, 1994 sinking of the "13 of March” tugboat outside the waters of the Bay of Havana in which 41 unharmed civilians (men and women) lost their lives along with 12 innocent children.

Dr. Lago, in his incoming book, will document these and other cases. Hopefully this book will not be ignored by the U.S. media and academia as they did with “THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM: Crimes Terror Repression” published in French in 1997 and translated to English by Harvard University Press (October, 1999). But it seems that while the Nazi crimes are still publicized to this day, the crimes of the communists are being systematically ignored.

It is very revealing indeed of the U.S. media and academia, but what can the purpose of their avoidance of the truth of Communism be? After Castro falls and Cuba hopefully becomes a free and democratic country, many of those guilty in this cover-up will have to answer.

The right to leave and return to any country is guaranteed by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. And Cuba is a signatory of this document. But, as usual, Castro’s signature means nothing since his regime has been systematically violating this right and so many others since 1959.

© 2003 ABIP

*Agustín Blazquez, Producer/director of the documentaries “COVERING CUBA,” “CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles,” “COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation” & “COVERING CUBA 3: Elian,” presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival. Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book “COVERING AND DISCOVERING” and translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta Morell “THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra.” For a preview and information on the documentary and books, click here .

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