Uncommon Sense

14 Cuban Damas De Blanco on hunger strike at El Cobre (UPDATED)

 

Pope Benedict XVI on March 27 will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in El Cobre, Cuba, to pray before a much-venerated image of the Virgin Mary. Chances are outstanding that it will be much easier for the pope to arrive at the church, one of Cuba's holiest places, than it is for members of Cuba's most effective group, the Damas De Blanco ("Ladies In White").

 

But as usual, the Damas are not giving in easily to the Castro regime's repression.

Fourteen members of the group are currently on hunger strike on the steps of the shrine to protest recent arrests of 30 other members of the group, which is made up of relatives of former and current political prisoners and other activists. As of Sunday evening, a dozen women remained in police custody, according to a report posted on Diario de Cuba.

Police had done their best to prevent the women from reaching the shrine, patroling area roads and letting it be known that the women would be better off not trying to attend Mass.

"They are angry that despite everything, they could not prevent 16 women from arriving at the sanctuary," said former prisoner of conscience Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, whose wife is one of those arrested and whose 14-year-old daughter Martha Beatriz Ferrer Cantillo is one of the protesters on the steps of the church.

The other protesters were identified as Tania Montoya Vázquez, Ana Celia Rodríguez Torres, Yarisel Figueredo Valdés, Kenia Leal Elió, Milagros Leiva Ramírez, Annis Sarrión Romero, Vivian Peña Hernández, Yasnai Ferrer Santos, Yaquelín García, Matilde Mejías Roque, Aurora Martín Calderín and Iraida Martín Calderín.

In preparation for the pope's visit, the Cuban police have been busy attacking the Damas De Blanco at and near Catholic churches across the island, beating them, sexually assaulting them, arresting them. Most in the Cuban church hierarchy have been silent in response and, so far, so has Pope Benedict.

As long as this sort of repression continues, the pope should be ashamed to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity.

And he should be ashamed to visit Cuba.

Read more about the current protest at El Cobre, and tell the pope to postpone his visit to Cuba by signing this petition.

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UPDATED, 9:30 p.m. EDT -- Via Facebook, Cuban independent journalist Aini Martin Valero has persuaded the Damas to end their protest and has arranged transport for them to return home. Also, the detainees have been released.

5 questions with former Cuba prisoner of conscience Pablo Pacheco Avila

 

Pablo Pacheco and wife Oleivys Garcia, soon after their arrival in Miami, July 2011.

 Through this blog and other social media, I have had the good fortune of corresponding with several former prisoners of conscience in the Group of 75, those journalists, human rights activists and other dissidents imprisoned during the Cuban "black spring" of 2003.

In each instance, I have been struck by their graciousness and the strength of their courage and character. In jail, they suffered the worst tortures imaginable and for most of them, leaving prison in 2010-11 was followed by forced exile from their homeland.

Yet not once have I detected any bitterness or regret.

Pablo Pacheco Avila, now 41, is one of the youngest members of the Group of 75, sentenced to 20 years in prison because of his work as an independent journalist.

While in jail, and with the supporters of friends on the outside, Pacheco started a blog in which he recounted the horrors experienced by him and other prisoners. Along with Yoani Sanchez's Generation Y and other blogs, Voices Through The Bars is an example of how despite numerous and apparently insurmountable obstacles, Cubans have adapted new technologies to break the Castro regime's embargo on information about the reality of life on the island.

Pacheco now lives in exile in Miami, and he is still blogging.

Recently, he answered five questions from Uncommon Sense:

During your imprisonment, you sufferered various illnessess and numerous tortures delivered by your captors. How is your health?

 In prison, I began to suffer from arterial hypertension, gastritis, migraines, renal ptosis, a knee dislocation, arthritis. I was a healthy man when I entered prison. The worst torture was that they sent me to prison for reasons of conscience more than 350 kilometers from home with family visits every three months and conjugal visits every five. Add to this the violation of correspondence, isolation in punishment cells, etc.

When you were released from prison, you took exile in Spain and now live in Miami. What has been the most significant adjustment you have had to make during your time in exile?

 I left with my wife and 11-year-old son for Spain on July 12, 2010, and a year later reached Miami with my family. The most significant adjustment has been adapting to the real world. After more than seven years in captivity, life seems unreal away from your environment, your homeland, your habits, your friends. It has been a 180-degree turn.

Yet I thank God for this change. My life has chaged forthe better. I am free man with my family. I have a decent job and live like a human being. And from time to time, I can help my brothers in struggle on the island. So things are better.

While you were in prison and with the help of supporters, you were able to start a blog in which you related your experiences behind bars, and in exile you also have a blog. What role do independent journalists and bloggers have in the continuing struggle for freedom in Cuba?

Look, the power of human solidarity is amazing, is unpredictable. Human solidarity penetrated the bars where the owners of hatred and intolerance in Cuba placed us. It broke borders and our cause is recognized like never before. The blog  http://vocescubanas.com/voztraslasrejas/ served to strip the prison system from within, so that every human rights violation was reported first-hand and that the common criminals saw in us a protective shield. Plus many of them, with our help, learned to denounce what they saw.

The role of bloggers and independent journalists is fundamental. Remember that information is power. What they do is inform the world of the harsh reality in which the average Cuban lives, a reality that the regime keeps hidden with all its might. But the strength of freedom will end up destroying the tentacles of the dictatorship. We should support bloggers and independent journalists, help them. They are part of the civil society emerging on the island. That civil society will soon reach what we most want, freedom for Cuba. But without our support, it cannot do much. Remember that we are capable of reaching to where we are pushing. We are one people, them and us. We are only divided by the sea and a 52-year dictatorship.

What are your hopes and expectations for the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba?

The pope's visit could be a mixed blessing, especially for the regime. We remember the shouts of freedom during the Mass celebrated in the Cuban capital when Pope John Paul II visited the island (in 1998). Today, there exist other conditions. We have new technologies and spaces of freedom achieved in the past decade.

I am certain that the dictatorship will deploy a large police operation across the island against the peaceful opposition. But it is the people who can lead by demanding freedom. For Cuban democrats, this visit by the holy pontiff might provide the oxygen they need to tilt the balance, to push harder. It could be a box of surprises.

What is one thing Americans can do to support the cause of freedom in Cuba and contribute to the demise of the Castro dictatorship?

Friend, the best thing that the American people can do to support those who want freedom for Cuba is to understand what has happened to our island. The people of the United States have nevered suffered a totalitarian system. They don't know first-hand what a dictatorship is, and I admire them for that. With their voice, they can be very helpful in breaking the chains of oppression. Support Cuban democrats and demand that their politicians support the peaceful opposition.

For Pacheco's responses in Spanish, read below the fold.

Oscar Biscet calls on Pope Benedict to shine light on repression in Cuba (UPDATED)

 

Oscar Biscet

 

The Miami Herald reports on Dr. Biscet's powerful testimony, via telephone, to a U.S. House subcommittee on Thursday:

Speaking by telephone direct from Cuba, one of the country’s best-known political dissidents on Tuesday told Congress that Pope Benedict XVI should use his power and visibility as a world leader to shine a light on human rights abuses and political oppression under the Castro regime during his upcoming visit to the communist island nation.

If he has an opportunity to meet with the pope, he will ask him to be an advocate for the oppressed, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. He spoke through a translator in testimony delivered over the telephone from Cuba.

"I would say to him, that I would love for him to lobby for our freedom of speech and for a multi-party system, so that everyone can participate and be represented," Biscet said. "We hope that his coming will bring great change to our country."

The congressional committee did not announce Biscet's name before the hearing, out of concern that Cuban authorities would detain him before he was able to testify from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. During the hearing, Biscet's photo was projected on two separate video screens. His image was on several posters propped up along the wall in the hearing room.

President George W. Bush awarded Biscet the Medal of Freedom in 2007 while he was still serving a 25-year sentence for his opposition to Fidel Castro's regime. Biscet accused the Cuban government in the mid-1990s of allowing and covering up botched abortions, and was imprisoned from 1999 to late 2002. He had been free for 37 days when he was arrested again.

Biscet, 50, was freed last March as part of the Cuban government’s decision to release more than 125 political prisoners — a move that came after pressure by the Catholic Church. Some congressional leaders, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, have nominated him for a Nobel Prize.

His testimony Thursday came at considerable personal risk and could lead to his re-arrest, he acknowledged. "Everything is possible," Biscet said. "We're under constant supervision."

Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J. and Rep. Albio Sires, D-N.J., said they would write to the pope asking him to meet with Biscet. Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, said the message to the church couldn't be more clear.

"Now it is up to Catholic Church to respond to Dr. Biscet," Rivera said. "It is up to the pope himself to respond to Dr. Biscet. I would hope they would be responsive to Dr. Biscet's hope and aspirations and his request of the pope and the Catholic Church."

Biscet on Thursday told the committee that the police in Cuba beat him, disfigured his face and broke his foot in an effort to “stop me from defending human rights."

He also described the conditions he experienced in prison in Cuba. Some prisoners were undressed collectively, disregarding "any respect for human dignity," he said. They were handcuffed at their ankles and hands for more than 12 hours and as many as 24 hours. Some were hanged by their hands, with their feet barely touching the ground.

Cuban journalist Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, also a recently freed political prisoner who now lives in Miami, told the committee that women are treated with particular brutality by police. Some men have reported that their captors undressed them, screamed obscenities at them, touched their genitals, and threatened them with rape, he said.

"I still have fresh in my mind the screams of prisoners who were being freshly tortured," he said. "I don't know if I'll be able to ever forget that."

Sires called Biscet's testimony untainted by the politics of the Miami exile community. That should give the Castro regime pause, Sires said, because Biscet is one of their own.

"He's not a product of Miami Beach, he's not a product of Miami, he's not a product of Cubans in exile," he said. "This is a man that was educated in Cuba, and he sees that this is a dictator, that this a country that oppresses human rights. That this is a country that allows no one the freedom to express themselves. And he's personally seen what they do to people who are seeking freedom of expression."

Biscet on Thursday vowed to continue what he described as a non-violent movement to change Cuba. Biscet said they expect little to improve while both Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, remain alive — but said that they can't wait for their deaths to agitate for change in Cuba.

"So we will cre"ate change on our own," he said. "We are hoping that we will have the capacity to create non-violent coercion and pressure in order to actually install that political change ourselves.

 UPDATED, Feb. 17 -- For a link to a video of the hearing, go here.

 

Cuban political prisoner Ernesto Borges resumes hunger strike

Ernesto Borges

 The Castro dictatorship is trying to murder political prisoner Ernesto Borges Perez. But like Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar Mendoza and thousands of others before him, Borges is fighting back.

His father Raul Borges told Radio Marti that Ernesto has resumed a hunger strike to demand his jailers provide him with needed medical care and the right to make telephone calls to his family. Borges on Jan. 16 had suspended an earlier protest after officials promised him some relief but not surprisingly, the guards have reneged.

"He resumed this strike because they are keeping him in a punishment area, in a filthy cell where sewage falls on him while he is taking a shower," said Raul Borges, who recently visited his son at the Combinado del Este prison in Havana.

Raul Borges said Ernesto, a political prisoner for almost 14 years, has a lung infection and suffers from nine chronic illnesses, including emphysema and asthma.

Raul said the Cuban opposition is worried about his son because "there is no doubt that the Castro brothers' dictatorship has planned a murder."

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Cubans on the island and in exile are taking to Twitter to spread the news about what Borges' protest and what his jailers are doing to him. You can follow the tweets here.

Further proof that Borges is not forgotten comes from the Czech Republic, where exiles there are planning a demonstration for April 1 to demand Borges' release. For more information, the event's Facebook page is here.

Cuba human rights group reports 631 arrests in January

Determining an exact count of examples of how repressive the Castro regime is against its opponents in Cuba is an impossible task. The beatings and arrests are numerous, and since Cuba is a police state run by a band of thugs eager to cover up its crimes against Cuban people, the government feels no need to hold itself accountable by offering any sort of statisitics.

So the task falls to the Cuban opposition.

The exact numbers vary -- again, quantifying the Castros' barbarity to the last beating and arrest is not possible. But what matters more is that statistics that dissidents have compiled show that despite the best intentions of the naive, the ignorant and those who don't give a damn about the Cuban people, and the lies from Raul Castro about "reform, nothing has changed in Cuba.

In fact, it has gotten worse.

In its latest report this week, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported there were 631 politically motivated arrests in January. In what has become the hallmark of Raul-style repression, most of those detained were released after a few hours or days.

The 631 arrests compares to 268 arrests in January 2011. (And it compares to the 428 arrests in January tallied by another human rights group on the island)

631 arrests, each one a call to arms, a call to resist, a call to speak out for freedom and justice in Cuba.

 

After almost 18 years in Castro gulag, Rafael Ibarra Roque released from jail

Rafael Ibarra Roque

After almost 18 years as a captive in the Castro gulag, Rafael Ibarra Roque on Thursday was released from jail.

His release represents a defeat for the Castro dictatorship because after holding him in its dungeons for almost 18 years, after torturing him for almost 18 years, it failed to break Ibarra's will to resist and his desire for freedom.

"We have to persevere until the final days of our lives," Ibarra said in an interview with Miami-based Radio Republica after his release. "That is the message not only for the brothers in the struggle but all of the Cuban people.

Ibarra, a co-founder of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners organization, said he believes that "sooner rather than later," Cuba will be free of the Castros.

Ibarra had been in prison since June 1994, and in 1995 was convicted of "sabatoge" and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

His release represents a victory for Ibarra, his family and the Cuban opposition. But it is not a moment to think any more of the regime that imprisoned him, because he never should have been in jail.

"I am very grateful for all the solidarity and brotherhood that I have always felt from each one of you in exile and all the brothers here in Cuba," Ibarra said.

Read more about Ibarra here.

Castro thug to Cuban Lady In White: 'You will not be allowed to go to church'

This is why Pope Benedict XVI should postpone his visit next month to Cuba. Or at the very least, order his cardinal, bishops and priests on the island to immediately speak out and act on behalf of his flock.

Pedazos de la Isla has the details:

When 6 Ladies in White were violently arrested this past Sunday February 5th in the city of Holguin, they were also warned that they could not continue trying to assist mass in church, according to Marta Díaz Rondón, one of the activists who was attacked.

After a brutal detention which consisted of "twisted arms and aggressive shoves against the police vehicles," Diaz Rondon denounces that once inside the dungeons of the Pedernales Unit, an official (whom she does not know the name of) violently threatened her, telling her that they would not be allowed to carry out their activities.  "He told me that he would not allow us, the Ladies in White and other dissidents, to continue doing what we were doing."  Rondon’s response was a question: "Not allow what? That we go to Church?", to which the regime official aggressively responded, "That was what he had said and he did not have to talk about anything else with us."

After this confrontation and 6 hours in sealed off dark and damp cells, the women were released.  In the case of Rondon and Gertrudis Ojeda Suarez- both from Banes- they were taken to their municipality but abandoned miles from their homes.

Marta Díaz explains that her home has been under "total vigilance," as have the homes of "all the Ladies in White in the Cuban East." The dissident adds that "they do not let us move from one place to another, but we are going to continue marching and taking to the streets, despite the threats."

This is just one of the constant cases of repression against Cubans who are simply trying to get to church to pray for the freedom of all political prisoners and for all of the Cuban people, and it is occurring with much more frequency, even as the trip to the island of Pope Benedict in March nears.  Although some religious figures inside Cuba- such as Father Palma from the Cobre Sanctuary- have demonstrated solidarity with oppressed dissidents, various reports have hinted that the Pope will not meet with figures of the Cuban Resistance, despite the fact that the situation is getting more violent every passing day.

"All of this that the regime is carrying out against us is being done in order to plant fear in the everyday Cuban people, so they will be afraid and not join the struggle“, affirmed Marta Diaz Rondon, "and although sometimes the everyday people do not join us physically, they are well aware of who were are- peaceful people.  And they are commenting out on the streets about how we are mistreated Sunday after Sunday, day after day."

"I am denouncing to the world that whatever happens to us is the direct fault of the Cuban government, for they have already assassinated various brothers and sisters in struggle such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto, Wilman Villar Mendoza and Laura Pollan," declared the Lady in White.

If you agree that the pope should postpone his visit, sign this petition.

 

16-year-old dissident calls for students to end the Cuba dictatorship

Via Pedazos de la Isla:

Sign petition to demand release of Cuba political prisoners Yasmin Conyedo and Yusmani Alvarez

The CIHPRESS independent news agency and human rights organization has started a petition drive to demand the release of Cuban political prisoners Yasmin Conyedo and her husband Yusmani Rafael Alvarez.

The couple was arrested Jan. 8 in Villa Clara, and have become the focus of several public demonstrations by other activists.

The petition is part of a new campaign to demand the couple's release.

You can sign the petition here.

Amnesty International: Cuba uses exit permits to punish freedom of expression

 

Yoani Sanchez

 

Amnesty International weighs in on the Castro regime's decision for the 19th time to deny blogger Yoani Sanchez permission to travel overseas:

The Cuban government must reform an arbitrary exit permit scheme that affects all Cubans and is used to punish freedom of expression, Amnesty International said today after a prominent blogger was again blocked from travelling abroad.

On Friday, Cuba’s migration authorities denied blogger and activist Yoani Sánchez an exit permit (white card or tarjeta blanca) for the 19th time in four years. As on previous occasions, no reason was given for the decision.

The well-known author of Generación Y had been invited to speak at the premiere screening in Brazil’s Bahía state on 10 February of a documentary on freedom of expression in Cuba and Honduras. Brazil had already issued her a visa to enter the country.

“The Cuban government’s repeated denial of exit permits to critics like Yoani Sánchez can only be seen as retaliation for the expression of their legitimate political views and activism,” said Javier Zúñiga, Special Advisor to Amnesty International.

“Those fighting for freedom of expression, association, and movement must be authorized to leave and re-enter the country without arbitrary restrictions, and the Cuban authorities must end other tactics used to clamp down on peaceful dissent.”

Read the whole thing, here.