Uncommon Sense

Dissident wins asylum in Norway

From Human Rights Foundation:

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- Amauris Samartino, a political dissident illegally expelled from Bolivia for criticizing President Evo Morales and Fidel Castro, has been granted asylum in Norway. Samartino, a medical doctor, was detained at gunpoint in eastern Bolivia last December for remarks he had made in the local media. Prior to his expulsion, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) adopted him as a prisoner of conscience of the Bolivian government. "Although my home is Bolivia, I am overjoyed that Norway is willing to be a safe harbor for those with the temerity to express themselves freely. Bolivia is no longer a safe place for those who disagree, no matter how peacefully, with the government of Evo Morales," said Samartino.

Samartino, a Cuban national, escaped Cuba in 1998 along with 11 other dissidents on a raft. He was picked up by a ship and taken to Guantánamo Bay, where he remained until the International Organization for Migration arranged asylum for him in Bolivia. Admitted to Bolivia in October of 2000, first as a political refugee and later as a permanent legal resident, he settled in Santa Cruz, where he met his wife. In early 2006, Samartino began publicly criticizing the friendship between recently elected president Evo Morales and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. On December 23, 2006 he was arrested in Santa Cruz and taken to La Paz. While in Bolivian police custody, he was told he would be returned to Cuba, but after 17 days of detention he was expelled to Colombia. "Remarkably, Samartino has faced the nightmare of political persecution not once, but twice. Fortunately for him, there is a Norway. This man's story underlines the reality that freedom can never be taken for granted and must always be actively defended," said Human Rights Foundation President Thor Halvorssen.

Bolivian cabinet minister, Alicia Muñoz, ordered Samartino's arrest and detention for violating a 1996 immigration law that prohibits foreigners from involving themselves in Bolivian internal affairs. However, that law was declared unconstitutional in 2001 for infringing on free speech rights. On February 2, 2007, the Bolivian Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the detention and expulsion of Samartino was arbitrary and illegal. HRF had filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the Constitutional Tribunal delineating how the government had violated not only Bolivian law but four international treaties in this case. However, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera responded that the government would not follow the ruling of the court and that Samartino would not be permitted back in the country. "The behavior of the Morales government illustrates the constitutional crisis in Bolivia today. The government ignores the highest court in the land, violates the separation of powers, and justifies arbitrary detainment and exile," said Halvorssen.

Prisoners finally get their day in court (UPDATED)

It's Castro-style justice, so justice, it's really not. But Tuesday something resembling due process was finally delivered for five political prisoners in jail since July 2005, but never formally charged with a crime.

Journalist Roberto Santana Rodríguez, in a dispatch posted at CubaNet and Payo Libre, reports that the five prisoners — René Montes de Oca Martija, Emilio Leyva Pérez, Lázaro Alonso Román, Manuel Pérez Soria and Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez — finally received hearings before a judge.

Prosecutors had no case, and the defense, with the facts and the arguments on its side, was well prepared. But not surprisingly, the defendants each were found guilty of the supposed crime of "public disorder," for participating in a demonstration commemorating the victims of "13th of March" tugboat massacre on July 13, 1994.

"It was judicial theater, everything was prepared beforehand," said Esther Germán, the wife of Montes de Oca.

It was a performance by the dictatorship without much of an audience. Journalist Santana reports that the only members of the public allowed in the courtroom were two family members for each prisoner.

Montes de Oca, Leyva, Alonso and Pérez Soria, were each sentenced to two years in prison. Guerra was sentenced to 1 year and 10 months.

In a move that resembles something approaching justice, the prisoners will get credit for time served. Which means Guerra is scheduled for release in May, and the others, in July, according to Santana's story.

For more on René Montes de Oca Martija, read several articles by the National Review's Jay Nordlinger. The links are here.

UPDATED, 11:43 p.m. EST

Reporters Without Borders has reaction to the 22-month sentence for Guerra, an independent journalist:

“Such a severe sentence for ‘disturbing the peace’ is in itself surprising,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Guerra was held for 19 months without being charged before being tried. We obviously hope this long period already spent behind bars will be discounted from his sentence and that he will be released soon.”

The organization added: “Prior to his arrest, Guerra was repeatedly harassed because of his journalistic activities, and the peaceful demonstration in which he took part on 13 July 2005 was just used as a pretext for imprisoning him.”

Real journalists get expelled from Cuba

From Investors' Business Daily (H/T to Mora, writing at Babalú):

Cuba Expels The Wrong Marx

Cuba's expulsion of three journalists was a minor story, but shouldn't be. Not only does it show Cuba's growing fear of the spotlight, it raises questions about why others are still there.

It's no coincidence the same Western journalists who tell us all's well in Cuba — nothing here but vintage cars and mojitos — were not among those asked to go. In fact, their reporting has little in common with that of the Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs or Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of Mexico's El Universal.

Under intolerable conditions — spied on by secret police, sources harassed by government goons — these three managed to paint a credible picture of Cuba. That's important because big changes are coming with the demise of the Castro regime, and it might not be a Velvet Revolution.

Cuba's military is restless, Florida civil authorities are making contingency plans for a freedom flotilla, and Hugo Chavez's potential role will be unknown. But at least we could grasp underlying conditions from the journalists whose visas the regime refused to renew.

Marx (Gary, that is) wrote of the disillusionment of Cuba's youth with communism, fakery at Castro's military parades and how the Cuban black market works.

Gonzalez-Calero chronicled long lines, lousy train rides and savings devaluations. He also asked the key question of who was running Cuba and highlighted the fact that the Cuban government had no intention of telling.

Gibb reported on Cuba's social disintegration, including AIDS camps and strange traffic like husband-selling.

All of it was valuable. In the Internet Age it's not complicated to see why — it was verifiable. Marx's, Gonzalez-Calero's and Gibbs' accounts tended to match those of ordinary Cubans who escaped Castro's island prison to freedom and who can now speak freely — like the 23 Cubans who just made it to Key West on Tuesday after multiple attempts. Their reporting matched exile news services like CubaNet.org, as well as the exile photographs seen on Web sites like TheRealCuba.com. It also matched the scholarly research like that found at the University of Miami's Cuba Transition Project.

What it didn't match was the tripe put out by Cuba's state press, touting the "achievements" of communism. Cuban authorities told Marx his work was "negative." Gonzalez-Calero was thrown out for "reporting in a way that does not comport with the Cuban government."

If professional standards mean anything to the mainstream media, getting expelled for that reason is a badge of honor.

Which brings up why remaining correspondents inside Cuba aren't red-faced about not being thrown out.

As with the CNN correspondents who admitted they slanted prewar Iraq coverage to avoid getting their visas revoked by Saddam Hussein, one sees some of this very behavior in the Cuban correspondents and one wonders what the value of such cowardice is. It's a problem for anyone covering a totalitarian regime. But few reporters excused Hussein's regime the way some do Cuba's.

Earlier this week, unexpelled Reuters correspondent Marc Frank wrote about Cuba's latest failed sugar harvest, making no effort to look up why government price-setting creates the same disastrous result over and over. Like the Soviets of old, he blamed the weather.

Not everything Frank does is bad, but the ex-People's Daily World staffer states in many of his reports that Cuba's economic problems are a byproduct of the U.S. embargo rather than the failures of socialism.

Not to be outdone, Anita Snow of the Associated Press is the go-to person for every Western fringe leftist visiting Cuba and parroting Castro's priorities.

Journalists who fail to pass along the realities of a dictatorship are not only doing their readers a disservice. They're also being foolish. One day the Castro regime will fall, and when the Cuban secret police files are opened, there could be a reckoning of what the truth of this regime and their role in its enablement really was.

Prisoners testify to the truth about Cuba

As long as there are political prisoners in Cuba, no deal to lift the so-called American "embargo" on Cuba is morally acceptable.

As long as there are political prisoners in Cuba, there is no liberty in Cuba, no matter how much Raúl Castro talks about shaking up the system or implementing economic reforms. His goal is not to reduce repression, just to make it more efficient in order to continue the dictatorship.

As long as there are political prisoners in Cuba, that truth about the Castros and their regime will be there for the world to see.

If it only dares to look.

Whether it's Fidel or Raúl holding the keys, nothing changes for the prisoners of conscience in the Castro dungeon. The suffering only increases.

Just ask Rolando Jiménez, José Ferrer and Francisco Diaz, who recently were targeted for especially brutal attention by their jailers.

Rolando Jimenez

An attorney, Jiménez, 37, was arrested in April 2003, and after being held without charges for more than three years, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for the "crimes" of revealing state secrets and disrespecting the Cuban government.

On Monday, Jiménez was ordered to spend 21 days in a punishment cell at the El Guayabo prison on the Isle of Pines, for supposedly showing a lack of respect for a prison employee, according to a story by journalist Lamasiel Gutiérrez posted at Miscelaneas de Cuba. Gutiérrez also is Jiménez's wife.

Jiménez is a former Uncommon Sense Political Prisoner of the Week.

José Ferrer

Also recently spending time in an isolation cell was Ferrer.

Journalist Abel Escobar Ramírez, writing for CubaNet, reports that Ferrer, 36, was targeted for special punishment after he protested how officials at the Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey were treating family members wanting to visit their loved ones. Escobar reports that family members were forced to wait for several hours and that they were not allowed to give prisoners any food.

The latter, Ferrer believes, is designed to punish him and fellow prisoner Juan Carlos Herrera, who for several months have refused to eat prison food, as a protest against conditions at Kilo 8.

Ferrer, a democracy activist and journalist, was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Francisco Diaz

The punishment recently inflicted on political prisoner Diaz was much more severe.

Writing for Puente Informativo Cuba-Miami, journalist Aidé Rodriguez Rodriguez reports that 15 guards severely beat and kicked the 55-year-old Diaz. The injuries were so grave that he was immediately admitted to a prison hospital in critical condition.

Diaz, who was jailed in 1990, is serving a prison sentence of 20 years and nine months.

Gay rights in Cuba

DeWayne Wickham, whose opinion columns on Cuba for Gannett News Service suggest he is trying to channel Herbert Matthews, is impressed that Cuba is moving towards ending discrimination of homosexuals and granting gay couples certain rights. If only the United States were so progressive, Wickham writes from Havana:

"We have to abolish any form of discrimination against those persons," said Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly. "We are trying to see how to do that, whether it should be to grant them the right to marry or to have same-sex unions."

Alarcon said he expects Cuba's communist government will soon enact a law to do one or the other. "We have to redefine the concept of marriage," he said. "Socialism should be a society that does not exclude anybody."

This awakening comes less than a year after President Bush renewed his call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. "Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them, and changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure," Bush said in June.

Just one state, Massachusetts, allows gay marriages. And only four permit some form of same-sex union, which falls short of the definition of marriage but lets gay couples have some legal rights.

How ironic is this? While a country that successive U.S. governments have called a totalitarian state is moving toward expanding the rights of gays and lesbians, the president of the United States — the world's leading democracy — wants to restrict their rights.

Bush is wrong about amending the Constitution — that's no place for legalized discrimination. But Wickham's moral equivalency argument is ridiculous, for how it ignores the discrimination and outright persecution of all Cubans — no matter with whom they go to bed at night.

Even if Wickham is right about gay rights in Cuba, there's no comfort in knowing that homosexuals on the island may no longer be suffering any more than straight Cubans have for almost 50 years.

Journalist provides prisoners a voice

Diosdado González

Ivan Hernandez

One of the more courageous and persistent chroniclers of the Cuban dissidence movement is independent journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira, a correspondent for Agencia de Prensa Sindical Press and Buró de Prensa del Puente Informativo Cuba Miami whose work can be found at Miscelaneas de Cuba and other sites. Through his efforts, the Damas de Blanco and others in the opposition are able to deliver the message to the rest of the world. For no better proof of Serpa's effectiveness, consider that the dictatorship knows very well who Serpa is, and has taken steps to try to silence him, but to date, has failed.

Earlier today, Miscelaneas de Cuba — an outstanding Sweden-based source of information on Cuban dissidents — published two dispatches from Serpa on the latest injustices suffered by two political prisoners.

In the first, Serpa reported that officials at the Kilo 5 1/2 prison had denied prisoner Diosdado González Marrero a visit with a Catholic priest. A democracy and human rights activist, González — a former Uncommon Political Prisoner of the Week — was one of the Group of 75 dissidents imprisoned during the "black spring" of March-April 2003. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Serpa, with Gonzalez's wife, Alejandrina García de la Riva

Also a member of the Group of 75 is journalist Ivan Hernandez Carrillo, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

Serpa reports that the dictatorship has censored Hernandez's communications with his family.

"He sends us letters, but they do not arrive at my house," said Hernandez's mother, Asunción Hernández Carrillo.

Serpa, with Asunción Hernández Carrillo

The rise of Darth Valdes

Ramiro "Darth" Valdes

La Nueva Cuba sounds the alarm about the rise to renewed prominence in Cuba of former secret police chief Ramiro Valdes.

As interior minister, he helped create the Cuban police state and gulag.

And now, as minister of information technologies and communications, he's hoping to bring the same ruthlessness to policing the Internet.

The Internet is not so easy to break, but Valdes' role in policing what Cubans do with their computers — trying to stamp out the "virus" of freedom, if you will, that so clearly defines the Internet — signals that the Castro 2.0 version of the dictatorship plans on not crashing anytime soon.

An excerpt of the La Nueva Cuba editorial:

Valdés is not a new threat, but an old one-the brutal, conscience-free executioner of people and policies in a regime which has hidden its crimes against humanity behind flamboyant anti-American rhetoric and a threadbare disguise of romantic populism. All the more surprising that the usual voices of liberal outrage have been uniformly silent on his ascension to new power. Had the head of a brutal secret police from any right-wing regime been so elevated, the chorus of libertarian Furies would have hardly held their tongues. Instead, Valdés has merited no recrimination. Even the trusted Reuters recently describe him innocuously as nothing more than "an academic of Cuban origin." Even the new Venezuela-Cuba optic cables being laid across the Caribbean, in conjunction with President Chávez's appropriation of telecommunication companies in Venezuela, have failed to provoke any concern, with their obvious indication of what totalitarian controls await internet users in the Bolivarian Republic and elsewhere in Latin America where the newly re-packaged "Socialism of the 21st Century" is taking hold.

Valdés new powers should annul any hope that the Cuban regime awaits the imminent death of its founding Pharaoh to begin the process of liberalization. If anything, Cuba is planning for a fiercer totalitarian future for itself and Latin America, and beyond. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have already sounded the alarm on Cuba's tightening grip on internet access and use, but the Western media and the usuall vocal, liberty-conscious intellectuals have yet to denounce these new Cuban crimes against freedom. Valdés' draconian policies cannot be rationalized as defenses against alleged American imperialism, for the internet has become the lifeblood of information and freedom for all the world. Will the West sit and watch the Havana Strangler with patronizing awe, or will it finally do its duty and demand a stop to his reign of terror?

Read the whole thing here.

An inconvenient truth

Oscar loves Al Gore.

It turns out Raul Castro does, too. The Gore documentary was even shown on Cuban state television earlier this month, demonstrating that Raul does not believe the Cuban people have suffered enough.

Support Cuban freedom, read a banned book

Columnist and free expression advocate Nat Hentoff describes how the Castro regime burns books:

Among Fidel Castro's brutal legacies are the imprisoned independent librarians among the authors, labor organizers, journalists and other "prisoners of conscience" (designated as such by Amnesty International) who will remain in cages as long as the dictatorship continues, even without Castro. The librarians are being punished for making available to Cubans books not permitted in the heavily censored state-run library system.

From kangaroo-court records I have seen, when independent librarians are sent to the gulags, certain confiscated books and sometimes all books in their libraries are ordered incinerated by the presiding judge. A biography of Martin Luther King was sent to the flames because, said the judge, it "is based on ideas that could be used to promote social disorder and civil disobedience." And the nonviolent King's own books have been burned.

Even works by Jose Marti, the 19th-century organizer of Cuban independence, have been incinerated. Maybe because of the pamphlet he wrote during his exile in Spain, planning the liberation of his homeland. Marti's pamphlet was about the horrors of political imprisonment in Cuba under a pre-Castro dictator.

Among thousands of other incinerated "subversive" books and pamphlets are those books by George Orwell, Pope John Paul II, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (particularly dangerous) and reports by Human Rights Watch.

When I found these court records by Castro's judges, I called Ray Bradbury, whose classic novel "Fahrenheit 451" still reverberating among readers around the world tells of a tyrannical government destroying "disloyal" books by fire and the resistance by courageous citizens memorizing those forbidden books to preserve them for future generations. Ray Bradbury authorized me to circulate his response to these real-life bonfires of free thought in Castro's Cuba: "I plead with Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off the independent librarians and release all those librarians in prison and send them back into Cuban culture to inform the people." The dictator was not persuaded. Many of these librarians are still in cages, some in dangerously failing health, and other independent Cuban librarians have joined them.

Read the whole thing here.

And for on FREADOM, go here.

Fidel Suarez Cruz, Political Prisoner of the Week, Feb. 25, 2007

UPDATED, Oct. 6, 2010 — Fidel Suarez was released in October 2010 under a deal struck by Spain, the Castro dictatorship and the Catholic Church of Cuba.

Fidel Suarez Cruz, a farmer from Pinar del Rio, had a couple strikes against him — at least in the evil eyes of the Cuban dictatorship — when he was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Suarez, who is in his mid-30s, was a human rights activist, and then he dared to spread his message of hope and liberty as an independent librarian. About the only thing worse, again in the eyes of the tyranny, would be if he also worked as a journalist.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., has made it a habit of giving speeches on the House floor to raise awareness about Cuba's political prisoners. Of Suarez, Diaz-Balart said in October 2004:

Because of his admirable beliefs in freedom, democracy, and human rights, Mr. Suarez Cruz has been the target of the nightmare called the Castro regime.

According to Amnesty International, in 2000 Mr. Suarez Cruz was sentenced to 6 months of restricted freedom for "disobedience'' for fishing in a restricted area: however, this sentenced was changed to imprisonment in the totalitarian gulag because he was arrested for carrying out peaceful political activities.

On March 18, 2003, as part of the dictator's condemnable crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy activists, Mr. Suarez Cruz was arrested because of his belief in freedom and human rights. In a sham trial, he was "sentenced'' to 20 years in the inhuman, totalitarian gulag.

Mr. Suarez Cruz is currently languishing in an infernal cell in the totalitarian gulag. These depraved conditions are truly appalling. The State Department describes the conditions in the gulag as, "harsh and life threatening.'' The State Department also reports that police and prison officials beat, neglect, isolate, and deny medical treatment to detainees and prisoners, including those convicted of political crimes. It is a crime of the highest order that people who work for freedom are imprisoned in these nightmarish conditions.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of more than 300 political prisoners. To illustrate that reality, Uncommon Sense each week profiles one prisoner. There also is a Political Prisoner archive on the left sidebar. To suggest a prisoner for a profile, send me an e-mail.

For profiles of imprisoned Cuban journalists and related information, read the March 18 Project.