Uncommon Sense

Cuban students arrested

CubaWatcher, my collegaue over at Babalú, has some disturbing news about the Cuban tyranny acting, well, like tyrants:

From the Directorio Democrático Cubano comes word that four youths, among them three members of the Cuban Movement of Youths for Democracy (MCJD) were arrested by state political police last night, November 29th. The activists were taken to the National Revolutionary Police Station "Sanja y Dragones" after having joined a sit-in demonstration that had been going on for more than a week outside the "Aguilera" National Revolutionary Police Station in central Havana. Protesters had gathered there to press for the release of jailed dissident Juan Bermudez Toranzo.

Those arrested had earlier taken part in a press conference where 5,000 signatures supporting the "University Students Without Borders" project had been submitted before the public. The project advocates university autonomy through free expression and freedom of association at Cuban universities.

Folks, we need to get the word out regarding these arrests. The more press these arrests get, the better - as international attention may prevent these young dissidents from being subjected to harsh beatings at the hands of the Cuban state security apparatus. Please forward this information to as many contacts as possible.

With these arrests, the Cuban dictatorship, despite the best efforts of its apologists here and around the world, shows what it is really made of. They just can't help themselves.

Please remember these brave students in your thoughts and prayers.

Romney: Let all Cubans in

Well, maybe.

Despite his apparent boldness during an interview with the Tampa Tribune this week — "I can tell you my inclination would be to say as many Cubans as want to come here should come in." — Romney did leave himself some wiggle room, with an artful dodge of a more specific question about the current wet-foot, dry-foot policy, which sends prospective immigrants back to Cuba if they are intercepted at sea.

Romney replied that Cuban Americans are exemplary citizens who have brought "great vitality, skills and energy to the American experience."

"In my opinion, the more the merrier," he said.

Also in the interview, Romney reiterated his support for the embargo and other restrictions on dealings with the Castro dictatorship.

Protesters demand prisoner's release

In the face of tyranny, some Cubans absolutely refuse to show fear.

From Cuban Democratic Directorate:

Havana, November 28, 2007. Between 15 and 25 human rights activists have been carrying out a sit-in in front of the National Revolutionary Police Unit (PNR) for more than a week demanding the release of Juan Bermudez Toranzo, who was violently arrested the night of November 21st, at 9 p.m. by more than 30 members of the PNR and State Security. The officials burst into his home in the Cambute neighborhood, located in San Miguel de Padrón, where a fast was being carried out for the freedom for all political prisoners.

“We find ourselves here sitting-in, we will not move until he is immediately freed, and we hold the Cuban Regime responsible of these violent acts that can be taken upon us and on Bermudez Toranzo,” declared Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva to the Cuban Democratic Directorate in the early hours of the morning. Gonzalez Leiva is the Executive Secretary of the Council of Investigators of Human Rights in Cuba and President of the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights. He affirmed that the participants have been sitting-in, in silence, since November 22nd before the National Revolutionary Police Unit “Aguilera,” found in the municipality of 10 de Octubre.

Nery Castillo, wife of Bermudez Toranzo, who also is sitting-in with the rest of the activists in front of the police unit, has been subject to harsh intimidation by high-ranking officials of the 21st Department of State Security and of “Villa Marista.” The agents warned her that “she would have to leave the sit-in, that they were going to take away her children, and that they have prepared a battalion of women of the Rapid Response Brigade to arrest and abuse all of them.” However, Gonzalez Leiva affirmed that they will stand firmly until they free her husband.

Bermudez Toranzo was taken from his home on November 21st and dragged along the street with his two-year old son, to take him to the squad car that took him to the police unit. The child, traumatized by the violent act, stayed with his mother in the middle of the street.

Payo Libre has more on the protest.

Darsi Ferrer starts a blog

One of the highlights of my blogging about Cuba, was my September 2006 e-mail interview with Cuban dissident leader Dr. Darsi Ferrer. When I asked him how receptive Cubans have been to his calls for change on the island, he wrote:

The immense majority of Cubans long for a change, including many of those that are currently in different levels within the power structure. We’ve had more than four decades of resistance to change, and the Cuban government has demonstrated its filthiness and failure in political, economic, and social arenas with the destruction of everything. If it still currently maintains our nation in submission, it is due to the mechanisms of terror that it has implemented. But, in the conscience of Cubans, it is now time to put an end to all the suffering; that’s what the change urges. Cubans desire to live in freedom with democracy and to have the opportunity to move ahead.

Ferrer is one of the more prolific writers in the Cuban dissidence movement. Or at least one whose work is the most familiar to the outside world, thanks to his apparently regular access to e-mail, courtesy of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Every week or so, I and others receive messages from Darsi, and Web sites like Misceláneas de Cuba publish his work.

Ferrer has taken his work to a new forum: His own blog, BASTA DE APARTHEID EN CUBA MARCHA 10 DICIEMBRE, dedicated to rallying Cubans to participate in a peaceful march Dec. 10 — International Human Rights Day — to protest the apartheid policies of the Castro dictatorship:

We call upon all Cubans to commemorate International Human Rights Day on December 10th, by exercising our right to demonstrate in a PEACEFUL SILENT MARCH as a protest of the immoral and illegal APARTHEID policy imposed by the Cuban government.

It is the duty all people to assume individual responsibility and confront the tragedy facing the nation, to urge political, economic and social changes that benefit EVERYONE, and to facilitate an end to this humiliating situation in which a powerful few violate sovereignty and enjoy privileges all while discriminating against the majority simply because they are citizens.

Governments, institutions, organizations and human beings in general have an obligation to promote respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, as well as ensure their recognition and universal and effective application.

Our appeal, by our participation on that day, will be for the recognition, in every corner of the earth, of the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

Never in the history of the nation has there existed such an ANTI-CUBAN government. The current constitution recognizes rights and freedoms for Cubans (Article 42 and 43), the penal code condemns as a felony any application of apartheid (Article 120-1 and 295-1); in practice the two laws are systematically violated by the established official public policy.

Despite the fact that the Cuban government is a member of the newly created United Nations Council for Human Rights, it violates its pledge to be a signatory of the international convention on repression and punishment for the crime of apartheid.

Ferrer is one of the giants of Cuban dissidence, a status that presumably has brought him some protection from the dictatorship. But he is well familiar with its evil ways.

Still, he persists in the cause of freedom, and for that, he is a hero.

The DNA tests are in ...

... and the results bring unsurprising, but still outstanding, news:

Ernesto "Ché" Guevara — the murdering communist bastard — is still dead.

But for Christmas, you can still buy for the favorite Ché-lover on your list, the T-shirt.

(H/T Child of the Revolution.)

Love potion

A declining Roman Empire distracted its people by giving them bread and circuses.

The decaying dictatorship in Havana, is aiming a little lower.

(H/T Penúltimos Días.)

New blogs on the block

Babalú earlier today introduced us to La primera generación.

In just a few posts, "Cubanbanker" has established himself as a unique voice in the always growing Cuban blogosphere. He writes:

The author, "Cubanbanker," writes:

After a year and a half of scouring other people's blogs (mostly regarding Cuba), I've decided it's time for me to try my hand. Who am I? I'm 21 years old, a first generation Cuban-American, born in the great city of Hialeah but grew up in the Kendall area of Miami.

Spent 18 years surrounded by my Cuban family, but it was only when I turned 20 that I realized I knew nothing about my origins. Sure, I knew "Cuba si, Castro no," but that was about it. Had anyone asked me to explain my views, I would have been grasping for words. When I was 13 and Elian was all over the news, I was just one of maybe two Cubans in the classroom. When the topic came up in Civics class, I couldn't defend myself against the rednecks from Homestead.

Then, I turned 20. What's the significance? I turned 20 on August 1, 2006, and on that day everybody on my floor at work had two reasons to congratulate me. When a 55-year old senior Managing Director came over to my cubicle came to ask me about what was going on in Cuba, and I didn't have many substantial things to say, I realized that I desperately needed information. That's when I found BabaluBlog.com, and I haven't stopped reading since.

My family never sought to educate me on Cuba, never told me their stories, just let me go about my studious ways. Let me go off to school in Boston, where I would be representing my culture without a real sense of what that culture was. Don't get me wrong, I don't hold anything against them, but I do wish they would've talked to me about it more. After a year and a half of reading blogs and books, I've been told that I'm the most knowledgeable one in the family when it comes to Cuba. Can you imagine that? Me, a 21-year old who has never set foot on the island.

I'm assuming most of the people who read this (if any) will be older than I am, and may already have children. So I leave you with this — educate your children early about what's going on in Cuba now, what has happened in Cuba over the past 60 years, and what being Cuban is all about. They'll thank you for it in 20 years.

Cubanbanker and I are of different generations — I am almost 20 years older than him — but we are both "first." We are both, as the name of his blog indicates, of the first generation born to Cubans who fled their homeland for freedom, and a chance of a better life. We are forever in debt to our parents for their sacrifice, and to our country, American, for the opportunities it never ceases to provide.

We both may have lost a sense of our identity as Cubans as we went through school, joined the workplace and grabbed our piece of the American Dream. But now that we have found our Cubanidad again, we will never let go.

|——————|

Speaking of the Cuban blogosphere, this past weekend I discovered Blogs sobre Cuba, which is nothing more than a collection of links to some 200 Cuba-related blogs. A valuable resource, indeed.

Colleagues, and heroes

When I quote a news report by a Cuban independent journalist, I make it a point to name names, to give credit to whom it is due. It is a professional courtesy, from one journalist to another. But more importantly, I hope that by including the names of these incredibly brave women and men, the exposure provides them with a semblance of protection. The more their names circulate on the Internet, I figure the less likely the Cuban police will come knocking on their doors late at night. Maybe if I, and others, had told their stories sooner, maybe there now wouldn't be so many journalists locked away in Fidel Castro's gulag.

Naive, perhaps, and conceited, too. Tyrants will always do what tyrants do, especially to those committed to exposing their tyranny. And really, only a few dozen each day bother to check in on what I am writing. The Cuban dictatorship must have greater worries.

Still, it is vital that the world know of the work, and the courage, of the Cuban independent press. These are women and men who every day risk what little liberty they enjoy, to serve as the eyes and ears of their countrymen, to discover what really is happening on the island, and then to share their stories with the world. will always be proud to do what I can, to help them.

So, please, show your support, and read the works of:

Marco Antonio Lima.

And Caridad Caballero Batista.

And Esteban Sande Suárez.

And Ignacio Estrada Cepero.

And Lázaro Prieto Álvarez.

And Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia.

And Richard Roselló.

And Manuel Guerra Pérez.

And María Antonia Hidalgo Mir.

And Luis Esteban Espinosa.

And Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez.

And Tania Maceda Guerra.

All of them, and more, are my colleagues, my fellow Cubans and my heroes.

Update on Antúnez

Cuba Encuentro is reporting that former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez, better known as "Antúnez" is recovering in a Havana hospital, after suffering what might have been a heart attack. Earlier accounts of his hospitalization did not detail his illness.

Antúnez held the dictatorship, which imprisoned him for more than 17 years, responsible for his illness.

"These are the consequences of being imprisoned for more than 17 years, without receiving medical attention. I became used to living with pains ... with all these sufferings, without a clear diagnosis, as reprisal for my political position," Antunez said.

(Cross-posted at Babalú.)

Yosvani Carmona Cuello, Political Prisoner of the Week, 11/25/07

Need further proof that all of Cuba is a prison?

Then consider this: It is againt the law to leave the country without the government's permission — an authority the dictatorship abuses to exercise its control of the populace, whether by restricting who can take advantage of a visa granted by the United States or other foreign country, or punishing those desperate enough to try to escape their island hell.

Fidel Castro's gulag is brimming with men like Yosvani Carmona Cuello, convicted in 2002 of attempted "illegal exit," and sentenced to 10 years in prison. (Some accounts say Carmona was sentenced to 15 years in prison.)

The Internet provided few clues about Carmona's alleged "crime," but like others convicted of trying to illegally leave Cuba, Carmona also was convicted of "piracy," which suggests he tried to hijack a boat to freedom.

In a sane world, that would be a crime, maybe even an act of terrorism. It is possible Carmona had to scare the hell out of someone, to get his way.

But he is not a common criminal. He is a political prisoner, because however frightening his crime might have been, it is not as awful as the terror he was trying to escape. He was rejecting the communist system, and rejecting one of the more heartless methods it uses to oppress, and repress the Cuban people.

In the coming weeks, I will be profiling more Cuban political prisoners, in jail because they were caught trying to escape.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of political prisoners. To illustrate that reality, Uncommon Sense each week profiles one prisoner. There also is a Political Prisoner archive on the right 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.