Uncommon Sense

Notes from the gulag, 9/24/08

— Three political prisoners on hunger strike since Friday when officials refused to deliver publications to one of them, have ended their protest, according to a report posted at Payo Libre.Adolfo Fernández Saínz said senior officials at the Canaleta prison promised him he would be allowed to receive the newspapers, magazines and other items. Joining Fernández in the protest were Pedro Argüelles Morán and Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez.

— Political prisoner Reinaldo Labrada Peña has been transferred from the Boniato maximum security prison to a minimum security work camp near his home, which may be a precursor to an imminent release. Labrada, a democracy activist, was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003 and sentenced to 6 years in prison. On Sunday, he told his wife that he might soon be released, since under Cuban law prisoners usually serve 10 months for each year of their sentence.

Prisoner describes torture (UPDATED)

Hand-cuffed and dragged for 110 meters.

How does political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo respond?

By re-stating his support for others struggling for liberty and reassuring the world that he remains true to the cause.

Just another day in the Castro gulag.

UPDATED, Sept. 25, 2008

Cuban Democratic Directorate has an interview with Zapata's mother:

Obama: I will keep the embargo

Democratic presidential nominee reiterated his support for the U.S. embargo on Cuba, during an interview with a Miami radio station.

The Washington Post reports:

Regarding Cuba, Obama said, "We have to put pressure on Raul Castro and others in that government to free political prisoners and to create political freedoms and freedom of the press, freedom of religion." He later added that "I think we should keep the embargo until we are seeing clear signs of increased political freedom and that so we can maintain leverage in any direct negotiations that may take place."

Cuba Encuentro has more.

3 political prisoners start hunger strikes

Three Cuban political prisoners — all members of the Group of 75 — started hunger strikes last week after officials at the Canaleta prison blocked one of them from receiving magazines, newspapers and other materials that had been delivered for him.

The publications, including copies of two Spanish newspapers, magazine published by the Cuban Catholic Church and spiritual writings by St. Augustine, had been intended for imprisoned journalist Adolfo Fernández Sainz.

Fernández, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence handed down in 2003, responded by starting a hunger strike until prison officials give to him the publications.

Joining him in the protests were Pedro Argüelles Morán and Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez.

Fernández's niece, the blogger Yoani Sanchez, offers her perspective on her uncle's latest tribulation:

His co-defendants and fellow inmates, Pedro Argüelles Morán and Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez, have been united in exerting pressure in the only way they can: Rejecting the meager sustenance put on their trays. As long as they refuse to pass on the sustenance of words, they will refuse the tasteless ration that keeps them alive.

(H/T to Penultimos Días)

(Cross-posted at Babalú)

Maybe the 4th time will be the charm

The United States is again offering to help Cubans in need.

From the United States government, via e-mail:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez released the following statement regarding the United States ’ fourth offer to send humanitarian aid to Cuba:

“On Friday, September 19, 2008, the United States extended its fourth offer of aid to the Cuban people who continue to suffer from the destruction of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Our most recent offer was in direct response to the Cuban government’s plea for construction materials. In addition to our previous offers, USAID is prepared to deliver, via air and sea, building supplies and shelter kits that could provide temporary and permanent housing that will help 48,000 Cubans.

“In the three weeks since Hurricane Gustav hit western Cuba , concern for the well-being of the Cuban people has been growing and getting aid to them is our top priority. Reports from news agencies and relief organizations that have visited the island indicate that as many as 2.5 million Cubans remain without homes. We understand the difficulties caused by such devastating storms and we want to give the people of Cuba the materials needed to begin to recover. We hope the Cuban government will consider our genuine offers of assistance and that the best interests of the Cuban people will come before political differences. The United States stands ready to provide relief to the Cuban people.”

The latest aid package includes aircraft filled with 8,000 Family Emergency Shelter and Emergency Household Kits, followed by a shipment of supplementary material to include: zinc roofing and lumber for residential repair to complement the 8,000 Family Emergency Shelter Kits.

This represents part of what the United States should be doing in response to the disaster in Cuba. The U.S. should keep offering, even if the dictatorship keeps rejecting the offer, for what it reveals about the Havana regime and what it again demonstrates about the United States.

Unfortunately, the U.S. offer is not coupled with another key element in efforts to help Cubans in need: The lifting of limits on remittances from Cuban Americans to family members on the island. The United States can, and must help those in need. And it should get out of the way of those Cuban Americans who want to help, too.

José Benito Menéndez del Valle, Political Prisoner of the Week, 9/21/08 (UPDATED)

UPDATED, Feb. 2, 2010 - José Benito Menéndez del Valle was released from prison on Jan. 23, 2010.

The particular "crimes" of Cuba's political prisoners may differ, but they are all bound by a shared goal: Liberty for themselves, for their fellow Cubans and for their country. Some, like José Benito Menéndez del Valle, even have been willing to sacrifice the freedom they have found in the United States or elsewhere to return to the island to fight. That might be considered a fool's mission, but it is still worthy of respect and recognition.

Various online postings note that Menéndez, who is now 60, was arrested in 1994, tried and convicted — either for "acts of terrorism" or "rebellion" — and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

I could find the circumstances of Menéndez's case discussed only Web sites run as part of the dictatorship's propaganda operation: Menéndez and another man were arrested after they were caught trying to infiltrate the island at Villa Clara province.

Menéndez has spent most of his time in the gulag under a special punishment regime, but that has not prevented him from telling the world about the hell he witnesses each day. For instance, in July he reported to a Cuban independent journalist that several prisoners at the Quivicán prison had fallen ill after drinking contaminated water.

And this past week, Menéndez complained to another journalist that prison officials continue to deny him the most basic human rights.

The food is bad. Guards degrade their captives. There is not even basic health care. And in Menéndez's case, guards will not let him call on the telephone his children and other family in the United States.

"This is hell," Menéndez said.

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 at [email protected]

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

Questions about remittances

If Cuban Americans shouldn't be allowed to send money to family members on the island trying to rebuild after hurricanes Gustav and Ike because in Cuba there isn't anything to buy, where's the harm in allowing them to send the money anyway?

After all, if there's nothing to buy in the state stores, how would the dictatorship benefit with a lifting of limits (except for what the government takes as commission on currency exchanges)?

And with the Cuban dictatorship acting like dictatorships do — its rejection of American offers of humanitarian relief shows how little regard it has for the Cuban people — why does the U.S. government risk adding to the pain by adhering to a policy that even when the skies are clear, is bad for the Cuban people?

Despite the Prieto-Gutiérrez equation, the dollars do make a difference, much more for a Cuban trying to rebuild than they ever could for the dictatorship.

Or for those who seemingly would rather stick with a tired, and inhumane political position than take even the smallest step to let Cubans help Cubans in this time of great need.

Imprisoned Cuban journalist wins freedom of press award

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

Imprisoned Cuban journalist Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez has been named a recipient of a 2008 International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists. He and other recipients will be honored in November at a dinner in New York.

“These are the front-line reporters who risk their lives and their liberty to bring the news not only to the people of their own countries but to a global audience,” said CPJ Board Chairman Paul Steiger. “Their courage and determination have expanded the world’s knowledge in critically important ways.”

“Our award winners embody what CPJ stands for—the right of journalists everywhere to report the news as they see it,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “We honor them and stand behind them and their colleagues as they strive to keep all of us informed.”

Maseda's experience embodies not just the best of independent Cuban journalism but of all journalism. This award will highlight the contributions of all Cuban journalists and hopefully draw attention to the reality they all struggle mightily to report, whether from the streets or from behind bars.

This is what CPJ wrote about Maseda:

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez was part of Cuba’s flourishing independent press movement when he was arrested and jailed along with 28 other journalists in Fidel Castro’s massive crackdown on political dissidents in March 2003. The following month, Maseda Gutiérrez was sentenced to 20 years in prison for acting “against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state.” Maseda Gutiérrez began working as an independent journalist in 1995. He later founded, along with veteran journalist Manuel Vázquez Portal, the independent news agency Grupo de Trabajo Decoro, which published reports critical of Cuba in foreign media. Maseda Gutiérrez delved into social problems in Cuba and began to write long investigative pieces, including a series on the brutality and human right violations in Cuban prisons published shortly before his arrest. At age 65, Maseda Gutiérrez is the oldest of 22 journalists still behind bars in Cuba today. He managed to write his memoir, Enterrados Vivos (Buried Alive),smuggling the manuscript out one page at a time. The book was published in the United States in 2007.

Read more about him, here.

And go here for information about all of Cuba's imprisoned journalists.

Cuban journalist arrested

Yorledis Duvalón-Guibert Ortiz, editor of the independent newsletter "Renacer," was arrested earlier this week as part of an apparent crackdown on activists with the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy.

Cuban Democratic Directorate reports:

Cuban student leader Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina was arbitrarily detained on the streets of Baracoa along with fellow young opposition activist Yorledis Duvallon-Guibert Ortiz at midday on Tuesday, September 16. Rodríguez Lobaina directs the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy’s Center for Alternative Studies, and Duvallon-Guibert Ortiz edits the Movement’s independent newsletter Renacer (Rebirth), published in Santiago de Cuba.

According to independent journalist Luis Felipe Rojas Rosabal, Rodríguez Lobaina and Duvallon-Guibert were taken to the police station on Calle Martí, Final in Baracoa and face charges of “public disorder.” Only two days previously, Rodríguez Lobaina testified during a parallel forum held at the headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. During his testimony, Rodríguez Lobaina urged international human rights organizations and foreign countries to pressure the Cuban regime to allow massive humanitarian aid to reach the population directly. Baracoa, the city where the activists were detained, is one of the areas hardest-hit by Hurricane Ike.

Rodríguez was released but as of Wednesday, Duvallon-Guibert remained in custody.

Coincidentally, this week's Political Prisoners of the Week, Yordis García Fournier and Isael Poveda Silva, are also members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy.

U.S. approval of farm sales to Cuba is a good move

The U.S. has at least thrice offered Cuba disaster relief, and thrice, in ways that again reveal its crass nature, the Castro dictatorship has said, "No, we don't want your handouts, we want you to lift your embargo."

Meanwhile, Cubans struggle to survive in the wake of hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

Without exactly backing down from its adherence to the embargo, the United States has conceded the point, at least for now, to the dictatorship, by approving the sale to Cuba of $250 million in food and other agricultural material, including "wood, a material essential to rebuilding," the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

While falling way short of a total blockade, the embargo should be preserved as bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Cuba — after it releases political prisoners and institutes other reforms. But the American position is undermined, morally, politically and in other ways, by laws that allow Cuba to buy food and other items, as long as Havana pays upfront with cash. Despite the embargo — or perhaps, because of it — the United States has become the island's No. 1 foreign supplier of food.

I have been critical of the American policy allowing the sales, but for now, I am setting aside that opposition.

The thought of profiting by doing business with the Castros is distasteful, but hopefully the announced sales and other future deals will accomplish what all the blow-hard rhetoric and policy has not since Gustav and Ike: Helping the Cuban people.

Since the storms came ashore in Guantanamo and Isle of Youth and Piñar del Rio, political grandstanding by both the American and Cuban governments has blocked the delivery to suffering Cubans of all help possible. Washington and Havana have been unable to see through the forest of five decades of mistrust and rivalry, the trees, i.e. the people, felled by the storms. The U.S. maintains limits on how much help Cuban Americans can send to family members on the island, and the Cuban government can't even pretend to care about the welfare of the people.

Concluding that allowing Cuba to buy wood, cattle and other agricultural products will improve the lives of the average Cuba requires the assumption that the dictatorship will use what it has bought to benefit the people. That should not be easily conceded, but at least with the sales, cash is leaving, not going into Cuba. Also, with all the attention that relief efforts, and the Cuban government's response to disaster, are drawing, maybe it will be that much harder for the Castros to skim their cut off the top, as they have done in the past.

The irony remains that while the United States allows, if not facilitates the purchases by Havana, it hinders the ability of Cuban Americans to help family members on the island trying to rebuild after the recent storms by maintaining limits on remittances and travel.

Ag sales and remittances may not be enough to save Cubans trying to start over at less than zero, but that is no reason why they should be considered mutually exclusive. If the United States can allow American farming interests do do business with the dictatorship, why is it so dead-set against making it easier for Cuban Americans to help family members in need?