Uncommon Sense

Cuban blogger writes what he thinks

Iván García

As a professional newspaper journalist for more than 20 years, one of the more rewarding parts of running this blog is that here I am my own editor, my own boss. I pick the topics I want, and I am accountable only to myself and my principles. I welcome feedback, but no one tells me what or how to write.

Neither does anyone tell Cuba-based blogger Iván García what he should write for his blog, La Carpeta de Iván ("Ivan's File Cabinet").

In his most recent post, which has been translated into English, García recalls how when he was writing for another blog, a veteran Cuban journalist advised that he stick to certain topics — more "curve balls," like pieces about Cuban landmarks, and fewer "fast balls," like critiques of the Castro regime — presumably to avoid the attention and scorn of the authorities. In country like Cuba, where there are hundreds, if not thousands imprisoned because they said or acted on what they think, that is serious advice.

García, however, has chosen to be his own editor:

I say what I think and tell it like it is. You have the chance as readers to express disagreement in the comments section. I’m very far from thinking that what I write amounts to any kind of absolute truth. Perhaps I get things wrong. But these opinions about an event, theme, or personality are mine.

I’m nearly 45 years old and at this stage in my life I’m not going to be afraid to defend my perspective. Being imprisoned for many years, which is the prospect held out by Cuba’s laws for all those voicing public dissent, does scare me. I don’t have a vocation to be a martyr. But I’m not going to change my ideas. Even if I end up bricked up in a state security cell or in a dirty Cuban prison block.

Disagreement is healthy. And so is debate about ideas and dialogue with people who think differently. But in Cuba, when someone in the media criticises you or attacks you, be afraid. The message is: ”What goes around comes around”. In other words, shut up or you’re mincemeat.

We know that the beginning of a vigorous offensive on the part of the state apparatus portends further actions. Ranging from acts of repudiation and even threats and humiliations for your family. Or, in an extreme case, detaining you, penalising you, and locking you up in jail.

Writing what he wants. That's how, García concludes, he will be free:

Since I was born, in 1965, I’ve never known what is called democracy. And before I die, I would like to live in a pluralistic society where you as a person aren’t of the slightest interest to the State.  And where, if the powers that be don’t appreciate me, thanks to certain Constitutional laws, I’m not locked up in prison.

I don’t mind who’s in power. They can be communists, liberals, greens, social democrats, right wing, centrists, or left wing. Just so long as they’ve won an election. I ask myself if this is an impossible dream. I don’t think it is. That’s why I write what I think.

Read the whole post, in English or en español.

Want to help a Cuban dissident? Follow Human Rights Watch's example

Human Rights Watch today showed individuals and organizations around the world how easy it is to support Cuban dissidents with the courage to stand up the dictatorship, despite the great odds against them.

All you have to say, whether on a blog, a letter to your government or an e-mail to a friend, is, "Enough!"

Your words and/or actions of support, even if only from the comfort of your home, provide human rights activists and other dissidents on the island that much more protection from the Castro regime. It tells them — and it tells their oppressors — that they are not alone, that they are not forgotten.

Speak up for them whenever and however you can. Yours are not just words, but pieces of armor that can only give them the confidence to keep up their fight.

This is what Human Rights Watch had to say about Cuban human rights activists/independent journalists Juan Carlos González Leiva and his wife Tania Maceda Guerra, who recently have drawn renewed scrutiny, and repression, from Cuban authorities:The Cuban government should immediately cease its harassment of the blind human rights defender Juan Carlos González Leiva, a leader of the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs, and his family, Human Rights Watch said today.

In recent weeks, Cuban authorities have repeatedly threatened to force González Leiva and his wife and fellow rights defender Tania Maceda Guerra to leave Havana and move elsewhere on the island. The authorities have pressed for the move under a draconian law that restricts freedom of movement.

"The harassment of González Leiva offers further proof that the Raul Castro government is willing to do everything within its power to prevent human rights monitoring, including forcibly displacing the monitors themselves," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

González Leiva and Maceda Guerra have lived in Havana since May 2007, when they were granted permission to live with and care for a blind friend. Under a law known as Decree 217, all Cuban citizens from outside of Havana must obtain government permission before moving to the capital.

In November 2009, the government denied the couple's application to renew their temporary residence status in Havana, where they are still living with their blind friend. González Leiva said housing authorities told him the refusal came at the orders of state security officers.

Since that time, security officers have repeatedly visited their home, calling them "counterrevolutionaries" and "traitors," and warning that they will be forcibly sent back to their native province, Ciego de Avila, if they do not leave Havana voluntarily. As a result, they have not left their apartment in a week.

González Leiva and Maceda Guerra have also been the victims of death threats and public acts of repudiation. Over the past several months, the email account of their organization has been hacked into and terminated, their movements monitored, and their family members threatened, González Leiva told Human Rights Watch.

"The international community needs to send a clear message to the Cuban government that such attacks on human rights defenders are completely unacceptable," Vivanco said.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch - "New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era" - found that Raul Castro has kept Cuba's repressive machinery fully active, quashing virtually all forms of political dissent. The report documents the government's continued use of Decree 217 to restrict the freedom of movement of journalists, human rights defenders, and other members of civil society who criticize the government.

Human rights are for all

Julio Beltrán Iglesias

Sometimes, it takes only a few words or sentences to make an all-important point:

Human rights belong to everyone, and no government, no dictator, has the right to tear them asunder from those to whom they are given. They are part of each individual's spiritual DNA, and thus deserving of respect and protection.

On his blog, Cuban independent journalist Julio Beltrán Iglesias says it much more profoundly:

Human rights are also called fundamental rights. Some of them are the right to life, the right to not be tortured, freedom of speech, to vote, the right to be respected and not be rejected on the grounds of sex, race, age, religion or place of birth. In Cuba, are some of these rights respected?

They are called human rights because they belong to all people, not just a few.

That Beltrán, who lives in a place where these and other rights are routinely ignored, violated, assaulted, gets it, shows why it is vital that those of us in the United States and other free nations must always speak up and act on behalf of these rights for all.

Otherwise, we, too, risk losing them.

Doing Castro's dirty work, inmate burns Cuban political prisoner

Cuban political prisoner Fidel Francisco Rangel Sánchez was hospitalized Jan. 22, after another inmate threw boiling water on him while he slept. Rangel's sister said she is convinced that the attacker, a convicted murderer, was doing dirty work on behalf of prison authorities.

Rangel — who is serving a 25-year sentence for an attempted plane hijacking in 2003 and while in prison has frequently denounced the Castro regime — suffered first-degree burns to his face, arms, abdomen and legs, according to Mirtha Rangel Sánchez.

"I am sure this is one more violent act ordered by the political police against political prisoners," Mirtha Rangel said.

"How is it possible that if the gates are locked, this person can come up to my brother's cell without being seen by the authorities?"

Cuban prison officials and the political police frequently order "common" prisoners — murderers, rapists and the like — to attack political prisoners. It's just another way to deliver their punishment and repression.

"I am accusing the prison authorities," Mirtha Rangel said. "I am holding the government of Raúl Castro responsible for what happened to my brother."

Cuba dissidents arrested for showing support for student

About a dozen Cuban dissidents were arrested Monday and Tuesday in the city of Santa Clara, for showing support for a Cuban university student who has been harassed and threatened by Castroite thugs after she quit a communist student organization.

Some of those arrested were taken into custody after they went to a local police station to inquire about other dissidents who had been arrested earlier, according to a report posed by Cuban Democratic Directorate.

Among those arrested, detained and later released included Iris Tamara Perez Aguilera, head of the Rosa Parks Feminent Movement, and independent journalist Guillermo Fariñas.

Most of the detainees had been released, but as of Tuesday evening the whereabouts of five dissidents — Guillermo del Sol, Frank Reyes López, Carlos Barbier Obregón, Félix Reyes Gutiérrez and Celestino Hernández Gutiérrez — were not known, according to the Directorate.

The activists got in trouble for demonstrating their support for college Martha Bravo Perez, who has suffered "acts of repudiation" — marked by harassment, threats and name-calling — by government-backed mobs since she quit the Union of Young Communists (UJC).

Cuba human rights group: As many as 50 mental health patients died from the cold

As many as 50 patients have died from the effects of an unseasonable cold snap that ravaged a Havana mental hospital earlier this month, according to the unofficial Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

The Castro dictatorship has confirmed 26 deaths at Mazorra hospital from hypothermia and related causes. But the human rights group today said the actual number, including patients who later died at other medical facilities, was between 40 and 50, according to a report posted Diario de Cuba.

In Cuba, the streets are lined with shit

Luis Felipe Rojas

Cuban blogger Luis Felipe Rojas describes the scene in his Cuba-based blog, Crossing the Barbed Wire:

There’s a Cuban saying which goes as follows: “A lamp in the street, dark at home.” It comes to mind because some years ago the town where I live was deprived of the cistern-tank which collected human waste which they took to Holguín, the provincial capital.

Three years later we still lack the necessary services for cleaning out the septic tanks, we don’t have a single vehicle to collect the trash, we never had a drainage system, and the local service workers do a bad job cleaning away the dust and grime that overwhelms us a bit more each day.

When it comes to public sanitation, poverty smacks you in the face before you get to the door.

Every day Cuban television bombards us with reports about the work of Cuban epidemiologists elsewhere in Latin America while turning its back on the municipal shit-tips which the small towns in the interior of the country have become.

Without gloves or masks or thigh-length boots the garbage collectors, like the rest of us, confront the most threatening pandemic of all, the one coming from our own homes and which sits there for weeks out in the open.

Television, that box of fantasies, will always come up with something more to offer us than the meagre daily ration. Holguín’s weekly paper is at present bubbling over with optimism about the year that just ended and the litany of success stories prescribed by the Provincial Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.

So as putrid, tatty and filthy as they are… the streets, who can doubt it?  They belong to the revolutionaries.

Whatever!

You can read Rojas' blog in the original Spanish, here.

Cool Cuban cat

From Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo's Boring Home Utopics.

Be sure to visit to see more amazing photographs from Cuba.

Blind Cuban dissident leader targeted by regime

Juan Carlos González Leiva

The Cuba Archive, an invaluable resource on the human rights situation on the island, is stepping up on behalf of one of Cuba's most important human rights activists, Juan Carlos González Leiva, who through his activism and his journalism has sought to document the abuses of the Castro dictatorship. It is a mission he shares with the Cuba Archive and others. (You can read González's reports here, and more about him, here.)

The dictatorship, according to a news release issued today, is again putting the squeeze on González, who is blind:

Cuban opposition leader Juan Carlos González Leiva, Executive Secretary of the Cuban Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs, has made an earnest appeal to the international community for protection. This past week, the Cuban regime stepped-up its repressive tactics and several leaders of Cuba’s opposition movement have been beaten and arrested.

The Cuban Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs is a coalition of almost 500 human rights’ monitors representing almost 70 groups that includes political prisoners in 50 prisons (of over 250 believed to be in existence). It reports the most egregious violations against citizens and human rights’ defenders all throughout Cuba. Since its founding, Council members throughout the island have been subjected to a steady diet of harassment, threats, and detentions, their email accounts have been canceled and tape recorders confiscated.

Directorio, a Miami-based human rights organization, issued an alert on January 21st that included audio of a telephone message from Havana by González Leiva, who is a blind lawyer (see www.directorio.org.) He described how on Wednesday, January 20th, Cuban government officials attempted to forcibly move him and his wife, independent journalist Tania Maceda, to his home province of Ciego de Avila, claiming he is in the capital illegally. They resisted and bunkered themselves inside the home and are relying on friends and supporters to bring them food. He vowed to continue working on the Council’s 2009 Annual Report of human rights abuses.

Political prisoner starts hunger strike after guards beat him

A hunger strike has put the life of Cuban political prisoner Yoel Marín Cárdenas's life in danger, according to a report posted at Payo Libre.

Marín started a hunger strike Jan. 9, after a prison "re-education" officer at the Kilo 9 prison in Camagüey ordered other guards to attack and beat Marín. Apparently, the officer was not happy that Marín — who was imprisoned in September on a charge of "disrespect" — was protesting the poor condition of the food being given to inmates.

Marín, who is 38 or 39, was on probation when he was arrested in September after he several times marched through the streets carrying signs proclaiming "Long live freedom and democracy," and other anti-government slogans.