Uncommon Sense

Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez remains in jail

His colleagues at CIHPRESS have the details on Calixto Ramón's Martínez's detention since his arrest on April 23.

Apparently, police have referred a possible "contempt of police" charge to prosecutors.

Cuba has more press freedom than Libya, Burma and North Korea

This is not news — that there are more than two dozen journalists in Cuban prisons is all the proof you should need — but it is always worth repeating:

Cuba, as Freedom House reported this week, is one of the least free places in the world to work as a journalist.

According to the organization's most recent press freedom survey, Cuba ranked 191st out of 196 countries. Receiving lower rankings were Eritrea at No. 192, Libya, Burma, Turkmenistan and North Korea.

Tell me who you hang with, and it tells me all I need to know about you ...

Other notable rankings: the United States was tied at No. 24 with the Czech Republic; and Venzuela was tied with Brunei at No. 163, just below those bastions of freedom, Afghanistan, Sudan and Swaziland.

Sharing the top ranking were Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

The argument against lifting the embargo on Cuba

U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., states it perfectly.

Cuban political prisoner Ariel Sigler's health turns for the worse

Ariel Sigler Amaya, before he was imprisoned ...

... Ariel Sigler, after seven years in the Castro gulag

Ariel Sigler Amaya used to be a heavyweight boxer, a championship athlete, a bull of a man.

Today, after more than seven years as a prisoner of the Castro dictatorship, he is gravely ill, an invalid, barely a shell of his former self. Sigler, according to Cuban human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez, may be the only prisoner of conscience in the world confined to a wheelchair.

Sánchez, head of the unofficial Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, warned this week that Sigler, who has been hospitalized for more than a year, had recently become even sicker due to problems with his blood pressure.

“The government is aware that he is very ill and they don’t release him for political reasons,” Sanchez said of Sigler.

Ariel Sigler at his mother's funeral earlier this year.

The dictatorship cares if Sigler lives or dies only to the extent that his fate serves its interests. It would rather be spared the embarrassment of yet another political prisoner dying while in its custody.

But it will release him, if ever, only if it feels the benefits for itself would outweigh any perception that it is giving in to domestic and international pressure.

The key is the volume of that pressure. The dictatorship was placed on the defensive by the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on Feb. 23, and the ensuing international reaction. In some respects, the worldwide response has been extraordinary, even if it has not forced the dictatorship to bend on the question of political prisoners.

The past two months may have signaled the beginning of the end of the Castro dictatorship, so now — as Guillermo Fariñas said this week in rejecting pleas that he end his hunger strike on behalf of Sigler and other seriously ill prisoners — is not the time to let up on the regime.

Instead, it is time, louder than ever, to demand the release of Ariel Sigler Amaya and all Cuban prisoners of conscience.

Over and over and over again.

Before it is too late.

Family dispute may have led to jailing of Cuban dissident

The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald reports that Cuban journalist/blogger/human rights activist Dania Virgen Garcia was imprisoned last week after being convicted of "abuse of maternal authority."

By all appearances, however, it appears that is just another made-up charge the dictatorship is using to silence one of its opponents.

Here is the story:

Dissident Cuban journalist Dania Virgen García apparently struck her 23-year old daughter during a fight. In less than 48 hours, she was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said Wednesday he'll need a week or two to thoroughly investigate the arrest of García, 41, who also marched often in support of the Ladies in White.

But Sánchez said he has a strong hunch: ``It could well be a case of political repression, taking advantage of a family situation.''

That's not uncommon, he added, in a country where the government can easily drum up an array of criminal charges against opponents of the communist system.

Sánchez said he obtained preliminary information on the case after his Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation sent an investigator to the Havana home García shared with her daughter, Suzy, and 2-year-old nephew.

``The daughter was reticent to speak, but the family seemed to be hostile to [García's] dissident activities,'' he said. ``She said her mother was properly sent to jail because of abuses . . . She also said maybe there [in prison] she would change her dissident activities.''

The daughter also told the investigators that she ``argued a lot'' with her mother, and indicated that at some point the mother struck her, Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald via telephone from Havana.

García was arrested April 22, apparently on charges of ``abuse of maternal authority'' and the next day was tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison. Sánchez said. She was sent to the country's largest prison for women, Manto Negro.

In Miami, Carmen Ferreiro, a member of a group that supports dissidents and has contracted a Havana lawyer to appeal García's case, said she also had information the family was ``very pro-government.''

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/29/1603481/arrested-tried-jailed-in-less.html#ixzz0mY93kqUG

2 Cuban hunger strikers thrown into punishment cells

Egberto Escbedo and Abel Lopez must really be getting under the skin of their captors with their continuing hunger strikes for Cuban freedom.

Nothing else -- except for their innate cruelty -- explains the decision this week to punish the prisoners by throwing them into isolation cells at the Cerámica Roja prison in Camaguey.

Cuban Democratic Directorate has the details.

3 journalists with ties to Fariñas attacked with chemical

The Castro dictatorship may be going "unconventional" in its war on Cuban independent journalists.

Three journalists who work for Guillermo Fariñas' news agency were attacked in their homes in Santa Clara this week with some sort of chemical, according to a report from the island.

On the night of April 25, someone introduced an unknown irritant into the homes of Licet Zamora Carrandi and Rafael Pérez González. The next night, the attacked the home of their colleague, Carlos Balhuerdi Obregón, according to the report from independent journalist Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito.

Balhuerdi quickly went outside and saw two people fleeing on nearby rooftops.

The chemical led to breathing problems and skin irritations for the residents of the homes, including children. Understandably, the journalists and their families are afraid for their lives.

All three journalists are members of Fariñas' Cubanacán Press news agency.

Fariñas has been on hunger strike since Feb. 24 to demand the release of 26 critically political prisoner. Zamora has served as his media spokeswoman during the protest.

A Cuban blogger worth reading: Iván García

Starting today, Uncommon Sense each week will occasionally feature a favorite post written by one of the numerous Cuban independent bloggers working on the island. It's a small way that we can lend our support for their efforts, and maybe some protection against the Castro dictatorship.

This new campaign is dedicated to Dania Virgen García, a blogger and journalist sentenced last week to 20 months in prison.

Links to the featured blog and other sites can be found on the left sidebar, under "Blogs from Cuba."

This week's post is from "Iván's File Cabinet," written by Iván García. (Read the original Spanish-language version here.)

"If Fidel Castro is credited with the glory of the vaunted successes in education, sports, and public health, then he should also be charged with the failures. His experimental manner of managing the island’s economy would fill several volumes of nonsense." — Iván García

Iván García

EDITOR'S NOTE — Before too many more greedy Americans advocate for a lifting of the so-called "embargo" on Cuba, they might do well to consider how others around the world are treating the island nation as potential business partners.

No one, except for maybe Hugo Chavez, writes Iván García, wants to do business with the Castro dictatorship:

Quietly, one business after another is closing. Although the official Cuban press, the most optimistic in the world, ignores this, from 2000 to the present you can count on one hand the number of foreign investors who have kept their businesses in Cuba.

Italian businessmen in the telecommunications sector, who invested in ETECSA, the only company on the island in that industry, said goodbye a year ago. Israeli businessmen who bought the citrus production of Jaguey Grande, in Matanzas, and produced fruit juices, have also gone.

According to a source who prefers to remain anonymous, investors from the largest foreign investor in Cuba, Canada’s Sherritt, specializing in the mining business, are conducting a feasibility study. If they get red numbers, they will pack their bags.

The building construction sector has been immobilized for seven years on the direct orders of Fidel Castro. So what remains are a few companies in the field of tourism. China and Russia, the candidates sought by the leaders of the island, look askance at the proposals offered to them.

They know that Cuba’s ability to pay is almost nil. Russia is already owed several billion rubles. And China, with a similar ideological outlook, will donate a couple million dollars in the event of a hurricane, but if you don’t have money to pay them, see you later.

The trump card that the Castros play is the Venezuela of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. It is a bet on foolishness and voluntarism. More of the same. But there are not many options for a government that has a grudge against the market economy because a group of people got rich.

In 2010 the economic alliance with Caracas is all that remains. And it’s barely working. The only benefit is being able to buy oil at bargain prices, without having to pay for it in hard currency. Cuba pays for the black gold with human capital: military or civilian, medical and sports trainers.

There will not be an abundance of food on the tables of the poor on this island or in Venezuela, nor will life be better because of this alliance. For one thing, both nations manage their economies on the fly. In the case of Cuba, it is striking how they continue to bet on the centralized economy.

Having coinciding ideologies, as is the case with Castro and several presidents of the Hemisphere, is not the same as creating a coherent strategy for designing a sustainable economy. Virulent and polarizing speech does not count in economics. What matters is to save and work hard to get out of the deep hole of poverty.

To justify their failures, the Castros have their favorite weapon: the Yankee embargo. But no one but a fanatic or a moron could seriously blame only the U.S. embargo for the poor performance of the local economy. It doesn’t take a think-tank, or an expert in economic matters, to point out those responsible for sending the Cuban economy back to the stone age.

If Fidel Castro is credited with the glory of the vaunted successes in education, sports, and public health, then he should also be charged with the failures. His experimental manner of managing the island’s economy would fill several volumes of nonsense.

Read the whole post here.

Colleagues plead for help for detained Cuban independent journalist

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias

Journalist/human rights activist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias has been jailed since April 23, and his colleagues are worried the Castro dictatorship is preparing to falsely charge him with "contempt" of police officers, according to the CIHPRESS independent news agency.

Martínez was arrested while covering a gathering of government opponents in the Marianao neighborhood of Havana, said Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, chief of CIHPRESS. Despite the possibility of the false charges, Guerra said there are eight witnesses that can testify to what really happened when Martínez was arrested.

Guerra implored Reporters Without Borders and other international journalism groups and foreign governments to demand Martínez's release.

"Calixto Ramón has suffered dozens of arrests, three deportations to the city of Camagüey and beaten for reporting facts that the press does not release official," the CIHPRESS report states.

The dictatorship recently has stepped up its targeting of independent journalists, who by the very nature of their work — reporting about the reality of Cuba today — are very dangerous to the regime. Just last week, journalist/blogger Dania Virgen García was sentenced to 20 months in prison, and as RSF notes, another CIHPRESS correspondent, Magaly Norvis Otero Suárez, has also been targeted by police.

Radio Martí has more.

So does Punt de Vista.

Taking sides in the struggle for Cuba

The opposing sides, and what they represent, in the struggle for Cuba's soul are evident on the faces in the photographs coming from the island.

On one side, the side of freedom, there are women like Dania Virgen García, an independent journalist and blogger. Before she was arrested last week and sentenced to 20 months in prison for unspecified "crimes," she was a tireless supporter of the Damas De Blanco and passionate chronicler of what she was witnessing in Cuba today.

And on the other side, the side of Fidel, there are vermin like this woman, part of Castroite mob that last week again tried, and failed, to intimidate the Damas off of their mission to win freedom for their imprisoned loved ones.

Cuba, and the world, have a choice.

It is written right on the faces of these two very different women.