Castro's Useful Idiot

One often hears news on short-wave radio not to be found elsewhere. Such is the case of Fr. Geoffrey Dennis Bottoms, a Roman Catholic priest from Lancaster, England. On June 20, Fidel Castro's Radio Havana Cuba (6000 kHz) reported that the British priest was awarded Cuba's highest honor. Fr. Bottoms received the Friendship Medal from Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón.

The 58-year-old priest, a zealous member of the National Executive Committee of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in Great Britain, said that receiving the Friendship Medal was the highest honor of his life. And why? Says he: "…because working for Cuba is one of the noblest causes that one can imagine."

In a pastoral letter released earlier this year, Havana's Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino pointed out that Cuba is "one of the Latin American countries that has suffered the most devastation through the destruction of institutions and the sweeping away of traditions." Cuba's highest ranking prelate particularly lamented the absence of Catholic schools in Cuba. In 1962, the fledgling Castro government seized more than 400 Catholic schools, closing them permanently. Castro charged that the parochial schools spread dangerous beliefs among the people. To this day, the Catholic Church in Cuba remains hamstrung by political repression: The Castro regime prohibits the Church from operating its own press or news media, from building churches, and from establishing any institutions such as schools, hospitals, or nursing homes. Nor is the Church in Cuba allowed to train an adequate number of priests.

After Pope John Paul II's historical visit to the island in 1998, the Church was hoping the pontiff's influence would pave the way for a return of religious education, some access to the media, or at the very least permission to hold public religious gatherings, such as devotional processions. Castro, however, has granted none of this. The only result of the Pope's visit was that Christmas was reinstated as a national holiday.

Fr. Bottoms ought to know this well. According to Radio Havana Cuba, the British priest has visited Castro's isle eleven times.

The priest's passion for Cuba seems to center on the defense of five Cuban men who were arrested in Florida several years ago and charged with espionage, using false identification, and conspiracy to murder. All five were convicted June 8, 2001 and received prison sentences from 17 years to life.

Given that Cuba is one of only six countries that remains on a U.S. State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism-Cuba has links to Basque separatists, Colombia's Marxist guerilla groups, and the PLO-it doesn't seem out of the way that these five Cuban spies would be sentenced to prison as a result of due process in a Miami-Dade County court.

Fr. Bottoms considers these Cuban spies, popularly known to their defenders as "the Five," to be honorable Cuban patriots who were merely defending their country from what Castro Communists call the "ultra-right Miami Mafia," Cuba exiles perpetually said to be planning terrorist attacks against their native Cuba. According to the Committee to Free the Five, for which Fr. Bottoms serves as president, the Cuban spies were "framed up in a political witchhunt and railroaded by the U.S. in a 7-month trial in Miami."

For Fr. Bottoms it seems the Free the Five campaign is a social justice issue of singular importance. In fact he intends to visit each of the five Cuban "patriots" at their respective federal penitentiaries in the United States. Thus far he's visited two of the incarcerated spies. Last October, the British priest met with Gerardo Hernández at the maximum security prison in Lompoc, California. According to RHC, "Fr. Bottoms reported that Gerardo is the most integral human being he had ever met, full of humanity and compassion." Likewise upon visiting Ramón Labaniño at his Beaumont, Texas prison this summer, Fr. Bottoms reported that Labaniño "considers that he is fighting not just for Cuba but for the whole of humanity" and that the prisoner is "convinced that the left and progressive forces must unite to defeat the new imperialism which is the greatest threat to humanity at the present time."

If Fr. Bottoms is truly championing the cause of freedom and human rights, he'd have to turn a blind eye to just about everything that's been happening in Cuba this eventful year-not to mention the collective events of the past four decades.

An example: just three months before Fr. Bottoms was lauded at Havana's Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), Castro launched one of his most aggressive crackdowns in the 44-year old history of the western hemisphere's sole Communist regime. On March 16, Cuban state agents began arresting dozens of political dissidents, charging them with sedition, a stark reminder that Cuba, under Castro, is a police state. The 79 political prisoners, made up of independent journalists, librarians and human rights activists, were accused of conspiring with U.S. diplomats and collaborating with the "enemy press." In actuality, their offenses were three: promoting uncensored libraries, practicing independent journalism, and advocating peaceful political reform. In Cuba these activities are defined as crimes of subversion. According to state-run newspaper Granma, the long prison terms, ranging from 6 to 28 years, were meted out "in order to rein in political dissidents." It's worth mentioning that Castro's political prisoners were convicted after one-day summary trials. (Compare that to the Five's 7-month trials).

In April, three men accused of "terrorism" in an unsuccessful hijacking of a commercial ferry headed for Florida were summarily executed in front of a firing squad without trial. Castro said that he was making an example of them.

The crackdown received unprecedented worldwide condemnation, reaching well beyond Cuba's usual opponents. The executions of the ferry hijackers also disabused countries that previously thought the Castro regime was easing its hard-line attitudes toward political opponents. But European government officials aren't the only unlikely sources to have condemned Castro's recent aggression. Some of his most ardent supporters, including leftist intellectuals, have also turned against him. Portuguese author José Saramago, considered to be one of Castro's closest Communist allies amongst the European intelligentsia, broke all ties with the Cuban dictator after the execution of the ferry-boat hijackers in April. In an editorial published in Spain's El País, the Nobel Prize-winning author wrote: "This is as far as I go… Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions."

For Fr. Geoffrey Dennis Bottoms, not so. His illusions, for now, continue unfettered.

But the good reverend is by no means alone in his Castro crusade. He's joined by others like the 160 starry-eyed intellectuals and screen personalities, including American actor Danny Glover and singer Harry Belafonte, who recently signed a two-paragraph declaration, entitled "To the Conscience of the World," condemning the United States for "harassing" the Castro regime. This public statement seems to have been inspired by El Commandante himself. Six days earlier, in a four-hour talk broadcast on RHC, Castro blamed his recent crackdown on the United States and Cuban exiles in Florida ("the Miami Mafia"), who he said have a "warped plot" to provoke a crisis with Havana that could serve as a pretense for a U.S. invasion of the island-a vague charge Castro has been making off and on for years now.

Fr. Bottoms also has an American ally in his Free the Five campaign. According to a special report broadcast on RHC on June 10, the Berkeley City Council unanimously passed an unprecedented resolution in support of granting a retrial to the five convicted Cuban spies. Never mind that the famously liberal college town in northern California has nothing whatever to do with the politics of Miami-Dade County, some 3000 miles away. What it does demonstrate, however, is that the Free the Five campaign-despite any merits it may have (if it has any)-is one of the top pet causes amongst leftists these days.

What sets Fr. Bottoms apart from many of these other trendy Marxists ideologues is that he is a Catholic priest. Considering that the Catholic Church in Cuba has long been bludgeoned and that Fidel Castro is an avowed enemy of the Church, it is especially noteworthy that a man wearing a Roman collar (at least figuratively speaking) would be publicly honored in a country where the Church has so few rights. As such, the award smacks of a publicity stunt intent on presenting a façade of healthy Church-State relations in Cuba-something that could not be further from the truth.

The fact that Fr. Bottoms not only flew across the Atlantic to receive the Friendship Medal, but went so far as to say that the award was "the highest honor of his life" and identified Cuba as "one of the noblest causes one can imagine" is proof that Castro could not have nursed a more useful idiot than this British cleric, who must take great pains to blind himself from the harsh realities of Cuba's totalitarian state, least of all the endless string of well-documented human rights abuses, including the Castro regime's treatment of political prisoners: beating, torturing, starving, and denying medical treatment to political dissidents rounded up for opposing Castro's tyrannical dictatorship has long been standard operating procedure in Cuba.

According to the U.S. State Department's Report on Human Rights Practices for 2002, Cuba's prisons appear to be modeled after KGB gulags: "Detainees and prisoners, both common and political, often were subjected to repeated, vigorous interrogations designed to coerce them into signing incriminating statements, to force collaboration with authorities, or to intimidate victims. Some endured physical and sexual abuse, typically by other inmates with the acquiescence of guards, or long periods in punitive isolation cells."

According to human rights activist Laida Carro, head of the Miami-based Coalition of Cuban-American Women, Cubans are "victims of a brutal totalitarian regime whose citizens face few options but to remain in Cuba and become slaves to the totalitarian state, or dissent and become political prisoners."

This is the well-known pattern that has followed in all countries where Communism has taken over as a measure to control power. Cuba is no exception. The bottom line is that the Cuban people are not able to exercise their God-given right to free-will. Castro's recent crackdown has given the world more evidence of this fact.

"The Cuban people have never stopped struggling to be free from Communist rule since 1959," said Carro. "The thousands of victims speak for themselves: drowned, shot by firing squad, and casualties who died in prison or due to other repressive tactics."

Meanwhile, Fr. Geoffrey Dennis Bottoms is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.

Geoffrey Bottoms:"…the greatest honor of my life to receive this medal from a country that has my respect and love"

Fr. Geoffrey Dennis Bottoms, a Catholic priest from Lancashire, England, was presented with the Friendship medal by Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón at the offices of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) on the 20th June. The medal was awarded by the Cuban State in recognition of his solidarity work with Cuba and his devotion to Five Cuban political prisoners and their families. Fr. Bottoms holds the church has a body of social teachings which is its best kept secret and that the clergy of all faiths should be publicly involved in the issues that really matter: the ones that affect ordinary people and especially those that are oppressed or marginalized or in any way suffering. While he was in Cuba, Bernie Dwyer, Radio Havana Cuba interviewed the Reverend Bottoms.

[Bernie Dwyer] Congratulations, Fr. Bottoms. How did you feel when the Institute for Friendship with the People (ICAP) informed you that the Cuban State wanted to award you the Medal of Friendship?

[Geoffrey Bottoms] Absolutely delighted! It's a great honor: the greatest honor of my life to receive this medal from a country that has my respect and love.

[BD] You were awarded the medal for your solidarity work with Cuba, especially with the five political prisoners in the US. Will you give us an outline of the solidarity work you have been involved in?

[GB] Yes, I have been involved in solidarity with Cuba for ten years now as a member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in England, Scotland and Wales. I am also the chairperson of my local group which is very active in the northwest of England. I have led groups and study tours to Cuba for the participants to discover the reality of this country for themselves. I am a member of the executive committee of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign with special responsibility for the Campaign to Free the Five, so I am kept quite busy with many speaking engagements up and down the country.

[BD] In my experience most Catholic priests don't have a high political profile. They are generally good pastors and look after their flocks but they don't appear to become active as you do. What inspires you to become politically involved in certain cases?

[GB] This is a pity, because the church has a body of social teachings which is its best kept secret. Very few people including priests seem to know anything about it and yet the church has got social and political aspects to its message and I believe that if we are going to live out the gospel in today's world we must take the issues of peace and justice very seriously. I believe that if this is God's world and God is concerned about what happens to people and what happens to his world, then we should be involved in the issues that really matter: the ones that affect ordinary people and especially those that are oppressed or marginalized or in any way suffering.

[BD] You joined another one of Cuba's good religious friends, the Reverend Lucius Walker from Pastors for Peace, on one of his US/Cuba Friendship Caravans. What year was that?

[GB] That was in 1997, I think it was the 7th Friendship Caravan and it was the first one to be waved through without any problems, nothing was confiscated there was no assaults. There were no imprisonments and I think there were no repercussions on the 'caravanista' from the Untied States when they returned home.

And what was also special was that Tony Caccione, a London cabbie, brought his taxi over from England. We led the caravan and it was painted in the colors of the Cuban flag. This is Tony's mission in London: to bring the message of Cuba home to people by the use of his taxi. We came here to Havana and did an interview with Radio Havana together in this very same studio where we are now. The caravan that year was dedicated to children and we had a wonderful celebration in the Pioneers Palace in Lenin Park where Tony and I met with el Comandante Fidel Castro. That was an incredible experience, one of the highlights of my life.

[BD] You were already involved in educational and information solidarity activities with the solidarity campaign in England with special responsibility for the five Cuban political prisoners in the United States when you decided to go a step further. You decided that you were going to visit all five in their separate prisons. What was it that took you from the committee stage going around the country talking about the case it to actually going to visit these five men?

[GB] When I first heard of their case I was very moved, not only on a political level but on a humanitarian level as well. I was very involved with them through regular correspondence and I think I was the first one to write to them from England. They immediately responded and their responses where so warm that before long I felt that a relationship had been struck up between all five and myself. So much so, that I found myself asking them in my letters if they would you like me to come to see them. For me this was natural development and I also thought this would be a way of publicizing the campaign.

They immediately said to come. But you have to apply for visiting privileges which I did, and up until now I have only received permission for two, Gerardo and Ramón, both of whom I have visited recently. So really, it was their response to my correspondence and the relationship that developed that somehow blossomed into this mission of mine to visit all five.

That was helped by meeting their family on Mothers day last year at ICAP where I was speaking to them about why I got involved and I committed myself to visiting to them all. I felt that this was also a way of bringing some kind of encouragement to the families to know that there is somebody actually dedicated and committed to this degree because I feel as I have become a member of the families of these men. Its amazing how this whole thing has developed.

[BD] The Five are five thousand miles away on the other side of the Atlantic so that was very a big commitment to make. How did you find the time and the money to do this as well as the patience and commitment needed to fulfill that promise to them?

[GB] When you become so involved and when these men and their families mean as much as to you as they do to me, -I have taken them into my hearts and they have taken me into theirs, there is something very special in this relationship-, when you believe in something passionately and when you are so committed to people in this way I find that you are prepared to go to any length in order to offer help and solidarity.

So I made the time by using up the holidays that I have as a priest in order to go over to the states and then to go to Cuba and to report back to the families. I've got wonderful people in my parish back in Blackpool, in the northwest of England who finance me because they support everything I do. They know about the case of these men, because I have spoken to them about it. I have even printed their messages in my weekly bulletin in church for them to take away and read. They back me not only morally but also financially especially two elderly people who are not very well off and yet who contribute towards my finances and they feel that this is their way of sharing in what I am doing because they trust me. They believe in what I am doing and they give me that kind of support because they have that kind of confidence in me.

[BD] You have gained the trust of the two political prisoners that you have visited, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino. Gerardo is in Lompoc California, a high security prison where he is serving two life sentences plus fifteen years, and yet you described him after your meeting as being one of the most complete human being that you ever met. Before your visit, did you feel a bit apprehensive about meeting him?

[GB] I was not apprehensive about the man but I was apprehensive about visiting Gerardo in a US prison because none of this is very easy. There are all sorts of obstacles placed in your way and the conditions in which these men are held are not exactly very pleasant. Gerardo, for example, is imprisoned in Lompoc and that building dates back to the 1940's. It's showing signs of its age and there is a very harsh regime in there.

When you visit you sit on either side of a table with a panel underneath so that they cannot be any contact whatsoever other than an initial embrace and a farewell embrace. You have to buy his food from a very expensive machine that sells junk food. You are only allowed to take so many dollars in and it must be in coins and then you have to microwave it for him. If he wishes to go to the bathroom he must stand at the door with his hand up so the guard is constantly walking around watching you, listening to what you are saying. So it's not conducive to a very pleasant experience, but Gerardo cuts through all that because when you speak of one you speak of all five.

I called them the most complete human beings because that is how people have described Che Guevara ands for me these men are examples of the new person of whom Che Guevara spoke. When you meet them you are absolutely enthralled by these people. They are so humble and ordinary that they cannot believe they are heroes of the Republic of Cuba because they say they have only done what any ordinary Cuban would do in the same circumstances. They see it as their duty. They were defending their homeland, their people and their revolution and that for them is a noble cause. It is that spirit that sustains them in prison. That is the spirit that sustains their hope that they will return home. They do believe that international solidarity will eventually secure their release just as it secured their release from solitary confinement.

So when you are in their presence you feel you are in the presence of somebody you have known all your life, somebody that shares your same ideals, your ideals of justice and equality and compassion and solidarity and everything that the Cuban nation stands for.

And to me they are examples of the true heroic resistance of the Cuban people and I find that in visiting them I am very humble because I find them an inspiration.

[BD] How is Gerardo dealing with the fact that he was sentenced to two life sentences and 15 years for a crime that he did not commit?

[GB] He is in very good spirits. He has a very good sense of humor which helps him through, and he is a cartoonist as you know. I'm told by Ramón that he was the comedian of the group and I think that keeps him going. He is also on good terms with other prisoners especially the other Cuban prisoners. Many of them are Marielitos, who have been in that prison for many years because there is no extradition treaty between the US and Cuba. They are there indefinitely; in fact you can say that they are also serving life sentences as well.

He gets along very well with his prison guards. At the time I visited him he was working in one of the prison factories processing orders by computer and he seemed to be fulfilled in doing that even though its slave labor. He got 80 cents an hour which does not amount to much when you think that he worked a 40 hour week and if you visited him on a Friday, which would be taken from his week's work and his wages would be docked accordingly. Then when you think that he rings home 15 minutes at a time, he is allowed three hundreds minute a month, at a dollar a minute, the money does not go very far.

It's the solidarity of the people throughout the world and the love and support of the people at home that keep them going. Gerardo told me that on his wall in his prison cell, he has a picture of the 26th of July march and he tells himself: "They are my people and that's why I'm here".

[BD] You went to visit Ramón in Beaumont Penitentiary, Texas. Is that a different type of prison? [GB] Yes, it's a modern prison. It has only been built five years and the material conditions are better than in Gerardo's case although the prison regime is just as harsh. For example, Ramón was put in solitary confinement for a week when he was first admitted because he wouldn't admit to being a Caucasian. They tried to get him to admit to being white but he said he was Cuban and that he wouldn't play that game. They also wanted him to say that he was guilty of the things he had been accused of and he would not. He stood by his principles and they put t him in solitary confinement for a week to try to break him.

And then since he was released he has to report every two hours to a guard every day for the rest of his time in prison. Even while I was visiting him, he kept asking me the time. I had to tell him when he had to go and report to a guard even during visiting times, which are technically from 8am until 3pm although you never get to see them much before 9am and, of course, you have to leave a quarter of an hour early to get out on time, so it does cut the visiting time down. But he said that the worst feature of being in a United States prison is the culture of violence because there are mafia gangs at work in the prison involved in alcohol and drugs and if people default on their payments, they are knifed and knifed to kill. He has a little group around him. He calls it the school of the revolution made up of the prisoners who are interested in Cuba and the revolution but he is frightened of the group getting too large in case the other mafia leaders see him as a rival.

[BD] I have read that the frequent lockdowns are a result of gang warfare within the prison. If these gangs start fighting is everybody is put in lockdown?

>{?[GB] Yes, Antonio has been in lockdown three times. The first morning I went to see Ramón, I didn't see him until 1.15 in the afternoon because there had been lockdown in the yard during the count where there had been an incident between inmates. When I went to see Gerardo, he was delayed coming to see me. There had been an incident on his unit and as we were speaking a body was wheeled out through the court yard. We could see it through the window and he said that it was related to the incident on his unit that morning.

[BD] Do you feel any of this is having a brutalizing effect on them?

[GB] This culture is having no effect on their personalities or their characters whatsoever. They are the same people and this is what I admire so much. They remain strong. They remain convinced of their cause, they remain committed to their country and its revolution and I'm amazed that when you are with them you enter into political discussion more than anything else and you speak for hours and occasionally you break off to speak about life in prison or about the families but mainly they want to engage in political dialogue.

[BD] You have visited Gerardo and Ramón and you plan to visit the other three. At what stage are your plans for those visits?

[GB] I have been refused permission to visit Fernando at Wisconsin, Oxford although members of the Green Party of the US are trying to find another way around that. With René and Antonio, I am waiting to hear if I have been given permission. I have sent the required forms in applying for privileges. In René's previous prison I was refused but now that he has been moved to Edgefield, we will try again because if there is one thing I have discovered about the Federal Prison system in the United States is that it's contradictory.

It doesn't follow or implement policies in the same way. Each prison seems to have a certain degree of autonomy or interpretation. So I have been given permission for Ramón and Gerardo for example but not Fernando and yet Gerardo is serving two life sentences, Ramón one life sentence and Fernando is serving nineteen years, one of the most lenient sentences of the five and yet I have been denied permission. But I am determined to continue my mission to visit the three other political prisoners because now they are my family.

This interview was presented by Bernie Dwyer and aired on Radio Havana Cuba in two parts 23 and 24 June, 2003

Excuse me Fr., but how many political prisoners did you visit in Cuba?

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