Thought Crimes: Cuban Dissidents Reel Under 'Wave of Repression'

"The U.S. is riding high. It thinks it can dictate to or run over anyone and ignore international law," said Wayne Smith, a former top U.S. diplomat in Cuba who is now at the Center for International Policy in Washington. "I'm sure the United States has no intention of having a go at Cuba. But I'm not sure the Cubans are convinced of that." Smith also said that Castro may be trying to tighten his control ahead of worsening economic times, which have historically led to unrest and attempts to flee the island. Cuba's sugar industry is barely surviving, and tourism is expected to drop significantly as the war continues. "There's a greater sense of uncertainty: Where is the money coming from?" Smith said. "So they are cracking down."

The sense of chaos has been heightened by the armed hijackings of two airliners and a ferry since mid-March. In the most recent incident, Cuban officials on Friday arrested several men who had hijacked a ferry with 50 passengers aboard and tried to make it to Key West before running out of fuel. Sanchez said the hijackings were "an expression of the discontent and desperation of the people of Cuba -- economic conditions are getting worse every day." The Cuban government has charged the dissidents with conspiring with the United States, citing their frequent meetings with James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana. Castro charges that the dissidents are funded by the U.S. government, which the State Department and the dissidents deny.

Paya and Sanchez said Castro is worried that the dissident community has grown from a few people to thousands willing to sign pro-democracy petitions. "Nothing they have done has been enough to paralyze this movement, and that's why they are scared," Paya said. Paya said he has gone daily to the courtroom where the trials are being held, but security forces have shouted obscenities at him and forced him to leave. Sanchez said he has tried to send observers to the trials but that security police stopped them before they could get within 100 yards of the building.

The extent of Castro's security network came into view Friday, when two reporters who spent years working alongside the country's best-known independent journalist, Raul Rivero, admitted at his trial that they were actually government agents. And in another trial, the secretary of dissident economist Marta Beatriz Roque also acknowledged spying for Castro.

Who Cares About Cuba?***Cubans and Cuban-Americans feel a persistent hurt over the general American attitude toward them. One exile in Boca Raton reports that he can no longer talk with his Anglo neighbors about his homeland. "If I explain to them the reality of Cuban life, all I get is, 'Oh, you're a right-winger,' or, 'You're biased against President Castro.' Can you imagine being biased against the tyrant who deprives you of rights, throws you in jail, and makes life so intolerable as to force you into the open sea on a homemade raft? Many Cubans especially resent this honorific "President" before Castro, as if the dictator were the equivalent of a democratic leader. Worse is the affectionate, pop-star-ish "Fidel." We would never hear, for Pinochet, "Augusto." Gus!

The oppositionists and their supports are extraordinarily, even disturbingly, grateful for any sincere attention they receive. They are accustomed to being snubbed or defamed. Another exile writes, "Prisoners cling to newspaper articles about human rights in Cuba as their only hope against being abandoned and forgotten. The sense of helplessness, that no one is listening, that no one cares, is what kills their souls. I've known many such people, including within my own family."

Back in the Reagan years, Jeane Kirkpatrick became a heroine in the Soviet Union for the simple act of naming names on the floor of the U.N.: naming the names of prisoners, citing their cases, inquiring after their fates. Later, in Moscow, she met Andrei Sakharov, who exclaimed, "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." And why was that? Because she had named those names, giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope. Kirkpatrick says now, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo. It's terribly important to talk about it, write about it, go on TV about it." A tyrannical regime depends on silence, darkness. "One of their goals is to make their opponents vanish. They want not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously important that we pay attention."

Indignation and concern are not inexhaustible, of course; no one, including Americans, can watch the fall of every sparrow (although, somehow, it seemed possible in South Africa). But American attention is a powerful thing; so is an American consensus. "Fidel will eventually die," some people say, with a shrug. But certain other people have waited long enough.***

Cuba's Cruel Joke
by Lawrence Solomon

National Post
January 11, 2003

Forty-four years after the revolution, Cuba's poor beg for food, the rich drive Mercedes and the U.S. dollar is official currency.

"Can I have your bones?" the old woman asked my eight year old daughter, pointing to the gnawed remains of the chicken leg that had been her lunch. Seeing that my daughter was perplexed, the old woman displayed a box of chicken bones that she had collected from other customers at the lunch counter of the department store, a respectable establishment frequented by locals in Old Havana's main shopping street. My daughter provided the bones after the lunch counter staff gave its consent - the old woman was evidently a regular at the lunch counter, and this was how she earned her supper.

An illustration of Fidel Castro driv-ing a Mercedes car.
CREDIT: Mike Faille, National Post
Welcome to Cuba, 44 years into the Revolution that was to industrialize the economy, eradicate hunger and eliminate the gap between rich and poor in this island nation, previously the most prosperous in the Caribbean. Today, the once-muscular Cuban economy is in tatters and its much lauded social safety net a cruel joke. The poor, in reality, are bled to support the lifestyles of the government elite, which lives in luxury - the driveways of the Havana honchos sport Mercedes - while its populace goes hungry.

Some Cubans outside government --increasingly those who obtain patronage positions in the tourist industry, where they receive tips and other payments in U.S. dollars - manage comfortable, if meagre, existences. With dollars, they can shop in the many "dollar" shops, where they can obtain some of the consumer goods, medicines and dairy products that most Cubans, prior to the Revolution, could readily obtain.

The great majority of Cubans, however, are left to fend for themselves in a pitiless system. Most must "do business" to survive, as Cubans put it, because most cannot subsist on the typical wages - the equivalent of about 50 cents a day - that the government sets for them. The old woman at the lunch counter begged for food; other Cubans beg for old clothes or for medicine, or sell peanuts on street corners. Young men sell cigars and other goods in the burgeoning black market; young women sell their bodies in the burgeoning sex trade.

Without dollars, life is grim. People line up at dimly lit government distribution centres, ration books in hand - libretas, the government calls them - for their monthly allocation. The books, which were established in 1962 to "guarantee the equitable distri-bution of food without privileges for a few," entitle Cubans to 2.5 kilograms of rice, 1 kilogram of fish, 1/2 kilogram of beans, 14 eggs and sundry other basics at subsidized prices. Through the libreta, each Cuban also gets one bread roll a day. Every two months, a Cuban is entitled to one bar of hand soap and one bar of laundry soap. Fresh fruits and vegetables come infrequently; meat might come once or twice a year. Until the mid-1990s, children under seven were entitled to fresh milk, but fresh milk, like butter, cheese and other dairy products, is now off the shelves. Before the revolution, two litres of fresh milk cost 15 U.S. cents, well within the means of the poor.

Cuba, a country with a coffee culture, produces fine beans in its Oriente province, but not for average Cubans. The good stuff is sold to tourists and exported to earn dollars, or reserved for the Cuban elite, while the government imports cheaper beans, grinds them, mixes them with ground chickpeas, and doles out 28 grams per month - less than one ounce - to Cuban citizens. The government also exports high quality Cuban rice for dollars while importing a low-grade rice from Vietnam for its citizens. It exports 90% of its fresh fruits, directing much of the rest to tourists and others who can pay in dollars.

Nowhere in the world does the Almighty Buck more separate the haves from the have-nots. The Cuban government has adopted the U.S. dollar as an official currency that co-exists along with the peso and cleverly keeps the poor in their place. The multinationals operating in the country - Cuba now courts them to earn dollars - are forbidden to pay their Cuban workers directly in dollars. Instead, they must turn over the workers' wages to a government agency which pockets most of the money and gives the workers a pittance in pesos. Cuba's communists have perfected the Double Currency Standard, and the double standard: One currency for the rich, another for the poor, and the rich determine the means of exchange.

Cuba's poor are also squeezed in the other necessities of life. Even in central Havana, people commonly carry water by bucket from standpipes in the street to their homes, and then lift the buckets by rope to the higher floors, because their buildings' broken water pipes go unrepaired. Those lucky enough to have working water pipes can get water at the tap - but only at certain times. In one dense urban neighbourhood that I visited, the water flowed from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., during which time families scrambled to fill pots and pans inside their homes for drinking water, and former oil drums outside their homes for washing. About the time that the water came on, the electricity went off - it, too, is rationed by daily blackouts.

In buildings where one or two families might have once lived, today live many. The inner courtyards of Cuba's residences have become miniature shanty towns, cinder block housing units or other improvisations piled on top of one another. The units - often two small rooms totalling 200 square feet - can house an extended family of seven, 10 or even 12. The rooms are often windowless or near-windowless, the ceilings low and oppressive. Among these buildings packed with people lie many identical buildings, but appropriated for government use. In the space that might house 50 or 100 people will sit one government functionary, bored and idle at a desk, the premises otherwise near-empty.

"For the first time in the history of our country, both the state and the government left aside the rich side and joined the poor side," Fidel Castro proclaimed after assuming power in 1959. Forty-four years after the Revolution, the poor side are talking of another revolution, in which the government will do much, much more for its people by doing much, much less.

US Interests Section's Chief James Cason, left, and Cuban dissident Marta Beatriz Roque, right, are seen in this March 18, 2003 file photo during an opposition meeting in Havana, Cuba. Roque was arrested in a recent crackdown and will go on trial Thursday April 3, 2003 in Havana, Cuba with dozens of other opposition members. Communist officials accuse the arrested dissidents of working with American diplomats in Cuba to subvert Cuban President Fidel Castro's government. (AP Photo/STR, File)

Leading Cuban dissidents arrested in latest crackdown *** Roque, 57, heads the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, which claims to represent 365 dissident organizations. She spent three years in prison for "sedition" between 1997 and 2000.***

January 2002 - First pro-democracy Web site in Cuba is Launched*** (January 2, 2002) A new Web site chronicling day-to-day life in Cuba has recently opened, and Fidel Castro's communist regime is unhappy with its content. Marta Beatriz Roque, leader of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists, recently announced the creation of the Web site, which was designed to show the opposing viewpoint of life in the Communist state, independent of government influence.

The site, located at www.cubaicei.org, has been mistakenly listed under the wrong address by several media outlets. Currently, the English half of the group's Web site is "under construction", although the Spanish language half is up and running. The site will contain news from roughly 130 dissident groups, as well as monthly reports on various issues, such as the economy in Cuba. The site will also contain opinion pieces and photos.***

CubaNet.com

Castro wants her imprisoned for life.

Cuba - Saddam and Fidel are birds of a feather

The Secret War ***It has been noted that the French and Russians did not want this war because they knew we would learn how they cheated on U.N. sanctions against Iraq. But the treasure trove of information we will collect on the Arab world and other Islamic states will be much more important. It will enable us to see into previously opaque issues and to squeeze many a corrupt leader who believed he was safe from external scrutiny. The Iraqi archives will be a mother lode of information for scholars. But there is much we will choose to keep under lock and key for strategic purposes. The psychological effects of our access to those archives and to former regime officials anxious to tell all will be even greater than the practical information we accumulate.

No Arab leader will know what was or wasn't in those files. Each will have to fear the worst. President-for-life X will always have to wonder what we know as we sit across the negotiating table. Our immediate goal will be to help the Iraqi people build the first rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East. That will bring its own rewards. But the long-term dividends we will reap from our secret war will keep paying off for decades. The destruction of Saddam's regime will result in the greatest intelligence coup in history. ***

December 29, 2000 - Fidel, Saddam and Hugo --An improbable but growing friendship of three military revolutionaries***The Castro-Hussein-Chávez connection is anti-American and anti-capitalistic, but not in an ideological way. What matters to the three is domestic power built upon a base of nationalism that they believe legitimizes their policies

In a way, this bizarre trio represents the rebirth, a half century later, of the kind of nationalist populism spawned by General Juan Perón in Argentina and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam gained power through armed revolutions; Mr. Chávez, a paratroopers' lieutenant colonel, was democratically elected in 1998, after serving time for trying to overthrow the government in 1992.

Mr. Chávez is the most intriguing new leader to emerge in Latin America since Mr. Castro - and he is the lynchpin between Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two countries until Mr. Chávez appeared on the scene. This fall, Mr. Chávez became the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War, ostensibly to invite Mr. Saddam to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an in-your face gesture toward the United States.***

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