Tema: Castros’ repression against the dissidents

Cuba’s repression takes on more racial tint under Raul Castro
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/15/v-fullstory/2454488/cubas-repression-takes-on-more.html

BY JON B. PERDUE
Twitter@jonperdue

Unlike the pervasive myth of universal literacy and quality healthcare that has gone unchecked and unchallenged for decades, Cuba’s fabled championing of the Afro-Cuban community is one Cuban myth that has been shattered since Fidel Castro handed power to his younger brother Raúl.

Unlike Fidel, Raúl Castro has shown a tin ear about the politics of image making, sending violent mobs to attack peaceful female marchers in an age where every cell phone can be a live broadcasting tool to the rest of the world. Lately, these citizen-held cameras have been broadcasting disturbing scenes of screeching mobs of Castro supporters waiting outside a church for the peace marchers of the “Ladies in White” to exit, where they proceeded to beat, pelt with stones and even smash the ladies against the church walls to prevent their march, leaving several severely injured.

What is most remarkable is that these are not mayimbes, or light-skinned Communist Party elites of Cuban society, but many of these marchers are poor and black. Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, who runs the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights, is a good example.

Perez Aguilera was leaving her home on Sept. 26 to go to a peaceful march for the freedom of another female prisoner, Sarah Marta Fonseca Quevedo, when she was beaten and forcibly taken away by Castro’s security apparatus. She was kept incommunicado from her husband and children for six days before being released — beaten and bloodied.

Sonia Garro recently became one of many peaceful Afro-Cuban community organizers that have gotten the business end of the Castro regime’s “outreach” efforts to Cuba’s black community.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Garro had protested the Castro regime’s discrimination against the Afro-Cuban community, and had paid dearly. In October of 2010, Garro was taken by Castro security for seven hours, after which she was released — with her nose broken. One of her fellow female marchers, also taken by Castro enforcers, was sent home with a broken arm.

Garro, a woman with little means to support her own family, had committed the offense of building a recreation center in her home for other poor children in the community who have nothing to do but roam the neighborhood unsupervised. One of her goals had been to try to free young girls from having to resort to prostitution, an all-too-common survival occupation in a country that boasts that its governing model provides for all.

Since taking over in 2008, Raúl Castro has continued Fidel’s policy of using female agents to handle the takedown and capture of the female marchers, so as to avoid photos of thuggish male enforcers attacking helpless females who do nothing other than carry flowers and march silently. But that has not lessened the brutality the women receive once they are behind the walls of Castro’s jails.

Aside from many of the Ladies in White and their supporters, two of the most recognizable Afro-Cuban dissidents have been Orlando Zapata and Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who were arrested together in 2002 during a peaceful protest. Biscet, a medical doctor and disciple of the nonviolence preached by Dr. Martin Luther King, was finally let out of prison in March of 2011 so the regime could let some steam out of the international pressure that was building against it. Zapata was not as fortunate.

Zapata died a martyr on Feb. 10, 2010, 83 days after beginning a hunger strike after he had asked in vain to serve his sentence under the same prison conditions that Fidel Castro had enjoyed when he was imprisoned by the Batista government. When Zapata died, Cuba’s state-controlled newspapers called him a “common criminal falsely elevated to martyr status.”

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson recently traveled to Havana under the auspices of trying to bring home American prisoner Alan Gross, who was imprisoned for handing out computers to the island’s small Jewish community. When Richardson arrived, he was not allowed to meet with Gross, nor with Raúl Castro.

His biggest failure was not asking to meet with any of Cuba’s political prisoners. Richardson compounded that mistake upon his return by telling CNN that the “human-rights situation has improved” under Raúl — a qualitatively and quantitatively false assertion that will now be regurgitated ad nauseam by the regime in order to dismiss international criticism.

But Richardson’s futile and counterproductive diplomatic freelancing is not the worst of the foolhardy foreign policy actions toward Cuba in recent years.

History may view the repeated junkets taken by members of the Congressional Black Caucus as the most shameful. They treat the Castro brothers as teenage girls would treat the Jonas Brothers, and come back singing the praises of how the “revolution” has been great for Afro-Cubans, without ever asking to check the dissidents’ living conditions in the island’s gulags.

They will, however, shout from the mountaintop about the supposed atrocities taking place on the opposite end of the island at Guantánamo Bay.

Racial solidarity, it seems, stops at the water’s edge.

Jon Perdue is director for Latin America programs at The Fund for American Studies.

The new technology is a great threat to Castros’ tyrannical regime. They need isolation to prevent the outsiders seeing the drastic measures they used to remain in power, and at the same time to prevent those in the island from receiving news and support from the outside world, like news and video's of revolts against other tyrannical regimes, which would encourage them to take a stand and fight for their freedom.

Grief and shame
http://www.penultimosdias.com/2011/10/17/grief-and-shame/

By Ernesto Hernandez Busto

The Cuban situation is increasingly veering away from politics. The prevailing sentiment among people who closely follow the news from the island tends to be shame: decent Cubans, in Cuba and in exile, are ashamed of the direction the country has taken, the cynicism of repression, the complete lack of moral perspective that remains following the political failure of the Castro regime. The discussion is no longer political, it is moral.

Laura Pollán’s death in Havana’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, after a week in intensive care, raises serious questions not only about the virtues of the Cuban health care system, but also about the capacity to translate this moral indignation into visible politics.

Of course, there are always suspicions that the death of an indisputable leader of the peaceful opposition could have been caused, or accelerated, by methods that only the nightmares of totalitarian systems can conceive of. We have already seen worse; the Cuban chronicle of horror could easily admit another stain. But even if we have no proof of medical negligence, or worse, even if we cannot directly blame the forces of repression or expound on the details of her death, we have abundant proof of what the Cuban government did, in life, to Laura Pollán Toledo and to the courageous Ladies in White. Abundant proof of how they wanted to debilitate this woman, over and over; of how they tried to break her by every means possible.

I wonder, and I believe I am not the only one, what they are thinking now, all those people who behaved like rabid dogs at each of the many repudiation rallies that Laura suffered; what will she do now, for example, the woman whose insolence stands out even among the mob incited by State Security. Or another one, who personally took charge of mistreating Laura last month. Their faces are unforgettable, but they also trigger our embarrassment, a shame provoked by seeing such lamentable events, such despicable actors. Isaac Bachevis Singer’s story, The Destruction of Kreshev, offers a good summary of the morality of the pogram and its consequences; there, he says it all.

Laura Pollán was, without a doubt, a moral example—as recorded today in a good editorial. Her dignity and her Catholic faith favored a comportment that lifted her far above her detractors. She knew how to win a cause, the release of the 75, but she paid the highest price for embodying the choice of peaceful struggle and nonviolence. Her example moved even the most iconic figures of the official culture, like Pablo Milanés, whose shame in the face of the programmed bullying of defenseless women burst forth in some controversial declarations that honor the man, and that remind us, by contrast, of the shameless cowardice of those who today remain silent or continue to defame her.

Now, Laura Pollán is no longer among the living, and the Cuban opposition is in mourning. With regards to the wake, the testimonies I have received agree that State Security imposed its rhythm from beginning to end; her family and other opponents offered not the least resistance to their directions. Drowning in grief, they were paralyzed by an event that transcended them, perhaps unable to grasp the tremendous significance of her death. Grief mixed with shame, and this mixture resulted in inaction, the temptation to avert one’s face and to become defenseless against the onslaught.

I read that there will be masses in Miami, in Santiago de Chile, and in Madrid. But the mass and homage that this woman deserves remains pending; it will be remembered the day her people wake up and decide to follow her example: a humble teacher who defied a government and so managed to prove its true nature.

Laura Pollan is not the first and unfortunately will not be the last either.
http://cubaarchive.org/home/images/stories/truth%20and%20memory/female_victims.pdf


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The legacy of Laura Pollan, Cuba’s Lady in White
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-legacy-of-laura-pollan-cubas-lady-in-white/2011/10/16/gIQAUizlpL_story.html

By Yoani Sanchez,

Eight years ago, Laura Pollan was a schoolteacher living with her husband, Hector Maseda, the leader of the outlawed Cuban Liberal Party. Despite the vicissitudes of living in a country where association is penalized, the family tried to live a normal life in their small house on Neptune Street in Havana.

But early one morning, a pounding on the door irrevocably changed their lives. After an exhaustive search and a summary trial, Maseda was imprisoned and sentenced to 20 years in jail, accused of acting against national security. His crime: imagining a different Cuba, politically opposing the authorities and putting those opinions in writing.

Seventy-five opposition figures were arrested and condemned during that sad March of 2003, a time that will remain forever known in Cuba’s history as the Black Spring. The Cuban government expected this blow to the opposition to persuade other restless citizens to abandon the ranks of the protesters. Officials also believed that the wives, mothers and daughters of the political prisoners would remain silent, so as not to cause more problems for their loved ones. They never anticipated that these women would band together to publicly denounce the arrests and imprisonments. But every political calculation made from the arrogance of power turned out badly.

Thus was born the Ladies in White, a group of women who, through peaceful struggle, demanded and achieved the release of all the prisoners of conscience. At first it seemed a tiny, disjointed movement, given the long miles separating one woman from another. But the ladies’ indignation functioned as a unifying element, and their marches through the streets of Havana, each woman dressed in white and carrying a gladiolus, followed Sunday after Sunday for more than seven years. One voice stood out among them, that of a diminutive blue-eyed woman who taught Spanish and literature to teenagers.

Laura Pollan was emerging as the spokeswoman and leader of the Ladies in White, which focused on human rights and the release of their relatives. In a country that has always been moved by the polarization of its ideological discourse, the Ladies in White were different from their inception. Instead of party platforms, the women displayed only the desire to embrace their loved ones. They did not choose to organize themselves around a doctrine but rather around the unassailable position of family affection. Thus they won a great deal of sympathy among the population of the island, and so, of course, provoked the authorities into a campaign of defamation and insults against them.

If one group has been denigrated to a fault in the Cuban media, it is the Ladies in White. The regime has launched a kind of media war against the women, backed by experiments in intimidation. “Repudiation rallies” — busloads of “spontaneous” protesters called in to scream insults at and even beat their targets — made Pollan’s front door their highest altar. Official journalists called them “The Ladies in Green,” an allusion to the economic support they received from Cubans in exile in order to take food to their imprisoned husbands. Meanwhile, the Cuban government didn’t hesitate to dip into its national coffers for every kind of political attack; part of this money — which could have gone to feed Cubans — was spent ferreting out every cent that reached the hands of these women in need.

The national press continued to denigrate Pollan even on Oct. 7, when she was admitted into the intensive care unit of a Havana hospital with aching bones, shortness of breath and extreme weakness.

Given the seriousness of her condition, government officials asked her family if the patient could be transferred to a luxury clinic designed for the military. But Pollan herself said, before losing consciousness in an induced coma, “I want to stay in the hospital of the people.” And there she died on Oct. 14, after a five-day delay in diagnosing dengue fever, in a country that has been experiencing an intense outbreak of the disease for months now.

While newspapers around the world reported on the death of Laura Pollan, Granma, the official paper of the Communist Party, and all the papers of Cuba’s provinces remained silent. This reaction is a given, considering the pettiness of a government that cannot feel sympathy at the death of an opponent. The Castro regime has never been able to pause in its belligerence, never been able to offer condolences.

But this silence also stems from its fear of this little teacher of Spanish, the fear that sticks, even now, in officials’ throats. The leader of the Ladies in White is dead, and no one in Cuba will ever carry a gladiolus in his or her hands without thinking of Laura Pollan.

Yoani Sanchez is a writer in Cuba. Her awards include the 2010 World Press Freedom Hero award. She blogs at www.desdecuba.com/ generationy and is the author of “Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth About Cuba Today.” This column was translated from Spanish by M.J. Porter.

We cannot forget the thousands of Cubans executed without due process, imprisoned, perishing trying to escape in make shift rafts, forced into exile, since the reign of terror of the Castro brothers tyrannical monarchy started 53 years ago.

Why so many Cubans left the island and live all over the world? Some of the reasons are: because they cannot live in a country where an employee in a tourist hotel earns more than a doctor, where the currency in which they are pay is worthless, where they cannot say that Castro is an inept without being through into prison, you cannot travel freely, a place where in order to have a phone install you must be a supporter of the regime, where to get a job in which you can earn some hard currency need to be recommended by an apparatchik. Want a few more? How about a country where you can not kill your own cow, because if you do, you will go to jail and get as many years as somebody that kill a person, where you cannot own more than one house, and the regime can take it away from you at any time. Put yourself in their shoes, and think what would you do.

Castros’ regime evil characteristics have long been well-known and documented in many cases of political repression. But for the main stream media and so call progressives “supporters of human rights”, they are oblivious to these human tragedies events and consider them non-events. Yet they still apologize for the regressive Soviet Union Stalinist regime. The bravery of the “Ladies in White” shall be recognize as a triumph of the human spirit, supported and celebrate outside of Cuba. Not to do so, will encourages the regime to keep attacking them with impunity. They need your support.

Cuban independent journalist who wrote about the possible intravenous bacterial infection of Laura Pollan arrested
http://babalublog.com/2011/10/cuban-independent-journalist-who-wrote-about-the-possible-intravenous-bacterial-infection-of-laura-pollan-arrested/#comments

Hablemos Press journalist who wrote about the possible intravenous bacterial infection of Laura Pollan arrested

Havana, October 17, 2011- Six agents from Cuban State Security arrested independent journalist Carlos Rios Otero at his home at 5:30 pm on Friday the 14th.

Rios Otero, who is a member of Independent Press Agency Hablemos Press, had published an article the day before detailing the critical condition of Lady in White Laura Pollan and other cases of Ladies in White who became ill after being injected during acts of repression.

According to the journalist, the agents took him to the Aguilera police station in Lawton, Havana, where he was constantly threatened until after midnight.

His arrest took place two hours before the announcement of Laura Pollan's death, at the same time when it became evident that many of the cell phones of peaceful opposition members had been cut off.

At the home of the journalist at Correa #163, Santos Suarez, a patrol car appeared with two uniformed police officers and two plainclothes agents of State Security. Another two agents in civilian clothes arrived on motorcycles. One said to Rios: "Carlos, we need to talk."

In his articles for Hablemos Press, one on September 12th "IPK Denounces Medical Power," and on October 28th, "Lethal Vaccinations against the Cuban Dissidence," Rios explored the possible relationship between the grave illness of Laura Pollan and the puncture inflicted on her at the last attack she suffered.

He cited previous instances, such as the other Ladies in White who had been injected and then suffered dizzy spells, blurry vision, fever, loss of equilibrium, diarrhea, nausea, cramps, irregular menstrual cycles with heavy bleeding, and other symptoms attributable to bacterial infection or reactions to toxic substances.

Rios said: "They placed me in the back seat between two plainclothes agents and with the two motorcycles leading a caravan that appeared to me as if I were the president of the republic. In the Aguilera station at a section they call "The Pit," they interrogated me and the four agents threatened me regarding signs that had appeared in the streets with the word "NO." I belong to the "NO" campaign. They threatened me with prison for the signs, calling it a "crime of propaganda for the enemy," but I refused to sign an "admission." They interrogated me about my friends and about a repair done on my house - remember that Dr. Darsi Ferrer was imprisoned on the pretext of the materials used in the repair of his house. They avoided talking about my articles dealing with the health of Laura Pollan and the puncture she suffered on her forearm during the last act of repression carried out by them and their paramilitary "Rapid Response Brigades." After releasing me around midnight, one said, 'Laura has died.'"

Carlos Rios believes that the sudden interest in him has nothing to do with the signs on the streets, but with the death of Laura Pollan while he writes of how the government's "battle of ideas" includes suspicious injections.

According to family members, Lady in White and photo journalist for Hablemos Press, Sandra Guerra, was "sequestered by State Security agents on Saturday morning when she was traveling to Havana to attend the funeral for Pollan."

On October 17 Roberto Rodriguez Tejera in his radio program interviewe­d the Cuban independen­t journalist of Hablemos Press­ Rios Otero, and several Ladies in White. They denounce three other cases of toxic injections applied on Ladies in White by the regime mobs on their Sunday walk to mass. One of them is Ana Betancourt, a healthy 40 years old woman, hospitalize with high blood pressure and fever, general inflammation and uncontroll­ed menstruati­on. The other two are Montes de Oca and Sara Marta Fonseca, who after being injected during their Sunday walk, had similar symptoms to that of Laura Pollan and Betancourt. Rios Otero denounced that he was detained and interrogat­ed during several hours in the Villa Marista, headquarter of the Political Police. They told him that he will be prosecuted on a number of charges if he does not leave aside his investigat­ion about the toxic injections­. They are afraid he will find the smoking gun if he continues with his investigations.

Lech Walesa on the death of Laura Pollan
http://joanantoniguerrero.blogspot.com/2011/10/lech-walesa-elogia-la-lucha-de-laura.html

October 20, 2011

Letter send by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wakllesa to the husband of Laura Pollán, Héctor Maseda, with the condolences for the recent death of The Ladies in White leader.
1213698135_0.jpg

Dear Sir:

It was with great sadness that I received the news regarding the death of your wife Laura Pollan. Those of us who admire the values professed by Ms. Laura Pollan share in the enormous tragedy that is being experienced in these days.

She was able to mobilize not only her compatriots, but also the international community in the defense of those struggling for democracy who were unjustly sentenced and imprisoned for their beliefs. The cause for democracy and liberty in Cuba has become our dream and our common objective.

The Ladies in White, a movement established by Ms. Laura Pollan, is proof that peaceful struggle and the results of its practice are always victorious. Please, accept my sincerest condolences and you can count on my constant support for the mission launched by your wife.

Sincerely,

Lech Walesa

. "The US does not lead morally or politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. That was the hope, that whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today we lost that hope." - Lech Walesa

We are in need of a few more Walesas on these trial times. It is deplorable how quickly people forget.

A Dissidents Mysterious Death in Havana
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576645362368682524.html

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
OCTOBER 24, 2011

Days after a beating by a mob, Laura Pollán fell ill and soon died. She was cremated two hours later.
For more than eight years, the Castro regime tried its level best to silence Ladies in White leader Laura Pollán. Ten days ago Pollán did fall silent. She passed away, after a brief illness, in a Havana hospital.

Hospital officials initially said that she died of cardiac and respiratory arrest. But according to Berta Soler, the spokesperson for the Ladies in White in Havana, the death certificate says that Pollán succumbed to diabetes mellitus type II, bronchial pneumonia and a syncytial virus.

Since there was no independent medical care available to her and there was no autopsy, we are unlikely ever to find out what killed Pollán. We do know that although she was a diabetic with high blood pressure, both were under control and she did not need regular insulin shots. Indeed, she had been healthy only weeks before her death, according to friends and family. We also know that the longer she remained under state care, the sicker she got.

Not surprisingly, the Cuban opposition is suspicious about her demise, and their concerns deserve an airing if only because of the nature of the totalitarian regime. It learned its trade from communist Eastern Europe, where the practice of eliminating enemies while in state custody was refined.

Over the life of the Cuban dictatorship, suspicious deaths (most commonly heart attacks) of otherwise healthy individuals who were considered disloyal to the Castros are not unheard of. The most famous was José Abrantes, a former interior minister and confidant of Fidel, who had a falling out with his boss, was imprisoned, and though known for being fit died of a heart attack in his cell in 1991. More than one defector from inside the regime has claimed that Abrantes was murdered.

Pollán took up her cause when her husband, Hector Maseda, was arrested, along with 74 others, in an island-wide crackdown on dissent in March 2003. Seeking a way to resist the injustice, she joined other women whose loved ones were handed down long sentences in Cuba's Black Spring. Together they organized a simple, peaceful act of disobedience: After attending Mass at St. Rita's church in Havana, they marched in the street, dressed in white and carrying gladiolas. The group was peaceful and nonpolitical. But to the regime it was dangerous. Mobs were unleashed against it.

Beatings, detentions, intimidation and harassment of the group were fruitless. The Ladies repeatedly returned to their "counterrevolutionary" practices: Sunday Mass, silent processions, Wednesday women's "literary teas" held in Ms. Pollán's home, prayer vigils for the persecuted.
The movement took on enormous visual power, and when images of the ladies being attacked in the streets went viral, the dictatorship was humiliated. The Castros were forced to offer the Black Spring prisoners "liberation" through exile with their spouses.

Pollán and her husband refused. Instead she expanded the movement across the country and promised to convert it to a human rights organization open to all women. Speaking from the Guanajay prison as her condition was deteriorating, jailed former Cuban counterintelligence officer Ernesto Borges Pérez told the Hablemos Press that making public those objectives likely sealed her fate.

On Sept. 24, Pollán was attacked by a mob as she tried to leave her house to attend Mass. Her right arm was reportedly twisted, scratched and bitten. This is notable because for more than a year, the Ladies had alleged that when Castro's enforcement squads came after them, the regime's goons pricked their skin with needles. Those same women claimed that they subsequently felt dizzy, nauseous and feverish. Independent journalist Carlos Ríos Otero reported this for Hablemos Press before Pollán was hospitalized.

According to interviews with Pollán's daughter and husband and with Ms. Soler, conducted by the Miami-based nongovernmental organization Directorio, eight days after the Sept. 24 assault Pollán came down with chills and began vomiting. Wracked with pain in her joints the next day, she was taken to the Calixto García hospital. After a battery of tests she was told everything was normal and released. On Oct. 4, she had a fever and shortness of breath. A prescribed antibiotic did not help. On Oct. 7 she was admitted to the hospital, later transferred to intensive care and the next day put on a respirator.

Her family was denied visitation rights until Oct. 10, when only her daughter was allowed to see her. State security agents surrounded her bed and monitored the doctors. On Oct. 12 doctors reported that she had a syncytial respiratory virus, which is otherwise known as a cold. She was obviously much sicker.

On Oct. 14 she died. When the family was allowed to see the body, state security agents were again on hand, as they were at the one-hour wake permitted at midnight. In record time—only two hours later—Pollán was returned to ashes. Who could blame the resistance for its suspicions?

The tragic death of a true leader. The Castros are old men near the end of the rope, but it would be much sweeter to see them deposed and repudiated before they go. They deserve a Gaddafi and Ceausescu type of end.

Former political prisoner José Ángel Luque Álvarez, on October 20^th was arrested in Havana and beaten for wearing a T-shirt with the word “change.” When he was released two days later, the State Security officer Fernando Tamayo Gómez told him: “We killed Laura; we can do the same with you and nothing happens.”

Anti- governmentprotest at Havana’s Fraternity Park
http://babalublog.com/2011/12/human-rights-activists-in-cuba-violently-arrested-and-bystanders-pepper-sprayed-after-courageous-public-protest/

ByAlbertode la Cruz (translation), on December 1, 2011,

Activistsdisplayed a sheet with the words "Stop the lies and deception of the Cubanpeople" and "End the hunger, the misery, and the poverty inCuba"

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Agentes+esposan+a+Ivonne+al+derribarla+al+suelo.JPG4Vq5IKT15oU/Ttbck7eSg2I/AAAAAAAADE8/m3GeP8aNyFg/s1600/Agentes+esposan+a+Ivonne+al+derribarla+al+suelo.JPG/
ActivistsIvonne Malleza and Blanca Hernández Moya led a protest this Wednesday againstthe island's government at the Fraternity Park in Havana, say sources from thedissidence.

MallezaGalano, who is 33, and Hernandez Moya, 77, displayed a sheet with the phrases"Stop the lies and deception of the Cuban people" and "End thehunger, the misery, and the poverty in Cuba," said Mayra Morejon toCUBAENCUENTRO, who was also present at the protest.

Morejonexplained that for almost 20 minutes, the activists demanded from thegovernment "food for the children, liberty for the Cuban people, and araise in pensions" for the elderly, among other demands.

Theactivists said that while the women were protesting, "two police officerscame running" and attempted to "take away Ivonne's sheet." Butthe crowd gathered around her came out in her defense and demanded that thepolice let her go, and then the police officers "backed away fromher."

Accordingto Morejon, more police and patrol cars arrived and began "pepper sprayingthe people." They arrested Malleza Galano, her husband, Ignacio MartinezMoreno, who was beaten, and Hernandez Moya. All of them are currently at theZanja y Dragones police station in central Havana, said the activist.

Morejonalso stated that Yordani Biset was also arrested, " a young man who was onhis cell phone, but who had nothing to do with the protest. This young man hasnothing to do with us, he is not a member of the opposition. He was just aspectator in the crowd, and they aggressively threw him into a police car. Hehas nothing to do with this," Morejon said.

Oppositionleader Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, who leads the Cuban Network of CommunityCommunicators, also reported on the protest at Háblalo Sin Miedo (Speak itwithout Fear).

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cwaLXPjdLco/TtbclDk5JHI/AAAAAAAADFE/T-JjcjB0uN0/s320/Blanca+e+Ivonne+con+el+lienzo.jpgBlanca+e+Ivonne+con+el+lienzo.jpg

The public protest initiated by Cuban human rights activists at the Fraternity Park in Havana was quickly quashed by Castro State Security with several activists and bystanders being violently arrested. The protest was led by two women of Cuba's peaceful opposition movement, Ivonne Malleza and Blanca Hernández Moya. Their act of protest against the repressive Castro dictatorship was highlighted by the support they received from the large crowd of bystanders when the Cuban State Security agents attempted to arrest them. The crowd surrounded the women in an attemptto protect them from the agents, forcing the security officials to pepper spray the people in order to reach the two women.

Video of the protest on November 30 at Havana’s Fraternity Park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hbBJJm3-uAw

This is one of the most recent examples of the great achievements of the Revolution, the physical abuse of women demonstrating peacefully. Clearly it can be seeing and hear a lot of public support, something that is occurring with more frequency. The Cuban people are fed up with the Castroit regime disaster and it is only a matter of time that this type of protests will evolve into the Caribbean spring.

Cuba stops dissident Rights Day protest, 200 held
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE7B90HI20111210

ByJack Kimball and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban dissidents said on Saturday thatabout 200 people were temporarily detained by the Communist-run island'ssecurity services in the days leading up to an international human rightscelebration.

Government supporters danced salsa and chanted political slogansin a Havana square to mark the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.

Opposition members who had planned to celebrate Human RightsDay in the same place, and protest against abuses in Cuba, were blocked fromgoing to the square, dissidents said.

"Some 200 detentions for political motives have takenplan in the last nine days in the lead up to the international Human RightsDay," said Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of HumanRights said.

"Authorities use a tactic of short-duration arrests,who are released a few hours or days later, to impede protests."

International rights groups say Cuban laws virtually preventall forms of protest and dissent while the government says the free educationand health services it provides show its respect for human rights.

On Friday, government backers blocked the dissident groupLadies in White from marching in the street.

The women were heckled again on Saturday by a crowd ofgovernment supporters and prevented from leaving a house were they had gatheredin central Havana.

"Here come the people to fight for what is ours. Thesestreets are ours and that's why we defend them," shouted governmentsympathizer Mirta Sosa outside the house.

"The government has prevented us from exercising theright of free movement in the streets. Here in Cuba, human rights are violateddaily," said Ladies in White leader Berta Soler.

The Ladies in White group was formed by the wives andmothers of 75 dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Castro's opponents. Theyhave since been released by President Raul Castro's government.

Havana's "Black Spring of 2003" caused a majorfallout between Cuba and the international community, and while some Europeannations have begun a rapprochement since the prisoner release, relations withlong-time ideological foe the United States remain in a deep freeze.

Opposition protests in Cuba are exceedingly rare. Cuba'sgovernment, which came to power in a 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro,accuses dissidents of being on the payroll of the Washington, which has imposeda trade embargo on the island since Castro embraced Soviet communism in theearly 1960s.

On Saturday, state media was filled with stories andcommentaries for the anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights in 1948.

"The fulfillment of international commitments ... hasbeen implicit in the work of the Cuban Revolution despite the economic war ...and also the systematic plots to destroy it," Jose Luis Mendez Mendez, ananalyst at the research arm of the Interior Ministry, wrote in an opinion pieceon cubadebate.cu.

Castros’ tyranny, which is a member of United NationsHuman Rights, celebrated Human Rights Daywith a crackdown on around 200 Cuban human rights activists. The oppressionin the island is vast and wide. Long Live Human Rights!

Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez y Sanchez, Cuban Lawyer, Jurist, Politician, Diplomat and Economist, wrote a book entitled "La Carta Magna de la Comunidad de las Naciones (The Magna Carta of the Community of Nations)" in 1945. At the San Francisco Conference the Republic of Cuba submitted two proposals for consideration, a "Draft Declaration of the International Rights and Duties of the Individual" and a “Draft Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Nations.” These two drafts were written and presented by Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez in his book.

John P. Humphrey prepared the first draft for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1947. In the Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, “Memoirs of John P. Humphrey, the First Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights”, he stated: “I was no Thomas Jefferson and, although a lawyer, I had had practically no experience drafting documents. But since the Secretariat had collected a score of drafts, I had some models on which to work. One of them had been prepared by Gustavo Gutierrez (Sanchez) and had probably inspired the draft Declaration of the International Duties and Rights of the Individual which Cuba had sponsored at the San Francisco Conference.” He was right, those were the documents written in Gutierrez book. Gutierrez draft for the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was chosen as one of the drafts presented by the Secretariat.

Dr. Gutierrez draft exercised a great influence in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Below you will find a preamble of three proposed drafts. The draft by Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez is the one in the middle.

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Jailed Cuban dissident dies at 31
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/1...t-dies-at.html
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BY Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@elNuevoHerald.com
Posted on Thursday, 01.19.12

The young Cuban dissenter Wilman Villar, who 50 days ago began a hunger strike in his jail cell in response to his imprisonment, died Thursday night in the Juan Bruno Zayas de Santiago hospital in Cuba.

Villar, who was 31, became a martyr of the opposition movement in defense of individual liberties and human rights in Cuba. Villar was being kept alive by a respirator for several days before his condition deteriorated. He developed a sepsis infection that spread through his bloodstream in his final hours. Doctors alerted his family, stating that "only a miracle" could save his life.

The complication mortally wounded his liver and intestines, according to doctors. On Thursday, his wife, Maritza Pelegrino, said state agents will not allow her to see her husband's body. Villar was serving a four-year jail sentence at the time of his death.

Another prisoner of conscience died in a hunger strike under the Castros regime. The Dissident’s death highlights the repressive tactics of the regime. It uses capricious arrests, fake trials, harsh imprisonment, and harassment of dissidents’ families, in order to silence its critics.

Wilman death after 50 days of a hunger strike is a demonstration that there are Cuban dissidents capable of fighting the regime all the way to the limit. The Castros regime doesn’t make any concession that could be interpreted as weakness, since it doesn’t has any future whatsoever. The one that had a future was Wilman, 31 years old and with a wife and two girls, but the regime elected to let him die.

It is really quite amazing how CBS News has completely given up on even trying to give the appearance their reports on Cuba are objective. This news report goes way beyond irresponsible and lazy journalism and can be honestly classified as pure propaganda.

One of the few non violent ways to be heard in the Castro brothers 54 years paradise is going in ahunger strike as an act of political protest. It is very sad that these hunger strikes have to be used to bring worldopinion to bear against the oppression and denial of freedom by the two tyrantsand force change.