Raul Castro turns into big brother Fidel
BY NAT HENTOFF
Popular singer Carlos Varela (known as "Cuba's Bob Dylan") came here in
December "Trying to Sway America's Cuba Policy With Song and Easy Talk"
(New York Times, Dec. 29), and even had lunch with a senior White House
official. However, it now is grimly clear that Raul and Fidel Castro are
interchangeable, as Raul keeps adding more "prisoners of conscience" (as
Amnesty International describes them) to the gulags.
At least 40 Cuban advocates of human rights have been locked up during
the past three years on the charge of being "dangerous." And Human
Rights Watch documented "more than 40 cases under Raul Castro in which
Cuba imprisoned people for 'dangerousness' because they sought to do
things like staging marches or organizing independent labor unions" (New
York Times, Nov. 19).
Since President Obama is concerned with human rights, he also might want
to know from the Human Rights Watch report that "the younger Mr. Castro
has relied in particular on a Cuban law that permits the state to
imprison people even before they commit crimes." The Robert Mugabe way
of ruling.
Not surprisingly, the sudden "declaration of conscience" by 60 prominent
black Americans, exposing and protesting the pervasive racism against
Afro-Cubans in Castroland, has not been "reported by Cuba's state media
monopoly" (Latin American Herald Tribune, Dec. 19).
This customary censorship by the dictatorship has not prevented
Afro-Cubans from hearing of it and being encouraged by this long-delayed
support from these black Americans. And although the mainstream American
media have paid little attention to their pre-emancipation proclamation,
the 60 signers "are considering forming a group to follow this (Jim
Crow) situation via international human rights and civil rights
organizations" (Radio Marti -- www.martinoticias.com, Dec. 30).
Also welcoming this awakening to Castro racism is one of the
internationally best-known prisoners of conscience: Oscar Biscet. He
says of the signers: "They are now on the side of justice, and it is
very important for Afro-Cubans to have on our side our American
brothers. They have fought against racism, they have fought for the
ideal of equality and democracy in the United States and we need that
here, too." (Radio Marti).
A particularly prominent American signer, political scientist Ron
Walters -- in "Racist or Revolutionary: Cuba's Identity is at Stake"
(www.thedefendersonline.com) -- declares:
"Cuba's national identity is precisely what is at stake. The government
cannot claim to be truly revolutionary and progressive while tolerating
white elitism in its leadership and the oppression of its blackest
citizens." He quotes Dr. Carlos Moore, a longtime battler against racism
in Cuba:
"By denying the existence of racism in Cuba for 50 years and by brutally
preventing those who wanted to confront that reality from doing so, the
revolutionary regime guaranteed a safe haven for the unfettered
perpetuation and growth of a racist consciousness in Cuba."
In that declaration -- in the tradition of Tom Paine's "Common Sense,"
instrumental in igniting the American Revolution -- the signers cited
the recent imprisonment of civil rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer. Says
his wife, Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, "It is a very positive step because
before, no one wanted to talk about this. There has always been the
notion that racism in Cuba did not exist, but this is a lie."
Entering what is now a worldwide conversation about the bigotry of the
Castro brothers is a hero of freedom, Vaclav Havel, whose velvet
Revolution helped drive the Russian dictatorship out of Czechoslovakia.
Author of "The Power of the Powerless," he has won the U.S. Presidential
Medal of Freedom. In a letter to Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, which I've not
seen mentioned in the American press, Havel says of the Cuban resistance
against the Castros:
"The Cuban opposition has my sympathies since it suffers totalitarian
forms of power and ideology similar to those that I knew in the former
Czechoslovakia." Then Havel went on to target passive accomplices of
endemic Cuban racism: "I am very worried about the lack of willingness
of the European Union to express itself clearly and draw conclusions.
Even though the practices and treacheries of totalitarian regimes have
been described and documented thousands of times, their lies are still
underestimated, omitted or even accepted by international organizations.
"I am afraid," the liberator of his country continued, "I am afraid that
your husband's arrest is just another piece of evidence of the
international community's indifference towards the Castro regime's
actions. ...
"Dear Mrs. Jorge Soca, I would like to assure you that I will not stop
drawing attention to the violation of human and civil rights in Cuba and
will seek international solidarity with the persecuted so that one day
we all can see a political change in your country."
In the history of individual freedom, I am less than a cipher compared
to Vaclav Havel, but I also intend to keep on writing about those
American public figures and institutions who claim to be on the front
line of resistance to totalitarianism and racism but continue to imbue
the Cuban Revolution with a romantic aura of unparalleled liberation of
each and every one of its citizens.
And I will continue to ask the leadership of the American Library
Association when it will finally act directly to help remove from their
prison cells the independent Cuban librarians, white and black, whom the
father of this exclusionary Revolution has placed in cages.
I still cannot understand why the leading Officers of American Library
Association have abandoned these other librarians. Nor do I understand
why there has not been a rank-and-file rebellion against this by the ALA
membership around our country. Don't they all believe in the freedom to
read?
Raul Castro turns into big brother Fidel | zanesvilletimesrecorder.com |
Zanesville Times Recorder (14 January 2010)
http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20100114/OPINION02/1140301
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