Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado, Translator: Jackie Isaksen
Once again Cuban society darkens from the avoidable death of another of
its members. The peaceful protestor Wilman Villar Mendoza was detained
in a police offensive carried out in Contramaestre, a province of
Santiago of Cuba, unjustly and quickly condemned to 4 years in jail for
working with a free conscience, in a trial behind closed doors, and they
argue that this attracted his naked protest, his hunger strike and the
resultant pneumonia — that was attended to too late — costing him his
life. The outrage and official teaching toward those who think
politically different are the moral rubric and the behavior of the Cuban
dictatorship that have become tradition. The impunity with which the
state works, the judge, who is part of and owner of all power, forsakes
those citizens of the alternative political society who face the
oppression of the state. For action and omission, the authorities are
responsible for the death of this young man of 30 years.
Wilman was the victim of the abuse of power and the police who appeared
to be directed by the high leadership of the country. Accustomed to vex
and judge roughly the peaceful political dissidents and independent
journalists in order to plant the seeds of terror in the citizenship, to
avoid with intolerance what the independent civil society grows, and to
maintain unharmed their cabinet and perks. To blackmail Maritza
Pelegrino –now widow of Villar Mendoza — threatening to take away her
daughters if she didn't abandon the ranks of the Ladies in White, is an
act lacking in ethics. Facts like these do not serve to "defend their
Revolution" but to sully it. When they use violence, when they publicly
denigrate and have paramilitary men hit women and defenseless people,
they are serving a shameful, unspeakable and arbitrary order. They don't
change the mentality with slogans or through a decree, but with an
appropriate government code of ethics and and in the just exercise of power.
This tragedy happened within just in a few days of the awaited visit of
the president of Brazil, an ex-political prisoner who was tortured, and
the visit of Pope Benedict XVI scheduled in March. In this hostile
environment that has propitiated the intolerance, the Cuban government
hides behind "convenient" criminal offenses in order to sanction
political activism while awaiting these dignitaries. You can't reform a
country destroyed by the same people who pretend to fix it with
ideological propaganda, but must do so with humane ideas and logical
ethics and by including people who contribute to the respect of justice
in all orders of national life. The new Cuba which inevitably will be
reborn from this rubble of ignominy, should erect itself humanely with
the respect and the harmony of all of its children inside and outside
our borders, where there exists plurality of parties and ideas and where
there is not mistreatment or oppression toward its children who defend
their differing opinions from the official ones.
I sympathize with the pain of the families and I join the "outraged"
members of Cuban society to condemn this death which could have been
avoided. It is left to us to continue working to honor the example and
the valiant souls of Pedro L. Boitel, Orlando Zapata, Laura Pollán and
Wilmar Villar, rest in peace.
Translated by Jackie Isaksen
January 24 2012
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