"WHY US 'ENGAGEMENT' WITH CUBA HAS BEEN DEADLY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS" - John Suarez / June 15, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/15/why-us-engagement-with-cuba-has-been-deadly-for-human-rights-activists/
Rosa Maria Paya. (Photo: Ivan Franco/EFE/Newscom)
President Obama’s engagement policy with the Castro regime, announced in 2009, has led to a massive increase in arbitrary detentions, violence against activists and the deaths of high-profile opposition leaders under circumstances that point to extrajudicial executions carried out by Cuban state security.
The White House not only began to loosen sanctions on the Castro regime in April 2009, but also refused to meet in June 2009 with the winners of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award, who happened to be five Cuban dissidents that year.
It was the first time in five years the U.S. president did not meet with award laureates. In December 2009, the Castro regime responded to the outreach when it took Alan Gross hostage and the Obama administration responded with initial silence. It took American diplomats 25 days to visit with the arbitrarily detained American.
These signals would have deadly consequences for the Cuban democratic opposition. Rising levels of violence against nonviolent activists and the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012) and Harold Cepero Escalante (2012), followed promptly.
The administration responded to the taking of Gross (2009) and the death of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo on Feb. 23, 2010, by further loosening sanctions on Cuba in January 2011. The number of high-profile activists who died under suspicious circumstances after the second round of loosening of sanctions should give engagement advocates pause in their optimism with the new policy.
Machete attacks by regime officials against activists began in June 2013, the same month as secret negotiations between the Obama administration and the Castro regime started.
On Feb. 3, 2015, Rosa María Payá, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued an indictment on the indifference of the US government and the international community:
"On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention. The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the U.S. government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes."
Two months later Rosa María Payá, and other activists were harassed first at the airport by Panamanian officials and later at the VII Summit of the Americas for protesting that the United States, along with the democracies of the region, invited Raul Castro to the summit. Castro arrived with a huge entourage of state security agents, then proceeded to interrupt and shut down official civil society gatherings at the summit to silence dissent. Cuban pro-democracy activists were physically assaulted in a public park when they tried to lay a wreath before a bust of Jose Marti suffering broken bones and black eyes.
Meanwhile, President Obama shook hands with Raul Castro and declared the goal of regime change in Cuba was no longer U.S. policy. Now, violence in Cuba escalates each Sunday as men and women of the democratic resistance suffering brutal beatings and detentions.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
"Why We Should Be Skeptical About Raul Castro’s Talk of Conversion" - Mike Gonzalez / @Gundisalvus / May 12, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/12/why-we-should-be-skeptical-about-raul-castros-talk-of-conversion/ [NOTE: The following are but excerpts from this article as it is too long to post here. I found what I post here MOST interesting. - Stan]
"... In other words, Castro and his henchmen were behaving like communists always do. As we know from a recent Catholic News Agency interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, one of the highest ranking Iron Curtain defectors in the 1970s, the KGB itself created Liberation Theology. [Pope Francis is a Jesuit, which champions this teaching.] This quasi-Communist movement, very important in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s but less so today, emphasized the oppressed vs. oppressor Marxist narrative. As Pacepa told Catholic News Agency, the plan was that the “the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.”
The depths of cynicism were reached of course not in the motives for the gift [given by Raul Castro to the Pope] but with the gift itself. Cuba became a wealthy island in the 20th century by producing many things: sugar, tobacco, rum, music, etc. Since the Castros took over in 1959 and established communism shortly thereafter, Cuba has been known for producing only one thing: exiles.
Between one-tenth and one-twentieth of the population have fled (estimates vary), and they’re the lucky ones. Those left behind have all of their civil rights suppressed—whether it’s freedom of the press, of religion, of free speech, of free association, etc. None of them now exists.No wonder then that Cubans still constantly try to flee the land of their births by crossing the shark-infested Florida Straits on rickety rafts. Tens of thousands have died at high seas, according to Maria Werlau, executive director of the Cuba Archive Truth and Memory Project. But the shame for Raul Castro and his goons doesn’t stop there. When they catch these rafts and boats, they don’t tow them back to the island, they sink them. It happened most recently—that we know of—on Dec. 20, three days after Obama announced the U.S. would extend recognition to the Castro regime.
Any talk that Raul Castro would be seen crossing himself on a regular basis at a pew at Havana Cathedral would be belied by his government’s track record of repressing Catholics, keeping them out of the Communist Party, the universities, the good jobs and all the perks that come from keeping your head down in his socialist paradise..."
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Rosa Maria Paya. (Photo: Ivan Franco/EFE/Newscom)
President Obama’s engagement policy with the Castro regime, announced in 2009, has led to a massive increase in arbitrary detentions, violence against activists and the deaths of high-profile opposition leaders under circumstances that point to extrajudicial executions carried out by Cuban state security.
The White House not only began to loosen sanctions on the Castro regime in April 2009, but also refused to meet in June 2009 with the winners of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award, who happened to be five Cuban dissidents that year.
It was the first time in five years the U.S. president did not meet with award laureates. In December 2009, the Castro regime responded to the outreach when it took Alan Gross hostage and the Obama administration responded with initial silence. It took American diplomats 25 days to visit with the arbitrarily detained American.
These signals would have deadly consequences for the Cuban democratic opposition. Rising levels of violence against nonviolent activists and the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012) and Harold Cepero Escalante (2012), followed promptly.
The administration responded to the taking of Gross (2009) and the death of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo on Feb. 23, 2010, by further loosening sanctions on Cuba in January 2011. The number of high-profile activists who died under suspicious circumstances after the second round of loosening of sanctions should give engagement advocates pause in their optimism with the new policy.
Machete attacks by regime officials against activists began in June 2013, the same month as secret negotiations between the Obama administration and the Castro regime started.
On Feb. 3, 2015, Rosa María Payá, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued an indictment on the indifference of the US government and the international community:
"On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention. The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the U.S. government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes."
Two months later Rosa María Payá, and other activists were harassed first at the airport by Panamanian officials and later at the VII Summit of the Americas for protesting that the United States, along with the democracies of the region, invited Raul Castro to the summit. Castro arrived with a huge entourage of state security agents, then proceeded to interrupt and shut down official civil society gatherings at the summit to silence dissent. Cuban pro-democracy activists were physically assaulted in a public park when they tried to lay a wreath before a bust of Jose Marti suffering broken bones and black eyes.
Meanwhile, President Obama shook hands with Raul Castro and declared the goal of regime change in Cuba was no longer U.S. policy. Now, violence in Cuba escalates each Sunday as men and women of the democratic resistance suffering brutal beatings and detentions.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
"Why We Should Be Skeptical About Raul Castro’s Talk of Conversion" - Mike Gonzalez / @Gundisalvus / May 12, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/12/why-we-should-be-skeptical-about-raul-castros-talk-of-conversion/ [NOTE: The following are but excerpts from this article as it is too long to post here. I found what I post here MOST interesting. - Stan]
"... In other words, Castro and his henchmen were behaving like communists always do. As we know from a recent Catholic News Agency interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, one of the highest ranking Iron Curtain defectors in the 1970s, the KGB itself created Liberation Theology. [Pope Francis is a Jesuit, which champions this teaching.] This quasi-Communist movement, very important in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s but less so today, emphasized the oppressed vs. oppressor Marxist narrative. As Pacepa told Catholic News Agency, the plan was that the “the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.”
The depths of cynicism were reached of course not in the motives for the gift [given by Raul Castro to the Pope] but with the gift itself. Cuba became a wealthy island in the 20th century by producing many things: sugar, tobacco, rum, music, etc. Since the Castros took over in 1959 and established communism shortly thereafter, Cuba has been known for producing only one thing: exiles.
Between one-tenth and one-twentieth of the population have fled (estimates vary), and they’re the lucky ones. Those left behind have all of their civil rights suppressed—whether it’s freedom of the press, of religion, of free speech, of free association, etc. None of them now exists.No wonder then that Cubans still constantly try to flee the land of their births by crossing the shark-infested Florida Straits on rickety rafts. Tens of thousands have died at high seas, according to Maria Werlau, executive director of the Cuba Archive Truth and Memory Project. But the shame for Raul Castro and his goons doesn’t stop there. When they catch these rafts and boats, they don’t tow them back to the island, they sink them. It happened most recently—that we know of—on Dec. 20, three days after Obama announced the U.S. would extend recognition to the Castro regime.
Any talk that Raul Castro would be seen crossing himself on a regular basis at a pew at Havana Cathedral would be belied by his government’s track record of repressing Catholics, keeping them out of the Communist Party, the universities, the good jobs and all the perks that come from keeping your head down in his socialist paradise..."
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
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