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Cuba today put up pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside the US mission in Havana in retaliation for US Christmas illuminations highlighting Cuban dissidents.

The decorations war on the Malecon Avenue along the Havana seafront intensified as Cuba ended wargames that have been portrayed as countering US plans to invade. But the President, Fidel Castro, has also met a US delegation that wants to sell $US100 million ($132 million) of much needed food and agricultural products to the communist island.

The Cuban authorities were infuriated when the US special interests section put up Christmas illuminations that had a neon "75" as the centrepiece surrounded by traditional Christmas trees.

The number was a pointed reference to 75 Cuban dissidents detained by the communist authorities last year in a crackdown on the opposition.

...

Near the public entrance to the building, another image has been put up showing an American marine pointing his rifle at the head of a child under the words: Merry Christmas.

The Cuban authorities have also put up red flags with Nazi crosses emblazoned on them.

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Oz - username:rabble11 passwd: rabble11

[ 19 December 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

In related news, the Cuban 5 have been treated absolutely terribly in the US jail they are holding them in. Literally being kept in a hole, within a hole, barely any access to legal counsil, no personal belongings, etc. All this for trying to protest and do something about Cuban-Us terrorists attacks against Cubans. Of course, blessed by the bastian of integrity and freedom, the US government.

Here's the link to the story in Counterpunch

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Originally posted by Doug:
Meh. Two wrongs, and all that....

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Yes, but who are the Yanks to point fingers ?.

American gulags - Largest incarcerated population in the world

American apartheid

[ 20 December 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Cuba was getting looser for a while, now it is apparently becoming more repressive again. We seem to be forgetting that it is a one-party dictatorship.

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Cuba is the bad guy here.

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Is that because they aren't a "democracy", where people get to go through the motions of selecting between pre-screened candidates proven acceptable to the moneyed ruling classes?

Is it because it jails foreign agent provocateurs whose stated goal is the overthrow of the current regime to install a CIA employee as dictator?

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The US has no right or credibility to lecture other countries about human rights abuses.

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The US is not Amnesty International. Like other countries, the US will raise human rights questions when it is politically convenient for it to do so.

This should not take away from the existence of human rights violations by the Cuban government that are of concern to groups like Amnesty International or that have been raised by normally sympathetic powers like the European Union.

None of the dissidents (the "75") has advocated violence. They have been imprisoned, according to human rights observers, for exercising freedom of expression and all should be released immediately.

If the CIA wants to recruit people, I am sure they would try to penetrate the armed forces or state enterprises, not recruit retired people with a few dissident books in their living room.

The Cuban system of government had been evolving in a more liberal direction and has reverted to being more repressive.

A more tolerant open Cuban government would certainly help defeat the US-sponsored propaganda efforts to undermine it.

[ 21 December 2004: Message edited by: Critical Mass ]

The issue of jailing CIA stooges in Cuba is being used as political leverage against a sovereign nation. With it's lower infant mortality rates than either USA or remainder of Latin America, and more physicians per capita than any other western nation, Cuba leads the rest of us in several basic human rights categories.

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The issue of jailing CIA stooges in Cuba

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Calling them that does not make it so.

Lots of Cubans would like to have a democratic country; the Cuban Communist Party will never provide that.

I have a fair number of Cuban contacts, I would say fifty or so. My secretary was fired from her job in Cuba (as a journalist) for "Gorbachevism"; she had nowhere to appeal this undemocratic act.

I have given public speeches in favour of the Cuban Five, (who were all employees of Cuban State Security) because they are getting a raw deal.

Cuba is a dictatorship that violates human rights. Our wishing things to be different does not make them so.

[ 21 December 2004: Message edited by: Critical Mass ]

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Originally posted by jeff house:

Calling them that does not make it so.

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Lots of Cubans would like to have a democratic country; the Cuban Communist Party will never provide that.

I have a fair number of Cuban contacts, I would say fifty or so. My secretary was fired from her job in Cuba (as a journalist) for "Gorbachevism"; she had nowhere to appeal this undemocratic act.

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But just calling any dissident a "CIA stooge" is a mistake. Life is more complex than that.

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What we seem to be doing is not, in fact, calling *any dissident* a CIA stooge. We're talking about a fairly specific group of cases with features and timing in common. And what they have in common is that the US ambassador of the day was paying them. What he was paying them to do is unclear; I personally doubt there was anything too serious going on, and there's some indication that they were deliberately hung out to dry just to gain precisely this sort of propaganda victory. But during the cold war, if we found that someone was taking money under the table from the Russian embassy, they would have been in pretty hot water. Nobody would have been getting too upset or calling them prisoners of conscience or dissidents, either.

Haiti;
Guatemala;
El Salvador;
and last but not least,
The USA

There is some appalling ignorance of the concept of human rights being displayed in this thread. Here's one of the basic principles: If you're human, they're your rights. Your enemies get human rights too. Yes, they are "class-neutral" because humanity comes before class analysis.

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You have to examine each country against the same yardstick.

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Well then let's look at what the response of the United States government would be to folks who were on the payroll of Al Qaeda and published materials advocating that the U.S. become an Islamic Republic.

That's in effect what the "75" have done.

Bush's "man in Havana", head of the U.S. Interests Section James Cason has been engaging in deliberately provocative actions against the Cuban government since his appointment.

Given the political climate created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Cuban government is worried that they're next. Its not an unreasonable fear.

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Originally posted by verbatim:
Amnesty International is not just focusing on Cuba -- they focus on every country:

Haiti;
Guatemala;
El Salvador;
and last but not least,
The USA.

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And Uncle Sam's Latin A-list wouldn't be complete without such human rights havens asBelize, Honduras, Colombia and several more South American countries still recovering from fascist leadership, aided and abetted by the CIA.

And if Castro's not careful, the Cuban's will some day be recognized as a the most torturous military presence on the island. (see Guantanamo Bay torture gulags )

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I think it's important to seperate out the Amnesty protest from the US cold war with Cuba. They are not the same thing, although the US is of course happy to deploy Amnesty's arguments and data its own partisan ends. You can't blame Amnesty for the US's appropriation of Amnesty's credibility in this case. Jailing people for their political beliefs is wrong, no matter who does it. If Cuba released the political prisoners, the US wouldn't be able to point to the Amnesty protest anymore.

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That's the point. This is very much part of the U.S. cold war against Cuba. They engage in deliberate provocative actions and then criticize Cuba for reacting.

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If some of the prisoners can be charged with substantive crimes, then let that happen immediately.

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Two wrongs?
If I'm not mistaken about the '75' referred to by the Americans, they were guys being paid by the US embassy.

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Let us assume that, in each and every case, the "75" were receiving funds from the US. The first question a democrat would ask is: "For what purpose?"

Publication of opinions should never lead to incarceration, even if those publications are subsidizedby a foreign power. What is important is the acts of the people being subsidized, not their opinions, and not their distribution of their opinions.

In the case of the Cuban Five, each of them was an employee of the Cuban State Security apparatus.
But they were involved in justifiable acts, for example, trying to give Cuba early warning of surreptitious and illegal attacks on Cuban territory, proceeding from Florida.

Of course they were "subsidized", far more directly than "the 75" by a foreign power. To jail them, though, the US should have to prove more than that fact. What did they actually DO?

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Originally posted by verbatim:
You can't blame Amnesty for the US's appropriation of Amnesty's credibility in this case. Jailing people for their political beliefs is wrong, no matter who does it. If Cuba released the political prisoners, the US wouldn't be able to point to the Amnesty protest anymore. If some of the prisoners can be charged with substantive crimes, then let that happen immediately.

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While I think we all agree that freedom of speech is an important part of any democracy, we also need to recognize the geopolitical context in which the Cuban's are acting as was pointed out by Rufus and Radiorahim. The Yanks have waged political and economic warfare on almost every Latin American nation for the last several decades. The UN knows this and so does Amnesty.

Amnesty is a well respected human rights group, but I doubt that many would take the American's seriously about their pointing to human rights abuses in another country at this particular point in time. The world now views the USA as a rogue superpower, according to Gwyn Dyer. Widespread human rights abuses by the American's around the world makes Cuba's crackdown pale by comparison. And in many a view, it's the Cuban's who are the one's exploiting an American human rights gap across the street from the American embassy, not the other way around.

If the source of human rights violations in Latin America is to be identified, then I think the blame generally lies with those who've been funding the assassinations of democratically elected leaders and of the killing throughout Latin America and beyond. Which nation here is at the source cause of what has been described as a Latin American holocaust over the last several decades ?. It's not Cuba.

I'll bet the neon sign comes down before too long. What a joke.

[ 30 December 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Publication of opinions should never lead to incarceration, even if those publications are subsidizedby a foreign power. What is important is the acts of the people being subsidized, not their opinions, and not their distribution of their opinions.

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On the face of it yeah I'd agree with that statement. But unfortunately the U.S. has in effect rewarded Cuba's sometimes repressive measures in that its the only Latin American government thats been able to successfully pursue a programme of radical social reform.

All of the other attempts at radical social reform in more "open" Latin American societies have been defeated by U.S. power.

"El Mercurio" in Chile was a tool of the CIA during the Allende period. "La Prensa" was the CIA's tool in Nicaragua during the Sandinista period. Of course in Venezuela the U.S. has all of the private TV networks in their back pocket.

One of the things that "La Prensa" used to do is report that there was a shortage of "x" commodity...let's say sugar. Then, everyone would race out and buy up all the sugar. So sure enough by the end of the day there was a sugar shortage!
Defacto economic sabotage.

When the Sandinista government would respond by say shutting them down for a couple of days, the US Embassy would start screaming about the "repressive" Sandinista government.

But the US use of La Prensa to generate panic during an actual war caused only a few short term limitations on the right of that newspaper to be published. Commonly, the paper would be banned for three days or so. Certainly, the Sandinistas never jailed the owners, the workers, or the writers there.

Before the analogy is precise, it must be demonstrated that "the 75" were publishing items calculated to cause shortages, panic, etc.

Finally, while this is a significant human rights violation, I agree that it pales next to the ongoing crimes in Iraq, or even Guantanamo. But those are not the standards we should impose on any regime; those are crimes being committed by the Americans, crimes which deserve punishment.

We should have a discussion of Amnesty International sometime. radiorahim raises this issue:

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Amnesty International does some good work but yes sometimes their work lacks political context. For instance they refused to adopt the case of Sinn Fein MP Bobby Sands along with the other Irish republican hunger strikers back in the early 1980's.

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On the one hand, AI is my most basic political loyalty, the single activist group I admire most (if I have to rank them, and I'd rather not).

On the other, AI's principle of distancing themselves from anyone who has advocated violence seems problematic to me. Surely, if we are opposed to torture always and anywhere, eg, we speak up in defence even of those who have committed crimes -- as, in fact, AI does in practice.

Even the guilty may have their civil rights violated; and cruel and unusual punishment is abhorrent in and of itself, regardless of the actions of the victim.

I see the logic behind the care with which AI chooses its campaigns, the resistance to becoming politicized to the point of becoming partisan, which indeed could threaten the survival of the organization, certainly its effectiveness.

Perhaps all I'm noting is that there is, especially in these times and in the context of the so-called War on Terror, no such clear and easy dividing line between deserving and undeserving candidates for AI campaigns.