Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Cuba: Persecuting the Ladies In White

Carlos Eire posts a Normalization Circus Update: More abuse heaped upon Ladies in White (emphasis added)

Okay, okay, time to spell it out:

Ever since Mr. Obama visited the Castro Kingdom, King Raul has not allowed any dissidents to stage public protests.

His new tactic is to arrest potential protesters before they are able to raise their voices in public.

The change has been as abrupt as it has been obvious.

While King Raul waited for the lifting of sanctions, he allowed dissidents to be somewhat visible.

As soon as sanctions were lifted, King Raul no longer had to pretend to be a somewhat nice guy.

The once-somewhat- visible Ladies in White are now totally invisible virtual prisoners in their homes, instantly rounded up and roughed up the instant they step out their doors.

And ever since the European Union signed its Carte Blanche deal with King Raul, the repression has been increasing at an alarming rate.

A couple of years ago, I was in Rick Moran’s podcast with Jazz Shaw and Doug Mataconis, where Jazz and Doug approved of Obama’s Cuba policy “because what we have been doing about Cuba hasn’t worked,” ignoring the fact that the regime’s goal is to consolidate power around itself. Lifting sanctions has availed the regime of financial resources it previously lacked, further facilitating that purpose.

Small surprise, then, that Our new relationship with Cuba doesn’t seem to have changed much of anything.

As Capt. Louis said,

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Cuba: How’s that “easement” going?

Pres. Obama announced on December 17, 2014 an easing of U.S. relations with Cuba

that will engage and empower the Cuban people.

Four months and a few days later, how’s that working out so far?

Castro police arrest more than 100 Ladies In White, other activists as they leave Havana church

The Ladies in White have been attacked continuously every Sunday since Dec. 17.

How about the conditions of political prisoners?

Cuban secret policeman to hunger striker’s mother: ‘If he dies, it’s not our problem’

The Dec. 17 WH website statement was titled A Failed Approach.

Prescience.

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Obama makes campaign stop, meets Coco & Berta

after a $32,000/plate dinner, With Charlie Crist as guest, President Obama raises cash in Miami, chats with Cuban dissidents Guillermo “Coco” Fariñas and Berta Soler.

Florida’s newest high-profile Democrat, former Gov. Charlie Crist, was spotted at the Segovia Tower in Coral Gables at a $32,000-a-head fundraiser hosted by personal injury attorney Ralph G. Patino.

Obama moved next to a fundraiser hosted by Jorge Mas Santos, a Cuban American National Foundation leader and CEO of MasTec. There, the president thanked Mas Santos, who stood next to him, and singled out Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

Obama told two of Cuba’s leading dissidents in South Florida that he admires their sacrifices, a rare White House recognition of the peaceful opposition on the communist-ruled island.

“The most important thing here was the recognition by the president of the United States, the most powerful democracy in the world,” dissident Guillermo Farinas said minutes after the meeting.

The other dissident is Berta Soler, of the Ladies in White.

Speaking by the pool of Mas Santos’ house, Obama said his policy of supporting civil society in Cuba is beginning to show results, but that Washington must continue to be “creative and thoughtful” in its policies.

Results, you say? Cuban human rights monitor reports 763 political arrests in October.

Just last week Fariñas was beaten up by a mob in his hometown of Santa Clara, Cuba.

If you like your policy of supporting civil society in Cuba, you can keep it. Period.


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Lady in White met Pope in white

Cuban dissident Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, was able to exchange greetings with Pope Francis yesterday at the end of a general audience held in St. Peter’s Square

Soler handed the pope two letters from the wives of political prisoners, according to the French news agency AFP. Soler later told the media that the pope had given her a blessing and asked her to continue her fight.

Carlos Eire points out that

It may seem like an insignificant encounter to some, but this is a big deal, and the rulers of the Castro Kingdom will gnash their teeth when they see this photo. The Cuban flag draped between the two figures in white will be a great irritant to the tyrants, because they refuse to accept the fact that Cuba belongs to all Cubans, not just to their slave-drivers and those slaves who agree to submit to the lash. .

So, even though this was a brief encounter, it delivers a potent message.

It’s definitely an improvement over the prior pope’s refusal to meet them while he was in Cuba.


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Cuba: Racism in the revolución

Mary O’Grady interviewed Berta Soler,

Havana in Black and White
Dissident Berta Soler takes a big risk by telling the truth about racism and repression in Cuba.

Now Ms. Soler is taking advantage of the dictatorship’s new travel policy—that for the first time in a half-century allows Cubans to take trips abroad—to ask the international community for “moral and spiritual support” for the Cuban people in their struggle against the dictatorship.

She wants the world to know of Castro’s racism. Blacks, she says, are grossly underrepresented in the universities and overrepresented in prisons. “The beggars in Cuba are black, not white. The marginalized are blacks, not whites.” She adds: “They tell me ‘Negra, what are you doing? You have a lot to thank the revolution for!'”

Repression is on the rise, and in the absence of international condemnation the regime feels free to administer publicly the beatings the Ladies in White endure in order to show who’s boss. The regime used to send women only to attack the Ladies but now they send men as well. They punch the Ladies with the clear intent to hurt them. They sometimes break bones.

Ms. Soler says that these attackers “never have been neighbors” spontaneously defending the glorious revolution. They are professionals working for the Interior Ministry or civilians who obey the regime in order to keep their jobs or their place in university classrooms. Ms. Soler says that for the past two years many of “the same faces” have consistently shown up to attack the group. The woman who bit Laura Pollan is well known by the Ladies because she is a regular on the goon squad and works for the ministry.

It is chilling to think what might happen to the politically incorrect Ms. Soler when she returns to Cuba, which is what makes her trip to Rome this week so crucial.

Lady in White Belkis Cantillo was beaten, arrested, and taken away the week after returning to Cuba.

She has asked to see Pope Francis. If he agrees, the visit might protect her. Without it, and in the absence of other influential international voices coming to her defense, her fate is less certain.

I’m not counting on the Pope.

Too bad Beyonce and Jay-Z couldn’t drop by, though.

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Cuba’s message to dissidents: You had your trip, now we’re coming after you


Belkis Cantillo, second from the left.

Cuba’s Communist regime has telegraphed a message to dissidents Orlando Luis Pardo ‏@OLPL, Yoani Sánchez @yoanisanchez, Rosa María Payá @RosaMariaPaya, and any others who were allowed to travel outside the country:
One week after returning to Cuba, Lady in White is missing after being beaten and arrested by Castro State Security

Yesterday, the Castro regime carried out its usual Sunday of violent repression against members of Cuba’s peaceful human rights group the Ladies in White when they joined together for Sunday church services as they do every Sunday. As the women stepped out of the church after Sunday mass in the town of Palma Soriano, they were met by Castro State Security agents who began to viciously punch them and beat them with umbrellas before placing them under arrest.

Among the Ladies in White victimized by the violence of the Castro dictatorship was Belkis Cantillo, a Lady in White who just a week ago was in Brussels to take part in the long overdue acceptance of the Sakharov Prize the group had won in 2005. Ms. Cantillo was one of the women who was beaten and arrested by the Castro political police before being arrested and taken away. As of this morning, her physical condition and whereabouts are unknown.

In record time, From Brussels to a Cuban Prison in just one week.

In Italy, Yoani Sánchez was “greeted” by this,

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“Cuba May Be the Most Feminist Country in Latin America”

No worse fool than a Communist tool:
Cuba May Be the Most Feminist Country in Latin America, says Luisita Lopez Torregrosa,

In sheer numbers and percentages, Cuban women’s advance is notable. Cuba has a high number of female professional and technical workers (60 percent of the total work force in those areas) and in Parliament (43 percent), as well as high levels of primary, secondary and tertiary education enrollment, according to the Gender Gap report.

Indeed, Cuba is a friggin’ feminist paradise; look at how well the totalitarian Communist regime treats its women:

Newsbusters points out,

Wheee! Such good news for the most prominent of the Cuban women, blogger Yoani Sanchez. Oops! Not such good news as Voice of America notes:

Yoani Sanchez is a Cuban blogger who is not permitted to leave the country. She has attracted an international following for her blog, Generación Y, which gives readers unprecedented insight into the harsh realities of life in Cuba. Her work has won numerous awards, including Columbia University’s Maria Cabot prize for journalism, and the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award in 2011. But Cuba’s Communist government has refused to allow her to leave the country to accept these honors. Requests by Ms. Sanchez to travel have been denied 19 times.

But those are relatively recent instances of Cuba’s “feminist” support. Humberto Fontova knows his Cuban history since he lived it,

The longest-suffering female political prisoners in modern history suffered their tortures in Castro’s Cuba. Many died by firing-squad and prison beatings.
…
Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo. “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.”

In fact, Castroism TRIPLED Cuban women’s pre-revolution suicide rate, making Cuban women the most suicidal on earth. This according to a 1998 study by scholar Maida Donate-Armada that uses some of the Cuban regime’s own figures.

Some suffered months in “Tapiadas” (underground cells in total darkness) Some were jailed a few miles from La Cabana. With the right wind direction, the firing squad volley’s would reach them. “HA-HA! Oiste?… Ce la cepillaron a tu marido! ( Hijo! Padre! Abuelo! Tio!)” (Heard that?! We just shot your husband, son, dad, grandad, uncle!) the guards would gather and cackle at the rat-bitten women, surrounded by cockroaches and caked in filth and menstrual fluid from lack of water in their torture chambers

Obviously Luisita doesn’t believe in the rights of all Cuban women, only in the rights of the Cuban women who toe the Communist Party line.

Additionally, millions of Cuban women are living in compulsory poverty, since the monthly salary is the equivalent of $20/month, which has pushed many young women into prostitution.

Is that feminist enough for you, Luisita?


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Laura Pollan’s mysterious death

Mary O’Grady looks into Laura Pollán’s death,
A Dissident’s Mysterious Death in Havana
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.

Here’s how it happened,

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?

Particularly since you hear about Castro official to political prisoner: ‘We killed Laura, we can do the same thing to you…’ while Another Lady in White falls ill after mysterious injection

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