Novelist Cecilia Samartin effective ambassador for the Cuban cause and Ladies in White, needed security protection in Oslo against possible Castro aggression

By Eva Belfrage

September 4, 2012

When the Cuban-American novelist Cecilia Samartin toured Norway in mid September with her new novel “Doña Maria” about the Ladies in White and the oppression in Cuba, she received an enormous publicity. When she visited a library all the staff, as well as Cecilia, were dressed in white to honour the Ladies in White. Where would that happen but in Norway.Her books sell like no others in Norway, nearly a million (963 000) has been sold to a population of only 4,7 million. She has lobbied effectively for the Cuban cause in Norway and earlier this year also for the Nobel Peace Prize to the Cuban candidates the Ladies in White, to the now deceased Oswaldo Payá and Oscar Elias Biscet  .

Thanks to Cecilia Samartin a great part of the Norwegian population are today probably more informed than any other European country about the situation in Cuba. And she always tells the ‘real’ story about Cuba in her interviews and lectures. She is very well updated about life in Cuba, the oppression and the opposition and dissent. In one of the many interviews during her latest tour in Norway she said to the daily Aftenposten about Cuba’s mediating role between the FARC guerrilla and the Colombian government, which will soon start in Norway:
“Cuba presents itself as a peace loving country, when they have not even ratified the Declaration of Human Rights, when people are arrested and tortured only for their opinion, that is nothing but pathetic”.

No wonder the Cuban Embassy lashed out against her. They wrote a letter* to the Ministry of Culture in Norway, asking them to distribute the letter to those who will be in contact with Samartin. CDV readers may guess the content:
- Samartin has no right to speak about Cuba
- Ladies in White are only US mercenaries and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina hate them
- There is no torture in Cuba only in Guantánamo
- Cuba was elected as a member of the Council of Human Rights, the highest body at UN
and a lot of invectives against Cecilia and the usual general propaganda lies.

When one of those Castro-men the Embassy always send when critique against Cuba is expected,  showed up at one of Cecilia Samartin’s  public events and screamed at her, the responsible organizers of her program contacted the police and she received four security guards to protect her against possible Castro-aggression, which caused a lot of attention in Norwegian press.

The Cuban embassies (plural – because this happens everywhere there is a Cuban representation) seem to be completely out of time with the democratic reality outside the Cuban borders, when they so blatantly show the authoritarian nature of their regime and its gross and threatening methods. It was not long ago the Cuban Embassy staff in Oslo smacked a peaceful demonstrator in the face, something the Norwegians, who read the news, surely remember.

Cecilia Samartin commented to Bergens Tidende on the Cuban ambassadors letter:
“It only underlines the main point of my novel. When the Cuban embassy goes out with such strong words against a writer from another country and in an open country like Norway, it is easy to imagine what they do against their own people inside their own borders.”

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*This is the letter from the Cuban Embassy on Cecilia Samartin:

Fra: Embajada de Cuba
Dato: tirsdag 11. september 2012
Emne: RV: Some information about Mrs. Cecilia Samartin and her wrong knowledge on Cuba.
Til: Ministry of Culture

Embassy of Cuba

Oslo, 11/09/2012

Dear colleagues and friends:

Cecilia Samartin is an author that became well known in Norway in recent years through her books and there are no doubts about her capacity to create fiction, mainly about a country that she does not know at all: Cuba!

She likes to say that she is a “Cuban – American” (?) writer  but in fact she is not, she is simply a US writer. Mrs. Samartin was born in Havana in1961 and in spite of her stories saying that she “escape from the Cuban Revolution when she was a child” and that many of her books are about “the terrible reality she had to face because of that Revolution”, the truth not so dramatic is that her parents took her to USA when she was –please, pay attention- 9 months old so forget about the “escape” and the impact in her life of the “terrible reality” in Cuba because is impossible she remembers anything about her first 9 months of life.

Since then she has been living in USA and never returned to the place where she, by chance, was born (is not our fault) so when she writes about Cuba is simply reproducing what her parents and other “Cuban – Americans” in Miami, many of them linked to Batista*s Dictatorship, tell her about Cuba and this is what our Country was before Revolution.

We have heard that Mrs. Samartin dedicated her last book to the so called  “Ladies in White”, a group of Cuban women that, as has been totally proved, receive money from USA Government and also from terrorists organizations in Miami for subversive purposes within Cuba. About those “Ladies…” who use white clothing and head-scarves in the most cynical appropriation of the memory of the Argentine “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” who marched to demand the return of their children, abducted in the U.S. supported military dictatorship there, Mrs. Hebe de Bonafini, the President of that Argentine organization, a real hero for all those that defend justice and peace in the world, in an interview declared: “First, let me say that the Plaza de Mayo is in Argentina and nowhere else. Our white headscarf symbolizes life, while the women you speak about (“Ladies in White”) to me represent death. This is the most important and most substantial difference that should be noted…. We are not going to accept their being compared to us, or that our symbols be used to trample upon us. We are in complete disagreement with them… These “Ladies in White” defend United States terrorism. They defend the world’s foremost terrorist country, that with the most blood on its hands, that which launches the most bombs, that invades the most countries, that imposes the strongest economic sanctions against others. We are talking about a country that is responsible for the
crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These women don’t realize that the struggle of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” symbolizes love for our abducted children, killed by tyrants imposed by the United States. Our battle represents the Revolution, the one that our sons and daughters wanted to make. Their struggle is different, since they defend the subversive policies of the United States that only contain oppression, repression and death”. This explanation about those “Ladies…” is more than enough to understand who they are.

In her frequent interviews with the Norwegian press Mrs. Samartin speaks about supposed violations of Human Rights and even torture in Cuba. For her and those that reproduce her fantasies to know, the only part of the Cuban territory where, up to now, there are people in jail without any legal basis and with no respect for their human rights, is in the illegally occupied Base of Guantanamo which, as is well known, is under the control of the USA administration, her Government. Cuba is not a huge torture camp like Guantanamo because, more that 53 years ago, we produced a genuine Revolution (without Soviet tanks or any other external assistance, only with the love for freedom and independence of the Cuban People) that defeated the Batista´s dictatorship, one of the many criminal regimes imposed by the USA empire to our Countries -not only to Cuba-, to protect their interests (Trujillo in Dominican Republic, Duvalier in Haiti, Somoza family in Nicaragua; all the military tyrannies that existed in Central and South America in the last Century. During the Batista-US “democracy”, more than 20 thousands Cubans, mainly young people, were killed and many of them tortured and is important to remember that the assassins and torturers of the Batista´s tyranny were trained by specialists of the CIA and other repressive US institutions, and all of them, at the Triumph of the Revolution the 1st of January 1959, were warmly welcome in the USA, mainly in Miami, where up to now, they have been living freely, practicing all kind of terrorist actions against Cuba from there.

Samartin also assures that Cuba has not signed the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations; again she is wrong. In recognition to what the Cuban Government has done defending the essential rights of our people –and in many other parts of the world-, in 2006 Cuba was elected as a member of the Council of Human Rights, the highest body at UN for the promotion and protection of human rights, integrated by a select group of 47 Countries. In a secret voting, Cuba received one of the strongest supports with 135 votes; it shows the prestige that Cuba has in this matter internationally. By the way, her Government, the US administration -at that time Mr. Bush was in charge-, could not even present its candidature to the newly-created Council, precisely because everybody knew about its criminal methods of torture and terror all over the world that, unfortunately are still being practiced. Two years ago, Cuba was re-elected as member of this Council, again with a strong support from the international community and since then my Country was elected also to occupy one of the Vice Presidencies of this Council of Human Rights at UN.

In an interview published by “Aftenposten” last Sunday 9 of September, Mrs. Samartin said, among some other lies reproduced by that newspaper, that the diffusion or knowledge of the peaceful ideas of Martin Luther King Jr. “were prohibited in Cuba”. This is really to much because Martin Luther King Jr. is a hero in Cuba where it exists, with all the support from the Cuban Government, a very important Centre in his Memory. Please see below an article about the celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the creation of that Centre, and its main activities.

Mrs. Samartin has been very busy since her arrival to Norway, spreading false information about Cuba, a Country that she does not know at all. Maybe somebody is nervous because of the news about the positive relationship between Cuba and Norway that permits us, as sovereign Countries, to help others in our region with humanitarian help like, for example, the people in Haiti and more recently with our participation supporting together a process of dialogue for peace in Colombia. Remember, there are some powers in our hemisphere with elites totally opposed to any kind of peaceful solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Those are really against Martin Luther King*s ideals, not Cuba. Maybe those are the ones giving Samartin wrong information about the Country where she was born.

Please, those that have been or will be in contact with Mrs. Samartin, try her to read this information. We are sure that she will learn more through this message about the real Cuba that what she knows up to now.

With kind regards,

Embassy of Cuba

Oslo, Norway

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