My Weekly Denunciation to Castro’s Dictatorship By José Daniel Ferrer UNPACU - Forum for a United America #ForoAmericaUnica
September 23, 2016
Brother or sister, artist, intellectual, athlete, journalist, public servant, scientist, we are addressing you because your words are a reference for others:
Cuba lives under a cruel dictatorship: a dictatorship of wicked records. Castro’s dynasty has been exercising absolute power over Cuba for more than 57 years and now threatens to stay on after Raul Castro’s retirement in 2018. The Castro family holds the unfortunate record of ruling the oldest government in the hemisphere and the second in the world, behind only another Communist dynasty in North Korea. Knowing this detail alone should be enough for you to suspect that things in Cuba are not going too well. Would you accept a government in your land with the same faces for so long? Do you think that these someones would avoid falling into the temptation of enriching themselves at the expense of the people during 57 years in power? Do you believe that these individuals would not take care of ensuring their power?
One of the mechanisms employed by the dictatorship to entrench that power is restricting free speech. In Cuba, all media are controlled by the single party. The distribution of foreign press is not allowed, and independent media are censored. Internet access does not reach Cuban homes but only a few Wi-Fi zones with monitored traffic, and email service is often suspended brazenly.
Another dark Cuban record arises from Castro’s interventionist policy. Cuba is the American country that has taken part in a war outside the hemisphere for the longest time: the War of Angola. In addition to that country, the Castro brothers have organised military interventions, since their rise to power in 1959, to places as diverse as Algeria, Bolivia, Congo Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Panama, Syria, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Zaire.
Moreover, the Cuban regime has developed an entire school of political subversion, by encouraging, instructing and training insurgent movements in many countries, and by promoting anti-democratic governments throughout Latin America.
These expansion plans of the Castro dictatorship have taken the lives of many of our fellow citizens, and have impoverished the Cuban people due to the enormous resources devoted to “export the Revolution”. No wonder, the Cuban Army is the second American military force after only the US Armed Forces.
Nevertheless, the evilest record concerning Cuba may probably be found in the questionable survival of the Cuban nation. Cuba is now the country with the oldest population in Latin America, and will be amongst the top ten ageing countries worldwide by 2050. This phenomenon common to developed countries, which is far from being the case of Cuba, has its roots in the terrible hopelessness of Cubans. Cuban women do not want to have children. Young Cubans emigrate. And a rarity in today’s world: many elderly people migrate, too.
Since 1959, more than two million Cubans have fled their country, even at great risk to their lives, either in rustic rafts across the Florida Straits or hiding in the landing gear of aircraft. Many countries of the Caribbean and South America are now being affected by the unstoppable migration of Cubans to the United States. On the other hand, even the inhabitants of the poorest countries do not wish to immigrate to Cuba. Cuba, not the state, can already be regarded as a failed nation.
According to studies, if this severe demographic crisis persists, the Cuban nation will be extinct by the end of the century.
Today, Cuba is an unliveable country where fundamental human rights recognised worldwide are violated systematically. There is no freedom of association, assembly or demonstration; and as a result, independent trade unions, as well as any organisation not explicitly backed by the government, are prohibited.
In Cuba, any expression that departs from the official dogma is repressed openly. The social control even reaches households through the so-called “Committees for the Defence of the Revolution”, something that did not happen even in the former Soviet Union. Only people who have the approval of the Communist Party are allowed to stand for the sad elections for lower-level public offices existing in Cuba.
The cities are falling to pieces. Many people sleep on the street, even having a house, for fear of dying buried in a housing collapse. Food is scarce, as well as medicines and healthcare. In the much-vaunted “medical power”, Cubans do not receive adequate care because doctors are an exportable economic line nowadays.
Upholding human rights is not accepted as a legitimate activity, although the Cuban government is a signatory of international agreements in this field. The brave people who dare to challenge the regime are exposed to beatings and assaults by the police and parapolice groups, and what is worse, to be injected with toxic substances that can cause death, or suffer a “fortuitous” accident.
The country is full of overcrowded prisons. Even old schools are being turned into new jails. Serious abuses are committed in the prosecution of detainees, and trials are rigged with false charges. The political nature of the alleged crimes is never acknowledged, and no legal traces of the arrests are provided. The political prisoner Mario Chanes de Armas endured much longer in prison than Nelson Mandela, and Armando Sosa Fortuny is approaching the time spent in jail by the South African leader.
As in the past racist South Africa, the movement of persons within the country is restricted. Cubans living in provinces cannot settle in Havana, and even their visits to this city are limited. Cubans are discriminated in front of foreigners, since they are prohibited from setting up businesses in the same conditions as the latter. Cuban citizens residing abroad are completely banned from making business in Cuba.
Furthermore, Cubans living overseas are restricted or completely denied entry to their homeland, whilst those who live in the Isle need an exit permit to travel abroad.
Admittedly, there is a right to education in Cuba; but the university is a privilege for pro-government individuals only, and all instruction is strongly ideologised. Neither private schools, nor in-home tuition, nor religious colleges are allowed.
People are discriminated for political and religious reasons in their work and their social sphere. People’s demands are neglected, ignoring even the very legality of the regime. This is the case of the Varela Project, which called for some political reforms under the Cuban Constitution. His promoter, Oswaldo Paya, died in strange circumstances, and his family was forced into exile.
Brother, sister:
We understand that you could have been dazzled at some point by the romantic but interested image created by the owners of Cuba replicating the brave little David facing the giant Goliath. That image has served to justify the excesses of the Castro dictatorship all over the world and its apathy towards the real needs of the Cuban people. However, in the current scenario of good will with the Cuban regime, by the governments of the USA and many other countries, its policy of confrontation remains unchanged, whilst it keeps on repressing the Cuban population and refusing to carry out its much heralded economic changes.
The Castro regime must end. Freedom and prosperity of the peoples of America will always be in danger if such a criminal model, which seeks to spread like cancer in the region, lives on. To see the dreadful consequences of the Castroist political design, we only need to turn our attention to our brother country of Venezuela, which is suffering a brutal tyranny under the direct orders of Havana. The inefficient economic state monopoly that exists in Cuba, where virtually nothing is produced, requires subsidies from an affluent foreign partner to survive. Today, that partner is Venezuela, as was formerly the USSR; and it could be any other country in the future, after the possible fall of Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
Brother, sister: the Castroist cancer could end up metastasising in your native land and affecting your loved ones, if left unchecked. Consequently, we ask you to please help us raise awareness about the threat that Castroism represents for the whole continent. We appeal to your generosity to show your rejection to this opprobrious regime at any opportunity that comes your way, whether in print, radio, television or the Internet. The calls that have been directed at the Castro dictatorship in the past, looking for a change, have come to nothing. Therefore, we believe that our demonstrations against the Castro regime must be frequent and sustained over time. We consider that initiatives that may contribute to its isolation within the civil society and governments in the region can flourish only through widespread rejection of the dictatorship.
Specifically, we ask you to please make public criticism of the Castro dictatorship at least once in a week, in order to keep the opposition to Castroism alive and make it grow within our peoples. The aim is to turn the NO TO CASTRO into a “trending topic” in the collective consciousness of America and the whole world.
One denunciation per week can make a difference for the Cuban people and possibly also for yours.
Please receive our warm and grateful hug,
Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) Forum for a United America #ForoAmericaUnica
With more than 3000 members, the UNPACU is the largest dissident group in Cuba. Following the principles of nonviolent struggle, the UNPACU bases its strategy on an ever-growing political activism in the streets and the supply of information about human rights and facts hidden by the Cuban regime. Likewise, the UNPACU develops an intense social work through aid programmes for families in precarious situations, including building and repairing houses, and runs cultural projects that include the application of arts in favour of freedom, the promotion of artists marginalised by the dictatorship, and recreational activities for children. Furthermore, the UNPACU campaigns for achieving Internet access for all the Cuban population, and provides legal advice and medical care for those who need it.
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