Cuban dissident artist circumvents internet cut-off to submit testimony of abuses Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democary June 8, 2021
GENEVA, June 8, 2021 — Despite government efforts to silence her, a Cuban dissident artist has managed to submit testimony about the regime’s gross and systematic abuses to an annual human rights assembly of activists and former political prisoners, in which she expresses concern over “the potential consequences that I will have to confront for participating in events like this one”.
Tania Bruguera, a Cuban political performance artist, has been repeatedly detained, interrogated and put under house arrest for her artwork and activism critical of the regime.
She was scheduled to deliver video testimony yesterday at the opening of the two-day virtual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, organized by a cross-regional coalition of 25 human rights groups, which brings together dissidents and former political prisoners who have been oppressed by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.
However, the conference announced that she was unable to speak yesterday because government forces repeatedly cut off her internet.
Today, Bruguera managed to circumvent restraints on her communications and was able to submit an audio message, in both Spanish and English, to the Geneva Summit.
In her powerful testimony (click here for audio and text), Bruguera describes harrowing abuses committed by the regime’s “military dictatorship” in Cuba, including impunity for killings and rape committed by police.
Cuba is “an island-prison” where “laws are created to protect those in power” and “the only thing that operates efficiently is the department of state security.”
The dissident artist reports that her country is a place where “independent journalists are persecuted, where citizens’ access to independent media via internet is blocked, where citizen journalism is penalized to such an extent that if you post a statement on Facebook that is critical of the government, you will be sought out and fined more than your monthly salary.”
Bruguera’s testimony sheds light on Cuba’s 170 political prisoners who are arbitrarily detained, publicly smeared by the regime, and refused “real legal protection because your appointed attorney works under direct orders from the government. Cuban lawyers may represent their defendants, but they work in the interest of the State”.
Informed by her personal experience and fellow artists and dissidents, Bruguera says that “people you know are afraid to lend you the phone line under their name for you to use because they know that electronic surveillance is one of the priorities of the Cuban government,” with the authorities leaving homes with “no telephone or internet for months”.
Activists “are treated as non-persons” by the regime, which “does not solve its problems, it simply expels those who keep reminding them there are problems to solve”.
Bruguera knows that she is taking grave personal risks by submitting her testimony. “While I was recording this presentation, I was thinking about my fellow activists in prison, about the potential consequences that I will have to confront for participating in events like this one, the vulnerability that we feel daily. But I take strength in joining with others the words ‘Patria y Vida’.”
Statement by the Cuban artivist Tania Bruguera at the Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy June 8, 2021
Tania Bruguera, Cuban political performance artist who has been repeatedly arrested for her work, addressed the 13th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.
"Imagine yourself walking on the streets with a friend and suddenly, a car stops, and four people emerge from the car and force you to get inside of it. Once you are inside; you realize that those with you are state security agents. You arrive to a police station, and they make you remove your clothes, they interrogate you, they don’ t allow to make a call and noone knows where you are. Imagine that you are one of the 170 political prisoners in Cuba today.
Imagine that you are having lunch and the police break into your home and take you before you have a chance to put your shoes on. Shortly thereafter you find yourself in a prison cell with common prisoners awaiting trial for completely fabricated charges. Imagine how would you feel if you know that you have no real legal protection because your appointed attorney works under direct orders from the government. Cuban lawyers may represent their defendants, but they work in the interest of the State.
Imagine a place where it is the exception rather than the rule that the police let you leave your house. Imagine seven months have passed by and although you have not committed any crime you are prevented from leaving your home to buy a bread or to take out the trash. Imagine that state security agents are standing guard outside your house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You can’t even dream of going out. Imagine going to prison because you asked to explain why they were subjecting you to such treatment.
Imagine that you are unable to leave your home and that you have no telephone or internet for months. On top of this you know that your friends are being harassed and imprisoned. Imagine that each time you try to tell your story to the world your internet service is cut off by only phone company in the country, which happens to belong to the government. Imagine that people you know are afraid to lend you the phone line under their name for you to use because they know that electronic surveillance is one of the priorities of the Cuban government.
Imagine turning on the TV to watch the only national newscast in your country and suddenly finding that your personal telephone number with your name next, the address of your house and your personal information is on the screen. A news anchor stresses to listeners that indeed it is your number and here they can find you. Several hours later your voicemail fills up with hate messages left by people you do not know. Imagine knowing that most of those messages are generated by government agents passing themselves off as “the people” so if someone harms you physically afterwards, they can attribute to the aggression to civilians. Imagine that someone on the street whom you don’t know runs towards you with a machete in his hand because of the hate speech generated by the government.
Imagine watching a national news program in which your private correspondence has been taken out of context, edited, and interpreted in such a way to serve a narrative that has nothing to do with your intentions, your actions or your way of thinking. Imagine seeing the newscaster point to fake documents that bear the logo of your organization. Imagine being the target of a government that, having lost its legitimacy, rationalizes its excessive use of force by criminalizing people who are just asking for their basic human rights.
Imagine that you have no right to challenge your government. Imagine that you file a defamation case against your government and it is rejected because according to the court the government has the right to a free press — in a country where independent journalists are persecuted, where citizens’ access to independent media via internet is blocked, where citizen journalism is penalized to such an extent if you post a statement on Facebook that is critical of the government, you will be sought out and fined more than your monthly salary. If you do not pay the fine you will go to prison.
Imagine that you die on hunger strike in prison.
Imagine that you are Black and poor, and a policeman kills you. The government justifies the killing even if you were unarmed and shot in the back. Imagine that the police kill a poor young Black man and if anyone dares to say something or demonstrate publicly, they are arrested. Imagine you are a woman, and a policeman rapes you or your partner commits femicide and you are not even a statistic because your government does not keep records of such violence. Imagine that you are part of the LGBTIQ+ community and you can only be heard if you are part of the organization lead by the daughter of the ex-president of the country. Imagine you are an activist and because of that you are a treated as a non-person, as someone without rights.
Imagine that your daughter studies journalism and was persecuted and expelled from her university because of her opinion, that she leaves the country because that is her only way to complete her studies. Then when she graduates and buys her ticket to come back the government doesn’t allow her to return to her own country. The Cuban government does not solve its problems, it simply expels those who keep remind them there are problems to solve. They do not want anyone that criticize or oppose their political system.
Imagine that you have a daughter who dies because the balcony of a building falls on her while she was playing on the sidewalk. After you have inquired everywhere you can think of to find out who is accountable for the unsafe living conditions that people contend with to no avail, you desperately go out to the street to ask for justice and you end up in jail.
Imagine that the authorities make of your life a living legal hell for wanting to educate your kids according to your way of seeing the world, according to your beliefs.
Imagine that you believe in the Cuban political system, and you are elected as a representative in your local rural area. You request that school bus service for local kids not be removed, so they don’t have to walk several miles to get an education. As a result of your request, you receive anonymous threats. One day a common prisoner that has been released under mysterious circumstances attacks you and you lose an arm.
Imagine that you are a human rights defender and you get ill and you do not come out of the hospital alive or that you are taken into the prison hospital and they inoculate you with HIV.
Imagine that all of this is treated as normal by the government. The victim is always presented as the one responsible for whatever has happened.
Imagine a country that receives food donations from international organizations which are supposed to be distributed for free and instead they are sold for hard currency in special stores that most citizens cannot access because they do have not dollars.
Now, imagine that all of this happens on an island that has been sold to you as the paradise of social justice, but it is really an island-prison and it is called Cuba.
A country where for decades you had to cease communication with your relatives abroad or you would lose your job, and where nowadays you depend on remittances from those same relatives. The government that once denounced those emigres as traitors now profits from large commissions on their remittances but does not accord them any rights.
All of this is happening in Cuba. where is becoming more and more common to see those who ask for their rights are treated for mental illness and put in psychiatric wards. as if aspiring for political freedom or demanding for human rights were a demented behavior.
In Cuba you are not only persecuted in person but on the internet. The government has farms for fake news and an online army ready to strike against anyone who dares to criticize the state or asks that those in power be held accountable for their actions or engages in activism. This is Cuba, where the internet has proved to be such a threat to the government that it announced on National TV trials in absentia and threatens to extradite Cubans who live outside that criticize the government from afar.
This is Cuba where laws are created to protect those in power, not to make the lives of the people more secure. Cuba is a country where the only thing that operates efficiently is the department of state security.
In Cuba, just as in the film Minority Report you can go to prison not for what you have done but for what the government thinks you may someday want to do. There is a law for that. In Cuba you don´t even have the right to be recognized as a human rights defender or an activist. All political demonstrations and expressions of dissent are treated as common crimes because the Cuban government has declared that its socialist system is inviolate and unchangeable. In Cuba all laws and all the resources to protect the empowered and to silence those who dare to think differently or dare to expose the stark differences between the luxurious living conditions of political class and the hardships ensured by the working class that stand in line for hours in search of food.
None of this is new, the history of injustices is long and repeats itself. The past presentations here at the Summit by my fellow Cubans, their denunciations could be retold today because the government has not changed. But what has changed in that the people of Cuba are not the same, Cubans are losing their fear of speaking out and they are showing it.
Today we can see that our president was booed by Cuban citizens when he visited a neighborhood that was hit by a tornado. Today we can see that more than 300 people stood in front of the Ministry of Culture for more than twelve hours demanding to be heard. Today we can see Cubans around the world are asking, together with those inside the island, for political freedom. Today we have evidence of corruption in the government. Today we have an extensive database detailing the harassment and persecution of activists and human rights defenders.
Today we can’t be naïve nor indolent in front of the actions towards activists and human rights defenders by the Cuban government. The international community is also responsible for what happens to us activists in Cuba, the international community is also responsible for each political prisoner in Cuba, for the imprisonment of Luis Robles, Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto, Luis Angel Cuza, Yuisan Cancio, Esteban Rodríguez, Maykel Osorbo and all the prisoners of conscience that are legally vulnerable for doing something that in any other part of the world could be seeing as normal: saying what they think freely in public.
The international community has to wake up and realize that the dream of Cuba it has clung to what was created in the 60´s is not the Cuba of today.
Because the Cuba of today has neighborhoods where citizens go out into the street and demand the police forces leave. It is a place where neighbors band together to free activists that are being arrested by police. Cuba is also the people who are defending a street vendor from an unjust fine levied by police. Cubans are losing their fear and they are becoming aware of their ability to confront injustices and prevail, and that is a contagious feeling.
Today in Cuba complaints are being transformed into civic actions.
Today Cuba is different because it has also happened that a policeman feels shame when he has to take you. That policeman has started to think as Cuban and not only as the repressive agent of the state. They also need a change, because more and more people have stopped believing in the political system in Cuba. The sense of injustice is penetrating all spheres of society and the government is becoming increasingly isolated.
Cuba is also today many activists with diverse interests who have found a common goal: the right to have rights. The Cuban government today is an ironic caricature, but we should not forget that the Cuban government is a military dictatorship. Faced with this, people have changed the government slogan Fatherland and Death for one that is more attuned to their aspirations: Motherland and Life, because what we the Cubans want is to live in dignity.
Today, also, while I was recording this presentation, I was thinking about my fellow activists in prison, about the potential consequences that I will have to confront for participating in events like this one, the vulnerability that we feel daily. But I take strength in joining with others the words “Patria y Vida”." |