I can tell you that the saddest thing was to see the indifference of the world towards the human rights violations in Cuba. That is, when my fellow inmates died being tortured, were murdered, disappeared, the world absolutely ignored it, the world didn´t want to listen at the time. In fact, organizations like Amnesty International, “discovered” the political prisoners in 1978. That is, when the forced labor programs had already ended, when thousands of my fellow inmates had already been killed, when they had already been tortured, when more than 10 of them had died in hunger strikes. However, all the complaints we made years before were unsuccessful. The press would not comment on the situation in Cuba.
Now, why did this happen? And I think this is really important, so people can understand what the situation was. That is to say, if Castro´s revolution had happened in Asia or Africa, it would have disappeared many years ago. The guarantee of the Cuban revolution was being 90 miles away from the US, because most of the world hates this country. Then, that hate, in an absolute moral aberration, has been channeled into supporting Castro´s crimes. That is to say, they think that by supporting Castro´s crimes they bother the Americans. I am going to mention two irrefutable cases. For instance, when I was appointed Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Secretary of State of the Spanish government, Fernando Morán, issued a statement saying that Spain had no evidence of human rights issues happening in Cuba.
We knew that the Spanish Government had ordered the Spanish Embassy in Cuba to carry out an investigation, and that the report was top secret, and that it was at the Spanish State Department. I managed to get that report through some friends and I leaked it to the Spanish press. That report stated, and I am going to quote it textually because I have mentioned it a thousand times and I have memorized it like it was one of my poems. The report from the Spanish State Department said: “The treatment of prisoners in Cuba is cruel, inhumane, and degrading. The Embassy has been able to confirm cases of torture. Several Spanish families have shown up at our premises and have been able to prove religious and other sorts of persecution.
We have talked to Fidel Castro to help him improve this situation and he does not want to cooperate”. And the report went on: “However, we cannot make public this report of human rights violations in Cuba because this would prove the Americans right”. That is, that report was signed several months before by the same Spanish Secretary of State who had said a few days before, that Spain had no evidence that there were any human rights issues in Cuba. This hypocrisy, this immorality, was summarized in that sentence: “We cannot make this report public because this would prove the Americans right”. And when I was in prison, my wife had an interview with Pierre Schori, the Swedish socialist leader, and my wife said: “You don´t know what is going on in Cuban prisons”. And he told her: “Yes, we do.” And she said: “Why don´t you say anything about it?” And he said: “Oh, because we would be giving the Americans reasons to justify their actions”. This is the reason why it has taken Cubans over 50 years to get the world interested in the human rights situation in Cuba
Armando Valladares, a poet, human rights advocate, and former diplomat, was a political prisoner in Castro’s Cuba for 22 years. After international pressure led to his release, he emigrated to the United States and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission from 1988 to 1990.
Valladares was a Cuban Postal Bank employee who was arrested in 1960 when he refused to display a sign on his desk that endorsed Communism. Valladares, then 23 years old, was convicted of being a “counter-revolutionary” and spent 22 years in prison. He was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and his prison memoir “Against All Hope” became an international bestseller and raised the profile of the campaign for his release. This campaign finally succeeded after then French President Francois Mitterand made a personal appeal to Fidel Castro.
During his service as ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Valladares succeeded in persuading the commission to adopt a resolution on the human rights situation in Cuba.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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