A Double-Layered Denouncement / Luis Felipe Rojas

After half a century of diplomatic slip-ups, sophism, and trifles one reaches the point where they imagine that the Cuban government couldn’t possibly come up with yet another fallacy.  But all it takes is to wake up in the morning and listen to the radio or read the newspaper, and then you will quickly see the injustices.  Ever since mid-July, the main focus of the news is the story of the hunger strike being carried out by numerous inmates in a prison of the United States.   The inmates were demanding better attention from their jailers, the cease of racist practices, and that their living conditions improve- something so natural which must be respected by all human beings.

But what is shocking is how this has made it to the front page of Granma, the communist Cuban newspaper,  for various days, as they pay attention to the demands of hundreds of violators of minors, professional thieves, and assassins without remedy, while nothing has ever been written about the hunger strikes carried out by hundreds of Cubans in the island demanding the same thing, with the difference that the Cubans have been imprisoned due to their opinions.  The skid of Brazilian ex-president Lula de Silva in February of 2010, where he compared Orlando Zapata Tamayo to common criminals from Rio de Janeiro, the silence surrounding the hunger strikes of Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, Normando Hernandez, or Pavel Mansfarrol- to name just a few- is eloquent proof of the hypocrisy of that Cuban newspaper.  Only in the cases of Zapata and Farinas have they written a few short paragraphs, but only to vilify them without reason and to deny them, and their relatives, the right to reply.

The hunger strikes carried out by Montonero prisoners or members of the Puerto Rican Macheteros behind the bars have had coverage and unmeasurable analysis in television programs here, in addition to various newspaper articles.  The peaceful protests of Cuban political prisoners, or common prisoners, have been handled with deception and lazy promises in the majority of cases.  For half a century, the Cuban political prisoners have achieved celebrated victories through starvation and abstinence from water, which has resulted in more than 10 deaths.  Those who have been successful have only later returned to being kept in subhuman conditions.

The human crushing machine that is the penitentiary system adjusts its iron corset while the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party is in charge of painting everything rose-colored with their ideological bombardments.

Translated by Raul G.

22 August 2011