(My) Declaration of Human Rights / Regina Coyula

Piranesi etching of an imagined prison.

Lately the mass media talks a lot about “the Human Rights we defend.” The topic is no longer taboo, with limited coverage of health, education and social security. Very few Cubans know the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite that fact that putting it in a tabloid would cost a peso, but no one has dared to publish it. University students don’t know what it’s all about, the whole body of it seems like a venereal disease that no one dares to mention.

For the first time I am aware that to honor the date on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was enacted can be risky. The visit from “the comrades” and “the factors” last week opened a parenthesis of threats that can range from instilling fear to physical action. I do not know what will happen tomorrow and I would like that nothing happens, but any action against peaceful people who want a thriving and diverse country, would confirm the need to expose once again a government that says it champions the Human Rights “it defends” while ignoring those it disrespects.

In the imaginations of much of the world, Cuba remains an alternative where altruistic citizens build the social project of the future. Cubans in reaction, for so many years, have constructed a Piranesian project. We are suspicious and it has brought out the worse in us, stirring up rich vs. poor, homosexuals vs. heterosexuals, religious vs. atheists, exiles vs. those on the island.

It would seem these differences are surmountable, but since the government continues to instigate the “good citizens” against the dissidents, and meanwhile the dissidence and different concepts of freedom are criminalized, it remains an unfinished task.

Because it has the means, the government can ban meetings and even imprison activists. But new faces will continue to appear, because the objective conditions exist and in the sleep society there is a secret will for change. A quick look at those who enter the visa lottery, to go to the United States, those who have abandoned and continue to abandon the national territory in all directions — including those who have lost their lives in the attempt — the women who put off giving birth and the couples who barely conceive one child; those who vote blank ballots or annul their ballots or don’t vote at all, those who daily steal from the State by action of omission. People without confidence in the successive promises. It is an enormous subjective figure. Subjective, but as weighty as a plebiscite.

State Security possess all the information about the internal situation, how it’s analyzed and what patterns it shows remain to be seen. Tomorrow we will have a preview.

9 December 2013

Bastion 2013, A Little Game in a Make-Believe War / Jorge Olivera Castillo

HAVANA, Cuba, December, www.cubanet.org — The Bastion 2013 Strategic Exercises recently concluded with the so-called National Days of Defense. Headlines such as “The Heart of the Country Is Invulnerable,” “The Enemy Will Have No Peace,” “An Unbreakable Coastline” and others equally ridiculous could be read in the November 25 edition of the weekly Trabajadores.

They have once again taken the military paraphernalia out of storage to inflict an imaginary defeat on the enemy, which occasionally lands in the country with its phantom divisions.

As well as being something outside the bounds of common sense, fabricating external aggression at this point is increasingly useless. There have been so many combat preparations and invasion warnings that have proved pointless that almost no Cuban believes in the demagoguery that sustains them anymore.

Indifference and mockery are the routine reactions to these expenditures of human and material resources, which are not even successful at diverting attention from the serious social and economic problems that affect a wide segment of the population.

“They are shameless. Instead of investing money in important things, they waste it knowing full well that we will never see American troops in Cuba. It is a cliche they use for the sake of convenience. Essentially, it stems from a need to present an image of unity and strength. They know that the probability of a military confrontation between the two countries is very low, practically impossible,” says a former military official.

Very few citizens spend time on this sort of news. The most widely read items in the official press continue to be the television schedule and the sports page.

“I don’t waste my time on this nonsense. We have had enough of this war for subsistence. If the Americans ever come, I would be happy if they brought food and other stuff. With that they would win two out of three. The country is already in ruins, even without a missile having been fired from overseas,” says a retiree living in the capital.

After a series of virtual military battles throughout the country, Cubans are still confronting challenges brought on by difficult circumstances. Dealing with the bureaucracy, finding their way through the maze of the black market and struggling with high prices for essential consumer goods are some of their primary concerns. According to the vox popoli, however, efforts to keep us mired in poverty will be even more intense in 2014.

There is no shortage of reasons for such assumptions. The just completed Bastion 2013 is a bagatelle, a children’s game compared to the battles we have to face every day in the farmers’ market, with their heart-rending prices, or in the hard-currency stores, which are fully capable of destroying anyone’s patience.

oliverajorge75@yahoo.com

Cubanet, 2 December 2013

She Can’t Return to Cuba: She’s on the Blacklist / Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba, December 2013, www.cubanet.org. – Guadalupe Bustos left Houston, Texas on November 27, enthusiastic about her upcoming trip to Cuba. But she didn’t know that she is on the “black list,” delivered to the Miami airport authorities by the Cuban Immigration Office, with the names of Cubans who are forbidden, for political reasons, from returning to their country.

Lupe, as she is known to friends and family, traveled by car from Houston to Miami. She was loaded down with gifts for her family and many friends in Cuba. Some are human rights activists and political dissidents. But she also has brothers and nephews waiting for her. One of her brothers is recovering from a complicated operation and, because of his advanced age, Lupe’s first priority was to visit him.

She arrived in Miami on the 28th. She could barely sleep that night, thinking about everything that she would be doing within a few hours. Early the next day she left for the airport. Upon arriving she presented all her papers in proper order: her U.S. passport, Cuban passport, and return ticket. At the airport they gave her the well-known “Cuban entry card” for her to fill out later, on the plane.

She still had her papers in hand when an airport official hurriedly approached, asking the employee at the window to point out the one named Lupe. Upon being told he said:

“No, stop her luggage. Cuban Immigration just called; they said that she is denied entry for failure to comply with ’immigration requirements’.”

In an email interview Lupe said:

Lilianne Ruiz (l) with Guadalupe Bustos

“I was floored. I talked to the man and he put me on the phone with the head of Cuba flights, who had received the call, and I told him I needed them to explain to me which ’requirements’ I did not meet, and if this were true, then why they had not advised the travel agency and stopped me from buying the ticket, something that the agency itself says that it can’t explain, because when a person does not have permission to enter they must communicate this before the passage is booked.”

The Cuban immigration authorities did not respond to any of the emails sent by Lupe:

“The Cuban government has prevented me from entering my country, my homeland, without any basis, without setting out a single argument against me, as the law requires.”

And she points out:

“They are a disgrace to the world, acting like this to protect their policy of totalitarianism, of opposing all desire for change, for freedom, for improving our people. But I also believe that they are not the owners of a land, and of a history of emancipation that dates back many years. They are not the owners of the children of Cuba nor their dreams of freedom.”

For years Lupe has maintained her solidarity with the Cuban democratic movement. She is the mother of Ernesto Hernández Bustos, editor of the Cuban-affairs blog Penúltimos Días.

The government ban to keep her out of the country coincides with the approach of December 10. Historically that day in Cuba has been characterized by an increase in arbitrary arrests carried out by the political police in order to prevent the celebration of World Human Rights Day, and to impede the emerging civil society.

Lilianne Ruiz

Cubanet, December 8, 2013

Translated by: Tomás A.

Letter from Antonio G. Rodiles to Raul Castro / Antonio Rodiles

antoniorodiles-e1386618774168Letter from Antonio G. Rodiles to Raul Castro

Havana, December 6, 2013

Mr. Raúl Castro Ruz,

My name is Antonio Enrique González-Rodiles Fernández, Cuban citizen, resident of Ave 1ra. Number 4606 in the municipality of Playa, Havana. I studied physics at the University of Havana and later earned the titles of PhD Candidate in Physics and Masters in Mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Florida State University, respectively. After 12 years living outside my country, I decided to return with the idea of being part of a process of change that will help us out of the disastrous situation in which we live.

In the summer of 2010, as a result of these concerns and with a group of friends, artists, intellectuals, activists, Estado de SATS was developed, a civic and cultural project that proposes through art and thought a public space for free debate of ideas and views about our nation.

The project has been carried out in my own home for three years, given the impossibility and refusal of the authorities to accommodate it in a public space or institution. Since its inception, dramatic police operations around my house, accompanied by beatings and arbitrary arrests against the attendees, have been a constant.

My family and I have received multiple threats and pressure including my being beaten by several State Security agents and detained this November for 19 days for the supposed crime of resistance. The authors of this violation continue to commit the same abuse with impunity.

Last week two of the tires on my car were punctured and a chemical liquid with a terrible stench was poured on the seats, as stated in Complaint number 66804 filed on November 26 at the 5th Station of the People’s Revolutionary Police (PNR) in the municipality of Playa.

Just two days ago urine was thrown on the front seats and, to all of this, is added the warnings that we have been sent of possible acts of repudiation to block an event we are going to hold on December 10 and 11, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a campaign asking for the ratification and implementation of the UN Covenants.

This event will have the same characteristics as all those we have developed previously, where a plurality of opinions and full respect for others have been our premises.
The situation we are living in is unsustainable, after 54 years of running the country on whims, violations and abuse, the result screams before our eyes. Every individual who dares to publicly express their disagreements is destined to be treated in a degrading and humiliating way with no possibility of appeal to any authority.

The deplorable acts of repudiation, managed through groups of vigilantes, all the abuses of power and the legal violations committed, keep Cuban citizens in a state of total defenselessness. The great irresponsibility and excessive ambition of those who now govern will lead our nation to an even greater debacle.

With this I mean not only to emphasize the complex situation in which we live, but to make clear my total commitment to the construction of a nation based on respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Cubans. It is impossible to remain indifferent before a power that systematically ignores the dignity of its citizens and its own laws, with total impunity. A power that orders its representatives to act as common criminals.

Those who have the reins of power in their hands also carry the major responsibility for the course of coming events. It is impossible to remain indifferent to the violations and abuse.

6 December 2013

What’s Happening in Ukraine? / Yoani Sanchez

Protests in Kiev, photo from http://www.cadenaser.com/internacional/articulo/oposicion-insta-mantener-presion-presidente-ucrania/csrcsrpor/20131208csrcsrint_7/Tes

The official Cuban media reports, immediately, when the citizens of the world’s imperfect democracies take to the streets. In these cases the words “injustice,” “capitalism” and “exploitation” are used by the court’s newscasters to explain the whys of such social protests. Something very different occurs if the protestors rise up against an authoritarian regime, or against a government “friendly” to the Plaza of the Revolution. In that case, the informative script is peppered with qualifiers such as “mercenaries,” “financed from abroad”…”insurgents” or the “so-called rebels.” The people are not people everywhere… this hemiplegic analysis seems to want to tell us.

Occasionally, however, something doesn’t fit within the strict patterns of our national press. This week with the events in Ukraine, for example, the Communist Party’s political news reports have seemed disoriented. Verbal malapropisms, caution and even actual stuttering, have been heard on TV from the mouths of those reporters who are most combative when addressing other topics. Why is what happened in the former Soviet republic so upsetting to them?

In the first place, because with Russia, the USSR’s old information pact of never questioning its foreign policy or reporting on its internal problems, has been left behind. Hence the awkwardness of reporting the popular rejection of President Viktor Yanukovich for preferring to approach the Kremlin instead of Brussels. In this scheme designed by the Department of Revolutionary Orientation, the European Union is to be vilified and whatever it does called into question whenever possible. Thus, it is now difficult for the same media to explain why so many Ukrainians are demanding to become a part of this political community.

Given the apparent contradiction, the newscasters choose to play down the news and limit the use of images of the crowded squares in Kiev. Instead, they accompany the reports with several scenes from inside the Kremlin, with the announcers insinuating that some foreign power is behind the revolt. Twenty-four hours after the first note we haven’t heard anything more.

I imagine that many viewers, like me, watching that incoherent sequence, are asking themselves, “What? What’s happening in the Ukraine?” But the official press can’t answer us, because they can’t even fulfill their role of telling us what’s happening in Cuba.

9 December 2013

The Other Raul / Reinaldo Escobar

I was eleven on a day in August 1958 when my neighbor Ermeregildo, with tears in his eyes, received his son Jorgito who had arrived covered with bruises after a torture session at the police station in Camagüey. The father of that young man, who was a member of the 26th of July Movement, was a Batista supporter and never stopped saying, between sobs, “The General has to know what barbarities are going on here.”

The general who rules us today has many Ermeregildos who think that he, also, is not aware of certain atrocities, especially with regards to acts of corruption and disrespect for human rights. They assert he is pragmatic and attribute to him a deep paternal feeling for his children and grandchildren; they say his abrupt outbursts are due to so many years surrounded by soldiers; they assert that he prefers to work in a team and even plays the piano very well.

The fault, the grievous fault for the problems of Cuba, cannot be carried by a single person, nor even by the small group of octogenarians who survive at the helm of power under the epithet “the historic generation of the Revolution.” But blame is one thing and responsibility is another.

Those who seek to monopolize the glory of what they exhibit as achievements, should take the responsibility for what only deserves to be called failures.

If there is another Raul I haven’t had the opportunity to meet him. The one I have news of is a man who was looking the other way when his brother committed the errors he now seeks to rectify. The one I know is the one who orders arbitrary arrests and beating, the one who obstinately resists bringing reform to the political camp, the one who proclaims a war without quarter against secrecy and then issues circulars prohibiting the publication of this or that issue.

Ermeregildo declared to me that the general is not to blame. Right now he is writing him a letter to let him know what’s going on.

9 December 2013

The Torture of the Retired / Lourdes Gomez

An old man with a Cuban history book.

According to the Center for Population and Development Studies of the National Bureau of Statistics of Cuba by 2025 some 26.1% of the population be 60 years and older, which makes us a country with one of the highest indices of aging in Latin America. Being retired in Cuba today means belonging to a population group distinguished not only by its lack of productivity, but also for its lack of economic resources. The “Revolution” prides itself on having bettered the quality of life for Cubans, especially in the area of health. Today we can satisfy ourselves that life expectancy is comparable to that of developed countries (75 years on average), praiseworthy if this quality is maintained in all aspects of the lives of older adults.

Today, if the retired want to supplement their income that have no other option than to turn to family members for help or to turn to “self-employment.” It’s become common to see old people in whatever neighborhood, seated or walking around, selling cigarettes at retail, peanuts, or whatever other scarce product allows them to get some money every day to be able to deal with prices that rise while salaries remain stagnant.

Retired people waiting in front of the bank to collect their pensions (LG-DDC)

In Santiago de Cuba its an ordinary occurrence to see, twice a month, the degrading spectacle of banks overcrowded with old people, standing in line from the night before, filling the sidewalks and parks around the banking institutions for several hours and at times even days, waiting to collect. They are men and women who have dedicated forty years or more to working for the Government that today repays them with the torture of a miserable pension.

The retirees are divided into two large groups: those who collect up to 200 pesos ($8.30 US) and those who collect more, the first at the end of the month and the second at the beginning. In fact, the banks have taken measures with respect to this: the days designated for collection of pensions have that as a priority and others are not served.

For Maria Elena, 76, retired hairdresser, the pension collection day has become the most important day in her life for the last ten years.

“In the two or three days  my pension lasts I feed my taste, I can buy a nice bite of ham and cheese, I can buy meat, and arrange some other things. But for me the most important is the food, even if it’s bad,” she said from the front of the collection line at the People’s Savings Bank.

Maria Elena belongs to the more than 2 million Cubans over 60 who receive a pension that’s less than the average wage. Many of the were imbued with the Revolutionary spirit at the start of the Revolution, they cling to the ration book and their faith that the government will protect them. They don’t understand that the announced economic changes point to a veiled market society that they’ve been isolated from.

Hilda, 81, retired from the municipal sector, said, “I live thanks to the support of my children who give me products to sell on the black market at a profit. It’s not easy for us because we also have health limitations and the chances for some other work don’t exist, much less now that they’re laying off young people.”

The challenge of old age

To address the problems of aging is a challenge for the government. In Santiago de Cuba with a population of close to half a million people, there are two nursing homes over capacity, and two “grandparents’ houses,” dedicated to their care while their children are at work. Obviously, these centers are inadequate before the growing demand.

Options have been created that provide food assistance to destitute elderly in various workers’ canteens in businesses near their neighborhoods, and they have even called on the private sector. They are early attempts of a reality that they still don’t know how to take.

Pedro Angel, a retired construction worker 86 and disabled, says he wants to go to a nursing home but can’t do so for lack of places. He has to hope that those who are there will die, “I spend the day alone at home until my daughter comes, I’m missing a leg, I get two free lunches a week at a private Italian restaurant, and with one leg I can’t take care of myself so I hope they give me a place before I die.”

Palliatives don’t solve problems. The situation also affects the working sector, as they are the children who in most cases assume the care of their parents and have to employ a person for that job or leave work themselves, because assistance costs an average of 300 to 500 pesos a month (~$12-$21)and is unattainable on the average salary.

The solutions are not in sight. Amid the “economic restructuring,” addressing the problems of the elderly is not a priority. But something must be done, as the situation will worsen. According to an article in Granma about the new Social Security Act, in 2025 the population over 60 years will surpass three million people.

Lourdes Gómez | Santiago de Cuba

From Diario de Cuba, 2 December 2013

Montreal Denounces Violation of Freedom of Expression and Shows Solidarity with Angel Santiesteban

Once again, the dictator Raul Castro and his minions had to watch, irritated and helpless, as the more they try to silence Angel Santiesteban-Prats, unjustly imprisoning him, the civilized and free world works to restore his voice and his “freedom.”

This time, at the hands of Gaétane Dufour, historian and writer, the event “Books Like Air” visited Montreal, Canada. This was a tribute to Angel along with other writers also persecuted and imprisoned for speaking freely, in other countries governed by regimes that, like that of the Castros, violate rights and freedoms with the same audacity and cruelty: Cameroon, China, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Vietnam and Qatar.

There were ten of Quebec writers in solidarity with ten writers imprisoned or persecuted in their countries and they expressed their solidarity during the 14th edition of the event “Books “Like Air,” held at the Montreal Book Fair from 20 to 25 November 2013.

Amnesty International, International PEN Quebec and the Quebec Writers Union (UNEQ) joined their voices to denounce these abuses and to commemorate the International Day of imprisoned writers held annually on November 15.

The ten imprisoned writers honored and the ten Canadian writers representing them were:

Marie-Célie Agnant with Dieudonné Enoh Meyomesse (CAMEROON)

Germaine Beaulieu with Li Bifeng (CHINA)

Jean-Paul Daoust with Jabeur Mejri (TUNISIA)

Jean-Pierre Davidts with Raif Badawi (SAUDI ARABIA)

Gaétane Dufour with Angel Santiesteban-Prats (CUBA)

Karoline Georges with Dolma Kyab (TIBET)

Pierre Ouellet with Akram Aylisli (AZERBAIJAN) Invité d’honneur du Salon du livre de Montréal et porte-parole de Livres comme l’Air

André Roy with Somyot Prueksakasemsuk (THAILAND)

Neil Smith with Vo Minh Tri and Tran Vu Anh Binh (VIETNAM)

Kim Thuy with Mohammed Al Ajami (QATAR)

From left to write and top to bottom: Akram Aylisli, Dolma Kyab, Dieudonné Enoh Meyomesse, Jabeur Mejri, Li Bifeng, Mohammed Al Ajami, Raif Badawi, Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, Tran Vu Anh Binh, Angel Santiesteban-Prats y Vo Minh Tri.

Gaétane Dufour dedicated to Ángel Santiesteban-Prats a copy of her book LA MODERNITE DEVIENT PATRIMOINE:

The Editor

5 December 2013

Dining Rooms for the Elderly Are Pathetic / Gladys Linares

Havana, Cuba, November, www.cubanet.org – The Cuban Constitution, in Article 48 says: “The State protects through social assistance the elderly without resources and any other person unfit for work who lacks family members in a condition to lend them help.” In Law 105 of Social Security and Regulation 283 the requisites are established for fulfilling the mentioned article.

But in spite of the government propaganda about the important resources that it invests in social assistance, for old people it is very difficult to achieve this protection because of the series of obstacles that are imposed on them.

Tomasa is one of these old people.  She says she never worked for the government: she used to sew for the street and now arthritis prohibits her from doing so.  She made efforts to get the aid, but as she has a son, they refused it for her.

“I live alone,” she says, “because although my son is listed in the Address Register and in the ration book (I do not want him to lose the little room when I die); he is married, has two children and lives with the woman. His salary is not enough for them.  What conditions does he have to help me?  And in spite of that, he gives me money to pay for the refrigerator and to get my quota on the ration book.”

In Cuba there are 2,045,000 old people, who represent 18.3% of the population according to figures from the most recent census carried out in 2012 and published in the newspaper Granma on November 8, 2013.  As a strategy to confront the aging population, 17 years ago the System of Attention to the Family (SAF) was created, consisting of dining rooms to sell cheap food to the elderly who receive a pension of 200 Cuban pesos or less (around $8 US).

In all these years, the SAFs have not increased. Very few exist in each township. Some have closed because of the danger of collapse, and in almost all the rest the building conditions are bad. The kitchens are improvised and the lack of sanitation is alarming.

It is depressing to pass through one of these places and see the elderly standing in line while they wait to be served in their containers the badly prepared food that they then improve in their homes.

But still knowing all these difficulties, the elderly fight to be enrolled.  Rebeca is one of these. She used to receive help from her sister abroad, but the sister died, and Rebeca is not economically solvent.  She complains that the requirements for social assistance are many.

In the year 2010 with the policy of suppressing freebies, many old people who used to receive social assistance were excluded. Linet is 73 years old. She used to live with an older sister who had a son with mental retardation. On her death, the young man was awarded her pension. Linet, who had worked almost always as a domestic, then sought social assistance, and they awarded it to her.

Nevertheless, in 2010, her assistance was withdrawn. As much as she has written to all the authorities, they have not restored it to her because a pensioner lives in her house — the nephew — who supposedly is obliged to support her.

The part about the relatives “who have conditions” having to help the elderly without resources, is supremely debatable, if one takes into account that in Cuba they are quite few (if there are any) the people who are self-sufficient on their salaries alone. The responsibility for apportioning a decent existence through social assistance falls to the State.

Gladys Linares

Cubanet, December 2, 2013.

Translated by mlk