HAVANA, Cuba, February 23, 2013 (Pablo Pascual Méndez / www.cubanet.org).
Coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the first meeting of Estado de Sats in 2013 was held on Saturday at its headquarters on 1st Street between 46 and 60, in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar. The meeting was attended by about a hundred people.
The issue addressed by the panelists focused on the Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba, which demands the ratification of the United Nations covenants signed by Cuba’s then Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, four years ago, and which, as explained at the meeting today, should be discussed in the Council of Ministers, approved by the National Assembly and included in the laws of the Nation.
At a break in the panel, the meeting honored the memory of all those who have died defending the cause of human rights, the democratization of Cuba, and the downing in international waters of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes, a crime which occurred 17 years ago tomorrow. Also remembered was Antonio Rodiles’ father, recently deceased, who in life was a fervent attendee at Estado de Sats debates.
On this occasion, the panel consisted of the Sakharov-prize-winning psychologist Guillermo Fariñas, the Baptist pastor Mario Felix Lleonart, the attorney Laritza Diversent, the historian Manuel Cuesta Morúa, and the president of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) Jose Daniel Ferrer; as always, the host was Antonio Rodiles, who served as moderator.
Presentations were made on civil society and on the collection of signature for the Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba. A documentary by the intellectual Juan Antonio Blanco was screened, and several questions were asked of the panel by those present, as well as from abroad via text message.
FOR ANOTHER CUBA: Ailer Gonzalez, Antonio Rodiles, Angel Santiesteban, Lia Villares, Luis Trapaga, TBD, Claudio Fuentes
Five years after Cuba’s representative signed the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the situation with regards to fundamental rights in Cuba remains precarious. The violation of fundamental rights is not only a part of the repressive apparatus of the State, but our national legislation itself imposes restrictions on these freedoms enshrined in international law.
The Cuban Constitution formally recognizes the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression, but immediately establishes limitations that barely allow the exercise of them. The practice of these rights can always be considered contrary to the interests “of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism,” and therefore swept away with great violence and impunity. In short, none of the fundamental rights are legally guaranteed.
To punish these “contrary interests” the Criminal Code provides for sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison or the death penalty for anyone “who, in the interests of a foreign State, commits an act with the intent of undermining the independence of the Cuban State or the integrity of its territory.” continue reading
Another of the offenses widely used to limit the exercise of these rights is the charge of a “propensity” to commit crimes demonstrated by conduct that is in manifest contradiction with the norms of the “socialist morality.” Any police officer may issue an “official warning” against an individual if the officer perceives them to be “dangerous” or to have ties to “potentially dangerous people.” Anyone who has received one or more official warnings may be charged with “dangerousness” and sentenced to up to four years in prison.
Currently still in force is the Law of Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba (Law No. 88) enacted in 1999 by the National Assembly. Law No. 88 provides penalties of 7-15 years in prison for supplying the “enemy” with information that could be useful for strengthening measures against the government of Cuba. The deprivation of liberty may be up to 20 years in the case of information obtained surreptitiously. This law also prohibits the possession, distribution and reproduction of “subversive material,” and establishes prison sentences of up to five years for collaborating with radio stations, television stations or publications deemed to be in the service of foreign powers. The law also imposes unacceptable limits on freedom of association and assembly.
The Cuban State has ratified more than forty international treaties on human rights; however, none of these norms are directly applied to the legal system, principally by the courts. This means that the rights protected by these international norms are, in practice, a “dead letter.”
Total control over all communication media, as provided in the Constitution, includes the written press, radio broadcasts, television or any other means of communication, such that the right to freedom of expression is restricted. Official recognition and registration is denied to unions, civil, professional and human rights associations not belonging to the apparatus of the State or to mass organizations controlled by the government.
Those who try to express their opinions, organize meetings or form associations that contradict the policies of the government or the objectives of the State, are in danger of being subjected to punitive measures such as imprisonment, dismissal, harassment or intimidation.
The arrests and beatings of defenders of human rights, dissidents and political opponents, and independent journalists are common. In some cases they are detained for hours, in others they have been held without charges for months and, on occasion, without trial, on suspicion of participation in activities considered to be counterrevolutionary or for equally vague accusations. In some cases, opponents are summarily tried and sentenced in the space of a few days. Harassment and intimidation of critics and political dissidents and their families at the hands of official groups in so-called “acts of repudiation” constitutes psychological torture, given the tension it can generate for the victims and their families.
Independent local and international human rights NGOs have a great difficulty reporting on human rights violations. The latter are not allowed to visit the island, which contributes to hindering the observation of the human rights situation.
It is incomprehensible that democratic governments embrace a totalitarian system that bears the main responsibility for the disaster befalling our nation. The Cuban people have the right to life, to live and feel pride in their land. Why not listen to us? Why allow us to be covered with a mantle of rhetoric, full of absurd and outdated terms, repression and national ruin?
A true transformation for our people implies, above all, changing laws, regulations and administrative practices that relate to all fundamental freedoms in accordance with international obligations contracted by the Cuban state, as well as the provision of full legal guarantees.
The defense of fundamental rights entails not only an ethical commitment. No society can be viable while ignoring human beings, never before has the nexus between respect for the individual and the development of nations been so clear.
How long should the Cuban people endure the misery associated with the disrespect of our fundamental rights and the imposed material misery that has caused so much pain and damage to our nation? Our country languishes in a calamitous economy with its collapsed infrastructure and an asphyxiating decapitalization. How many more Cubans will have to escape from our country to seek a dignified life in other lands?
For all this, the Campaign for Another Cuba was launched in August 2012, a campaign arising from civil society to demand that the Cuban government immediately ratify and implement the United Nations Covenants.
This effort has been coordinated by hundreds of activists and dissimilar groups the length and breadth of the island, who are working towards regaining our fundamental rights, rights that never should have been severed for any reason. Undoubtedly, this requires the efforts of many pushing from civil society to change a reality that has shown itself to be deeply impervious to change. However we are confident that we will succeed.
We also hope for the just support of the entire regional and international community to exert pressure towards the democratization of our land.
Organizing Committee of the Campaign For Another Cuba:
Ailer Gonzalez Mena (Artist, State of SATS)
Alejandro González Raga (former prisoner of conscience, Cuban Observatory of Human Rights)
Alexis Jardines (Philosophy Professor, State of SATS)
Angel Moya (former prisoner of conscience, Coordinator Democratic Freedom Movement for Cuba)
Antonio G. Rodiles (SATS State Coordinator)
Eduardo Díaz Fleitas (former prisoner of conscience, Pinar del Rio Democratic Alliance)
Felix Navarro (former prisoner of conscience, Pedro Luis Boitel Democracy Party, Executive Secretary FANTU)
Guillermo Fariñas (former prisoner of conscience, Spokesman FANTU)
Iván Hernández Carrillo (former prisoner of conscience, Confederation of Independent Workers of Cuba)
Jose Daniel Ferrer (former prisoner of conscience, UNPACU Coordinator)
Jose Diaz Silva (former political prisoner, Opposition Movement for a New Republic)
Laritza Diversent (CUBALEX)
Librado Linares (former prisoner of conscience, Cuban Reflection Movement)
Luis Felipe Rojas (Writer)
Manuel Cuesta Morua (Progressive Arch, New Country)
Raul Risco (Pinar del Rio Democratic Alliance)
Veizant Boloy (Independent Lawyer)
Yaremis Flores (Lawyer, CUBALEX)
Rene Gomez Manzano (former political prisoner, Lawyer, Corriente Agramontista Association of Independent Lawyers)
Many people wonder what on earth does “sats” mean? Does it have something to do with the SAT I and SAT II college entrance exams in the United States? Could it be an acronym? Well, it’s none of that. Although it is (wrongly) written as an acronym, it is a Scandinavian term used in the theater world that means, “the point of departure in the action, the point when the movement begins and, in turn, the opposite of the sense in which the action unfolds.” A concept, in my opinion, quite convoluted and excessively subtle.
Prominent Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles explained in an interview some time ago how he decided, in 2010, to apply this moniker to his think tank:
“We were thinking of a name for the project, and as a physicist I was leaning toward something relating to resonance, something that would encompass this state in which we all start to look and think in a similar direction… Then Esther [the actress Esther Cardoso] told us about Estado de Sats [State of Sats], a term used in the theater to describe the moment where all the energy is concentrated to explode on the stage, to put into action, finally, that which one has been preparing for a long time.”
Introductory Note: On July 24, 2012, during the funeral of the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, there were violent arrests of several activists and dissidents, among them Antonio Rodiles, who was held for 24 hours at the Fourth Police Station and interrogated by State Security, two years to the day after the first meeting organized by the Estado de SATS project. A few days earlier, Rodiles had granted this interview to Cubanet.
Estado de SATS (State of SATS) was born two years ago, but it has been mostly in the last year that this project has generated more interest and has experienced major growth, despite the efforts of the political police against it. Many people, on the other hand, are asking what could be the meaning of such a peculiar name. Antonio Rodiles explains it very clearly: “Estado de SATS is a term used on the theater that represents the moment when all the energy is concentrated to begin to action, or when an athlete is at the precise moment before the starting signal. It is the concentration that later explodes.”
There is no description more graphic and exact for the spirit of what emerged in July of 2010, when the first meeting was held at Casa Gaia, in Old Havana, organized by Rodiles, a mathematical physicist, and his friend Jorge Calaforra, a Cuban-Polish civil engineer, and with the notable support of the OMNI Project and the participation of the theater group Cuerpo Adentro and Darwin Estacio, who organized a painting exhibition.
Antonio Rodiles himself provides more details in this interview with Cubanet, in the midst of the intense undertaking that occupies most of his time.
Cubanet: How did the idea of the Estado de SATS project emerge and develop?
Antonio Rodiles: What we set out to do in the first meeting was to break the ice; to do something independent where we could generate debate about current topics from different perspectives, artists, intellectuals, professionals. It was a very interesting event that lasted three days, and the result was interesting. There were about seven lectures and three panels, an exhibit of paintings, a presentation of the film Memories of Underdevelopment, which had just been released, and on the last day there was a concert mixing jazz and hip hop.
This first concert was very positive and gave momentum to the idea of continuing, always maintaining the idea of the confluence of art and thinking. The reality of a country is very complex. There are different approaches, and we believe art has a lot to bring. There are things an intellectual or a professional sees that others don’t see, and an artist sees many of them. The ways of approaching problems are also different.
CN: We know that some time ago there were people who expressed the opinion that Estado de SATS was an “opposition-lite” project, prepared by the government. We know the answers you gave at that time. However, what would you respond today now that the project has continued to grow and develop?
AR: I think this is part of a strategy by State Security which has tried to spread this opinion to create internal divisions among political and social activists in Cuba. Everyone can say what they want, but it seems to me that this falls in the plane of conspiracy theories, because in the plane of reality we see that people with distinct visions and positions have participated here.
Just yesterday we had a meeting with three of the seventy-five former prisoners of the Black Spring, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, José Daniel Ferrer and Ángel Moya. We also had Berta Soler, Wilfredo Vallín, Manuel Cuesta, Yoani Sánchez, Elizardo Sánchez, Alexis Jardines, Raudel Collazo, OMNI ZONA FRANCA and many more. They debated everything.
Ultimately, we have met with everyone to call upon the government directly with the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, which is part of a campaign we are initiating to ask the government to ratify the Covenants they already signed (the United Nations Covenant of Civil Rights and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). A campaign we want to carry out throughout the whole country and in which everyone who wants to can participate.
If anyone still thinks that this project is orchestrated by the government, they are definitely suffering from paranoia. Sometimes I think it’s important to talk about this so that it’s perfectly clear, but other times I feel that it’s a waste of time. Anyone, if they are well-intentioned, simply by looking at the work we’ve done this year, which for us has been huge, can understand the truth of our project. To entangle us in so many explanations and responses seems to me exactly what State Security wants: distract you with absurd details so you waste your time and energy.
CN: What importance do you attribute to the space for dialogue and reflection that this project has opened? In your view, what has been the impact of the work done so far?
AR: What has pleased me the most, personally, is being able to show the faces of civil society that the Cuban government tries to hide. They always say that those who oppose them are criminals, mercenaries, people with no vision of the future, no plan for the country, the worst of the worst. To show this range of faces and visions definitely gives the idea that when we can end this long nightmare, there is a clear prospect of a much better country.
It has also been very interesting to establish friendships with so many people, or that many individuals who didn’t know each other do now and they know what they think, what they see and how to collaborate. Another important aspect is that it has created a public space for debate. Here there is no room for the powers-that-be description: “you are my friend or you are my enemy.” Here people can coexist with others who think differently, but who ultimately also want a better country. That exchange is essential to a democracy.
It would be great is spaces like this could emerge across the entire country, if people could do it from their own inspiration. It’s very important to signal that tons of spaces like this exist in democratic societies. This may seem strange only in Cuba because we live under a totalitarian regime.
A process of maturation is indisputably happening in civil society, but new technologies are also contributing: to have a channel on YouTube, or to record a video and distribute it among people has a very important role, because people that see this can get interested in coming, participating, and knowing what happens. At first about fifteen or twenty people came, currently, at some meetings, we have observed over ninety or a hundred people.
CN: What new purposes and plans are fueling the project at this time?
AR: We would like projects like this to spread throughout the whole country, that here increasingly more people with different interests come, including from official institutions. That’s why we are focusing on greater awareness of what we do.
Another plan, on which we are concentrating great energy, is the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba. We believe it is very important that, from civil society, we demand our rights from the government and that, starting from those rights, there is a democratic transformation in the country. We are working very intensely to spread this whole conception of the new society, of what we want the change to be.
We are also very interested in the exchange with Cubans who are outside of Cuba. We have tried several times and we will keep trying. Almost always it has to be through recorded videos.
CN: Can you mention some of the procedures that the political police have used the to deter or derail the project?
AR: They have used many. Starting out, as they thought I would leave the country, they tried to blackmail me by taking away my permit to reside in the exterior, which they did a few months after the meetings began in my house. Then they threatened my parents with withdrawing the license they have to rent rooms, and even mentioned the possibility of taking our house.
The guests who are invited are threatened that, if they come, there will be reprisals. Also many of the public who come are warned not to come again. On some occasions they have organized operations around the house. We are very close to the offices of the National Aquarium and they normally mount their operations there, although lately they are being discreet.
They have also installed two permanent video cameras facing the house. Many time they harass people who leave the meetings, asking for their identity cards in an intimidating way. In short, they closely monitor us and the work they do is systematic in continuing to try to strangle people, especially economically.
The idea is to isolate you, set you apart, and continuously reduce the impact you can have with your work. I think that as the project continues to grow, they will become more nervous, but we hope that they understand that this is a path of no return.
CN: How do you see the current situation of our country, the real possibilities of change?
AR: Look, it seems to me that, almost a year and a half after the Communist Party Congress, which raised many expectations in some who are too optimistic, if not naive, and after the Party Conference, people have realized that it was all words. The government does not have the ability to change. It’s an ancient government with ancient ideas. There is no human capital in the halls of power and they are greatly afraid, because they know that there is discontent and the hopes of citizens are completely different from what they are offering.
This fear creates in them an unchanging attitude that corners us in an even more critical situation. Moreover, economically the country is in a quagmire. The measures taken have failed to capitalize on anything. It was because the company Repsol didn’t strike oil. There is no foreign investment of any magnitude.
And something that has become a sword of Damocles is the Chavez factor. If he will be re-elected or not, if he survives or not. The question of Venezuela is not only the more than one hundred thousand barrels of oil per day, but also the number of professionals who are working there. If they suddenly have to return to Cuba without the possibility of employment, they will become a mass with a high level of discontent.
I think that the political elite has been delaying and delaying solutions and what has been created is an accumulation of problems that are increasingly insoluble. I do not think they have the ability to solve anything because the problems are now completely overwhelming.
That’s where I think the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba plays an important role, presenting as a first step the restitution of our political, economic, cultural, social, civil rights. I think from that restitution there can clearly be a transition to democracy.
If, as citizens, we can organize a nationwide campaign where people mobilize and demand those rights from the government, and following the ratification of the Covenants there can be constitutional changes implemented in the penal code, and we recover the basic liberties, I definitely think the country would go forward to a radical change.
I think the most important thing is to think about how to make the change, specifically; not to say we want a transition or that Cuba wants a transition, but to think about what kind of country we want.
CN: Would you like to add anything to what you said?
AR: Yes, I would like to invite Cubans outside of Cuba to join this campaign. One way to help is to sign the Demand for Another Cuba. Another is to bring materials from outside, the printed text, the videos that have been done to explain the proposal of what we’re trying to do, and also to bring information about the Covenants and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to give it to their families.
Some may see this as something small, but if every household in Cuba could know what is being requested and in what form we are proposing changes in the country, that would be a tremendous step. As long as our desire for change is an abstraction, we won’t connect; but from the moment we say how to do it and we all push in that direction, the change happens, because the vast majority desires it.
The ratification of the Covenants would benefit the Yoruba Association, which advocates respect for gender differences, all the churches, the musicians, all citizens. So everyone should know the meaning of these Covenants and what benefits their ratification would bring.
I think the conditions are ripe for this to become a formidable campaign. I’ve talked to many people, and they tell me this demand seems very sensible, that it is relevant to beginning to untie this knot. Not even the government could say that this is a crazy idea.
The government must understand that the more prolonged the situation the worse the end will be, because there will be a larger quantity of accumulated problems. I think we are on the threshold of achieving a transition in Cuba, but only if it takes the pace it should. If not, the impulse will cool and then we would fall into apathy and the change could happen spontaneously and out of control, generating violence and leading us all into a dead end.
Ernesto Santana and Antonio Rodiles
Original interview: July 2012. Posted on Estado de Sats 17 January 2013.
Antonio Rodiles (left) hosting a panel discussion at Estado de Sats in Havana, Cuba
The debates organized and filmed by Estado de Sats and broadcast from Florida by TV Marti has earned the show a nomination by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences of Florida for an Emmy award.
Antonio Rodiles, left center, Father Jose Conrado, right center
My blog is now 4 days behind, but I was fortunate enough to be present last Monday night for the presentation of the Tolerance Plus award to Father Jose Conrado at the home of Antonio Rodiles, within hours of his release.
The release of Rodiles was undoubtedly the most important event of the week and the most anticipated by his friends. Thinner and with a blackish crescent below his lower left eyelid from the bruise caused by the beating, Rodiles returns to his home like a big brother coming home from the war wearing a star on one of his pockets that announces the triumph of the light.
That night brought the scent of others gone by, songs of warriors from another dimension of time, when Father Conrado read the words he had prepared for the occasion. Martí settling like a nocturnal butterfly over the Monday night, opening the spirit of all those gathered there so as to receive the dew which, if it comes at night, is always the dew brought by the shadow of the Holy Spirit: that of infinite possibilities.
Father Conrado, in turn, presented to Ofelia Acevedo (widow of Osvaldo Payá) the award conferred by several organizations under the umbrella of Nuevo Pais (New Country Project). It was my second time seeing the widow and I approached her, always having to suppress the desire to cry for her loss and ours.
I admired each of the persons congregated there. It felt like I was witnessing a historic evening. Beyond the outcome of our actions, the punishment with which the regime attempts to intimidate and even annihilate,those who dare oppose it, the denial by means of violence of the respect we deserve and the attempt to brush us aside as if we were nothing. Beyond the success or failure, always fleeting in a Universe governed by change, a change that will come to them like a tsunami that will sweep them up and give each the just retribution for his actions, the feeling of being in the right place, being sure that God is with us, was confirmed within me, in a part of my being which makes me stop the fabric of time and feel that we are saved.
In recent days a horde of soldiers and officers from “State Security,” most in plainclothes, who are located in Section 21 (headquarters of “Counterintelligence”), attacked a peaceful group, of which I was a part and that was in front of the police station at Acosta and 10 de Octubre Streets, to support the elderly parents of Antonio Rodiles, whom they advised, in their turn, of the destination and “legal” case for which their son was being kept in the cells of that station.
One day earlier, this same horde of criminals, violators of justice and of the most elementary human rights, had assaulted a group of people who peacefully presented themselves at the aforementioned Section 21 together with the attorney Veizant Boloy to inquire about the whereabouts of his wife, the attorney Yaremis Flores, who had been kidnapped from their home by police.
Afterwards they took me to spend several days in the dungeons, where I remained without food and water, the only way I had to protest against the violence committed. They released me without charged thanks to the public outcry that resulted from the playing on the Internet of a video recording showing the brutal manner in which they arrested me.
Our only “crime” is to think immeasurably about the fate of our country, which for more than five decades has been in the throes of a ghostly and exhausting war, which has only served to devastate a nation and to keep you in power.
We have the unquestionable right to choose, to dissent, to gather together, to speak out, to decide what is most necessary for the Cuban nation and its future. We ar its legitimate children, with equal rights, so we demand respect and freedom for those who make up the opposition within the Civil Society in Cuba.
Right now, still arbitrarily detained under an alleged crime of “resistance,’’ is Antonio Rodiles, Director of the Independent Project of State of SA (Estado de Sats) and Coordinator of the Campaign For Another Cuba (Campaña Por Otra Cuba), a citizen initiative born in the deep social and economic crisis we are going through which demands the ratification of the UN Covenants, signed by your Foreign Minister on February 28, 2008 in New York City, and that we consider essential rights for the democratic transformation of the Cuban nation and its entry into the community of nations in the XXI century.
We therefore demand the immediate release, without manipulated charges, of Antonio González Rodiles, and I demand of you the earliest intervention in the ongoing violations in our country that are committed in your name.
Ángel Santistesteban-Prats
Cuban writer
Translator’s note: Between the time Angel released this letter and TranslatingCuba.com translated it, Antonio was released.
Antonio Rodiles after being released on 26 November 2012
Translated from an interview by Ivette Leyva Martinez in Cafe Fuerte.
After 19 days of detention in a police station in Havana, Antonio G. Rodiles returned to freedom convinced that the best path to a better Cuba is through the rejection of violence.
Rodiles was released on Monday afternoon after authorities agreed to the request of his lawyer to withdraw the charges of “resistance.” His violent arrest sparked an intense campaign of international solidarity.
The activist was fined 800 Cuban pesos [approximately $30 U.S.]. He will not go to trial.
CF: What do you take away from this experience?
AR: I say to my friends and others with whom I have spoken, that my main experience is that at this moment in Cuba there are a great many people who understand that the country has to change, and that people thinking differently, that people having different views of things, political, ideological, is not a reason for people to hate them or to not respect them but, sadly, there is a group of people who up to now have demonstrated that they have carte blanche to use violence, who are committed to creating situations like this one and I think, what’s more, they are committed to creating even more critical situations.
I think it’s very important that all national and international public opinion support civil society activists because these people are not the preponderance of the people in this country.
Definitely what they did to me was a vulgar beating and it was planned by them ahead of time.
CF: Your followers and the people who have followed your case insisted that there had been violence especially against you. What precisely happened that day of your arrest?
The State Security agent who uses the alias Camilo
AR: An official who has become known for beating and abusing people, whose alias is “Camilo,” crossed Avenue 31 [in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre] with a group of people, crossed directly to beat me. He says “identificaiton” or “ID card,” something like that, but simply to mention it. No one in uniform came, they didn’t identify themselves, and they immediately pounced on me.
When I put out my hands so they wouldn’t grab me, they rained punches down on me. They grabbed me by the neck, and threw me to the ground, there was a group of between 10 and 15 people — people who were there said it was something like 12. And when they threw me on the ground they began to kick me, to punch me, and at that moment someone punched me in the left eye, thank God their knuckle didn’t go into my eyeball, only the edge, this gave me a strong contusion in the eye which even bled. After they picked me up, they took me to the cop car, and against the car they were still hitting me, in the chest, all my ribs, it was a total beating. Thank God I didn’t have any fractures but I certainly could have.
CF: In the dungeon, what else did they do and how did they treat you?
AR: When they took me to the detention center on Acosta Avenue, which is a center for ordinary crimes of the Police Technical Department of Investigations (DTI), on arriving there, there was still this individual Camilo with two other characters he goes around with, who were also trying to provoke me, manhandling me, trying to provoke an incident.
This individual Camilo recorded me with a video camera, everything that was going on, but there appeared a major from the police station itself and these things were stopped until they took me to the cell. And yes, the next day, the people who had charge of me in that place had a completely different attitude. It was one of total respect, both physically as well as my moral integrity. I had medical attention, the doctor was a very kind person, she checked me over completely, looked at my eye, healed the eye. And the officials there, of the police, they behaved with respect.
It’s also incredible how the prisoners identify with people who come there for political reasons and they always call you “political” and the people are in solidarity with you.
CF: Do you think the delay had to do with having you look better before they let you out?
AR: Yes, it’s possible that had some weight, evidently there was a lot of pressure from many different directions, I think. What they were trying, in my opinion, was a short detention, of a few months or something like that… but at first what they did was very rough, they made a circus out of it, including statements they made themselves that didn’t apply to the crime of “resistance” and then at the end they simply didn’t have much of a way to justify what was happening and well, they released me.
CF: The photo that was distributed showing you in the cell, is it real?
AR: As I have mentioned to several people I would have to look at it in detail, and since I got out the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. If it was taken, it was taken while I was sleeping. No one took any photo of me while I was awake, although they took a video on my arrival. But I can tell you, I have to see the photo calmly to be able to analyze it. I saw it from above, if it shows I was hit in the eye, and it was that area, I had a shirt like that, the color of the walls was similar and those things.
CF: What do you think the intentions are between the work of the police and the strategic tasks of the State Security?
AR: That’s hard to know being in a cell, is something that I can not fully distinguish, what I can tell you is that contrasting the treatment and attitude of the people of the State Security, who are clearly unscrupulous people, they strike without any restraint, and the treatment received at the DTI station, it was completely different.
CF: Will you continue Estado de Sats? What are your plans now?
AR: The project of course will continue and I would say even more forecefully. The idea of the project Estado de Sats, of the campaign “For Another Cuba,” has to do with respect for the rights of Cubans, with respect for the human being first and foremost, with the opportunity to debate, to openly discuss, and I think that with this beating this was the main thing they showed me: this way is the way for Cuba to change, and clearly violence is the enemy. Now more than ever I believe that the work requires total dedication.
I send a huge hug [to those who supported me], I’ve always said that in this type of situation those who most need support is the family and my elderly parents feel very very supported by everyone and this gave them tremendous strength.
9 minutes: Writer Angel Santiesteban reports that Antonio Rodiles has been released, after long days in jail and a fine of 800 Cuban pesos. 13 minutes: Antonio Rodiles was just released!
Translator’s note: 800 Cuban pesos is approximately $30.00 US
Antonio and his friends and family in support. His parents are seated in the chairs.
URGENT ACTION
CUBAN MAN TARGETED FOR GOVERNMENT CRITICISM
Government critic Antonio Rodiles has been charged with “resisting authority”. It is believed the charges may be used to punish and prevent his peaceful criticism of Cuban government policies.
A coordinator of a civil society initiative calling on the government to ratify international human rights treaties, Antonio Rodiles, has been charged with “resisting authority” (resistencia). He has been placed in pre-trial detention (prisión provisional), but no date has been set for his trial.
Shortly after the arrest of the independent lawyer and journalist Yaremis Flores on 7 November, Antonio Rodiles, his wife and several other government critics went to the Department of State Security headquarters, know as Section 21 (i) in the neighbourhood of Marianao in Havana, to enquire after her whereabouts. Before they could reach the building they were approached by 20 people, all plain-clothed, as two officials from the Ministry of the Interior looked on. Antonio Rodiles was reportedly knocked to the ground and pinned down by four men. Several of the other activists were also manhandled and were forced into a police vehicle and sent to various police stations around Havana. All were released by 11 November, except Antonio Rodiles.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office (fiscalía) informed Antonio Rodiles’ wife on 14 November that he was being charged with “resisting authority” but a formal charge document has yet to be issued.
Antonio Rodiles is one of the coordinators of Citizen Demand for Another Cuba (Demanda Ciudadana Por Otra Cuba), an initiative calling for Cuba to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the country signed in 2008. Amnesty International believes the charges against him may be being used to punish and prevent his peaceful activities as a government critic and is gathering further information on his case and treatment.
Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language:
Calling on the Cuban authorities to release Antonio Rodiles immediately and unconditionally if they are unable to substantiate the charges against him, and to investigate reports that he was ill-treated during his arrest;
Calling on them to immediately cease the harassment of all other citizens who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association.Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language:
Calling on the Cuban authorities to release Antonio Rodiles immediately and unconditionally if they are unable to substantiate the charges against him, and to investigate reports that he was ill-treated during his arrest;
Calling on them to immediately cease the harassment of all other citizens who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 27 DECEMBER 2012 TO:
Head of State and Government
Raúl Castro Ruz
Presidente de la República de Cuba
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +41 22 758 9431 (Cuba office in
Geneva); +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban
Mission to UN)
Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission
to UN) Salutation: Your Excellency
Attorney General
Dr. Darío Delgado Cura
Fiscal General de la República,
Fiscalía General de la República,
Amistad 552, e/Monte y Estrella,
Centro Habana,
La Habana, Cuba Salutation: Dear Attorney General
And copies to:
Interior Minister
General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior,
Plaza de la Revolución,
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban
Mission to UN)
Email: correominint@mn.mn.co.cu Salutation: Your Excellency
Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country
Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Journalist Yaremis Flores was held for 48 hours before being released without charge. During her detention she and was threatened with charges of “disseminating false information against international peace” (difusión de noticias falsas contra la paz internacional), which carries a prison sentence of one to four years, if she continued her work as a journalist.
Antonio Rodiles has been charged under Article 143 of the Cuban Criminal Code. This covers the offence of resistencia, which refers to resistance to public officials carrying out their duties and is often used to deal with alleged cases of resisting arrest.
Article 143 is broad enough to encompass non-violent forms of resistance; it is sometimes used in ways that unlawfully restrict freedom of expression.
On 20 June, Citizen Demand for Another Cuba handed in a petition with 500 signatures to the National Assembly of People’s Power (Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular) – Cuba’s legislative body located in Havana – calling on the government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these covenants constitute the International Bill of Rights and are the key international human rights instruments. Since Cuba’s signing of both covenants in 2008, Amnesty International has called on the authorities to ratify them in order to bring them into force and begin their implementation.
Antonio Rodiles is also the coordinator of State of SATS (Estado de SATS), a forum which emerged in July 2010 to encourage debate on social, cultural and political issues.
Name: Antonio Rodiles
Gender : m
UA: 333/12 Index: AMR 25/026/2012 Issue Date: 15 November 2012
Hands clasped in front, deep breaths, the lights come up and the curtain begins to rise. The actor is not yet in front of his audience, but he’s already about to begin to speak, gesticulating in the voice and ways of his character.
He is in a state of “SATS,” a Scandinavian word that refers to that instant just before the theatrical action or the sports performance; the moment of greatest concentration that precedes the artistic explosion, the adrenaline rush of jumping, running. Those four letters, summarizing a turbulent journey from the depths of the self toward extroversion, have been adopted by a project of art and thought born in Havana.
State of SATS (Estado de SATS) was founded in 2010, taking off from an idea of Antonio Rodiles’ and two Cuban emigrants. It emerged as “an initiative of young artists, intellectuals and professionals in search of a better reality,” and quickly gained recognition and popularity. The best known work of SATS is centered on a program of reflection and debate–filmed in Rodiles’ own home–that circulates with great success on Cuba’s alternative information networks.
The most important social actors in Cuba today have passed in front of the SATS microphones, addressing essential issues, long postponed. Many of these guests remain silenced or stigmatized by the official press, while their analysis and points of view expressed in the SATS videos honestly delve into the most serious problems in our society, without discrimination against anyone. State of SATS has also brought the opportunity for other artistic, political and citizens’ projects, narrated in the first person.
But for more than a week now, the chair on that sober and democratic set usually occupied by Antonio Rodiles has remained vacant. He is under arrest by the Cuban political police. On November 8, this 40-year-old with a degree in Physics entered a dungeon from which he has not yet emerged.
Deliberate, analytical, and with a deep concern for everything that occurs in our country, the founder of State of SATS is now experiencing the most sordid side of repression in Cuba: a jail cell. And his main crime doesn’t seem to be the charge of “resisting arrest” alleged by the prosecutor, but rather the illegal act of thinking and opining on an Island where this “right” belongs only to the Party in power. Thus, to dream and debate about a more inclusive and plural country is an egregious crime here, as we all know.
Rodiles’ stay behind bars is the materialization of a premonition, of one of those painful predictions that many of us have while expressing our opinions and encouraging others to do the same. We see it as if one of those fireflies, attracted by the light of civic responsibility in which–sooner or later–Raul Castro’s totalitarianism will incinerate it.
His captors waited for the opportunity to trap him and this happened on a Wednesday afternoon when several activists demanded the release of Yaremis Flores, a lawyer and member of a free legal advice network who had been arrested near her home. Outside the feared Section 21 (the State Security department that monitors and controls regime opponents), a dozen people gathered. But instead of freeing the attorney, a group of agents in plain clothes violently rushed those making the demand and arrested them as well.
To the peaceful gesture they responded with blows, to the civic attitude they contrasted a repressive attitude. As if, with the arrest of Antonio Rodiles they wanted to teach a lesson to all of civil society. A dark autumn with dimensions much smaller than the Black Spring of 2003–but not, for that, any less frightening–it happened in a moment.
On balance, some thirty dissidents were temporarily detained, among them independent journalists, activists and alternative bloggers. I myself was held for about nine hours in a cramped room where three women and one man tried every verbal method to crush my self-esteem. But my mind was a thousand miles away, escaped to some beautiful place where they could not reach me.
I am almost sure that Rodiles is experiencing a similar situation, aggravated by his several days’ stay in the police station. I imagine they have said to him–as they did to me–that he should leave Cuba, get the hell out of here, because this Island “belongs to Fidel,” all the streets, the sidewalks, every tree and facade we know. Getting rid of their critics by pushing them into exile remains their most common strategy against nonconformists.
For sure they are mentioning to this Havanan who studied in Mexico City and taught in Florida the names of all his family members. A subtle method to let him see that they know everyone dear to him, they are aware of all their movements, that something might happen to them while they walk the streets.
If their strategy of interrogations is repeated, like the broken record of arrogance, then I envision how they end some of these questioning sessions. Perhaps they threaten him–as they have so many–with long years of incarceration in a filthy cell, stinking and violent. His police interrogators laugh through their teeth while making sexual, terrifying, allusions.
And it is in these moments when one sees the true face of Fantomas–that terrifying French serial killer–when one experiences first hand the absolute mediocrity under the skin of the executioner; when you reaffirm the idea of why you need to keep trying to change Cuba.
So that these censors of laughter and of freedom, these people who leap quickly from the penal code to the code of the neighborhood bully, cannot continue to lead this country. So that no one will fall–ever again–into the gap of legality where anything can happen.
I know that Antonio Rodiles will be strong, that he is, right now, like the actor who plunges within himself to explode into a freer state, into a state of SATS.
Here is a video from Tracey Eaton, reposted here so you can listen to Antonio describe his work in his own words.
Translator’s note: The collaborators and supports of Antonio Rodiles and Estado de SATS have decided to hold an Estado de SATS every evening at 6:00 PM as long as Antonio is in jail, to demonstrate that the arrest of one man cannot shut down the project. Our apologies for not having a subtitled version — readers are encouraged to contribute to preparing one… the first step is to make a transcript in Spanish and email it to TranslatingCuba – at – gmail.com. THANK YOU! (Or feel free to translate it and subtitle it and send us a link to the subtitled video!)
Antonio Rodiles, promoter of Estado de SATS and the citizen demand For Another Cuba, has been brought up on charges. The charges are not relevant, they could have been anything. As an emerging figure of civil society who, in a very short time, has managed to structure two outstanding citizen projects, Rodiles has become a very uncomfortable element for the government.
In the Taino (government) Studios they will be preparing a Special Program to air on the Roundtable program after the prime time news. Thanks to the magic of cutting and editing, we will meet a new Rodiles ready to board a transport to attend a meeting with U.S. politicians visiting the country. Thanks to this same technological wizardry, we will see him sitting next to an official from the United States Interests Section at an Estado de SATS even about Cuban-U.S. cultural relations. And thanks to the magic of controlling the media, and in particular the internet, they will present these images as THE proof that Rodiles follows a script written in Washington, and so, by the way, they will also implicate civil society activists.
My neighbor Tomas, my beloved uncle Gerardo, the sister of my friend Rebeca, and my close friend Josefa all belong to the group who will believe the message of this libel. But they underestimate a population whose educational level is around the 12th grade. There will be an abundance of people who will logically ask themselves why Rodiles is being judged for one of these offenses against authority, and not for espionage, collaboration with the enemy, or some other shadowy charge; and they will conclude as I do that it is because they would be too much, because the suggested conspiracy does not exist.
The aim of the documentary will be met with some of the viewers; but unlike other times, everyone has a relative, partner, or an acquaintance at the gym who has on their flashdrive, along with the latest Batman movie, the new season of Big Bang Theory or the final game of the World Series, the recordings of Estado de SATS and objectives of citizen demand for the signing of the UN Covenants.
I frequently remember the phrase of Lincoln (I quote from memory), that you can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
