Eric Umansky

Cuba Stories: Holy Cow

From Cubanet:

SANTA   CLARA

, February 9 (Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, Cubanacán Pres)
William Benítez was fined in the amount of 700 pesos by authorities after someone stole 8 milk cows and a pair of oxen from him February 5.
 
Agricultural authorities here hold peasants responsible for their cattle, and when they are stolen, issue fines against the owners for dereliction of duty.

E.U. Pee-ew

I'm generally a fan of the E.U. But I'm with Vaclav on this one:

I vividly remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War. They regularly needed to resolve the delicate issue of whether to invite to their embassy celebrations various Charter 77 signatories, human-rights activists, critics of the communist regime, displaced politicians, or even banned writers, scholars and journalists -- people with whom the diplomats were generally friends.

Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology, and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat friends.

[But] I cannot recall any occasion at that time when the West or any of its organizations (NATO, the European Community, etc.) issued some public appeal, recommendation or edict stating that some specific group of independently minded people -- however defined -- were not to be invited to diplomatic parties, celebrations or receptions.

But today this is happening. One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world -- the European Union -- has no qualms in making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will re-institute diplomatic Apartheid. The EU's embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government's wishes. The shortsightedness of socialist Prime Minister José Zapatero of Spain has prevailed.

Try to imagine what will happen: At each European embassy, someone will be appointed to screen the list, name by name, and assess whether and to what extent the persons in question behave freely or speak out freely in public, to what extent they criticize the regime, or even whether they are former political prisoners. Lists will be shortened and deletions made, and this will frequently entail eliminating even good personal friends of the diplomats in charge of the screening, people whom they have given various forms of intellectual, political or material assistance. It will be even worse if the EU countries try to mask their screening activities by inviting only diplomats to embassy celebrations in Cuba.

I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses -- indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations' profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.

[Via boz via David Holiday.]

Another snippet from the Socialist paradise

From Cubanet:

SANTA CLARA, December 10 (Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, Cubanacán Press).- A man was taken in by police for loudly protesting at a local fish market, apparently after a three-hour wait he had to endure in order to score some fish croquettes still failed to deliver the goods.

The man, whose age was estimated at "over 70" by witnesses, stood up and started yelling: "They are starving us. My wife and I are retired and we don't have dollars."

A police car rolled up to the Pesca Villa market and officers took the man.

Responding to bystanders who expressed concern for the man's advanced age, one police officer said: "We'll just take him in and when he gets over his tantrum we'll let him go."

P.S. I happen to know the guy who wrote this.  I've been meaning to write about him...and I will...soon.

Cuba, freedom, the administration's family values

About a month ago, I wrote about Cuban independent journalist Claudia Marquez who's long been harassed for her writing and whose husband, Oswaldo Alfonso,  was thrown in  the slammer as a political dissident last year. Two weeks ago, the Cuba government released Alfonso and a couple of others.  It also just gave Marquez and Alfonso permision to emigrate.

It's a kind of Faustian bargain:  You can be free and not have to worry about what you say and write-- so long as you abandon your homeland and family. Still, Marquez and Alfonso are  planning on taking the deal.

Which is where our administration comes in to further its agenda of freedom and  family values: Marquez just told me that while the U.S. has given her permission to immigrate, it has denied it for her husband.

At his trial Alfonso, essentially  alone among dissidents, "confessed" to having served the interests of the U.S.  Marquez says that's  why the U.S. denied him entry. I don't know how she knows that--I have an email back to her now. (Did embassy officials say that? Is she assuming?) But it makes sense to me: Except for the "confession," there aren't particular differences between Marquez's case and her husband's. 

And it jibes with what I heard in Cuba this summer: A  few political types who wanted to leave told me the U.S. was being particularly tight-fisted about visas. To get one, you  had to be politically pure. That is, never a member of the Communist party.  (Maybe there's a Cuban Chalabi in charge of a de-communistification program.)

Cuba

My latest (and probably last) from there.

Notes from a socialist paradise

From Cubanet, host of independent journalism from the island:

Nurse fired for political posture

HAVANA, October 14 (José Antonio Fornaris, Cuba Verdad / www.cubanet.org) - Alfredo Verdecia, a nurse at the Oncological Hospital, says he has been fired after 10 years of service for participating in a peaceful demonstration with other dissidents.

Verdecia said he had joined a vigil October 6 asking for the release of political prisoners. Two days later, he said he was called into a meeting at the hospital in which he found hospital authorities and an officer for the Department of State Security. At the meeting he was notified he no longer worked there, he said.
Verdecia had been working in the intensive care ward of the hospital.

Socialist Paradise

Marc Cooper notices the latest triumph of the Cuban revolution: breaking up a peaceful protest.