Fidel Castro came to power with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. By the end of 1960, according to Paul H. Lewis in Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America, all opposition newspapers had been closed down and all radio and television stations were under state control.[4]
Homosexuals as well as other "deviant" groups who were excluded from military conscription, were forced to conduct their compulsory military service in work camps called "Military Units to Aid Production" in the 1960s, and were subjected to political "reeducation".[5][6][7] Some of Castro's military commanders brutalized the inmates.[8]
In nearly all areas of government, loyalty to the regime became the primary criterion for all appointments.[9]
A Human Rights Watch 1999 report on Cuba notes that Cuba has penalties for anyone who "threatens, libels or slanders, defames, affronts (injuria) or in any other way insults (ultraje) or offends, with the spoken word or in writing, the dignity or decorum of an authority, public functionary, or his agents or auxiliaries". There are even harsher penalties for those who show contempt for the President of the Council of the State, the President of the National Assembly of Popular Power, the members of the Council of the State or the Council of Ministers, or the Deputies of the National Assembly of the Popular Power.[11]
There is a three-month to one-year sentence for anyone who "publicly defames, denigrates, or scorns the Republic's institutions, the political, mass, or social organizations of the country, or the heroes or martyrs of the nation".[11]
Cubans are not allowed to produce, distribute or store publications without informing the authorities.[11]
Social dangerousness, defined as violations of socialist morality, can warrant "pre-criminal measures" and "therapeutic measures".[12]
Regarding institutions, the Human Rights Watch report notes that the Interior Ministry has principal responsibility for monitoring the Cuban population for signs of dissent.[13]
In 1991, two new mechanisms for internal surveillance and control emerged. Communist Party leaders organized the Singular Systems of Vigilance and Protection (Sistema Unico de Vigilancia y Protección, SUVP). Rapid Action Brigades (Brigadas de Acción Rapida, also referred to as Rapid Response Brigades, or Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida) observe and control dissidents.[13] The regime also "maintains academic and labor files (expedientes escolares y laborales) for each citizen, in which officials record actions or statements that may bear on the person's loyalty to the regime. Before advancing to a new school or position, the individual's record must first be deemed acceptable".[13]
According to a paper published in the Harvard International Review, dissident groups are weak and infiltrated by Cuban state security. Media is totally state-controlled. Dissidents find it difficult to organize and "Many of their leaders have shown enormous courage in defying the regime. Yet, time and again, the security apparatus has discredited or destroyed them. They do not represent a major threat to the regime."[17]
The paper Can Cuba Change? in the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy states that about nine-tenths of the populace forms an economically and politically oppressed underclass and "Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast, dispossessed majority in the face of a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change".[16] Working people are a critical source of discontent.[16] The only legal trade union is controlled by the government and strikes are banned.[16]Afro-Cuban dissidents have also risen, fueled by racism in Cuba.[16]
In 2012, Amnesty International warned that repression of Cuban dissidents was on the rise over the past two years, citing the Wilmar Villar hunger strike death, as well as the arrests of prisoners of conscience Yasmin Conyedo Riveron, Yusmani Rafael Alvarez Esmori, and Antonio Michel and Marcos Máiquel Lima Cruz.[18] The Cuban Commission of Human Rights reported that there were 6,602 detentions of government opponents in 2012, up from 4,123 in 2011.[19]
Dissident groups
There are a number of opposition parties and groups that campaign for political change in Cuba. Though amendments to the Cuban Constitution of 1992 decriminalized the right to form political parties other than the Communist Party of Cuba, these parties are not permitted to engage in public political activities on the island.[citation needed]
Omega 7, a small terrorist group that operated against the Cuban government from the 1960s to the 1980s.[22]
Patriotic Union of Cuba – Founded by José Daniel Ferrer, a former member of the Christian Liberation Movement, it has defined itself as a civic organization that advocates for a peaceful but firm fight against any repression of civil liberties in the Republic of Cuba.[23][24]
During the "Black Spring" in 2003, the regime imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists.[29][30][31][32] Their cases were reviewed by Amnesty International who officially adopted them as prisoners of conscience.[33] To the original list of 75 prisoners of conscience resulting from the wave of arrests in spring 2003, Amnesty International added four more dissidents in January 2004. They had been arrested in the same context as the other 75 but did not receive their sentences until much later.[34] These prisoners have since been released in the face of international pressure. Tripartite talks between the Cuban government, the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Spanish government were initiated in spring 2010 in reaction to the controversial death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February 2010 following a hunger strike amid reports of massive abuse at the hands of prison staff. These negotiations resulted in a July 2010 agreement that all remaining prisoners of the 'Group of 75' would be freed. Spain offered to receive those prisoners who would agree to be released and immediately exiled together with their families. Of the 79 prisoners of conscience 56 were still behind bars at the time of the agreement. Of the total group, 21 are still living in Cuba today whereas the others are in exile, most of them in Spain. The final two prisoners were released on 23 March 2011.[35]
Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez) was jailed for criticizing communism and spent 17 years in jail until released in 2007. As the longest-serving jailed black dissident when he was released, he has been referred to as Cuba's Nelson Mandela.[36] Nelson Mendela, on the other hand, was an outspoken supporter of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro, crediting him with the liberation of his country.[37]
Jose Luis Llovio-Menendez, bureaucrat, defected in 1981.[citation needed]
Rafael del Pino Díaz, Brigadier General. Highest government official to have defected so far, in 1987[citation needed]
Independent bloggers
The Foreign Policy magazine named Yoani Sánchez one of the 10 Most Influential Intellectuals of Latin America, the only woman on the list.[38] An article in El Nuevo Herald by Ivette Leyva Martinez,[39] speaks to the role played by Yoani Sanchez and other young people, outside the Cuban opposition and dissidence movements, in working towards a free and democratic Cuba today:
Amid the paralysis of the dissident movement, bloggers, with Yoani Sánchez in the lead, rebel artists such as the writer Orlando Luís Pardo, and musicians such as Gorki Aguila are a promising sign of growing civic resistance to the Cuban dictatorship. And "el castrismo", without doubt, has taken note. Will they succeed in sparking a popular movement, or at least consciousness of the need for democracy in Cuba? Who knows. The youngest sector of Cuban society is the one least committed to the dictatorship but at the same time the most apolitical, the one most permeated with political skepticism, escapism, and other similar "isms". It would seem, however, that after 50 years of dictatorship, public rejection of that regime is taking on more original and independent forms. Finally, a breeze of fresh, hopeful air.
On 29 March 2009, at Tania Bruguera's performance where a podium with an open mic was staged for people to have one minute of uncensored public speech, Sánchez was among people to publicly criticize censorship in Cuba and said that "the time has come to jump over the wall of control". The government condemned the event.[40][41] Sánchez was then placed under surveillance by the Cuban police.[42]
On Thursday, 10 June 2010, seventy-four of Cuba's dissidents signed a letter to the United States Congress in support of a bill that would lift the US travel ban for Americans wishing to visit Cuba. The signers include blogger Yoani Sanchez and hunger striker Guillermo Farinas, as well as Elizardo Sanchez, head of Cuba's most prominent human rights group and Miriam Leiva, who helped found the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, a group of wives and mothers of jailed dissidents. The letter supports a bill introduced on 23 February by Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, that would bar the president from prohibiting travel to Cuba or blocking transactions required to make such trips. It also would bar the White House from stopping direct transfers between US and Cuban banks. The signers stated that:
We share the opinion that the isolation of the people of Cuba benefits the most inflexible interests of its government, while any opening serves to inform and empower the Cuban people and helps to further strengthen our civil society.[43]
The Center for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based group supporting the bill, issued a press release stating that "74 of Cuba's most prominent political dissidents have endorsed the Peterson-Moran legislation to end the travel ban and expand food exports to Cuba because in their words it is good for human rights, good for alleviating hunger, and good for spreading information and showing solidarity with the Cuban people. Their letter answers every argument the pro-embargo forces use to oppose this legislation. This, itself, answers the question 'who is speaking for the Cuban people in this debate?' - those who want to send food and Americans to visit the island and stand with ordinary Cubans, or those who don't. If Cuba's best known bloggers, dissidents, hunger strikers, and other activists for human rights want this legislation enacted, what else needs be said?"[44][45] The Center also hosts English[46] as well as the Spanish[47] version of the letter signed by the 74 dissidents.
On 3 April 1972, Pedro Luis Boitel, an imprisoned poet and dissident, declared himself on hunger strike. After 53 days on hunger strike without receiving medical assistance and receiving only liquids, he died of starvation on 25 May 1972. His last days were related by his close friend, poet Armando Valladares. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cólon Cemetery in Havana.
Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez) has done hunger strikes. In 2009, following the end of his 17-year imprisonment, Antúnez, his wife Iris, and Diosiris Santana Pérez started a hunger strike to support other political prisoners. Leaders from Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Argentina declared their support for Antúnez.[51][52]
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an imprisoned activist and dissident, died while on a hunger strike for more than 80 days.[53] Zapata went on the strike in protest against the Cuban government for having denied him the choice of wearing white dissident clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform, as well as denouncing the living conditions of other prisoners. As part of his claim, Zapata was asking for the prisoners conditions to be comparable to those that Fidel Castro had while incarcerated after his 1953 attack against the Moncada Barracks.[54]
Cuban dissident groups have received millions in funding from the USA government and are considered by the Cuban government to be part of the United States strategy for Cuba to destabilize the country.[3][57]
Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio told Reuters in 2022:
"In any nation, [having people who act as foreign government agents] is illegal, That is precisely what the United States is trying to promote in Cuba today .
[The U.S.A is] depressing the standard of living of the population and at the same time pouring millions of US taxpayer dollars into urging people to act against the [Cuban] government,"[3]
^Carlos Lauria; Monica Campbell; María Salazar (18 March 2008). "Cuba's Long Black Spring". The Committee To Protect Journalists. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011.
^Pedraza, Silvia 2007 Political Disaffection in Cuba's Revolution and Exodus (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)) Cambridge University Press ISBN978-0-521-68729-4, ISBN978-0-521-68729-4 p. 2 and many other sections of this book
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