By Karen Wald

HAVANA -- I was (once again) amazed at Amnesty International's naivete reflected in its posting “Human Rights At Risk” regarding recent events in Cuba.

One wonders whether the people at Amnesty International who send out items regarding “human rights in Cuba” or any of the people who re-post their misinformation ever even read the regular wire services (such as Reuters and IPS), let alone keep track of news posted in the APC networks.

It is astounding when a conscious US policy is forcing thousands to risk their own lives (and often those of small children) in dangerous ocean crossings on flimsy vessels, and people whose concern for their own economic welfare leads them to ignore the human rights of the people they shoot, force overboard, take hostage and traumatise as they hijack boats to get to the “Land of Plenty”, that Amnesty is capable of presenting such a lopsided, ridiculous view of what has been happening in Cuba in recent weeks.

For Amnesty's information, the young toughs who hurled bricks and smashed heads were not doing so against “government security forces” -- they were doing it against ordinary citizens and an occasional unsuspecting cop on the beat. It was not these “rebels” who were the victims of violence -- they were the perpetrators. Their victims were guilty only of supporting a revolution they still consider to be theirs or, in some cases, of just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The young man who lost an eye from a heaved brick was a construction worker. The one who lies paralysed from two crushed vertebrae was an athlete. If these young men had been opponents instead of supporters of the government (that is, of the Cuban revolution), there would have been a huge international outcry, most especially by Amnesty. Where is the concern for their human rights?

The policeman shot and killed by hijackers while riding the Havana Bay ferry when it was hijacked was only 19 years old. He had recently graduated from the police academy, proud to have done so because his family taught him to love and defend the revolution that freed them from four centuries of racism and impoverishment. (If Amnesty had really been doing its job, it might have noted that this young man was descended from former slaves in the remote province of Guant namo, the same province where the US Navy base keeps Haitians, who try to get to the US, in concentration camps -- over Cuban protests and in violation of international human rights.)

Or Amnesty might have been moved by the fact that the 39-year-old black Navy lieutenant shot in the head and stomach by another Cuban eager to reach Miami left behind a wife and three young children, or that his three shipmates forced overboard by the armed hijacker and nearly drowned certainly were having their human rights violated.

There is a specific source of blame for these violent episodes, and it is the US blockade and the cynical US manipulation of immigration policy (rejecting over 90% of those who apply to emigrate legally from Cuba, while welcoming with no strings attached all those who arrive illegally, even if they have committed murder to do so).

Is Amnesty saying that it is all right for people to use violence and commit murder if their goal is to get to the US, or if those who suffer and die are supporters of a regime they believe is oppressing Amnesty's pets -- the “dissidents” who speak out against the Revolution? Amnesty would be the first to disclaim this -- yet in effect, that is what it is doing by repeating distorted versions of events here in Cuba, and aiming its critiques not at the US policy that creates this situation but at alleged unwarranted arrests of those it presumes (or is led to believe) are non-violent protesters.

Amnesty should stop being so gullibly led by those who would undo a system of social justice which most members and supporters of Amnesty would like to see implemented everywhere in the world, if they could only open their eyes and see it for what it is. The “dissidents” supported by the US Interests Section, CIA and anti-revolutionary Cubans around the world are not the honest, progressive, freedom-loving people Amnesty liberals believe them to be. And the revolution led by Fidel Castro, with all its human defects and deficiencies, is not the repressive monster that those who would demonise in order to destroy it would have you believe.
[Both items on this page came via the Pegasus email network.]

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
For further details regarding subscriptions and
correspondence please contact glw@greenleft.org.au

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page