What, Castro’s afraid more athletes might defect?
Cuba won’t send a boxing team to the world championships in Chicago, heeding Fidel Castro’s fears about future defections after two fighters abandoned their teammates during the Pan American Games.
The competition is one of three qualifying tournaments for the 2008 Olympics.
LOL! Be afraid, Fidel, be VERY afraid! Mwahahaha!
Tomorrow (Monday) a big court date is set for the custody battle between the foster, and would be adoptive parents of a young Cuban girl in Miami, and her father from Cuba:
Nearly eight years after the battle over young Elian Gonzalez divided this city, another Cuban child has become the center of a bitter custody fight. A trial is set to begin Monday in family court over whether the 4-year-old girl’s father can regain custody of his daughter or whether she should remain with the wealthy Cuban-American former sports agent and his wife who want to adopt her.
We’ve mentioned this story before, as have numerous other blogs and websites. What makes this case especially interesting is the fact that the foster father was only recently revealed as Joe Cubas, a sports agent best known for representing defecting Cuban baseball stars. A few days ago, Babalu Blog posted that this was a case of revenge by Castro; I agree. Sure smells like it.
And here’s an interesting quote from today’s article, the one I’m posting about here:
Both (the girl’s mother, Elena) Perez and (head of the Cuba Study Group Carlos) Saladrigas said the community’s fear was that in both the Elian case and this one the fathers were pressured to bring the children back by the Castro government.
“The concern is whether they are speaking from their heart or being coerced, and there is no clear answer to that. You will never know,” Saladrigas said, adding, “If it wouldn’t be for that it would be a no-brainer.”
Funny how that got buried at the end of the article.
Sending two Cuban boxers back to prison over a technicality instead of letting them find asylum in another country, such as Germany, where they had applied for such:
Two Cuban boxers who abandoned the Pan American Games were deported from Brazil because of problems with their visas and not political pressure from Cuba, Brazil’s justice minister said.
Justice Minister Tarso Genro said Thursday that police tracked down boxers Guillermo Rigondeaux and Erislandy Lara after the Cuban delegation made a formal complaint that the two had disappeared during the games last month, the government news agency Agencia Brasil said.
But he said the Cubans were deported according to the law because of visa irregularities.
Here’s a very telling piece of the article (emphasis mine):
“The Cuban government didn’t ask for anything,” Perez Roque told Folha de S. Paulo news agency, retracting a previous statement to the contrary.
Castro’s liars can’t even get their stories straight.
then you KNOW you did a good thing:
Cuba branded Hungary an “imperial accomplice” of Washington on Wednesday for granting political asylum to 29 Cubans who were held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base.
Those given Hungarian visas were among 44 Cubans picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. Authorities deemed them at risk of persecution if repatriated and held the group at the U.S. base while officials sought a third country to take them.
Many were dissidents, and some were at the base more than two years.
The Cubans at the Guantanamo base included 17 who staged a hunger strike to protest conditions, but it ended August 17 when Hungary announced it would take 29 migrants.
A third country was expected to take seven more, and five others were approved to go to the United States. One chose to return to Cuba for family reasons, and the status of a couple who were offered Hungarian visas but apparently refused them was unclear.
Too effing bad, Castro. Screw you and the horse/hearse you’re riding in if you don’t like it.
Babalu Blog and a few others have been watching closely as Matt Lauer (of NBC’s Today Show) reports from Cuba this week. As can be expected of the MSM’s coverage of Cuba, Today’s reportage has left viewers with an inaccurate impression of the island and the 48 years of Castroite destruction of the Pearl of the Antilles.
A friend of mine wrote Matt Lauer a letter about his broadcasting the Today Show live from Cuba. She gave me permission to post the letter on my blog, as long as I maintain her anonymity, which I will. The full letter follows.
This is the email I sent Matt Lauer, NBC the network and NBC 6 the local affiliate this morning:
Matt,
I have been waking up to the Today Show since Barbara Walters anchored; I was in my teens, I am now a middle aged woman. I have followed your career and have admired much of your work. I don’t know if this email will get to you or not, but as do all who see you five mornings a week, I feel I know you and so will speak to you as if we really did know one another: The journalistic quality of this morning’s report left much to be desired. I feel sad and disappointed. I feel you sold out.I understand NBC’s goals of setting up a bureau in Cuba dictated the premise for your report. I understand that you work for a conglomerate who decrees rules you must follow. But you are a journalist! You could have done so much better! You did nothing more than recite what was give to you by the government. You did what most other major news media do: you pandered to the tyrant’s regime. I don’t believe you bought it. I caught a couple pf phrases here and there, “Cubans are not allowed on the beaches”; “Cubans earn the equivalent of $.50 per day”; your question: “Wouldn’t the embargo be a leveraging tool for change?” I trust you would have asked more serious questions had you been allowed, but you weren’t, right?
You know you didn’t showcase one regular Cuban. You interviewed only those selected by the nomenclature. Did you research the pro-democracy movement? Did you request permission to interview the Ladies in White? (An internal opposition movement that unites the spouses, mothers and sisters of dissidents jailed by the government of Fidel Castro. These women protest the unlawful imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white clothing symbolizing peace, and then silently walking through the streets. They received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005).
Did you make an effort to report on the sub-human conditions of Cuba’s political prisons? Were you denied?
Again, I heard little messages in your report: While standing outside the Cathedral you mentioned the word, “tourism apartheid”. I believe you weren’t fooled. I believe you slipped it in and hopefully someone in the millions of viewers caught it. Indeed, tourism apartheid is systematically practiced by the Communist regime against the people of Cuba . But why didn’t you emphasize this? Cubans are not allowed into the beaches, into the stores, into the hotels, on the plaza from which you were reporting. The grocery stores, shoe stores, clothing stores, all shops that sell the basic necessities of life do not accept the Cuban peso! The currency in which workers are paid is not accepted to purchase goods! This condition is unique to Cuba. You would have been the first US journalist from a major media source to report this! Instead of producing what could have been a journalistic coup, NBC and the Today Show chose to focus on the music, the “guayaberas”, the provocative dancing and the voluptuous shape of Cuban women.
Did you ask to visit a hospital? A real hospital for Cubans, not one for tourists? Had you done so you would have learned that while hospitals catering to tourists enjoy every comfort available in the modern world, women in delivery rooms must bring in buckets of water from home to wash themselves and their newborns! You would have learned that Cubans depend on their relatives in the US and around the world for everything from drugs to medical equipment to the light bulb for the operating room before a surgical procedure can be carried out!
If while standing in the Cathedral Plaza you could have asked how many would like to leave this Stalinist “paradise” and come with you to America, if you had offered them safe passage to anywhere in the globe, most if not all would have joined you without so much as a look back. Don’t you wonder why so many risk their lives to escape?
Matt, if after being fed the propaganda of the regime and offering the American public the innocuous pulp you presented, your journalistic soul still harbors questions about the real Cuban people, you can still do something about it:
- You can contact Yarai Reyes, wife of an independent journalist Normando Hern�ndez. A 2007 recipient of the Pen Club International Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award which honors prominent figures who have been persecuted or imprisoned for exercising or defending the right to freedom of expression, Mr. Hernandez is languishing in a Cuban prison. (From the US you may reach her by calling: 011-5332-37564).
- Mr. Hernandez was arrested in March 2003 along with 74 other journalists and activists considered to be dissidents by the Cuban government. He was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment under Article 91 of the Cuban Criminal Code.
- You can contact Elsa Morejon, the wife of human rights’ activist, pro-democracy leader and President of the Lawton Foundation, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, sentenced to 25 years in prison. His crime: flying the Cuban flag upside down (an internationally recognized symbol of distress) as a way of protesting the abuses against human rights in Cuba.
A physician and a very spiritual man who follows the philosophies of Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Biscet is regularly beaten and subjected to brutal interrogations. As a black man, a non-violent activist struggling to bring democracy to Cuba , Dr. Biscet embodies the dreams of the 11 million Cubans on the island. Amnesty International has declared him a “prisoner of conscience”.
Your response to Ann on the fact that Elian Gonzalez’ family has not seen him since his abduction: “this divide between Cuba and the US”, sadly demonstrates that you don’t get it: The issue is between Fidel Castro and his murderous cronies and the Cuban people.
To save you or whomever reads this from speculation: I was born in Cuba , and have lived in the US for 48 years. I know of no one whose interest in the freedom of Cuba is based on “taking back properties”. What drives me as any other freedom-loving individual is the wish to see an end to this bloody and despotic regime whose only legacy after almost half a century is lack of basic human freedoms, thousands of political prisoners, forced exile for hundreds of thousands of its people, systematic government corruption and a “surveillance society”.
Sadly Matt, you are just as misinformed as everyone else in the US . As I write this I am overwhelmed not only by a feeling of indignation but more by the sadness of realizing that no one understands the tragedy of Cuba. Cubans living in Cuba have no voice. The world turns a deaf ear to the Cuban diaspora. Your report today only pandered to the basest desires of capitalism. You ignored the Cuban people’s tragedy and repeated scripted nonsense. I am angry and heartbroken. You report could have been a light in the darkness.
For readers who wonder why I’ve been silent on the recent hijacking of the airplane in Cuba by a group of young conscripts… well, I’ve been extraordinarily busy this week. I do have a “day job,” after all.
My take on the thing is I could understand why they want to leave. They just chose the wrong way to do it. I suppose desperation drives you to do irrational things. The young guys who did it are not going to get a fair trial–if they even get a trial at all–and the reason for their taking an airplane won’t fly (pardon the pun) with Castro.
Sadly, I think you can count in days how much longer these youngsters are going to remain alive. There’s not going to be an appeal. There’s not going to be an international “Free the Three” campaign. No long, drawn out drama. Just an execution of three young men whose only crime is wanting to be free.
That’s why I was surprised to find coverage somewhat sympathetic to the young men in the Seattle Times. Normally, we in Miami think of Seattle as an ultra-liberal enclave and so you’d expect their newspapers only to provide coverage sympathetic to Castro and not would-be defectors:
Cuba analysts said the deadly hijacking attempt reflected the discontent among the island’s young people. More than 20 percent of Cuba’s 11.4 million people were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the economic hardship that followed the fall of Cuba’s once-powerful benefactor. At least one-third of the nearly 1 million Cubans who have left the island for the U.S. since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 did so after 1999, according to a Pew study of U.S. Census data.
“These were 19-, 21-year-old kids, and they obviously felt extreme desperation that they were willing to take those risks,” said Brian Latell, a Cuba analyst and author of “After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader.”
I think this says something important. Youngsters who have been indoctrinated practically since birth know instinctively that there is something terribly wrong with Castro’s version of Cuba.
According to Channel 7 in Miami (WSVN TV), 11 adults and two children have made it to shore safely from Cuba in the Miami area. The 13 are reported in good health as they made landfall near Key Biscayne in Miami. The news coming on the High Holy Day of communism, May Day. Ha!
Through the eyes of a Mariel refugee:
Argelio del Valle had no plan. All his best ideas had failed him. A 29-year-old mechanic, he had dreamed up several elaborate plots to leave Cuba. But something always went wrong. In the worst instance, he and his friends were caught and put under house arrest.
So when he took a 40-minute bus ride from his town of El Cotorro to Havana in the spring of 1980, he had no plan. He was only curious.
He had heard there was a ruckus at the Peruvian Embassy in the upscale Miramar neighborhood. Days earlier, a bus loaded with 12 asylum-seeking Cubans crashed a bus through the embassy gates, setting off a frenzy that left one guard dead. That morning, in retaliation, Fidel Castro withdrew police protection. Cubans from all over were heading inside. Del Valle wanted to scope out the scene.
But when his bus got to Havana, del Valle realized he had reached a point of no return. He saw swarms of Cubans in the streets. When the driver stopped the bus two blocks from the embassy, everybody bolted – even the bus driver.
For del Valle, it was the chance he dreamed of. He had felt marginalized for too many years in his homeland because he refused to be a Communist true believer. He says the government blocked his educational opportunities and his aspirations of becoming an engineer and routinely harassed him.
So that day, del Valle and his best friend, Antonio, joined the throngs rushing toward the embassy gates.
“I realized that if I didn’t go in at that very minute, I would lose the chance to escape Cuba,” recalls del Valle, now 58, a West Palm Beach auto mechanic. “I knew we were risking getting shot or arrested. But in times like that, when you see people marching so heroically, courage is contagious.”
It was a day like today, 27 years ago this month. Little did he imagine that he would come to take part in a massive, chaotic exodus that would bring 125,000 Cuban refugees from Port Mariel to South Florida shores. And he could not imagine all the dramatic ways his life would change. But he was a chess player, and he knew he had to make his move.
Read the rest of this terrific article here.
The biggest advocates for a free Cuba in Europe are the Czechs. Clearly it’s because they once felt the yoke of communism around their own necks and they haven’t forgotten. God bless them.
Prague was probably the last place on the minds of three Cuban families when they set out from their island home on a rickety boat in 2005.
But, late last month, Prague is where they ended their year-and-a-half-long ordeal in search of a new life. They are the first Cubans ever to be granted asylum in the Czech Republic, a move that further solidifies the Czech Republic’s harshly critical stance toward Fidel Castro’s communist regime.
The families’ journey started with a treacherous boat trip across the Straits of Florida, where they were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard. Then back to Cuba to a U.S.-operated facility at Guantanamo Bay, where they waited for a country — any country — to accept their plea for asylum. After more than a year, that answer finally came from halfway around the world, in Central Europe. On March 20, the 10 men, women and children boarded a plane and flew to their new homes in Prague.
The families are eager to build a new home here, said Interior Ministry spokesman Petr Vorlíček.
“They are cheerful and optimistic. In the short term, learning Czech is a main priority,” he said. “In the long run, they would like to find jobs and the children want to get an education.”Personal details are tightly under wraps, because the families fear reprisals against friends and relatives back in Cuba. They declined to be interviewed or photographed. What is known is that two of the families have children under 18, and one family has an infant son.
“All three families decided to leave Cuba because of persecution due to their political or religious beliefs,” Vorlíček said. For some, this had been their fourth attempt to flee. Because of their parents’ involvement in dissidence, the children were bullied and prevented from going to school in Cuba, he said.
Besides language difficulties, they’re also adjusting to the markedly less tropical climate. But they’re also eager about the quality of health care and education here, and the relative freedom with which they can live their lives.
It’s no coincidence that the Czech government reached out to these particular families.
Under communism, Cuba and Czechoslovakia shared close ties. But since the 1989 revolution that ended communism here, a revolution largely fueled by the dissident movement, Czechs have increasingly angered the Cuban regime by supporting dissidence there. Diplomatic relations in recent years have been tense, and the Czech Republic is one of the strongest voices in the European Union lobbying for a tougher stance against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.“We feel we have a similar experience with a communist regime. We hope we will also have a similar experience of transition out of communism,” said Jiří Knitl, head of Cuban projects at Prague-based human rights group People In Need.
Whatever bickering goes on within the government, “I think there’s a consensus in our foreign policy against Cuba,” he said.
“Human rights are a very important priority for the Czech Republic,” and Cuba is one of the main focuses of that, said Džamila Stehlíková, minister in charge of human rights issues.
God bless the Czech Republic.
Rough seas can’t deter the human yearning for freedom:
Nearly two dozen Cubans braved wind whipped seas to make a dangerous crossing to South Florida.
The 21 migrants were dropped off Monday morning at the toll plaza on the Rickenbacker Causeway. They told CBS4’s Yusila Ramirez they left Cuba on Friday, and spent the following two days in extremely rough seas.
“The conditions were rough, the waves were huge out there, but everybody stayed calm and here we are safe and sound,” said Andre, “everyone was anxious to arrive. We did everything right to here. I was scared, now I’m just cold.”
If the “Socialist Paradise” is such a wonderful place, why do so many Cubans brave 90-plus miles of treacherous sea in makeshift rafts to leave?
