Terence Blacker: We can’t ignore Cuba’s dark side
Many prefer their illusions about Castro to remain unblemished
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Independent Minds
It turns out that freedom of expression is largely a matter of fashion. Some acts of censorship are titillating and promotable, while others are downright embarrassing. So, in the week when there was considerable fuss over the alleged banning of a book at the Dubai Literary Festival, the deteriorating health under appalling conditions of 21 Cuban writers, journalists and librarians serving long prison sentences barely merits a paragraph – and is then denied by an apparently sane and respectable British academic.
Cuba, of course, is tricky. It is a plucky little country which has defied the bullying of its mighty neighbour. Its revolution has become the stuff of Hollywood films. It has a good health service, wonderful music and lovely cigars. The Castro regime is one which, for romantic lefties living in comfort in the West, still represents the smiling face of revolutionary socialism.
In this context, it is an awkward fact that a group of people who are similarly independent-minded and articulate, but who happen to be Cuban, were rounded up by the authorities in 2001. The crime of these 75 writers was that they were arguing for democracy. In short order – all the trials took place over two days and behind closed doors – they were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. The families of those who remain in prison tell increasingly grim stories of beatings, solitary confinement, dire food and medical conditions causing serious illness in some cases.
It was to this little-publicised aspect of Cuban life which the writers’ organisation English PEN brought attention on this month’s 50th anniversary of the Castro revolution. The reaction, as is so often the case with Cuba, has been bizarre and vaguely shameful. In the past, Ken Livingstone has dismissed criticism of the Cuban government’s human rights record as coming from those “with a very right-wing perspective”. This week’s Fidelista has taken a different tack. Rebutting PEN’s call to arms in a letter to The Guardian, Professor Michael Chanan concedes that there might be Cuban prisoners “classed from outside as political” but they are kept in good conditions. Chanan himself had, he says, filmed political prisoners in 1986: they had actually “declined to let us film their quarters because they didn’t want people to see how decent they were.”
In other words, like Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and others, Professor Chanan believes that PEN, Amnesty International and indeed the United Nations Commission on Human Rights are inventing the grim circumstances of the imprisoned writers (details of which can be found on www.englishpen.org).
On his website, the professor makes great claim for the new freedom enjoyed by Cuban film-makers; it is apparently only those who argue for a second political party who might find themselves in a bit of trouble. There are many like him who prefer their illusions about the Castro to remain unblemished. If these people are truly interested in allowing the truth to be told, they will convince the Cuban authorities to allow visits to the imprisoned writers. So far, the prisoners have kept out of sight and contact from the outside world. If that remains the case, only one conclusion can be drawn.
Tony Benn, a great champion of the Castro revolution, once said that “socialism has always been about democracy, human rights and internationalism”. For Cuba, one out of three is no longer enough.
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Comments
I'm a liberal, a writer and a member of a trade union. As such, I cannot abide a country that allows neither freedom of expression nor rights for workers that include advocacy from outside the government.
Countries such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago may have slightly lower literacy rates and medical standards. They also have noisy, robust democracy. Meanwhile, Cuba's CLR Jameses have been stifled.
We also need to remember that the previous regime in Cuba, under Batista, was even more horrific murdering and torturing socialist, or anyone else who was inconvenient to their mafioso regime.
Any dictator is despicable, Castro included, but at least he has managed to feed the Cuban people against overwhelming odds against a hostile super-power 70 miles from his shores, that has imposed an embargo for decades. The same super-power that has aided and abetted countless murders in the hemisphere, in cooperation with fascist dictators, such as Stroessner and Pinochet.
The only consolation for the real Cubans, living on the island, is that Raul Castro appears to be willing to work with the European Union and possibly Obama, to move the country further towards democracy.
A move that could never have been achieved during the Bush administration, frightened to offend the useless one-dimensional republican politicians from South Florida, and the Batista mafia still active in Miami.
In most countries, acting as the undeclared agent of a foreign power is a crime, to do so in a time of war is treason. Who can deny that the USA has waged an undeclared terrorist war against Cuba since their failed Bay of Pigs invasion? John Bolton, as UN Representative of the USA, even accused Cuba in 2003 of having a WMD program - precisely the excuse he and the Bush administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq in that year, on equally non-existent evidence. The UK Independent may seek to re-write history, but the facts speak for themselves.
Poor old Nester Baguer has gone to his eternal reward, his diagnosis with terminal cancer was the reason for the timing of the trials in quick succession. His heroic life story will feature in a forthcoming documentary by Bernie Dwyer on the so called "Dissidents" due out later this year.
Perhaps they are still paying 'journalists' to write 'stories', but can't find any Cubans to do it?