Now,
all 53 promised Cuban political
prisoners have been released, some of whom I mentioned before, namely our own
Amnesty prisoners of conscience. I also see that Lady in White Sonia Garro and
her co-defendants are included, http://abcn.ws/1y5gril.
Fox News reports that 2 of the 53
political prisoners released in Cuba were re-arrested:
According to
independent media sources in Cuba, Ronaldo Reyes Rabanal and Luís Enrique
Labrador – along with other activists – were arrested while attending a meeting
of the opposition group, Movement for a New Republic. Lazara María Borrego
Guzmán, a member of the Ladies in White opposition movement, was also allegedly
arrested during the meeting and Cuban officials allegedly broke her arm.
The
following seems like a fairly balanced and correct
summary of the human rights challenges in Cuba now: http://news.yahoo.com/dissidents-struggle-regroup-us-cuba-move-closer-031137060.html
The Huffington Post asked for comments on
the Obama/Castro accords, but rejected mine, saying it had too many
submissions. I noted that all those posted were from Cuban Americans. Here is
my submission anyway:
U.S.-Cuba Agreement, Historic Breakthrough
or Backward Step?
As a lifelong Democrat, former Fidel Castro admirer, and human rights
activist involved with Cuba going back to 1951, I’ve greeted the Obama/Raúl Castro agreement with cautious optimism; at least, it has shaken up the
status quo. Cubans should no longer be punished for being agents of “the
Empire” and internet access may increase. Whether political as well as economic
openings will result looks unlikely during the Castro brothers’ lifetime, so,
in the short term, probably the best that can be hoped for is a system like
that of China or Vietnam: economic opportunities without civil and political
rights. Even that would be welcomed by most Cubans, bringing hope to a country
with one of the world’s highest suicide rates and the lowest birthrate in Latin
America. Pressing to allow outside investors to hire and pay their workers
directly would provide a big step forward, replacing a system of selecting
workers by the Cuban government, which now gives them only a small fraction of
what their services actually command. That also applies to doctors sent to
treat Ebola patients or to Venezuela and Brazil to earn money for the
regime. Although I’m of European descent
and age 76, I’m now a Spanish interpreter who recently spent over 3 years as a
Peace Corps health volunteer in Honduras, working closely with Cuban doctors. I
still return annually for humanitarian projects there, including this upcoming
February.
I joined Amnesty
International (AI) back in 1981, where in 1984, our local group welcomed 26
long-term Cuban political prisoners whose names we’d given to presidential
candidate Jesse Jackson before he traveled to Cuba. All were released with him, most having been
kept years beyond their original 20-year sentences. For the last 11 years, I’ve served as
volunteer Caribbean coordinator for AI USA. Thankfully, the Obama/Castro
accords have just resulted in freeing five Amnesty POCs (prisoners of
conscience, the only POCs in the Americas): brothers Bianco, Django and Alexeis
Vargas Martín, conditionally released, and Iván Fernández Depestre and Emilio Planas, imprisoned for
“dangerousness.” Bianco and Django are twins arrested when they were only 16.
Afro-Cuban Lady in White Sonia Garro, husband Ramón
Muñoz, and neighbor Eugenio
Hernández , have now been released to house arrest after almost three
years, including reportedly suffering beatings by prison officials. These
releases, which we in Amnesty have been working on long and hard, are most
welcome, though we still advocate for the removal of all restrictions on those
released and for a fair and a speedy trial for Garro and her associates,
allowing them to call witnesses and present evidence.
My Cuba connections are
many and personal, including a Cuban foster son, Alex, an unaccompanied minor
from the 1980 Mariel boatlift, who was gay and died of AIDS in 1995. Later, I
sheltered a rafter released from Guantánamo, José Manuel. Via Mexico, I brought to this country a young mechanic, Armando,
with a congenital kidney disease not being in treated in Cuba. I made numerous
visits to Cuba in the 1990s, once by sailboat, and met with Catholic clergy and
dissidents all over the island, only to be ejected by state security in 1997,
so haven’t returned since. Still, I dare
to envision a Peace Corps presence in Cuba’s future, just as now in China.
Despite a successful worldwide PR campaign, Cuba is no bastion of social and
economic rights; many health service deficiencies exist on the island (except
in showplace facilities for paying tourists and the political elite) and in
agricultural production (most food is imported, with the US being the biggest
supplier despite the embargo); both are areas where Peace Corps works
successfully elsewhere. Afro-Cubans are especially disadvantaged because they
have fewer relatives abroad sending remittances and are less often chosen for
tourism, now the most desirable jobs in Cuba. Formerly imprisoned dissidents
estimate that 85% of the island’s prison population has African heritage.
My special interest,
because of my work in Honduras, is blind services. I was recently privileged to
meet Juan Carlos González Leiva, a
blind Cuban lawyer and activist from Ciego de Avila, allowed his first visit
outside his country. González Leiva was imprisoned for more than two years,
held subsequently under house arrest, and detained several times since. He has
repeatedly suffered officially sanctioned “acts of repudiation.” He told me he
has organized an (illegal) organization of blind Cubans and gives food and
money to some 20 or 30 people who visit his home daily. He mentioned a
malnourished little girl whom his family has taken in. “We also help people
write letters to the authorities,” he said. He often visits prisons and
distributes food there. The government would like to shut down his operation
and, at many of his meetings, there are more state security agents than genuine
members.
So the
US-Cuba accords have many nuances and unexplored byways—the change is not all
black or white, but, like almost everything, represents various shades of gray.
Anyway, it’s a done deal, so let’s build on the strengths of the new accords
while trying to remedy their remaining deficits.
I wrote letters recently for asylum seekers trying to
avoid deportation to the DR and Guyana,
both countries within my Caribbean jurisdiction for Amnesty International USA.
My
friend Anna, whom I first met when
we were teenagers in Colombia, and who visited me in Honduras (as per my
Honduras book), is still in the hospital, after being run over by a pickup
truck on Nov. 29 at her assisted living facility in a New England state while
she was out walking in the evening using a walker. I speak with her periodically
by phone where she has been undergoing painful treatments. Although it was a
very serious accident and she’s even a bit older than I am, she seems to be
progressing, though slowly, and has just started rehab. If I weren’t living so
far away and weren’t scheduled to go to Honduras shortly, I would certainly
visit her.
Another
visit I would like to make, time and money permitting, is the 100th birthday on Sunday of
Egyptian-born Wanda, mother of my
friend Carol, living in rural Vermont right next door to her daughter. I sent
them a basket of goodies to share at their birthday party, not the same as
being there, but recognition nonetheless. Wanda still lives alone on her own,
though Carol visits her every day; both are remarkable women.
Apropos
of nothing in particular, I’ve been amused to see an on-line mention of a black
lab, looking just like our late beloved
Claire, getting on a Seattle bus by herself to take a ride to the dog park,
where she duly gets off to run around.
If
dogs can sometimes be free-ranging
(though that’s illegal in most cities), with children the practice is even more
controversial. A couple living in Suburban Maryland is under fire for letting
their two children, ages 10 and 6, walk home alone together, about a mile, coming
back from a park, where they were playing apparently unsupervised. I am torn,
frankly, about such practices as I walked everywhere, including to school about
a mile away, and played freely outside for hours at a time without any adult
supervision at least from the age of 8, maybe earlier. At age 9, I even babysat
2 little children living next door, earning 25 cents per hour and feeling very
grown-up, able to call my own mother for help in an emergency. However, these
days, the outside world is considered more dangerous and, now, I wouldn’t feel
comfortable allowing my great-grandson, age 7, to play alone outside beyond his
own front yard or my front sidewalk. Probably the risks were not any less when
we were young, but perhaps we are now more aware of them. Something is lost
when children don’t have the chance to gradually achieve independence, yet
certainly when we were young, kids suffered injuries and abductions, perhaps
even more so than now, though in the absence of social media, we were unaware
of the extent.
I’ll be
leaving in early Feb. on my 11th return trip to Honduras since
Peace Corps, so if you have anything to send or to say to me beforehand, remember
that once there, I won’t have regular e-mail access.
