Circles,
We have probably reached the end of this string. I agree with you that Cuba overreacted to July 11-12 in arrests and violent treatment of protestors, and about the harsh sentencing emerging from trials, but we disagree over how the US can productively and humanely respond.
Do you agree that some of the protestors committed acts that would be considered criminal here, or do you follow the view of excusers of violence in US racial justice protests and Tania Bruguera about Cuba.
“[Vandalizing] the food stores means they are hungry and there is no way they have access to food. And turning over the police cars is saying they have enough of the police abuse. The people have spoken very clearly….” https://cubapeopletopeople.blogspot.com/2021/08/violence-in-protests-outside-involvement.html
Like during the Black Spring trials (and some trials in the US), I believe that objective justice is not being provided by the courts. But I also do not take as self-evident truth the claims of total innocence by protestors and their supporters and family members.
I have no illusion that my call for a diplomatic solution will be taken seriously be either government. Cuba will pay a price by alienating sectors of domestic opinion because of its draconian court actions, as often happens in the US in reaction to unfair politicized trials. The US will pay a price by losing any positive influence in Cuba’s evolution and by advantaging Russia and China as they seek to offset US presence in their proclaimed spheres of interest.
Circles,
I agree that ending the embargo is a big lift. Expecting the Cuban government to “set free and annul the sentences of all its political prisoners and for starters the hundreds of people who protested on July 11th” is an equally big lift.
A unilateral embargo is an act of economic warfare and conditions everything, including deep mistrust of US motives even when we do good things. It is closely linked to the goal of regime change. Add in millions of dollars annually for USAID and NED “democracy” programs, Radio and TV Marti and presumably covert regime change funding, you are asking more of Cuba than the US has manifested when it feels under threat.*
Cuba was too cautious in its reaction to Obama, too fearful of Trojan Horses. I have wondered if Obama had followed the example of the Popes and made a courtesy call to Fidel whether the reaction would have been different. It is also clear that the US did not do as much as it could, most notably on banking agreements and letting Cuba join International Financial Institutions and receive infrastructure loans. Obama could have solved the Guantanamo problem had he followed the path opened by Ben Rhodes and Alejandro Castro. Unfortunately both governments put off harder steps, assuming that President Hilary Clinton would move the process forward.
Biden-Harris did much to create the current impossible situation by ignoring their campaign pledges. Refusal to abandon Trump by restoring remittances, travel, regional flights, exchanges, etc. had both material and psychological impact on the hope Cubans had put on hold during the Bolton/Claver-Carone era of Trump. It also affected Cuban government attitudes about the space it could risk giving to opposition. My personal hope is that going back to Obama-Castro would be enough to prompt release of all but the most violent and destructive protestors. The additional step of legalization of all travel and normal agricultural sales would provide more confidence in the permanence of rapprochement.
Restoring Obama should happen because it is “a unilateral action to do what is right, not because of some future deal with” Cuba.
In reality, neither side will budge because it is in principle the right thing to do. Both will need a diplomatic arrangement that is mutually beneficial and face saving. Self-righteous rhetoric from President Biden, Secretary Blinken, the Congress and American editors may score points in Florida and with Menendez but will not impress other countries and will do absolutely nothing to free the prisoners.
———–
* US response to perceived threats to its governing system: 1) Civil War = martial law, suspension of habeas corpus; 2) post Civil War = Jim Crow, radical reconstruction; 3) World War I = Palmer Raids, imprisonment of socialist leaders; 4) World War II = Japanese internment; 5) Cold War = McCarthyism, anti-communist purges in unions, schools, Hollywood and government; 6) 9/11= rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, black sites, torture, Guantanamo prison, forced feeding of hunger strikers
Circles,
The question is not whether one supports or opposes the July 11-12 protests; or whether one thinks they were largely a reaction to difficult conditions of life or a conscious political protest; or if one believes they were the result of the embargo and US democracy interventions over the past decade or the consequence of Biden’s continuation of Trump’s harsh policies in the time of Covid; or the long awaited beginning of the end of the Cuban revolution.
The question is whether the hundreds of mostly young prisoners stay in prison until the regime falls–or if it doesn’t for ten to twenty years.
Cuba can be like US cities that want to punish protestors harshly enough to discourage similar acts in the future by others. The US can treat Cuba differently than Columbia and other allied countries that have far worse records of killing and arresting protestors to indulge the return to power fantasies of politically powerful exiles.
Or the two countries can negotiate a mass release that enables people to regain their lives in Cuba or as emigrants and get back on the path that Barack Obama and Raul Castro opened, an imperfect accommodation of two different systems that cannot escape each other so need to find a way to live side by side–just as must Russia and Ukraine and China and Vietnam and England and Ireland.
I watched the video months ago. It offers a compelling argument, but it is just one argument. I believe his commendable hopes for change could be advanced furthest and fastest by the US ending the embargo, not by the country’s deeply established system surrendering to the wishes of the big neighbor.
My recommendation is that everyone read Dr. Lou Perez “Cuba as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”. The problem did not begin in July, or when Fidel Castro’s revolution took power, or at the time of the Cuban-Spanish-American War. The only solution is mutual respect and tolerance between our countries and self-determined natural evolution that includes greater political rights for all sectors of opinion.
https://cubapeopletopeople.blogspot.com/2019/05/louis-perez-cuba-as-obsessive.htmlIt is common in protest related trials in the US that defendants charge the police and prosecution with making up evidence and insist they are completely innocent. Sometimes that is true, sometimes it is not.
About 14,000 people were arrested during racial justice demonstrations in the US during the spring and summer of 2020. A data base has been compiled of 1429 cases (including 367 federal) facing felony charges. https://theprosecutionproject.org/2020/12/22/tracking-federal-cases-related-to-summer-protests-riots-uprisings/
In Cuba someone looted stores, threw rocks and destroyed vehicles on July 11-12 because we have seen the videos, but maybe it was not these defendants.
The problem is we don’t know and won’t know.
In any case, objectively the punishments appear disproportionate to the charges.
Partisans of the protestors and from the governments of Cuba and the US can spin numbers and stories in dueling press statements and tweets for years while those convicted sit in deplorable prison conditions. They are useful symbols for all sides.
After the trials are finished the two governments should negotiate a path to release that undoes contributing factors from the Trump/Biden sanctions against remittances, travel, consular authority, etc. Ideally negotiators will go to the underlying problem and finally end the unilateral US embargo that has received virtually universal legal and political condemnation, including by Archipielago leader Yunior Garcia.
There is precedent for resolving criminal charges politically: 1113 Bay of Pigs POWs freed in 1961 for medical supplies valued today at $463 million; intervention by the Catholic Church and Spain leading to release of 75 victims of the Black Spring in 2011, followed by the end of European sanctions; the exchange of USAID contractor Alan Gross for three Cuban spies in 2014 opening the door to normalization of diplomatic relations.
The question is whether there are leaders in either government who can rise above real and immediate conflicts and their own sense of justice to find a humanitarian solution that opens the door to long term reconciliation domestically and bilaterally.
By Marc Frank and Mario Fuentes
LA GUINERA, Cuba, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Young Cuban protesters from Havana's poorest neighborhoods face decades behind bars at upcoming trials, relatives and rights groups said, amid a crackdown on some of those who took part in last year's unprecedented anti-government demonstrations.
The July 11-12 protests saw thousands take to the streets in towns and cities across the island, many denouncing the communist-run government and shortages of food, medicine and electricity at a time when cases of coronavirus were soaring.
Human rights watchdogs say more than 1,000 people were arrested following the protests. Trials for those accused of serious crimes began in mid-December and some have already led to prison terms of more than 20 years, according to the groups and interviews with families of the accused.
Cuba's government did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the trials.
Authorities on the island, however, have previously said those arrested were guilty of crimes including public disorder, resisting arrest, robbery and vandalism. Cuba blames the United States for funding the July unrest and fanning it.
In the poor Havana district of La Guinera - where a march on July 12 was followed by vandalism, a confrontation with police and the only death during the unrest - Reuters spoke with more than a dozen residents who said neighborhood youth who joined the rallies now faced stiff prison sentences.
They denied any larger plot against the government and said the decision to march had been spontaneous.
Emilio Roman, 50, told Reuters his two sons Emiyoslan, 18, and Yosney, 25, as well as his 23-year-old daughter, Mackyani, had joined the July protests and now faced 15, 20 and 25 years behind bars, respectively, if convicted. All three have been in jail since mid-July, Roman said.
"Everyone went out because of the noise, as if they were going to have a party, but nobody thought they were going to act so severely," he said.
"The number of years (in prison) they are seeking, it's as if they were terrorists, murderers. They are my only three children," Roman said, fighting back tears. "It's a lot of pain."
Another neighbor, Alcides Firdo, 47, said his son, Jaime Alcides Firdo, 22, was initially detained for public disorder after he allegedly threw rocks during the July 12 march, but that the charges were later upgraded to sedition.
The state was now seeking to imprison his son for 20 years in a trial slated to begin on Jan. 17, Firdo said in an interview with Reuters.
"I don't understand it," he said. "You kill a person (in Cuba) and they give you 8, 10, 15 years, and now for throwing a rock you're going to throw them in jail for ... 20 years? That's an injustice."
Reuters could not independently confirm the details of the two cases with authorities as court officials do not routinely speak with the media in Cuba, nor was it possible to contact the defendants.
Laritza Diversent, director of U.S.-based human rights group Cubalex, said Cuban authorities had ratcheted up penalties to make an example and stifle future protests.
"The government is saying, 'Look, I'm not playing games ... if you go out again to protest this could also happen to you," she said.
Several rights groups, including Cubalex, say penalties for dozens already sentenced including for sedition have ranged from 4 to 30 years behind bars.
Reuters viewed several sentencing documents from trials in December in which penalties ranged from 2 to 8 years in prison for protesters convicted of crimes including disobedience, public disorder and assault. None of the convictions reviewed by Reuters were for sedition, which carries the heaviest penalties.
Not all those who took part in last year's demonstrations have faced harsh penalties. Cuba recently dropped charges against several artists who protested in front of the Cuban Radio and Television Institute on July 11, according to a Facebook post by historian Leonardo Fernandez Otano.
He said race and poverty had weighed on the process.
"I am grateful," Fernandez Otano wrote on social media after the charges were dismissed. "But I am also sad, because the young people of La Guinera have not had the same luck and are condemned to unjust and politicized sentences."
The Cuban government has said it respects the rights of all those detained following the protests, and that the steepest penalties would be reserved for repeat offenders and the most serious crimes.
