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Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Matt Treacy ✒ Last Monday the Cuban Communist Party began its latest series of show trials. These involve some of those who were detained following the mass protests that took place in Havana and over 40 other locations in July.


The protests focused on the perennial problems of mass poverty, poor housing, food prices and the lack of basic healthcare – which will no doubt come as a surprise to the swivel-eyed parrots of the Irish left.

The “Cuban health system” has long been the Potemkin Village used to gull the useful totalitarian tourists. Just as once upon a time every western leftie knew that all East Germans had 1.45 colour televisions and Romania had reduced rudeness at bus queues by 86% under the leadership of Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, Cuba has “the best health service in the world.”

Hitler, autobahns; Mao, more rice than you could shake a stick at … you know the spiel.

To the contrary, unless you are part of a documentary or a high-profile collaborator from the free world who the Castro gang invite to have their gall stones removed in an act of international solidarity, Cubans are subject to long waiting lists for even basic medical care. All of which was exacerbated by the regime’s devotion to the pursuit of Zero Covid. (You will also be familiar with that one.)

Ten of the 21 people put on trial in this latest farce were reported to have started a hunger strike. The defendants include four teenagers, and the prosecutor has demanded sentences of between 15 and 30 years for “sedition.” This would be the equivalent of the Irish state doing the same to water charges protestors or protesting farmers.

The prosecution rhetoric is reminiscent of the ravings of Andrei Vyshinsky at the Moscow trials in the late 1930s: “From the crowd of people, without being able to determine who, counterrevolutionary slogans were shouted that fomented disturbances, as some profoundly lacerated patriotic feelings” being one example.

Estimates of the numbers arrested during the Summer run to over 187,000. According to Cuban freedom activists, over a thousand were being held with information as to where they were being detained or under what conditions. This has given rise to concerns that the secret police are torturing detainees perhaps with the objective of forcing them to confess.

Cuban dissidents – encompassing Catholic social activists, former members of the July 26 Movement that was taken over by the Communist Party after the overthrow of Batista and left wing opponents of the Party – have a long and proud history of resistance to brutality and, despite the shameful collaboration of Sinn Féin and others, the prison protests of Los Plantados – the Immovables who refuse to wear prison uniforms – are similar to those of the Blanketmen in the H Blocks and earlier Irish nationalist prisoners.

The 2021 protests were largely organised by the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and one of its leaders Jose Daniel Ferrer was re-arrested in July, held incommunicado and sentenced to serve the remaining four and a half years of a sentence that had been commuted to house detention.

Some of the protestors were shot dead, including Diubis Laurencio Tejeda who was killed by police in Havana on July 12.
Diubis Laurencio Tejeda

One of the focuses of the current resistance among younger people has been the San Isidro , movement of artists and other activists based in one of the most deprived and overcrowded sections of crumbling Havana. One of those associated with the group, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, was forcibly fed when he went on hunger strike in May last year.

Alcantara is reported to be again on hunger strike along with at least nine other prisoners.

January 28 marks the anniversary of the birth in 1853 of Jose Marti who was killed in the uprising against the Spanish authorities in Cuba in 1895. Marti has been appropriated as the historical symbol of the Communist regime but there is nothing in his vast writings to indicate that he was a socialist, let alone a Marxist. Similar dissimulation of course has been deployed in relation to Padraig Pearse and other Irish nationalist thinkers.

C: Jose Marti / Via Pixabay

Cubans who continue to oppose totalitarianism still look to Marti as the inspirational figure of Cuban nationalism, independence and democracy. They continue to fight that monster with little or no support or recognition outside of the exile communities who have managed to keep the ideal of Cuba Libre alive.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

The Hunger Strike Against Cuba’s Show Trials

Mick Hall ☭ Poor Cuba So Far From God, So Close To The USA.*

With Joe Biden in the White House, the political, military and industrial complex is on the march again. Ever since Biden first became a senator in 1972, there is not a single US military intervention overseas which he hasn’t supported. So, we shouldn’t be surprised he has Cuba in his gunsights.

For me, the Cuban Revolution was an iconic event and all these years later I see no reason to change my mind. True there have been naysayers on the left but their criticism basically boiled down to it wasn’t the right type of Revolution. A member of a long forgotten sect once told me “we support it unconditionally and critically” which seemed a bit of an oxymoron to me.

It has always been internationalist to it’s core. An example of this was when Mandela first came out of prison, his first major overseas visit was to Cuba. He knew the critical role the Cubans played in the defeat of apartheid, especially when backing militarily the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation in Angola with 3,000 Cuban frontline troops in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. That helped turn the tide against apartheid in South West Africa.

The same could be said for the support it gave to National Liberations Movements in Central and South America and even those closer to home. For Cuba a friend in need was never a nuisance!

Revolutions ebb and flow and life does not stand still and as Milovan Djilas once said “Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.” This may have been true about Yugoslavia but the Republic of Cuba has sustained and thrived on revolutionary attitudes and I’m sure it will overcome the current crisis which like many others is not of it’s own making.

It is worth remembering just how appalling, violent and vengeful US governments have been towards Cuba since 1959, as Jeff St Clair points out here:

The US has invaded Cuba, funded multiple insurrections, tried dozens of times to assassinate its leaders, used biological weapons to wilt its crops and poison its livestock, tracked down and executed Che Guevara, bombarded the island with hysterical propaganda, ranted against it at the UN, financed, trained and protected a gang of thugs that planned and executed the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane (killing 73 civilians), plotted false flag ops in Miami to blame on the Castro government, and enforced a decades long embargo (that even China finds it hard to break) that would have crippled almost any other nation. The fact that Cuba is still standing, a little wobbly at times, but still defiant, simply drives the US nuts. It’s a living example of another way to organise a society and it can’t be tolerated by the USA, especially as it’s so close to home.

Who is the victim here? Who are the perpetrators? It doesn’t take long to work this out. Besides we have been here before. When it comes to destabilising nations, the recent demonstrations in Cuba are straight out of the CIA’s manual. This type of reprehensible behaviour by the US government goes back decades. The overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the CIA / MI6 was one of it’s first outings in the post WW2 period.

With the internet it’s become easier to do this dirty work, although the foundations are much the same: find a grievance - it doesn’t much matter what it is - use an over ambitious useful idiot to stoke up trouble, spread the dollar around liberally and use the MSM to propagate it far and wide and then wait for the herd mentality to kick in.

The Cuban Revolution has survived many set backs since 1959 and have, despite the hardships, overcome them. If anyone thinks a march and demo orchestrated from the outside will bring it down, they are sadly mistaken.

Viva Cuba!

* Original quote was by Porfirio Diaz, Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Appalling, Violent, Vengeful

Peadar O'Donnell Socialist Republican Forum ✒ calls for solidarity with Cuba. 


Solidarity was always an essential cornerstone of Irish Republicanism from Wolfe Tone, New Irelander's, Fenians, the Revolutionaries of 1916 right up to the present day. The Irish people sought support and solidarity from across the world for their struggle for national freedom but also gave solidarity to those engaged in similar struggles.

Today is no different, across the planet hundreds of millions of people are attempting to find a different forward in economic and social development. This desire of the people to find ways out of poverty, hunger and brutal exploitation has and is bringing them into conflict particularly in Latin America with the United States of America.

Now is the time for all those who believe in the right of the Irish people to self-determination to come forward and stand with the Cuban people. To oppose the six decade long illegal blockade of Cuba by the USA and its allies.

Cuba has taken an alternative path of economic and social development that many of the peoples of Latin America admire and look towards. Millions have benefited for Cuban medical assistance and medical training. All Cuba has and is asking for is that this illegal blockade be lifted and that it be allowed to decide its own future and to trade with whomever its likes. To decide its own economic and social development. Similar goals and aspirations of the Irish people over many centuries.

The PODSRF has called upon like minded people to join us in a day of action and solidarity with the Cuban people and to call for an end to this illegal blockade that has and is causing so much hurt to the Cuban people. We are asking people to take a small or large action this Saturday 24th July in their village, town or city across Ireland #UNBLOCK CUBA. 

Show solidarity in order to receive solidarity.

Is mise
Tommy Mc Kearney
Chairperson 
Peadar O'Donnell Socialist Republican Forum

Unblock Cuba

Lasair Dhearg ☭ News headlines in recent days have attempted to manipulate the minds of the masses into thinking that all is not well in Cuba.


Organised by the usual suspects, financially funded and supported by the US Imperialist regime, small numbers of counter-revolutionaries assembled in cities across Cuba, making spurious demands for ‘freedom’ and ‘vaccines’.
 

The foreign press and world media were notified in advance, in what was clearly another step in the continuing attempts to destabilise Cuba and the Revolution.

Lasair Dhearg’s Pádraic MacCoitir said:

The US regime hoped that, with small numbers of loyal subjects coming out onto the street, they would provoke thousands more to join them. Those thousands, carrying Cuban flags and red banners, instead mobilised and marched to face down the counter-revolutionaries in a true testament of support for the ongoing efforts of the revolution.

Pádraic MacCoitir

President Biden has continued with the efforts of previous US Presidents to embargo Cuba under an economic blockade which seeks to starve its people into capitulation. The Cuban people have instead organised under the might of Socialism and created a health system that is the envy of nations across the globe.

Since the establishment of a democratic revolution the people in Cuba have endured years of hostility from the US and their allies. Many times they’ve defended the country against counter revolutionary elements and have always prevailed.

In recent days Biden and his cronies have once again tried to take on the Cubans using Covid as an excuse. None of us will be fooled as a small number take to the streets, despite what western media may report. Those of us who see what happens in Cuba will continue to support the revolution.

US attempts to destroy the Cuban revolution have failed time and time again. The resolve of the Cuban people has been tested, and they have won.

⏩Keep up with Lasair Dhearg - Follow on Twitter @LasairDhearg

Cuba ➖ The People Protect The Revolution

Matt Treacy ✒ During this, the year of the 40th anniversary of the H Block hunger strikes, attention has once again focused in a small way on the unhealthy relationship between Sinn Féin and the Communist dictatorship in Cuba.


There has been a persistent attempt to link the Irish hunger strikes with the Cuban regime, as epitomised in 2001 when Gerry Adams unveiled a memorial in Havana to Bobby Sands and the nine other men who died in 1981.

Activists under siege at the Isidro Movement headquarters in Havana, Cuba
Most Irish people will not know, however, that a succession of Cuban political prisoners have had a remarkably similar history to Irish republicans in resisting oppression within the prisons. It seems that because Cuba’s Blanketmen are being oppressed by the regime’s brutality, the only reference Adams or Sinn Féin ever make to their struggle is to disparage it.

Just last month, black Cuban activist, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, was forcibly-fed following a week-long hunger and thirst strike. Alcantara is a member of the San Isidro group that opposes the stifling censorship of artists, writers and other creative persons under the dictatorship that has been in power since 1959.
File Image: Dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara speaks during an interview in Havana

San Isidro is a predominantly black working class section of Havana. Last November, another member, the rapper Denis Solis, was arrested and sentenced to eight months in the maximum security prison of Valle Grande, a place notorious for the torture and degradation of Cuban political detainees.

The constantly-triggered Ógra Shinn Féin failed to post any outraged tweets about this – nor did any of the other Irish “comrades” of oppressed black people. There were no photo-events with impassioned fist-clenching or kneeling – or calling for their embassy pals to be expelled.

On February 23, 2010, another black Cuban activist, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died following 85 days on hunger strike after being forcibly fed. He had been sentenced to 36 years for “public disorder” and “disobedience.”

Tamayo had gone on hunger strike to demand, like the Blanketmen in the H Blocks, that he be allowed to wear white – the symbol of Cuban resistance – rather than the degrading prison uniform.

You would imagine that this might have elicited some sympathy for Tamayo among those who claim the legacy of the H Block men. Instead, the Bobby Sands Trust, an entity with close links to Sinn Féin that is opposed by the Sands family which has accused it of exploiting Bobby’s legacy for political and commercial gain, regurgitated Cuban state lies about Tamayo.

The Trust published a statement by Alain de Benoist in response to a suggestion that Tamayo might be honoured in Ireland, which repeated the Castroist claim that Tamayo was a criminal who had gone on hunger strike to have a TV and a mobile phone in his cell!

Tamayo was in fact one of the leaders of MAR, the Republican Alternative Movement, a group that opposes the totalitarian state, and campaigns for democracy. He had been arrested in 2003 during a crackdown on activists, not for attacking someone with a machete as was claimed by the Cubans and parroted by their sycophants abroad.

Hunger strikes and the refusal to conform to brutal prison conditions have been used in protest from the very foundation of the Communist state. Huber Matos was one of the Commandantes of the July 26 Movement that overthrew Batista but was imprisoned in 1959 by Castro when he objected to Castro’s installation of the tiny Communist Party which had not even been a formal part of the movement. Castro was filmed during the rebellion in the Sierra Maestra mountains declaring in English that he was not a Marxist, and that the objective was to replace Batista with a democratic government.

Matos was brutally tortured over the course of 20 years spent in the Cuban gulags. He claims that another hero of the revolution, Camilo Cienfuegos, Chief of Staff of the army, who was sent to arrest him had attempted to intervene with Fidel. Cienfuegos died a week later in a plane crash but the plane was never recovered. Guevara denied that Cienfuegos had been murdered but offered the theory that the plane had been mistaken for an “intruder.” Matos and others were convinced that Cienfuegos was another victim along with many members of the rebel army purged by the Castros.

Matos spent 35 days on hunger strike, one of many that has taken place during the course of the prison resistance to the Communists. Those who refused to conform by wearing the prison uniform or to attend indoctrination courses or to inform were known as Los Plantados – the Immovables.

In the documentary Nadie Escuchaba – Nobody Listened – one former prisoner Jorge Valles who was held in the horrific La Cabana prison described how having been deprived of physical freedom that it became curiously the only free space where amid the daily tortures and executions, “free thinking dwelt behind prison walls” among the diverse Catholic, anarchist, democratic and leftist opponents of the regime.

It is difficult to believe that Bobby Sands who wrote about “the inner thing in every man” that “lights the dark of this prison cell” would have been happy to have his name sullied by being associated with the torturers of the Cuban prisoners whose ongoing prison struggle mirrors that of Irish republicans from Thomas Ashe to the Blanketmen.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.  

Cuba’s Blanketmen Opposed By Sinn Féin During The Anniversary Of The Hunger Strikes

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