What really happened in Cuba on Human Rights Day and how it was reported

An analysis from John Suarez in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

International Human Rights Day and Cuba: What really happened and how was it reported
“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.” – Yevgeny Yevtushenko 

On International Human Rights Day the media was more interested in the handshake between the president of the United States and the dictator of Cuba at the Mandela memorial service. Searching google with “‘human rights day’ Cuba dissidents” provided only 50 results versus 72,400 results for “Castro Obama handshake” However, the massive crackdown in Cuba, at first garnered little attention, and what was reported low balled and trivialized what was taking place while offering a misleading analysis and questionable sources. Scores of activists detained and women activists badly beaten to the point of being hospitalized and requiring surgery for internal injuries was not deemed newsworthy by the Cuba based news bureaus or that two Argentine human rights defenders had been detained in the island for meeting with Cuban dissidents. The heightened level of repression appears to be in response to the increased number of activities by civil society to commemorate human rights day combined with the belief that they will not pay a political price for their repression. Some of these activities were small gatherings in a private home to observe December 10th.

The level of violence visited upon activists such as Damaris Garcia of the National Resistance Front Orlando Zapata Tamayo who lives in Velasco, Holguin whose home was attacked with gas launched by regime officials because various activists along with an elderly woman and Damaris’s young son had gathered there on December 10th to observe the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The child was asphyxiated by the gas and is still suffering from complications.

Meanwhile, in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas, dozens of members of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) were attacked with clubs, stones and tear gas as they gathered at the home of Roger Curbelo. Through their Facebook account, MCL members reported that police and special forces” burst into the house, breaking the door and windows, leaving several injured and arrested, among others, Alexis Guerrero, Ismael Guerrero, Ezequiel Morales, Roger Curbelo, Ercilia Correoso and Armando Peña, who was later abandoned in an embankment far away from home 

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