Political Prisoners

The Ladies in White win the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent

by

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 2013 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent Awarded to Ali Ferzat, Park Sang Hak, and the Ladies in White

NEW YORK (May 3, 2012)- The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) today announced the recipients of the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. The 2013 laureates are: Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, North Korean democracy activist Park Sang Hak, and Cuban civil society group the Ladies in White—represented by their leader Berta Soler. They will be honored at a ceremony during the 2013 Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway on May 15.

An initiative of New York-based HRF, the Havel Prize for Creative Dissent was founded with the enthusiastic endorsement of Dagmar Havlová, widow of the late poet, playwright, and statesman Václav Havel. The inaugural laureates were Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Saudi women’s rights advocate Manal al-Sharif, and Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ali Ferzat is a Syrian political cartoonist known for his satirical caricatures. Ferzat’s cartoons became increasingly critical of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the brutality of the regime’s crackdown. In 2011, masked gunmen detained Ferzat and broke both of his hands and his fingers, a clear message of intimidation and retaliation for his work. Ferzat recovered from the attack and continues to produce political cartoons.

Park Sang Hak, a North Korean defector and human rights activist, has worked for the democratization of his homeland since a daring escape in 1999. He is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea, an organization that uses helium balloons to transmit human rights and pro-democracy literature, DVDs, USB drives, and transistor radios from South Korea into North Korea.

The Ladies in White (“Las Damas de Blanco”) is a Cuban civil society organization founded by the wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of political prisoners jailed during the Castro regime’s “Black Spring” crackdown in 2003. “Las Damas de Blanco” wear white to symbolize their commitment to non-violence. Despite repeated arrests and beatings by Cuban authorities, the group marches every Sunday in Havana to protest the lack of human rights under the Castro dictatorship. Berta Soler has led the group since the death of founder Laura Pollán in 2011. Soler will accept the award on the group’s behalf.

The three Havel Prize laureates will receive an artist’s representation of the “Goddess of Democracy,” the iconic statue erected by Chinese student leaders during the Tiananmen Square protests of June, 1989. Each sculpture embodies the spirit and literal reality of creative dissent at its finest, representing the struggle of truth and beauty against brute power. The Havel Prize laureates will also share a prize of 350,000 Norwegian Kroner.

The Havel Prize is funded jointly by grants from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation and the Thiel Foundation. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation was established by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and his wife Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, a leading personal genetics company. The Thiel Foundation, established and funded by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. Vaclav Havel was chairman of HRF from 2009 until his death in December of 2011.

The Havel Prize ceremony will be broadcast live online at www.oslofreedomforum.com beginning at 4:00pm Central European Time on Wednesday, May 15. The event will take place at Oslo’s Christiania Theater. Registration is open to the public—email secretariat@havelprize.org for more information.

New Cuba Sage: “I done turned Havana into Atlanta”

by

aaa432

Last week it was the tale of two black women in Cuba. This week it’s the tale of two rappers.

Well, that was fast, huh? You wrote a real good rap song, real good rap song, Jay-Z.

It’s all about his trip to Cuba and his transforming and enlightening experiences there. Must’ve wrote it on the flight back to the USA. I guess Jay-Z got some eye-opening educating in that whole “Cuba education exchange” trip he and his wife made last week. And now he’s a big Cuba expert educating the rest of us on the truth. Some real prolific observations down in those lyrics…

Rapper Jay-Z released a new track Thursday in which he boasts about his recent trip to Cuba with superstar Beyoncé and says that President Barack Obama told him he’d get him “impeached.”

“I done turned Havana into Atlanta,” Jay-Z raps in “Open Letter,” which he released Thursday. “[…] Boy from the hood, I got White House clearance… Politicians never did s—- for me except lie to me, distort history… They wanna give me jail time and a fine. Fine, let me commit a real crime.”

He later raps: “Hear the freedom in my speech… Obama said, ‘Chill you gonna get me impeached. You don’t need this s—- anyway, chill with me on the beach.’”

“I’m in Cuba, I love Cubans. This communist talk is so confusing,” Jay-Z raps on the track, which is produced by Timbaland and Swizz Beatz and goes on to reference the Bob Dylan song “Idiot Wind.” “[…] ‘Idiot Wind,’ the Bob Dylan of rap music. You’re an idiot, baby, you should’ve become a student. Oh, you gonna learn today.”

I guess Jay-Z is feeling some political dissident pressure after the trip … or something.

It’s just too damn bad Cuban dissident rapper Angel Yunier Remon Arzuaga had to misbehave and diss the castro government in his lyrics or he could be listening to the new fantastic release Jay-Z will be making lots of money off of. Ain’t no radio or internet in castro’s prisons, Angel. Hell, brother, ya coulda been chillin’ on the beach with Jay-Z. But no-o-o-o-o…

A man of honor

by

There are few men and women who will risk everything to be free. Vladimir Bukovsky, Soviet dissident, who turned 70 last Sunday, is one of those. Our own brothers and sisters in Cuba who oppose tyranny, living or killed by the regime are our modern day Bukovskys, Solzhenitzyns, Sakharovs, and Sharanskys in Cuba. We need many more of them.

Vladimir Bukovsky does not like to be called a politician, preferring to be known as a neurophysiologist, writer or, at the very least, civic activist. In truth, he never engaged in politics: he merely realized, at an early age, that he could not reconcile himself to live quietly with a criminal and mendacious regime that sought to make millions of people its silent accomplices. Bukovsky’s protest was a moral one. “We did not play politics, we did not draft programs for the ‘people’s liberation,’” he recalls in his memoirs, To Build a Castle (a must-read for anyone interested in Russian history). “Our only weapon was glasnost (openness). Not propaganda, but glasnost, so that no one could say ‘I did not know.’ The rest is a matter for each person’s conscience.”

“I did not know” was a popular answer among members of the older generation when asked by the youngsters of the 1950s about Stalin’s times. The public condemnation of Stalinist crimes at the 1956 Communist Party congress and (almost immediately) the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution, which showed that the nature of the regime has not changed, were formative events for Bukovsky. His protest activity began literally during his school days: he joined a clandestine anti-Soviet group and published an underground satirical journal. In response, he was expelled from school, summoned to a dressing-down by the Moscow City Communist Party Committee, and barred from studying at university (he nevertheless won admission to Moscow State University, only to be discovered and expelled a year later.)

Vladimir Bukovsky is one of the founders of the Soviet dissident movement, which was born in the fall of 1960 on Moscow’s Mayakovsky Square. There, a group of yet-unknown young activists, poets, and actors (including Yuri Galanskov, Eduard Kuznetsov, Vladimir Osipov, Ilya Bokshtein, and Vsevolod Abdulov) held public readings of banned poetry – Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelshtam, Tsvetaeva. They also read from their own works and the works of their contemporaries, which would soon be disseminated as samizdat (literally “self-publications,” the clandestine reproduction and distribution of banned literature). Samizdat, too, was born on Mayakovsky Square. The authorities responded in their usual manner: with dispersals of the meetings by bulldozers and snow ploughs; provocations by Komsomol (Young Communist League) operatives; beatings and arrests. Yet the “seditious” meetings continued in the heart of the Soviet capital for almost two years […]

Remembering Laura Pollan and the Ladies in White

by

Laura, in her own words on why the Ladies in White are out on the street, “We cannot allow our men, our families to be destroyed. We cannot allow them to die in prison.”

I will always remember Laura Pollan. This inspiring lady, wife, mother, and teacher, never imagined that she would become a political activist. In 2003, her husband, journalist Hector Maseda Gutierrez, along with 74 others were rounded up and arrested in what became known as the Cuban Black Spring, La Primavera Negra. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “counter revolutionary” activities. As she struggled to find information on her husband she met other women relatives of the 74; their meetings were the beginning of the Ladies in White. Their quiet dignity, marching to make sure that their men would not be forgotten, standing up against increasing threats and violent repression, how could you not be inspired by these brave women standing alone against the power of the state armed only with gladiolas?

The murderous Castro regime has many ways to rid themselves of unwanted dissidents, murder by neglect, auto accidents, and perhaps injection. Many unanswered questions remain surrounding the death of Laura Pollan. If there was nothing to hide, why did they arrest Hablamos Press journalist Rios Otero?

Human Rights Foundation YouTube:



The valiant Las Damas de Blanco, Laura Pollan’s brave Ladies in White, led by Berta Solar, continue their mission without her, in spite of increasing violent repression against them. Today, October 14, is the anniversary of Laura’s death, please remember her.

Imprisoned Ladies in White Sonia Garro Receiving Death Threats

by

Prayers for Sonia Garro’s health and safety…

Sonia Garro, a female pro-democracy activist and member of the Ladies in White, was imprisoned on March 18th of this year.

According to Garro’s sister, she has been receiving numerous death threats at the women’s prison of “El Guatao”, where she remains incarcerated without charges or trial.

She was originally arrested in the wave of repression against dissidents prior to Pope Benedict XVI’s trip.

Castro’s secret police stormed her home, shot her in the leg with rubber bullets and dragged her away.

More “reform” you can’t believe in.

A remarkable victory for the Cuban democracy movement

by

Cuban pro-democracy leaders Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antunez”, and 26 others, faced off with the repressive Castro machine and won.

Capitol Hill Cubans:

A Victory for the Hunger Strikers

 The Castro regime has just released Cuban pro-democracy activist Jorge Vazquez Chaviano, whose unjust prison term had ended over a week ago.

As such, after 21 days on hunger strike demanding Vazquez Chaviano’s release, Cuban pro-democracy leaders Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antunez” and 26 others have ended their protest.

A remarkable victory for the Cuban democracy movement.

 
jvc

No Fidel, history will not absolve you

by

Watching the Republican National Convention this evening; listening to the speeches, I at times found myself wiping away tears caused by a gut wrenching response to words affirming our great America experiment in a government of the people, and by the people.  I cry easily, I know some might think it corny, but I’m the daughter of an anti-Communist WWII veteran. I love and hold a profound appreciation for our process, the American process wherein every four years, we the people go to the polls and choose our president. What an astounding privilege in the history of human kind this is.  No apologies here, this breaks me up.

I believe that the Free Republic of Cuba, the wonderful Cuba that all of us here at Babalú dream of, and carry in our hearts, no matter how unrealistic that dream may be, was achieved by the blood and sacrifice of generations of Cubans who carried the very same God inspired purpose in their hearts as America’s Founding Fathers, freedom from tyranny, liberty, libertad.  We all know that freedom is not free, that it is paid for by the hard work, sacrifice, and blood of every generation.

On this night, while I watch democracy in action here,  I’m rembering that this is our fourteenth  presidential election since Castro gained power in Cuba in 1959.  We freely voted in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and now, in 2012.  A lifetime.   I remember all those elections, as well as the 1956 election when I was just a small child.  In all that time, there has not been a free election in Cuba.  Imagine that.  Yet so-called experts, and “humanitarians”  praise the “achievements” of the “revolution”.   They do so oblivious to Cuba’s decline,  oblivious to Cuba as a state sponsor of terror, oblivious to the mass executions and exile, oblivious to Cuba’s position on Genocide Watch, oblivious to the decades of Cuba’s political prisoners listed as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, and the testimony of Cuban survivors now living in freedom.  How is it possible, that these murderous tyrants are sill in power after 53 years?   Castro seized power just 14 years after the end of WWII, and the apparent triumph of good over evil.  How is it possible that this dictator was allowed to take over our neighbor just 90 miles from our southern shore,  and here we are 53 years later and they are still in power?  A neighbor by the way whose women gave their wedding rings and other jewels in support of our revolution.  A neighbor whose sons fought along side ours in war.   I am horrified by what is happening in Cuba, and by the lack of real  interest in Washington.  If the U.S. supports freedom, then it far past the time for an appropriate response  from any American administration.  Don’t talk about it,  just get it done. 

Repression reigns in Cuba.  There has been much talk of reforms in Cuba, but talk is cheap and meaningless without proof of action.  There is no real reform,  not when the regime  models itself after Nazi Germany, and once again, humanity is squashed and freely written words are burned on the pyre of repressive  evil.

From Capitol Hill Cubans:

Public Bonfires for Dissident’s Documents

at 6:28 PM Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Yesterday, the Castro regime arrested Cuban pro-democracy leader and former political prisoner Angel Moya.

His crime?

Distributing copies of a document entitled, “Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba,” which advocates for Cuba’s adherence to the U.N.’s Civil and Political Rights covenants and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This is the same document that was being distributed by three dissidents (Diosbel Suárez, Idalberto Acuña and Santiago Cardoso) on August 16th, when they were brutally beaten, arrested and doused with pepper gas.

Now, the Castro regime is preparing public bonfires to burn the copies of this document and other papers confiscated from dissidents.

Sadly predictable

“Defecating on Fidel Castro’s Mother”

by

Capitol Hill Cubans:

Cuban pro-democracy activists Gertrudis Ojeda Suárez and Yoandris Ricardo Mir are each facing two-year prison sentences.

Their crime?

“Defecating on Fidel Castro’s mother.”

No joke. That’s what the official documents stated at a judicial proceeding against them in the eastern town of Banes.

The truth is that the couple hung anti-Castro signs outside their home.

This resulted in a harassment campaign against them and their three children, with tar thrown at their home, and now a two-year prison sentence.

Ojeda is a member of the Ladies in White.

200 Political Arrests in Cuba

by

From Capitol Hill  Cubans:

200 Political Arrests in Just Two Weeks

Thursday, August 16, 2012

According to the independent news agency Hablemos Press, the Castro regime has conducted over 200 political arrests between August 1st-14th alone.

Among these were 38 members of the Ladies in White.

Additionally, the agency is calling on Amnesty International to declare the following democracy activists, who have been imprisoned for months or years, as international prisoners of conscience:

1. Sonia Garro Alfonso
2. Niurka Luque Álvarez
3. Antonio Michel Lima Cruz
4. Marco Maykel Lima Cruz
5. Ariel Eugenio Arzuaga Peña
6. Luis Enrique Labrador Díaz
7. David Piloto Barceló
8. Eider Frometa Allen
9. Dani López de Moya
10. Jorge Vázquez Chaviano
11. Abismael González González
12. Bismarck Mustelier Galán
13. Rolando Tudela Iribar
14. Ángel Frometa Lovaina
15. Niorvis Rivera Guerra
16. Rogelio Tavío López
17. Eugenio Hernández Hernández
18. Ernesto Paula Pérez
19. Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González
20. Pavél Arcia Céspedes
21. Pedro Luis González
22. Orlando Triana González
23. Omar Naranjo Bonne

More on Angel Moya and the other dissidents arrested in Cuba

by

Once again, we are reminded that there is no real freedom in Cuba.  When you hear about political prisoners freed in Cuba, it doesn’t really mean they are free.  It means they are no longer behind prison bars, only behind the bars of the island prison that is Castro’s Cuba.  If they dare to exercise their God given human rights and say or do anything the regime considers counter revolutionary, they are once again subject to arbitrary detention and arrest. 

In a incident in the Matanzas province town of Pedro Betancourt,  Magaly N. Otero Suarez  of Hablemos Press, reports that a phone call was received from Angel Moya Acosta that police and state security were at the home of Felix Sierra Sotomayor, member of the Movimiento Libertad Democrática por Cuba.  They were searching for printed materials for a New Cuba, and Hablamos Press newsletters.  (Remeber, in Cuba only the State is allowed to print and share information.)

This was followed by a call from Caridad Gonzalez, Secretary of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR) in Mantanzas who reported that “Moya, Sierra, Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya, Dagobert Santana, and Edelvis Yanda Perez, were savagely beaten and then detained” She also reported that Edilia Moreno Fernandez, Gulliver Sigler Gonzalez, Jesus Sousa Garcia, Virgilio Sousa Moreno, the 14 year old son of Edilia, Rogelio Inanez and Dagoberto Obanez were also savagely beaten, but not detained.

 The Miami Herald reports that Monday afternoon some of those detained were released, but Berta Soler, wife of Angel Moya, and leader of the Ladies in White, said there is no word on the whereabouts of Angel Moya.

The unending Human Rights violations in Cuba

by

Everyday we hear of more beatings, more arrests, and more stories of  heroic men and women risking their lives in the name of freedom.

Jailed Cuban dissident rushed to hospital after long hunger strike
By Juan O. Tamayo

Dissidents in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba reported Monday that jailed activist Frank Montero, who has been on a hunger strike for more than 30 days, was rushed to a hospital over the weekend.

Authorities have refused to inform Montero’s relatives about his health or whereabouts after he was removed from the Aguadores prison on Saturday, said Rolando González, like Montero a member of the opposition Cuban Patriotic Union.

Montero went on a hunger strike 36 days ago to protest his arrest on Feb. 19, along with his twin brother Daniel, on charges of trying to leave Cuba without the required permits ailing, González said. The brothers claimed they were going fishing.

Daniel Montero, who was also being held in Agujadores, told relatives Sunday by telephone that his brother had been rushed to a hospital. The brothers, who are 29 years old, are from the city of Santiago de Cuba.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez said he first heard of Montero’s hunger strike about 19 days ago.

The deaths of political prisoners Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Wilman Villar Mendoza amid lengthy hunger strikes — Zapata in 2010 and Villar early this year — sparked broad condemnations of Cuba’s human rights record.

A member of the Ladies in White dissident group, meanwhile, alleged that police beat and humiliated her to block her from attending Sunday mass at the El Cobre Basilica of Our Lady of Charity in Santiago province.

“My whole body is black and blue,” a sobbing Yaqueline García said in a declaration recorded for Hablalo Sin Miedo, or Say it Without Fear, a Miami-based facility that receives and disseminates reports of human rights abuses on the island.

García said police detained her Saturday on her way to the shrine, dragged her in a police station until her pants almost came off and then released her late Sunday on a remote farm road after throwing her personal belongings at her feet .

Dissident José Daniel Ferrer García said police checkpoints established Saturday on the main road in the Santiago region, the Central Highway, detained or turned back about 20 Ladies in White as they tried to reach the El Cobre shrine for Sunday mass.

Another 11 managed to slip into the basilica, on a narrow road off the Central Highway, said Ferrer, who lives near El Cobre, 465 miles east of Havana. Most of the women detained were freed late Sunday and early Monday.

The Ladies in White in Havana are generally allowed to attend Sunday masses at the Santa Rita church in the capital and afterward stage brief street marches — the lone dissident protest tolerated by the government. But their eastern brethren have not been permitted to gather for the Sunday masses at El Cobre.

About 30 gay rights and other activists carrying rainbow flags and banners also walked down a Havana boulevard for Cuba’s second annual Gay Pride march Sunday, according to organizer Ignacio Estrada.

The marches went off without incident, although the activists were trailed by a van loaded with police men from an elite riot-control unit known as the Black Wasps.

Some black-rights activists, political dissidents and passersby also joined the two-hour march down Paseo El Prado, including some visiting Cuban-Americans and one apparent U.S. tourist, said Estrada.

Activists passed out pamphlets explaining gay rights under international conventions and at one point Estrada and his wife, Wendy Iriarte, went inside a cubicle made with bars, much like a prison cell, left on the boulevard from a recent art show.

“We went behind the bars because we feel imprisoned for our way of thinking,” said Estrada, who married Iriarte, a transgender woman, last year. Estrada calls himself a gay rights activist and political dissident.

Hablemos Press, [here] an independent news agency, meanwhile, reported that it had received word that dissident Angel Frometa Lovaina in the far-eastern city of Guantánamo was sentenced to two years in prison last week for resisting arrest and disobedience.

Frometa claimed the charge stemmed from his street protest Dec. 11 demanding political reforms, according to the report. Another dissident in Guantánamo said local authorities have long been trying to seize a small farm that Frometa owns.

Continue reading at The Miami Herald.