On
August 1st, the world learned that Fidel Castro
had temporarily relinquished power to his brother
Raul for reasons of ill health. As the first incident
of its kind since the success of the Cuban revolution
in 1959, the announcement sparked immediate and
polarised reactions from around the globe. Critics
and supporters of the Cuban regime alike were
vocal in their commentary and predictions for
how the country might cope without its iconic
leader, and the world watched on to see how traditional
foe, America, might react.
As
the corporate media bombarded the airwaves with
footage of Cuban exiles dancing in the streets
of Miami and reaction from U.S. authorities, coverage
of any genuine reaction from inside the Caribbean
island became increasingly conspicuous by its
absence. President Bush supported "transition
to a Free Cuba", and promised "assistance"
to Cuba should Castro die. We heard from exiles,
from supporters, from politicians, and from reporters;
but hardly a word from anyone who has lived under
the regime for any length of time since its inception
almost 50 years ago.
It
was with this in mind that I travelled to Cuba
a couple of weeks after the announcement. Depending
on which kinds of reports I had read beforehand,
Cuba was either a repressive, abusive and totalitarian
state or a socialist paradise affording all its
citizens the dignity and respect necessary for
a just society. It seemed that the only way to
bypass the malaise of propaganda infecting the
media was to go and visit the country itself.
Cuba
maintains a certain sense of nostalgia, perpetrated
by the throwbacks to 1960s culture, architecture
and cars that characterised every city we visited.
Most notably absent, however, are the advertisements
that the Western world is accustomed to seeing
on every blank space available to public eyes.
Bus shelters, toilet doors, ashtrays and bins
all combine to ensure that at home, you never
forget your status as a consumer. In Havana, both
tourists and locals alike are spared the ignominy
of being treated as a mere component of an ever-available
market.
In
Cienfuegos, a town of about 150,000 residents
just south of Havana, we were befriended by Santiago,
a university lecturer.
"In
Cuba, we do not pay for the school. We do not
pay for the hospital. We do not pay!" Santiago's
emphatic extolling of the virtues of the Cuban
health and education systems was common to many
of the people we met. He spoke about the opportunities
he felt he had been given by the regime. "I
went to pre-school. I went to school. I went to
university. And now, I teach. My mother does not
have to work. She worked, and she raised us, and
now she can relax."
Cuba
is one of the first countries in the world to
completely eradicate illiteracy. Education is
free at all levels, as is healthcare. Even the
World Bank, an institution intrinsically associated
with capitalism and all Cuba stands against, has
conceded that Cuba is topping virtually all other
poor countries in health and education statistics,
and continues to improve despite the stifling
embargo the country has endured for almost half
a century.
However,
Cuba's social and community achievements have
long been juxtaposed with the reports of human
rights abuses that surround the country. Human
Rights Watch roundly condemns the regime for its
"highly effective machinery of repression"
and claims that Cuba "restricts severely
the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression,
association, and assembly."
While
measures like these are undoubtedly indefensible
in themselves and are abhorrent in their nature,
they cannot be viewed or understood outside of
the context of the Cuban reality; that of a consistent,
premeditated, malicious programme of interference
pursued by successive American administrations
for the past forty years.
Since
1959, in addition to the US economic blockade
(arguably a form of state terrorism in itself
and consistently condemned by human rights organisations),
Cuba has been the target of over 680 terrorist
attacks. The total number of recorded deaths resulting
from these attacks stands at 3,478. These have
included bomb attacks, assassination attempts,
hijackings, the introduction of germs and pests
in agricultural areas and attacks on Cuban personnel
and property on foreign soil. The roots of these
attacks lie with Cuban emigrant groups hostile
to the socialist ideals of the country and determined
to destabilise the political climate. The US government
and the CIA openly support the aims of these groups.
Faced
with similar threats to national security after
9/11, the U.S. and U.K. governments imposed laws
that might equally find their way into critiques
written by human rights organisations. In the
UK, the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act permits
the issuing of control orders against any British
or foreign nationals on the basis only of a suspicion
stated by the intelligence agencies. These orders
include the powers of house arrest for an indefinite
period, without trial or knowledge of the charges
preferred against the individuals concerned. The
proposed legislation following the London terrorist
bombings is even more draconian and includes the
right to hold a suspect without trial for up to
three months.
As
a response to complaints that such measures infringed
human rights, the British Home Secretary, Charles
Clark referred to the need to act in this way
in an "emergency threatening the life of
the nation…" The head of MI5, Dame Eliza
Manningham-Buller, affirmed that civil liberties
might have to be eroded to prevent future attacks.
Similarly,
the U.S. has recently introduced legislation to
protect national security. Under the "Logan
Law", US citizens anywhere, who, without
the authorisation of the US government, "directly
or indirectly take up or maintain any kind of
correspondence with any foreign government official
or agent in connection with any dispute or difference
with the US, shall be fined in accordance with
that provision, jailed for up to a period of 3
years or both." Human rights also fall by
the wayside in relation to suspects detained at
Guantanamo Bay.
It
seems that identical reasons are used in the West
and in Cuba to justify these actions. That is
not to suggest that the geopolitical situation
of Cuba excuses such behaviour, but it does go
some way to explaining it. The American dollars
that pour into propaganda and destabilisation
exercises are at least partly responsible for
the sometimes-harsh nature of the Cuban response
to internal dissent.
What
is most notably absent in the Cuban case study,
however, is the hypocrisy and double standards
that characterise Western attempts to "democratise"
Cuba and rid her of human rights abuses. One must
consider whether American concern for Cuba is
born out of distaste for the economic and political
ideology there, rather than any genuine interest
in the advancement of human rights worldwide.
Equally,
Cuban human rights cannot be viewed only in the
narrow perspective taken by Human Rights Watch.
There are two major international instruments
on rights under the UN system; one on civil and
political rights and the other on economic, social
and cultural rights. Santiago gave us examples
of how the latter convention's protections that
people of the West are often denied are afforded
to Cuban citizens.
