Cubaportal |
The Cuban dissident movement is a political movement in Cuba whose aim is to replace the current government with a liberal democracy. [1] According to Human Rights Watch, the Marxist-Leninist Cuban government represses nearly all forms of political dissent. [2]
Some dissident groups in the Cuban diaspora received both funding and assistance from the U.S. Intelligence Community during the Cold War, which has caused the Communist Party of Cuba to allege that all dissidents are part of a United States strategy to covertly destabilize the Party's control over the country. [3]
Fidel Castro came to power with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. By the end of 1960, according to Paul H. Lewis in Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America, all opposition newspapers had been closed down and all radio and television stations were under state control. [4]
Homosexuals as well as other "deviant" groups who were excluded from military conscription, were forced to conduct their compulsory military service in work camps called "Military Units to Aid Production" in the 1960s, and were subjected to political "reeducation". [5] [6] [7] Some of Castro's military commanders brutalized the inmates. [8]
In nearly all areas of government, loyalty to the regime became the primary criterion for all appointments. [9]
In 2017, Cuba was described as one of only two "authoritarian regimes" in the Americas by The Economist's 2017 Democracy Index. [14] The island had the second highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world in 2008, second only to the People's Republic of China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international press organization. [15] The military of Cuba is a central organization; it controls 60 percent of the economy and is Raúl Castro's base. [16]
According to a paper published in the Harvard International Review , dissident groups are weak and infiltrated by Cuban state security. Media is totally state-controlled. Dissidents find it difficult to organize and "Many of their leaders have shown enormous courage in defying the regime. Yet, time and again, the security apparatus has discredited or destroyed them. They do not represent a major threat to the regime." [17]
The paper Can Cuba Change? in the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy states that about nine-tenths of the populace forms an economically and politically oppressed underclass and "Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast, dispossessed majority in the face of a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change". [16] Working people are a critical source of discontent. [16] The only legal trade union is controlled by the government and strikes are banned. [16] Afro-Cuban dissidents have also risen, fueled by racism in Cuba. [16]
In 2012, Amnesty International warned that repression of Cuban dissidents was on the rise over the past two years, citing the Wilmar Villar hunger strike death, as well as the arrests of prisoners of conscience Yasmin Conyedo Riveron, Yusmani Rafael Alvarez Esmori, and Antonio Michel and Marcos Máiquel Lima Cruz. [18] The Cuban Commission of Human Rights reported that there were 6,602 detentions of government opponents in 2012, up from 4,123 in 2011. [19]
There are a number of opposition parties and groups that campaign for political change in Cuba. Though amendments to the Cuban Constitution of 1992 decriminalized the right to form political parties other than the Communist Party of Cuba, these parties are not permitted to engage in public political activities on the island.[ citation needed ]
During the "Black Spring" in 2003, the regime imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists. [29] [30] [31] [32] Their cases were reviewed by Amnesty International who officially adopted them as prisoners of conscience. [33] To the original list of 75 prisoners of conscience resulting from the wave of arrests in spring 2003, Amnesty International added four more dissidents in January 2004. They had been arrested in the same context as the other 75 but did not receive their sentences until much later. [34] These prisoners have since been released in the face of international pressure. Tripartite talks between the Cuban government, the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Spanish government were initiated in spring 2010 in reaction to the controversial death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February 2010 following a hunger strike amid reports of massive abuse at the hands of prison staff. These negotiations resulted in a July 2010 agreement that all remaining prisoners of the 'Group of 75' would be freed. Spain offered to receive those prisoners who would agree to be released and immediately exiled together with their families. Of the 79 prisoners of conscience 56 were still behind bars at the time of the agreement. Of the total group, 21 are still living in Cuba today whereas the others are in exile, most of them in Spain. The final two prisoners were released on 23 March 2011. [35]
The Foreign Policy magazine named Yoani Sánchez one of the 10 Most Influential Intellectuals of Latin America, the only woman on the list. [38] An article in El Nuevo Herald by Ivette Leyva Martinez, [39] speaks to the role played by Yoani Sanchez and other young people, outside the Cuban opposition and dissidence movements, in working towards a free and democratic Cuba today:
Amid the paralysis of the dissident movement, bloggers, with Yoani Sánchez in the lead, rebel artists such as the writer Orlando Luís Pardo, and musicians such as Gorki Aguila are a promising sign of growing civic resistance to the Cuban dictatorship. And "el castrismo", without doubt, has taken note. Will they succeed in sparking a popular movement, or at least consciousness of the need for democracy in Cuba? Who knows. The youngest sector of Cuban society is the one least committed to the dictatorship but at the same time the most apolitical, the one most permeated with political skepticism, escapism, and other similar "isms". It would seem, however, that after 50 years of dictatorship, public rejection of that regime is taking on more original and independent forms. Finally, a breeze of fresh, hopeful air.
On 29 March 2009, at Tania Bruguera's performance where a podium with an open mic was staged for people to have one minute of uncensored public speech, Sánchez was among people to publicly criticize censorship in Cuba and said that "the time has come to jump over the wall of control". The government condemned the event. [40] [41] Sánchez was then placed under surveillance by the Cuban police. [42]
On Thursday, 10 June 2010, seventy-four of Cuba's dissidents signed a letter to the United States Congress in support of a bill that would lift the US travel ban for Americans wishing to visit Cuba. The signers include blogger Yoani Sanchez and hunger striker Guillermo Farinas, as well as Elizardo Sanchez, head of Cuba's most prominent human rights group and Miriam Leiva, who helped found the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, a group of wives and mothers of jailed dissidents. The letter supports a bill introduced on 23 February by Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, that would bar the president from prohibiting travel to Cuba or blocking transactions required to make such trips. It also would bar the White House from stopping direct transfers between US and Cuban banks. The signers stated that:
We share the opinion that the isolation of the people of Cuba benefits the most inflexible interests of its government, while any opening serves to inform and empower the Cuban people and helps to further strengthen our civil society. [43]
The Center for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based group supporting the bill, issued a press release stating that "74 of Cuba's most prominent political dissidents have endorsed the Peterson-Moran legislation to end the travel ban and expand food exports to Cuba because in their words it is good for human rights, good for alleviating hunger, and good for spreading information and showing solidarity with the Cuban people. Their letter answers every argument the pro-embargo forces use to oppose this legislation. This, itself, answers the question 'who is speaking for the Cuban people in this debate?' - those who want to send food and Americans to visit the island and stand with ordinary Cubans, or those who don't. If Cuba's best known bloggers, dissidents, hunger strikers, and other activists for human rights want this legislation enacted, what else needs be said?" [44] [45] The Center also hosts English [46] as well as the Spanish [47] version of the letter signed by the 74 dissidents.
On 3 April 1972, Pedro Luis Boitel, an imprisoned poet and dissident, declared himself on hunger strike. After 53 days on hunger strike without receiving medical assistance and receiving only liquids, he died of starvation on 25 May 1972. His last days were related by his close friend, poet Armando Valladares. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cólon Cemetery in Havana.
Guillermo Fariñas did a seven-month hunger strike to protest against the extensive Internet censorship in Cuba. He ended it in autumn 2006 with severe health problems, although still conscious. [49] Reporters Without Borders awarded its cyber-freedom prize to Fariñas in 2006. [50]
Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez) has done hunger strikes. In 2009, following the end of his 17-year imprisonment, Antúnez, his wife Iris, and Diosiris Santana Pérez started a hunger strike to support other political prisoners. Leaders from Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Argentina declared their support for Antúnez. [51] [52]
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an imprisoned activist and dissident, died while on a hunger strike for more than 80 days. [53] Zapata went on the strike in protest against the Cuban government for having denied him the choice of wearing white dissident clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform, as well as denouncing the living conditions of other prisoners. As part of his claim, Zapata was asking for the prisoners conditions to be comparable to those that Fidel Castro had while incarcerated after his 1953 attack against the Moncada Barracks. [54]
In 2012, Wilmar Villar Mendoza died after a 50+ day hunger strike. [55]
More than one million Cubans of all social classes have left the island to the United States, [56] and to Spain, the UK, Canada, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and other countries.
Cuban dissident groups have received millions in funding from the USA government and are considered by the Cuban government to be part of the United States strategy for Cuba to destabilize the country. [3] [57]
Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio told Reuters in 2022:
"In any nation, [having people who act as foreign government agents] is illegal, That is precisely what the United States is trying to promote in Cuba today . [The U.S.A is] depressing the standard of living of the population and at the same time pouring millions of US taxpayer dollars into urging people to act against the [Cuban] government," [3]
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance where participants fast as an act of political protest, usually with the objective of achieving a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not solid food. Hunger strikers that do not take fluids are named dry hunger strikers.
Human rights in Cuba are under the scrutiny of human rights organizations, which accuse the Cuban government of committing systematic human rights abuses against the Cuban people, including arbitrary imprisonment and unfair trials. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have drawn attention to the actions of the human rights movement and designated members of it as prisoners of conscience, such as Óscar Elías Biscet. In addition, the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba led by former statesmen Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, José María Aznar of Spain and Patricio Aylwin of Chile was created to support the Cuban dissident movement.
The Varela Project is a project that was started in 1998 by Oswaldo Payá of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and named after Felix Varela, a Cuban religious leader.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was a Cuban political activist. A devout Catholic, he founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1987 to oppose the one-party rule of the Cuban Communist Party. He attracted international attention for organizing a petition drive known as the Varela Project, in which 25,000 signatories petitioned the Cuban government to guarantee freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as well as to institute a multi-party democracy. In recognition of his work, he received the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize and People in Need's Homo Homini Award.
Armando Valladares Perez is a Cuban-American poet, diplomat and former political prisoner for his involvement in the Cuban dissident movement.
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy". He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".
Ladies in White is an opposition movement in Cuba founded in 2003 by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents and those who have been made to disappear by the government. The women protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets dressed in white clothing. The color white is chosen to symbolize peace.
Pedro Luis Boitel was a Cuban poet and dissident who opposed the governments of both Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro. In 1961, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Vladimiro Roca Antúnez was a Cuban dissident and leader of the Cuban Social-Democratic Party. A member of the "Group of Four", he was imprisoned from 1997 to 2002 after co-authoring a paper calling for democratic reforms.
Guillermo Fariñas Hernández is a Cuban doctor of psychology, independent journalist and political dissident in Cuba. He has conducted 23 hunger strikes over the years to protest various elements of the Cuban government and spent more than 11 years in prison. He vowed that he would die in the struggle against censorship in Cuba.
Jorge Luis García Pérez is an Afro-Cuban human rights and democracy activist.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a Cuban political activist and a political prisoner who died after hunger striking for more than 80 days. His death received international attention, and was viewed as a significant setback in Cuba's relationship with the U.S. the EU and the rest of the world.
Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights is a human rights movement in Cuba. It is named after Rosa Parks. The movement is headed by Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, the wife of human rights and democracy advocate Jorge Luis García Pérez.
Darsi Ferrer Ramírez was a Cuban doctor, journalist, director of Juan Bruno Zayas Health and Human Rights Center, and also a dissident.
Ivonne Malleza Galano is a Cuban democracy activist who was imprisoned in 2011 by the Cuban government. Amnesty International designated her a prisoner of conscience.
Félix Bonne Carcassés (1939–2017) was a Cuban engineering professor and dissident, best known for his 1997–2000 imprisonment as a member of the pro-democracy "Group of Four".
José Daniel Ferrer García is a Cuban human rights activist, whom the international and Spanish media claim to be "the visible head of the dissident movement in the interior of the island since the death of Oswaldo Payá, in July 2012”.
Anyer Antonio Blanco is a Cuban dissident, whose anti-regime activities are based in his hometown of Santiago. He served six years as a self-described political prisoner in Cuban jails until his release in 2012. Blanco is one of the few users of Twitter in Cuba. Havana-based fellow dissident Yoani Sánchez's Twitter account has been "certified" and who constantly tweets and uploads videos from within Cuba against the regime, activity which has been recognized outside Cuba.
14ymedio is an independent digital media outlet in Cuba. It was founded on May 21, 2014, by the Cuban blogger and activist Yoani Sánchez and the Cuban journalist Reinaldo Escobar. The project started with a group of 12 reporters. The newspaper wrote news about Cuba and the world on topics related to politics, economy, society, science and technology, and sports. It also publishes editorials, opinion articles, and interviews.
Dissidents in Cuba have staged many hunger strikes - but the hunger strikes of 2010 had a significant impact, in part, because one protester died while in prison and another was near death. The negative worldwide publicity caused by the hunger strikers pressured the Cuban government to authorize a release of 52 prisoners.