In the month of January, there were 268 arbitrary arrests and detentions of peaceful opponents of the Castro Regime in Cuba.
At least 268 arbitrary haltings of pacific opponents happened during the past month of January, revealed a report disclosed in Havana by the Cuban Commission of Human rights and Reconciliación Nacional (CCDHRN).
All the prisoners were released after some hours or of several days, but four of them were committed in prisons of high security, delaying their judicial hearing; another four have faced the same situation from December of 2010.
(translation mine)
But wait – there’s more:
The report emphasizes that the CDHRN was able to document in January at least 62 incidents that constituted abuses of human rights on the part of repressive agents of the government.
The document also emphasizes that “the political repression was particularly intense in the city of Santa Clara where at least 61 arrests happened, from only the 26 to the 28 of January, some of them with plenty of violence on the part of the police agents”.
The BBC simply isn’t interested. So what do they see fit to report?
Cuba welcomes new internet cable link with Venezuela
Cuba has welcomed the arrival of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to Venezuela as a blow to the US economic embargo.
The cable will transform communications in Cuba, which has among the slowest internet speeds in the world.
Apparently it’s all funded by the BBC’s darling, Hugo Chavez. Celebrate!
Human rights? Who cares about a few cracked skulls and detentions when a few well-connected (sorry) Cuban elites will be able to make cheaper international phone calls? Don’t be such a bore, eh?
Awesome priorities, BBC.
I take your point DP.
But still it will be interesting to see how this broadband is distributed.
Unfetterd wi-fi for all ? Somehow I dont think so but lets wait and see.
If you don’t have a connection to your home, it doesn’t matter if it’s the fastest internet in the world. Even the BBC isn’t very optimistic on that front, which means it’s not very likely.
Still, there’s no excuse for the BBC to censor – yet again – the ongoing human rights abuses of the regime they keep trying to rehabilitate.
Does anyone know the availability of internet cafes in Cuba and to what extent the government overseas them ?
I think the bbc are still infatuated with Fidel (and probably think Che was a peaceful freedom fighter). As for Chavez – it will be years before he’s ousted and by then Venezuela will be completely impoverished and its industry destroyed, but the bbc will probably make a biopic and portray him as the successor of the heroic South American socialism. Long live Pinochet.
David Preiser wrote:
“If you don’t have a connection to your home, it doesn’t matter if it’s the fastest internet in the world. Even the BBC isn’t very optimistic on that front, which means it’s not very likely. “
You hit the nail on the head there, while the bBC parrots on about how this is a blow agaisnt the US, what they fail to point out is that Internet use is available to anybody bar..Cubans.
Here’s a little something on Cubian internet use by Reporters sans frontieres
The Cuban regime does its best to keep its citizens away from the Internet. The sale of computer equipment is strictly regulated, Internet access is controlled, and e-mail is closely monitored. Looking something up on the Internet can prove dangerous. The indictments of most of the journalists imprisoned in March 2003 contained references to their Internet activity.
Cuba is the world’s biggest prison for journalists and free expression is banned. The regime carefully processes the news it feeds to its citizens and tolerates no independent press. The government has a contradictory position on the Internet. It trains thousands of students in the new technologies (official sources say some 30,000 are currently receiving training). But it prevents the vast majority of the population from having online access. The authorities have gone as far as to call the Internet “the great disease of 21st century” because it feeds its users with “counter-revolutionary” information. But it is also essential for Cuba’s economic development, as telecommunications minister Ignacio González Planas keeps repeating.
Cuba is one of the world’s 10 most repressive countries as regards online free expression. The Internet is reserved for the ruling elite. But even the privileged few usually have access only to an Intranet specially created and filtered by the authorities
And a much more recent article on freedom of speech in Cuba.
Pounce,
I think you have partly answered my question above.
Dunno if there are any BBC “journalists” without carefully-preserved old Che T shirts tucked away in their closets. I recall a few years ago there was a World Service hack gazing wistfully out over the Bay of Pigs as he described the invasion sponsored by the evil CIA and the heroic Cuban resistance. If it was BBC TV, no doubt they would have have shown him in profile against the sea and the sky with the wind fanning his hair. His Che T shirt would have been concealed by a jacket. To show it would have been a bit much, even for the BBC.
Come to think of it, maybe he was also on TV.
Blooming decades-long dictators, refusing to leave, despite the interests and desires of their people.
I wonder, is there a square in Havana surrounded by comfy hotels?
Maybe it’s a case of one man’s genetically impartial news broadcaster being another’s hypocritical propaganda machine?
No matter how crooked and grubby and cruel and anti democratic a regime is IF the BBC approves of its politics then the BBC will promote and protect them.
If Cuba was a right wing regime then you can bet your bottom dollar that the BBC would be in there attacking it with gusto. Where did this love affair with a despotic dictatorship begin?
The UUSR was able to pimp a victim narrative through its useful idiots in the West, the anti Western sentiment was nurtured by leftist agitators and Quislings and Marxist teachers and guess where that work gained most traction? Of coursr the BBC is filld with leftists who learned their political beliefs by those exact sources.
It really does not matter to the BBC that Castro&Co rule by the AK47, any revolutionary leftist regime crime is justified because the ends justify the means. A free election would sweep Castro and his gang of thugs away, ever wonder why the BBC spends so much time pimping calls for free and fair elections in some nations while we hear NOTHING about Cuba and its lack of democratic accountability?
Cuba, one word that has caused so much suffering in the world, working through the USSR it spread death and war and hunger and fear through Africa and Asia and Soth America like a deadly virus, millions dead as direct result of Cuban arms and political agitation of tribal hatreds, a legacay that lives on today.
BBC claims of impartiality fall flat when Cuba is examined, they have consistently aided and abetted violent criminals and crooked gangsters simply becasue they wear the correct political ideology on their sleeves.
Any national regime can only ever be considered valid if it passes a couple of simple tests:
Was it elected in a free and fair election?
Can it be removed in a free and fair election?
As you see Cuba fails the tests miserably yet here we a supposed impartial BBC that rages against supposed undemocratic regimes and champions supposed peoples power.
In the fantasy island mind of planet beeboid There is a clear difference between a grubby violent crooked Egypt and a crooked grubby violent Cuba?
On planet beeboid freedom and democracy is a variable commodity, fine for the left to deny it and fine for the left to demand it, outrageous crimes by the left are acceptable but minor supposed crimes by the right are intolerable?
People power rules unless it threatens the leftists, on planet beeboid the crushing of democracy by violent thugs is fine as long as they are leftists. The ends justify the means.
THE BBC: SUPPORTING CROOKED THUGOCRACIES, TORTURE AND MURDER, ITS WHAT WE DO!
Well said Cassandra.
Absolutely, Cassie.
The hypocrisy of the lousy Beeboids stinks to high hell. They are quite happy to ignore human suffering if it is a result of the perverted ideologies which they support.
I wonder what atrocities the evil Cuban regime would have to commit before the scum at the BBC report them ?
The BBC will never report the activities of Cuba and its mercenaries and arms deliveries to tribesmen barely out of the stoneage. No stories about execution squads and torture centres from planet beeboid
The BBC will not explain and never has tried to explain where Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge learned its political philosophy and methods, year Zero was not simply a spur of the moment idea.
Marxist doctrines and Marxist advisors from the USSR/Cuba and armed with Soviet weaponry.
The Khmer Rouge were classic Marxist revolutionaries trained by Marxists using classic Marxist methods, we have heard all bout the killing fields right? What we have yet to hear from the BBC is why it happened, it didnt just kick off accidentally, it was a carefully planned and executed narrative based on Marxist theology.
Thanks for the kind words Demon :*
In the case of Cuba it isn’t just the BBc, it is the entire “Left” including hollywood etc. Have yet to see a film yet that doesn’t have dozens of perfectly kept 50’s cars (there are about 3 taht actaully drive, the rest kept hidden for when film-makers arrive) people dancing in the street (literally) and bustling and alive Havana water front with the ubicuitous line of perfectly behaved and immaculate chool children etc…the whole thing is a scam (apart from the school uniforms!).
Many BBC news staff seem to be very pleased at the people power in Egypt, suddenly telling us how much Mubarak was a despot and unliked, something which they’ve remained very quiet about until a bit of trendy ‘power to the people’ revolution came along to satisfy their leftiy, western middle class, public school and home counties teenager/student/SWP lecturer style rebellious personalities.
It’ll be interesting to see how the BBC copes with the end of the communist regime in Cuba. We’ll probably get hours of sombre music and reverential obitiuaries like when Princess Diana died. I’m not sure the BBC wants any people power in Cuba. It certainly doesn’t seem very keen to ‘analyse’ the shortcomings of the current totaliatarian regime.