The Caribbean's Saddam Hussein Still Rules Cuba

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The Caribbean's Saddam Hussein Still Rules Cuba
by Jeff Jacoby (April 13, 2003)

Summary: The only one way to reform a totalitarian despot like Cuba's Fidel Castro is to topple his regime.

One of the first people I met during a week's stay in Havana last year was the economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a once-ardent communist who had turned against Fidel Castro's dictatorial system. For daring to criticize Cuba's disastrous policies, Chepe and his wife Miriam had been severely punished. He lost his prestigious position in the foreign service and was prohibited from leaving Cuba; she was told to choose between her job in the Foreign Ministry and her marriage. "You want me to divorce my husband?" she had asked in disbelief. "Well, it's up to you," came the reply.

As we sat in their tiny apartment in Havana's Playa district last March, the two dissidents told me how they had been forced to sell many of their possessions -- the car, the stamp collection, even some of their clothes -- in order to keep body and soul together. Barred from normal employment, Chepe managed to cobble together an income from odd jobs teaching and writing about Cuba's dysfunctional economy. He also broadcast a weekly commentary (not for pay) on Radio Marti, the US broadcast service to Cuba.

Now he will be unable to do even that. Chepe was one of nearly 80 Cuban dissidents seized in mass arrests across the island last week. After a summary trial on Monday he was convicted on trumped-up charges of "working with a foreign power to undermine the government." His punishment was 20 years in prison.

Also arrested, tried, and convicted this week was Marta Beatriz Roque, another intellectual who went from believing in Castro's communist revolution to acknowledging its utter failure. Her calls for reform got her fired from the University of Havana faculty and, like Chepe, she decided to work as an independent economist, disseminating through unofficial channels the grim facts about life in Cuba.

On the afternoon that I visited her meager flat, Roque welcomed me cheerfully, glad of the chance to practice her English. She showed me the gouges on the door frame where the police had recently broken into her house. "They took everything I could use to write," she laughed. "Even my pencil -- and every piece of paper."

Perhaps you could collect all your links and put them in one post, rather than fill the discussion board with a load of cut and past?

In comparison to the United States, Cuba is a liberal country where black people live freely, whilst they are almost always ghettoized in the US. If you call Castro Cuba's Saddam, then you must call Bush america's Hitler, respecting the proportions. Secondly, the cuban people have already suffered enough under the US embargo, where direly needed goods were denied to the needing.
Leave them in peace.

"Cuba is a liberal country where black people live freely"

Now that's funny! No one in Cuba is free.

Black people aren't kept in Ghettos in the U.S! LMFAO!!

Do black Germans even exist?

Anyways, back to the topic. We can't invade Cuba. We promised Russia we wouldn't invade Cuba EVER and in exchange they took out their nukes.

Blacks and hispanics ARE kept in ghetthoes in the US.. I dont know about american indians...

Just drive around for half an hour in Washington or Los Angeles, or New York, and COUNT.

There are a lot of blacks in Europe, and most of them live a life of human dignity.

Now where's the difference between the US and Europe ? It is the economical system.

No german blacks ? German POW's after WW2 were provided with extra food rations, against the orders of the invariably WASP officers ,to save them from starvation, by black american soldiers who told the germans "we're 'n-word's too".


[Edited on 14-4-2003 by Mokuhadzushi]

Originally posted by Dangerous_Brian
Now that's funny! No one in Cuba is free.

do you believe anyone in Cuba was free during the US-backed Batista dictatorship ?

Anyways, back to the topic. We can't invade Cuba. We promised Russia we wouldn't invade Cuba EVER and in exchange they took out their nukes.

not quite : if the USA cannot just "invade" Cuba, it is not because of Russia, but because international law prohibits unilateral offensive war.

The US has strengthened Castro's regime by it's bullying of Cuba. They're still taking revenge for the nationalisation of Cuba's industries and the refusal to pay back loans.

Castro is still very popular in Cuba. The people remember the Batista regime and they are still grateful to Castro for freeing them from it's grip.
They know the dollar has won though and they're resigned to coming around to the US policies once Castro has died.

As a Westerner, I have no problems with Castro. Yeah, he made a bad choice and gambled on Soviet backing but he had nowhere else to turn.

Cuba is one country that definitely does not deserve to be on the axis of evil list. It's people are tired of sanctions, tired of poverty. They're torn between their loyalty to Castro and their need for a proper living standard.

Castro is old. Once he is dead, things will change. But in the meantime the US should back off. It's one bit of their foreign policy that I have no respect for.