In a continuing series of guest posts by my fellow bloggers on the Island, today I am bringing you this article from the blog Sin Evasion, by Miriam Celaya, who won the Virtual Island award for the Best Journalistic Blog of 2009.
Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Until last February 23rd, it seemed that the imprisonment of the Black Spring 75 had been one of Castro's utmost blunders. The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, one of the civic fighters entrapped back then by the strong wave of repression unleashed by the dictatorship, goes to show that the events that took place almost seven years ago continue to have repercussions against the very regime that carried them out.
Not content with having allowed Orlando even a modicum of comfort, to spend his last days among his people, the dictatorship has launched its wolf packs onto the streets to suppress legitimate demonstrations of solidarity and respect by other Cubans for the courage and the resistance of a man who had the high-mindedness to confront the most powerful and protracted dictatorial government Cuba's history has known. Many independent Cubans were detained, others were threatened, and police operations raged throughout the day on February 24th.
By a strange coincidence, this February 24th, 2010, a date of historic significance for Cubans, was marked by fear, not because of the dignified and free citizens who went to the home of Laura Pollan, one of the Ladies in White, to sign the book of condolences, or on account of those who threw flowers into the sea in memory of the Brothers to the Rescue, also killed in the downing of their aircraft, another one of the "glorious" actions of Castro and his spies, nor by those who attended Orlando's funeral services. Now, the fear of the regime and the mercenaries at its service is palpable. They cannot conceive the power of shame, are ignorant of the virtue that envelops the sense of decorum, and cannot, even remotely, understand that freedom is a natural gift that is carried inside and it is -- therefore -- impossible to eliminate with steel bars. The Black Spring 75, Orlando Zapata, political prisoners and all of us who are disobedient are free.
The Cuban regime, on the other hand, is today the real prisoner: it is locked up in the very logic of repression and violence it generates. Victim of the system it alone forged, incapable of producing anything other than hatred and fear, it now shamelessly displays these things while trying to hold on, through terror, to its only real interest: power. The only thing is, many Cubans are losing their fear.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo's sacrifice also contains a hopeful singularity: he has died, but Cuba is beginning to awaken. Small niches of previously unconnected civil society, of the opposition, independent journalists, the Church, and ever-widening social sectors from very diverse ends of the island have begun to link. Sooner or later, reality will change: these are not times for dictators.
The Cuban president (the lower case is intentional), Raul, the Grey, the Second Fiddle, has made a statement to the foreign media saying he regrets Orlando's death. Of course, this is not a spontaneous expression of sincerity; this time, however, I believe him: he has more than enough reasons to regret this and many other deaths.
Miriam Celaya
Author of the blog: Sin Evasion
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez
Race is a crucial factor in the regime's fears, since most of the regime opponents are blacks like Orlando Zapata. There is a small representation of black among the regime leadership, the unemployment level is twice of the white population, and blacks comprise 80% of the prison population. This time-bomb could go off at anytime.
What the world must to do is to joint to USA embargo and get castrofascism down the same way that the world got down Sudafrica rascist regimen.
Those 5 agents in jail were the ones that comploted to helped castrofascism shoot down Brothers to the Rescue small plans and get kill so 4 American citizens..... You want those criminals free???
It is a serious matter to simply fly around a terminal area without control or permission. As an airline captain, I would have been VERY upset if I had been in the same airspace as they were. Given the fact of many terrorist acts that have been perpetrated by air, the shootdown was totally justified.
I am more outraged at the privileged position that Cubans have in our legal system. THEY have MORE rights than Americans it seems. They can go to Cuba, while Americans who are not Cuban may not. Cubans who are pilots do not have to follow the same rules as American pilots. This is outrageous and needs to END NOW!
Most immigrants in USA or wherever in the world conserves theirs properties and belongings in theirs homeland and can make investments in theirs homelands as they please..... Cubans gets all their properties and belongings confiscated when they leave Cuba!!!
Most immigrants in USA or wherever in the world conserves theirs residence status in theirs homeland..... Cubans does not!!!!!!
There is no emigration department in any country in the world but immigrations dept, in other words, no one in the world has to ask for permit to leave or get in the own country.......... but in Cuba there is a emigration department in charge of allowing or not Cubans to leave or not the country and to come back or not.
That's why Cubans gets preferred treatment in USA, Europe and many countries in the world. We do not have in our homeland the rights and benefits most of immigrants has.
Just after WWI, to go abroad, you had to get permission and tell the government what your business was, who you were going to see,etc.. Then they decided IF they would let you go. This was standard among almost ALL countries.
As for what happens to those who leave, I have to remind you that the US and Cuba are basically in a state of undeclared WAR. The US took Americans of Japanese ancestry and put them in prison camps during WWII, took all their property and their freedom. They had done nothing like asking to leave for Japan or even expressed sympathy for Japan. For the Americans who sided with the enemy, they lost their property, freeedom, and went to prison. I hardly see what the Cubans are doing is any worse than what the US did to our citizens they did not trust.
Do you have any comment to Brothers to the Rescue history bellow????
A vicious circle that started with the false feeling of invincibility and perpetuity that the former USSR and Soviet Block caused among the tyrants of this Block..... most of those tyrant naively believed their tyrannies supported by the "great" USSR and Warsaw Pact would last forever and so felt them self safes for acting as they pleased....... and what the most of them pleased was to kill all theirs opponents and criticizers and become "gods" for their peoples..... so they started the most horrible process of extermination ever the world seen....... "The Black Book of Communism" gives a pale idea about this crimes but can be used as guide for understanding this flagellum...... Castrofascism did not stood out this trend and the tyrant brothers happily started to kill theirs opponents and criticizers....... what horror have they surely felt the day USSR and Warsaw Pact got down as a cards castle........ that day they understood there was no way for them get out the criminal state they created..... so the only way for them get out of this is by giving up and be prosecuted for theirs crimes or to die killing in case of civil rebellion or to try endure in power until Devil take them to Hell...... meanwhile they are trapped in its own terror with no way of escape!!!!!!!