CUBA
Stand firm, America
BY BERTA ANTUNEZ PERNET
bantunezpernet@gmail.com
Afew weeks ago, Cuban State Security agents beat up on the streets of
Havana the internationally known Cuban writer and blogger Yoani Sánchez.
The international community condemned the attack.
Some wonder why the Cuban government would attack Yoani at a time when
the government of the United States is easing its restrictions, trying
to normalize aspects of the relation between the two countries and
urging the Cuban government to signal that it respects human rights and
political freedoms so that the U.S. government can revisit its trade
embargo -- an embargo that does not include food or medicine.
I want to explain the realities of Cuba to those who question: ``Why?''
I do so as someone who was born and has lived most of my life in Cuba,
as someone who is the sister and niece of political prisoners, and as an
activist trying to do as much as possible to win the release of Cuba's
political prisoners.
The attack on Yoani Sánchez was no fluke. It was part of the
dictatorship's strategy of constant arrests, harassment, kidnappings,
beatings, extra-judicial killings that have been employed against Cuba's
pro-democracy movement, especially since the mass arrests of March 2003.
Those arrests also resulted in worldwide condemnation of the regime.
The Cuban government has since been waging low-profile, high-intensity
warfare against Cubans who peacefully advocate change. For a while the
Cuban dictatorship hoped to be able to increase its repression and avoid
condemnation. Now the Castro brothers' regime feels emboldened by the
half-dozen Latin American heads of state who have traveled to Havana to
cozy-up to the world's longest reigning and among its bloodiest dictators.
The regime is emboldened by Spain's new policy of engagement with the
dictatorship, and the increasing influence of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez
throughout Latin America. Yet the regime is also frightened by the Cuban
people's increasing defiance and refusal to cooperate. Perceiving
division among the world's democratic governments, the regime is slowly
raising the visibility of its repressive war against the Cuban people.
The assault on Yoani is the clearest indicator.
My brother, Jorge Luis García Pérez ``Antúnez,'' was released after 17
years of imprisonment for peacefully advocating for change in Cuba, and
has remained in Cuba to continue the civic struggle for democratic change.
He has been frequently arrested, beaten and harassed by Castro's
apparatchiks. As the Castro regime receives unilateral concessions from
democracies around the world, Jorge Luis has seen the regime grow bolder
in its repression of the Cuban people.
In April he wrote members of the U.S. Congress that it is a ``powerful
attention getter that, while the Castro regime increases repression and
mistreats our compatriots, certain sectors [in the United States] seek
engagement with the oldest and most repressive dictatorship in the
hemisphere.
``For Cubans, freedom, dignity and respect for human rights are much
more important than any possible economic advantages that might be
gained from tourism and associated revenues that will be used to finance
the cruel tyranny oppressing the Cuban people.''
All my life I have had to deal with the true face of the Castro regime:
its thugs, its interrogators and its prison guards. As a result, my
brother, my family and I do not fall under the spell of the regime's
sophisticated diplomats, its well-placed agents of influence, and its
propagandists.
It's ironic to hear some argue that the Castro regime is repressive only
to avoid engagement with the United States, as if a 50-year-old
dictatorship is full of closet reformists kept in check by their fear of
the ``evils'' of U.S. imperialism. No, I come from deep inside Cuba and
I know how the regime treats us Cubans and what it really thinks of us,
especially if we happen to be black.
The regime represses us because it can. It brooks no dissent and
tolerates no opposition. It can't because it knows that the majority of
Cubans want their freedoms restored.
Giving a regime that is nearing its end, a unilateral windfall of
tourists' dollars, will only reinforce its bloody repression. It is the
wrong signal to send to a youthful and growing resistance movement that
eventually will prevail over a decrepit totalitarian state. For the sake
of the Cuban people, America should continue to stand as a pillar of
moral clarity.
Berta Antúnez Pernet is a Cuban pro-democracy activist scheduled to
testify Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Stand firm, America - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (19 November 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1341021.html
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