BY NAT HENTOFF • January 9, 2010
The Nov. 30 "Acting on Our Conscience: A Declaration of African-American
Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba" by 60 prominent black
Americans denouncing the deep discrimination against Afro-Cubans by the
Cuban government was a surprise because none of the five dozen signers
had previously been notably critical of the Castro dictatorship. More
surprising, however, was how long it took for their public outrage
against the chronic marginalization of black Cubans by the Cuban government.
The American Red Cross
Dr. Mark Q. Sawyer, associate professor of both African American studies
and political science at UCLA, wrote in "Racial Politics in
Post-Revolutionary Cuba" (Cambridge University Press, 2006):
"The ongoing marginalization of Afro-Cubans in Cuban social, economic
and political life" is shown by how "Castro's government consolidated
its power by curtailing freedoms of organization in general and those of
black organization in particular."
However, the new blazing statement of conscience by such dauntless
champions of civil rights in America as professors Cornel West, Ron
Walters and Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College, should
awaken the many Castro supporters here -- including many on college
campuses -- and spur them to confront the longtime presence in that
glorious Revolution of Old Jim Crow.
This powerful, if belated, demythologizing of the coldly callous Cuban
dictatorship ends with the 60 black Americans putting a face on one of
the black prisoners of conscience in a Castro gulag:
"We call on the authorities and Government of Cuba to IMMEDIATELY AND
UNCONDITIONALLY free our brother, Dr. Darsi Ferrer."
Carlos Moore, a well-known Cuban author and black-rights activist now
living in Brazil, has circulated an international "petition on behalf of
Afro-Cuban civil rights leader Dr. Darsi Ferrer," who "runs a number of
independent programs designed to help impoverished, marginalized and
discriminated communities in Cuba (who are overwhelmingly of African
descent)" (naijablog.blogspot.com, Oct. 30).
"Because the government claims," Moore continues, "that there are no
such things as poverty, racism or marginalized communities, Dr. Ferrer
is regarded as a highly subversive person by the authorities." And must
be put away.
Tellingly, Carlos Moore, driven by his own conscience -- and presenting
a challenge to many Americans romanticizing the brutality of the
Revolution -- emphasizes: "I want to make clear that this is the first
time in my life, as an anti-racist activist myself, that I publicly
raise a voice in support of any Cuban dissident. ... We have come to the
point where to remain silent before such injustice and oppression is
tantamount to be complicit with it."
Are you ready, so-called documentarian Michael Moore, to come out with
your own "statement of conscience"?
On Dec. 10 -- on Conversa Cuba Companioni blog radio snow -- there was
an interview by telephone with Dr. Ferrer's wife, Yusnaimy Jorge Soca.
She told of what had happened two days before in Havana at the Villalon
Park, "where we've had a peace march every year since 2006. Marchers
were brutally assaulted and taken to jail cells by police.
"I was taken to a police station," she added, "and kept in a clabozo
cell from 11 a.m. to about 4 p.m., but we continued to protest and
yelled out in front of the Cuban police for human rights. ... I told
Darsi that I was determined to march no matter what. ... State security
threatened him to try to convince me not to march, but he completely
refused their threats."
At the end of the radio interview with Dr. Ferrer's wife, there was this
epilogue: "Folks, the tyrant can roar, but ... can no longer hide his
deeds."
There are other Cubans, of varied racial backgrounds, who so subverted
the Castros' owned-and-operated Revolution that they have been locked
away for 20 or more years for having run independent libraries so Cubans
could borrow those free-thinking books censored by that government. (A
biography of Martin Luther King Jr. -- "Martin Luther King: Contra Todas
Las Exclusiones" by Vicent Roussel -- in one of those libraries -- was
ordered burned by a sentencing court when it was captured during a
library raid.)
As a I am writing this, Dr. Luis Milan Fernandez, an Afro-Cuban, a
member of the Independent Cuban Medical Association, is in a psychiatric
ward of the Prison of Boniato in the province of Santiago de Cuba,
despite reportedly having no previous mental illnesses. He's in poor
health, but no doctors are allowed. His crime? The "Manifiesto 2001,"
calling for fundamental freedoms in Cuba.
Another black prisoner, whom I've often written about, is Dr. Oscar
Elías Biscet -- a disciple of Gandhi, Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr.
-- serving a 25-year-sentence in a maximum-security prison, where he was
further punished for protesting the treatment of other prisoners. Sick
with hypertension and other ailments, he's without treatment.
Dr. Biscet was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President
George W. Bush. President Obama has said nothing about him or any of the
prisoners of conscience.
The American Library Association keeps refusing to demand the immediate
release of the independent librarians. Can ALA President Barbara Jones
and the governing council spare a few words for Afro-Cuban civil rights
while gently admonishing Fidel and Raul?
Maybe during this year's ALA Banned Books Week here, a charred copy of
the "felonious" biography of Martin Luther King Jr. can be shown.
Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and
the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.
Roar, tyrants, you cannot hide your racist deeds |
zanesvilletimesrecorder.com | Zanesville Times Recorder (9 January 2010)
http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20100109/OPINION02/1090313
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