A Martian visiting earth this week, coasting TV channels and perusing papers, would have to conclude that among the items that most interest this planet’s news bureaus is the plight of former political prisoners, especially black ones.
Well, many Cubans (many of them black) suffered longer and more horrible incarceration in Castro’s KGB-designed dungeons than Nelson Mandela spent in South Africa’s (relatively) comfortable prisons, which were open to inspection by the Red Cross. Castro has never allowed a Red Cross delegation anywhere near his real prisons. Now let’s see if you recognize some of the Cuban ex-prisoners and torture-victims:
Mario Chanes (30 years), Ignacio Cuesta Valle, (29 years) Antonio López Muñoz, (28 years) in Dasio Hernández Peña (28 years) Dr. Alberto Fibla (28 years) Pastor Macurán (28 years) Roberto Martin Perez (28 years) Roberto Perdomo (28 years) Teodoro González (28 years.) Jose L.Pujals (27 years) Miguel A. Alvarez Cardentey (27 years.) Eusebio Penalver (28 years.)
No? None of these names ring a bell? And yet their suffering took place only 90 miles from U.S. shores in a locale absolutely lousy with international press bureaus and their intrepid “investigative reporters.” From CNN to NBC, from Reuters to the AP, from ABC to NPR to CBS, Castro welcomes all of these to “embed” and “report” from his fiefdom.
This fiefdom, by the way, is responsible for the jailing and torture of the most political prisoners (many black) per-capita of any regime in the modern history of the Western hemisphere, more in fact than Stalin’s at the height of the Great Terror. But the Martian would only learn that it provides free and fabulous healthcare and is subject to a “cruel” and “archaic” embargo by a superpower.
Here are some choice Mandela-isms:
"Che Guevara is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom."
"The cause of Communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind!"
"There's one place where (Fidel Castro’s) Cuba stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty!"
Here are a few items the Martian would probably never learn regarding Nelson Mandela or the Stalinist regime he adored:
South Africa's apartheid regime was no model of liberty. But even its most violent enemies enjoyed a bona fide day in court under a judge who was not beholden to a dictator for his job (or his life.) When Nelson Mandela was convicted of "193 counts of terrorism committed between 1961 and 1963, including the preparation, manufacture and use of explosives, including 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel mines, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate," his trial had observers from around the free world. "The trial has been properly conducted," wrote Anthony Sampson, correspondent for the liberal London Observer. "The judge, Mr Justice Quartus de Wet, has been scrupulously fair." Sampson admitted this though his own sympathies veered strongly towards Mandela. (Indeed, Sampson went on to write Nelson Mandela's authorized biography.)
In sharp contrast, when Ruby Hart Phillips, the Havana correspondent for the flamingly Castrophile New York Times, attended a mass-trial of accused Castro-regime enemies, she gaped in horror. "The defense attorney made absolutely no defense, instead he apologized to the court for defending the prisoners," she wrote in February 1959. "The whole procedure was sickening." The defendants were all murdered by firing squad the following dawn.
In 1961 a Castro regime prosecutor named Idelfonso Canales explained Cuba's new system to a stupefied "defendant," named Rivero Caro who was himself a practicing lawyer in pre-Castro Cuba. "Forget your lawyer mentality," laughed Canales. "What you say doesn't matter. What proof you provide doesn't matter, even what the prosecuting attorney says doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what the G-2 (military police) says!"
A reminder:
According to Anti-Apartheid activists a grand total of 3,000 political prisoners passed through South Africa’s Robben Island prison in roughly 30 years under the Apartheid regime, (all after trials similar to the one described above by Anthony Sampson.) Usually about a thousand were held. These were out of a South African population of 40 million. Here's what Mandela's "jail cell" looked like towards the end of his sentence.
"N*gger!" taunted my jailers between tortures. “recalled Castro’s prisoner Eusebio Penalver to this writer. “We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!" they laughed at me. “For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell That’s 4 feet high, so you couldn’t stand. But they never succeeded in branding me as common criminal, so I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide,” continued the late Mr Penalver.
According to the Human Rights group, Freedom House, a grand total of 500,000 political prisoners have passed through Castro’s various prisons and forced labor camps (many after trails like the one described by R.H Phillips above, others with none whatsoever.) At one time in 1961, some 300,000 Cubans were jailed for political offenses (in torture chambers and forced-labor camps designed by Stalin's disciples, not like Mandela's as seen above.) This was out of a Cuban population in 1960 of 6.4 million.
So who did the world embargo for "injustice?" and "human-rights abuses?" (Apartheid South Africa, of course) And who currently sits on the UN’s Human Rights Council? (Stalinist Cuba.)
In brief, none of the craziness Alice found after tumbling down that rabbit hole comes close to the craziness Cuba-watchers read and see almost daily.