Cuba: Your Marginally Less Repressive Caribbean Paradise
by Jim Washburn
According to a BBC report, the Catholic Church did something good this week, negotiating with Cuban leader Raul Castro to improve some of the conditions in which the island's estimated 200 political prisoners are kept. Those needing medial attention will have better access to it. Prisoners detained far from their families will be moved closer to make visiting easier. Church officials said they hope more positive changes are on the way.
Cuba denies that it holds any political prisoners, referring instead to the convicts in question as "pleasure units." I read that wrong: it refers to them as "mercenaries," paid stooges of the US government bent on sowing disruption in their socialist paradise, which does make a mean mojito even as it clings to its Soviet-style propaganda. Which isn't to say that we haven't been messing with them for half a century, just that they should be dealing with it more graciously by now, and that, much as the Bush Administration and sorry to say Obama too used 9/11 as an excuse to ramp up surveillance of legitimate domestic groups, the Cubans of course are using the American boogeyman as an excuse to squelch their own much-needed domestic dissent.
Comments
No comments.
