Cuba

You can’t always get what you want, the Rolling Stones once told us. But you can, actually, in a push poll: a poll designed to elicit a certain result and then advertised as achieving that result. This past week the Atlantic Council released a poll it had sponsored about U.S. relations with Cuba. Here’s one key aspect of the poll: When respondents were told "Cuba continues to have a dismal human rights record. The Castro regime represses virtually all forms of political dissent through detentions, arbitrary arrests, beatings, travel restrictions, forced exile, and sentencing dissidents in closed trials," we find that 33 percent this was a "very important" reason to keep the current U.S. policy and 17 percent said it’s "somewhat important," for a total of 50 percent. And 43 percent the human rights abuses make it somewhat important or very important to change the policy. Respondents were also read this statement: "Cuban-Americans support current US policy because it puts economic pressure on the Castro regime, while providing assistance to Cuban citizens. Travel and financial restrictions have already been lifted for Cuban-Americans to help their families; meanwhile we should stay tough on the Castro regime." The poll found that 61 percent of Americans generally, 67 percent of Floridians, and 61 percent of Hispanics thought this a good reason to oppose normalization with Cuba. So, given that the statement about human rights abuses is true, and given that 67 percent number, how about a headline saying "Majority of Americans favors keeping the embargo on Cuba." Of course, it would have been easy to get even tougher pro-embargo results. Suppose a question had asked "Should we normalize relations when they have an American citizen named Alan Gross in prison for more than three years now, and he’s 64 and in poor health and has lost a hundred pounds in prison, and his only ’crime’ was helping the tiny Jewish community there get internet access?" Or how about this question: "Should we normalize relations when Cuba continues to harbor an American terrorist named Joanne Chesimard, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and shot and killed a New Jersey State Trooper?" We can pretty well guess what the numbers would have been in response. The Atlantic Council poll does ask about the fact that Cuba is on the State Department’s terrorism list. It asked this: "Currently, the US State Department designates four countries in the world as state-sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan. The State Department defines state sponsors of terrorism as countries that have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, and places sanctions on these nations that restrict trade, travel, and foreign assistance. In your opinion, does Cuba pose the same threat as these other countries—Sudan, Syria, and Iran—and thus belong on the list?” This biased query found that 40 percent of all Americans and 43 percent of Hispanics said yes, it does deserve to be on that list; 52 percent of all Americans and 50 percent of Hispanics said no.  Think what the results would have been had the "question" added that sentence about Joanne Chesimard! But the Atlantic Council has a strong position against the embargo on Cuba, so it headlines the poll this way: "Atlantic Council Poll: Americans Want New Relations With Cuba." And its web site surrounds the poll result with blogs, statements by officials, videos, and articles favoring that result. The handsome booklet the Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center published last week is entitled "Cuba: A New Public Survey Supports Policy Change." Well, nice try. People who want to change the policy will find the poll useful. People who oppose change, as I do, will find the whole effort unpersuasive. And I hope that people who are still thinking about the policy, and are undecided, will find it unpersuasive too. The poll found what those who commissioned it wanted it to find. Members of Congress who must vote on Cuba policy, and administration officials who must make decisions, are too sophisticated to be influenced by this kind of advocacy masquerading as opinion research. They know too much about Alan Gross and Joanne Chesimard.  

Next week, on November 12, new members of the UN Human Rights Council will be elected. Among the candidates are nations that should never be allowed on the Council, and indeed whose presence will make the Council a mockery: Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and Vietnam. Perhaps the United States cannot prevent countries with the human rights records of these five from being elected. There are two things we should do, however. First, we should fight, trying to organize resistance to the election of any of these five human rights abusers. Even if they cannot be kept off, a very substantial number of no votes will be a useful embarrassment to them, showing that many countries condemn their records. Second, we should announce that the United States will vote no on all five. The UN Human Rights Council was created in 2006 because the UN Human Rights Commission was a disgraceful mockery of support for human rights. Under the Bush administration the United States refused to join until the new entity proved itself to be different. In 2009 the Obama administration announced it would seek election, and did join the Council. The announced goal, part of the "new era of engagement" about which President Obama often spoke, was to strengthen both human rights and the Human Rights Council: then-UN ambassador Susan Rice stated at the time that "Those who suffer from abuse and oppression around the world, as well as those who dedicate their lives to advancing human rights, need the Council to be balanced and credible." The addition of human rights abusers like Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and Vietnam does not make the Council more credible, and it makes the place more balanced only if the balance is supposed to be between human rights defenders and human rights abusers. If all five of these abusers are elected, the Council will be tilting hard toward abusers. The United States should say so.    

After all the talk about hope and change and reform in Cuba, the old Stalinist regime of the Castros turns out to be in bed with North Korea and to be violating UN sanctions on that other Stalinist regime. Birds of a feather.... Today’s news tells us that a North Korean vessel traveling from Cuba to North Korea was stopped and searched near the Panama Canal. Lo and behold, hidden in the sugar were missile parts. As one news report put it, Panama’s president says the country has taken control of a North Korean ship that was trying to illegally sneak missile materials from Cuba through the Panama Canal...."We had suspected this ship, which was coming from Cuba and headed to North Korea, might have drugs aboard so it was brought into port for search and inspection," Martinelli said. "When we started to unload the shipment of sugar we located containers that we believe to be sophisticated missile equipment...." After examining images, intelligence officials told Fox News that the equipment is part of a "soviet era" radar system that accompanies the SA-2 surface to air missile. Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the seized ship is called Chong Chon Gang and has been on the institute’s suspect list for some time....Griffiths also said the institute earlier this year reported to the U.N. a discovery it made of a flight from Cuba to North Korea that travelled via central Africa." "Given the history of North Korea, Cuban military cooperation and now this latest seizure, we find this flight more interesting," he said. "After this incident there should be renewed focus on North Korean-Cuban links." It is too much to hope that those who have bought the Cuban line about reform on the island would now acknowledge they’ve been hoodwinked. But for the rest of us, and for those wondering why there should still be an embargo on trade with Cuba, this is a reminder of the facts about the Castro regime.

Last week the Castro brothers announced the name of the man who, they said, will succeed Raul Castro when--or if--he retires at the end of the new five-year term as president to which he has just appointed himself. The name is Miguel Diaz-Canel. He’s an apparatchik in the best Soviet style: thirty years in the Communist Party, starting with its youth groups. He’s not particularly well-known on or off the island, which may have recommended him to the Castros: previous heirs apparent sometimes got too big for their britches and had to be dumped. Of course, Canel may be dumped too, at any moment. He has no power base, and no apparent close ties with the Army and security services--who will be critical once the Castros are dead. The day Raul or Fidel is tired of him will be the day his "elevation" is undone. It will be interesting to see whether, in his new post as vice president, Canel is handed any real responsibilities by the Castros. This much is clear: nothing this man has ever done in his life suggests he believes in freedom, democracy, or human rights--or the Castros would never have selected him. Meanwhile another Cuban is in the news: Yoani Sanchez. She has achieved international recognition as a young (37 years old) blogger whose blog, Generation Y, is followed in 17 languages. Here’s what President Obama had to say to Yoani in 2009: Congratulations on receiving the Maria Moore Cabot Prize award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for coverage of Latin America that furthers inter-American understanding. You richly deserve the award. I was disappointed you were denied the ability to travel to receive the award in person. Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals. Recently Yoani was permitted to travel, and after a visit to Brazil is now in the Czech Republic. She is thanking the Czech government for its support of human rights in Cuba. She will also be coming to America on this trip. Yoani has posted a comment on the Diaz-Canel selection, and here it is: The designation of the number two man in the Cuban nomenklatura has probably been more commented on and discussed outside the Island than inside. In part because for several months the national media has already been suggesting — with constant allusions to this 52-year-old engineer — that he could become the successor to Fidel Castro. So few were surprised when the former Minister of Higher Education became, as of Sunday, yesterday, the “dauphin” of the Cuban regime. Their biological clock has the octogenarians governing the Greater Antilles at a crossroads: either establish the inheritance now or forever lose the chance seems to be dictating the hands of history. So the line of succession has been left to a much younger figure. They have based their choice on their confidence in the fidelity and manageability of Diaz-Canel, trapped between a commitment to his superiors and a conviction of how limited his real power is. History shows us that the behavior of these dauphins while they are being observed by their bosses is one thing, and something else entirely when those bosses are no longer around. Only then will we discover who the real man is who yesterday became number two in Cuba. However, I have hopes that the fate of our country will not be decided by this Council of State, nor by this presidential chair. I have hopes that the era of the olive-green monarchs, their heirs and their entourage is ending.

Democracy may be spreading in large parts of the world and with it genuine, contested elections--but not in Cuba. Cubans "voted" again yesterday for the Cuban "National Assembly," if one uses such terms very loosely. The Washington Post quotes Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez saying “It is a different electoral system. Personally I find it is more democratic than (others) I know.” This is offensive nonsense, because Cuba remains a one-party state where zero electoral competition is allowed. "Renouncing the principle of a single party would be equal to legalizing one or more imperialist parties," Reuters reports Raul Castro saying last year. So the system in Cuba is summed up by Reuters this way: "Reuters talked with more than half a dozen voters on Sunday before they entered the polls in Havana. None of them knew the candidates on the national slate from their districts." And why should they, given that there is no competition and that the Communist Party, not the National Assembly, runs the country. As one voter said to Reuters, "I vote because I feel I have to, and it doesn’t really matter because the deputies have no power anyway." Reuters also notes that this young woman "declined to give her name," and no one has to wonder why. Cuba remains a police state and one of the few communist dictatorships still in existence, and its fraudulent elections are an insult to the Cuban people. One can only hope that Cuba’s "different" system does not survive the Castros-- Fidel, now 86, and Raul, now 81.

The argument for sustained U.S. diplomatic engagement with Havana has never been more compelling, says CFR’s Julia Sweig.

Alan Gross begins his fourth year in a Cuban prison tomorrow, having been jailed on December 3, 2009.  The State Department issued a good statement:   Tomorrow Alan Gross will begin his fourth year of unjustified imprisonment in Cuba. He was arrested on December 3, 2009 and later given a 15-year prison sentence by Cuban authorities for simply facilitating communications between Cuba’s Jewish community and the rest of the world. Mr. Gross is a 63-year-old husband, father, and dedicated professional with a long history of providing assistance and support to underserved communities in more than 50 countries. Since his arrest, Mr. Gross has lost more than 100 pounds and suffers from severe degenerative arthritis that affects his mobility, and other health problems. His family is anxious to evaluate whether he is receiving appropriate medical treatment, something that can best be determined by having a doctor of his own choosing examine him. We continue to ask the Cuban Government to grant Alan Gross’s request to travel to the United States to visit his 90-year-old mother, Evelyn Gross, who is gravely ill. This is a humanitarian issue. The Cuban government should release Alan Gross and return him to his family, where he belongs. Thus far all the efforts by the United States government to free Mr. Gross have been unsuccessful. Those efforts are undermined every time an American tourist visits Cuba, there to play at the beach and deliver hard currency to the Castro regime. I regret that the Obama administration has not tightened up again on travel to Cuba in response to Mr. Gross’s continued imprisonement, and that Americans who know nothing about the treatment of their fellow citizen--or worse are indifferent to it--continue to visit Cuba. Until the regime begins to see more than words from the State Department’s spokesman, until they suffer some real harm from the treatment of Mr. Gross, it may be impossible to free him. Let us hope that conclusion is too pessimistic.

Alan Gross is a former USAID contractor who has been in a Cuban jail since December 3, 2009.  The most recent reports are that he has lost 105 pounds while in prison, and may well be suffering from untreated cancer. Vilma Rodriguez Castro is the granddaughter of Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and the man now running the communist dictatorship. They are linked here for one reason: while Gross suffers in a Cuban prison for the crime of helping the tiny Cuban Jewish community get linked to other Jewish communities in the world via the internet, Vilma is partying in New York. The indefatigable Frank Calzon, who has spent his life fighting for human rights in Cuba, tells me that according to the Cafe Fuerte blog, Vilma Rodríguez Castro, grand-daughter of Cuban dictator Raul Castro, is in New York City this week attending the contemporary Latin American art fair, PINTA 2012.  She was accompanying her boyfriend, Cuban artist Arlés del Río. According to witnesses that spotted her last night, she was wearing Chanel shoes, a Louis Vuitton purse and a Rolex watch, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The natural question is why the State Department granted her a visa. There is no American interest in seeing Castro family members go out on the town in New York, attired in expensive outfits acquired with money essentially stolen from the Cuban people, while Alan Gross sits in prison. Indeed allowing this to happen mocks Gross’s suffering and that of his family. If the facts here are right, the press or the Congress should be asking about our visa policy-- and asking that beneficiaries of the Castro  system be denied visas at the very least while our fellow citizen Alan Gross is held prisoner in Cuba. From what I can see, the decision to grant Raul Castro’s granddaughter a visa to come here and party is simply a disgrace.

Cuba, tropical paradise. Harvard grads are invited to participate in a Harvard Alumni Association trip down there next year. But of course, this is a serious visit: no beaches, I guess. The Alumni Association describes the trip this way: These programs are not vacations. Every hour must be accounted for and involve meaningful interactions with Cuban people. Further restrictions pertaining to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations apply. Participants attend a full daily schedule of activities that include lectures, roundtable discussions and break-out sessions, private performances, artistic demonstrations and interpretations, and informal conversations, all delivered by local people. Speakers and guests include professors and students from the University of Havana, docents from museums, artisans and craftsmen of various trades, musicians and dancers, and local residents. They will help you gain a better understanding of the history, economics, education, healthcare, politics, art, architecture, and culture of Cuba. One wonders. Will there be much interaction with Alan Gross, the USAID contractor who has been imprisoned in Cuba since December 2009 for the crime of trying to help the tiny local Jewish community get on the internet? Might a visit to him in prison help the grads "gain a better understanding" of the "politics" of Cuba? Will they meet with the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unión Patriótica de Cuba, UNPACU), which Amnesty International describes as an "umbrella group of Cuban dissident organizations in and around the province of Santiago de Cuba who seek democratic change by non-violent means?" How about meeting the widow and children of Oswaldo Paya, whom the Committee to Protect Journalists described as a "tireless advocate for freedom of expression" and "the leader of the Varela Project, a landmark gathering of more than 20,000 signatures petitioning for political and human rights reforms to the government." Would that be a "meaningful interaction with Cuban people?" How much will the visiting Harvard grads learn about the Varela Project during their "roundtable discussions" and "break-out sessions?" Cubans fighting for human rights can use our solidarity and support. Alan Gross, who has lost 100 pounds in prison, can use it as well. But this kind of well orchestrated tour will instead serve the purposes of the Cuban regime. Travelers who have a conscience should stay home. There will be time to visit Cuba some future day when it is free--and when "local residents" can speak freely to visitors about the lives they are leading.