While Non-Aligned Leaders Pontificate, Cuban Repression Continues

it's fine and good to pay lip service to equality and human rights, but to do so while violating those very same ideals at home is cynical hypocrisy.

while Cuba gets the NAM to badmouth the US for its "interference" in Cuban internal affairs (such as, perhaps, Cuba's nasty little political prisoner problem?), Cuba has no problems interfering in the lives of its citizens that the government does not deem deserving.

here are excerpts from one such story while the NAM meeting was going on, translated from Spanish:


Havana, Cuba, September 14, 2006
by Roberto Santana Rodriquez.

State Security kept dissidents Julio Antonio Valdes Guevara, his wife Cruz Delia Aguilar, his sister and another friend from visiting the Cobre Church, where they were going to pay homage to the Virgin of Charity, Patroness of Cuba.

Their car was stopped en route to the church, and Vales and his relatives were arrested and taken away in a patrol car. Valdes is an ex-political prisoner, one of 75 currently on parole for his delicate state of health.

A peaceful rally was held that night by dissidents at the local church to demand the freedom of political prisoners and the people of Cuba. A heavy security contingent was present.


alas ... Raul Castro rails against the US "bullying" poor Cuba, but thinks nothing of having his security forces bully elderly, sick, unarmed, and peaceful dissidents.

and the NAM leaders will surely condemn the US embargo against Cuba, but I haven't seen anybody speak up against the political repression inside Cuba.

oh well. we all know life isn't fair.