[Mb-civic] Re: 9,240 victims, and counting

[EAN at sbcglobal.net]

To compare Cuba to the Pinochet regime is 
disgusting.  Fidel is no angel, but much of what the 
Cuban revolution has done is truly remarkable and 
laudable.  Human rights violations and jailing of 
innocent people is despicable.  But under right wing 
military dictatorships sponsored by the US, FAR worse 
has been done, with NO redeeming social benefits to 
the people as in Cuba.  Let's count up the MILLIONS 
who have died because of US policies around the world 
since Fidel took power, and it WILL make him look 
like an angel!

--Mha Atma S Khalsa

>Boston Globe Op-Ed
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9,240 victims, and counting

By Jeff Jacoby | January 4, 2006 | The Boston Globe

THE LONGEST-RULING despot in the world is Fidel 
Castro, who seized power 
in Cuba 47 years ago this week. Like most dictators, 
Castro is a brazen 
liar, especially about his own regime. This, for 
example, is what he 
told an international conference in Havana in April 
2001:

''There have never been death squads in our country, 
nor a single 
missing person, nor a single political assassination, 
nor a single 
victim of torture. . . . You may travel around the 
country, ask the 
people, look for a single piece of evidence, try to 
find a single case 
where the Revolutionary government has ordered or 
tolerated such an 
action. And if you find them, then I will never speak 
in public again."

One would have to be willfully blind -- a useful 
idiot, in Lenin's 
phrase -- to believe such a reeking falsehood. But 
when it comes to 
Castro, useful idiots have never been in short 
supply. From Norman 
Mailer to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Jesse Jackson to Ted 
Turner, a long 
line of admirers has swooned over the bearded tyrant, 
lavishly praising 
his wisdom and charm -- and never showing the 
slightest interest in his 
real record: cruelty, repression, and a death toll in 
the tens of thousands.

But Castro's mocking challenge -- ''try to find a 
single case" -- is not 
going unanswered. The Cuba Archive project 
(www.CubaArchive.org) is 
working to document the cost, in human life, of more 
than five decades 
of Cuban dictatorship. The New Jersey-based archive's 
tiny staff has set 
itself the monumental task of identifying every man, 
woman, and child 
killed by Cuba's rulers since March 10, 1952, the day 
Batista ousted the 
island's last democratically elected president. 
Meticulously, 
impartially, the archive's researchers are assembling 
the evidence that 
Castro claims doesn't exist -- victim by victim, one 
death at a time.

It is heartbreaking work. The revolution's victims 
have died in front of 
firing squads and been beaten to death by government 
goons; they have 
been sunk while at sea and shot down while flying; 
they have been killed 
for resisting communism at home and killed when sent 
to fight for 
communism abroad. In the hands of Castro's jailers, 
some have been 
driven to suicide; many more have disappeared.

It is also slow and painstaking work. Each death 
entered into the 
archive must be confirmed by at least two independent 
sources and 
documented, to the extent possible, with photographs, 
eyewitness 
testimony, and the recollections of survivors. ''We 
don't want to just 
record names and numbers," says Maria Werlau, the 
president of the Cuba 
Archive. ''We want to tell each story. We want the 
world to know the 
magnitude of the Cuban tragedy."

So far the archive has catalogued the deaths of 9,240 
victims of the 
Castro regime. Who were they? Sister Aida Rosa Perez, 
who was sent to 
prison as an ''enemy of the revolution" and died of 
heart failure 
brought on by torture and hard labor. Estanislao 
Gonzalez Quintana, who 
died in police custody four days after being detained 
for ''unlawful 
economic activity"; his corpse was visibly bruised 
and had a deep gash 
in the forehead. The three Garcia-Marin Thompson 
brothers, who sought 
asylum at the Vatican embassy in Havana, only to be 
seized by Interior 
Ministry troops and executed after a summary hearing. 
Mrs. Alberto Lazo 
Pastrana, who died with her three children when the 
boat on which they 
were trying to leave Cuba was sunk by the Cuban navy; 
the mother was 
eaten by sharks and the children were never seen 
again. Carlos Alberto 
Costa, a 29-year-old American, who was shot down by a 
Cuban jet fighter 
as he flew an unarmed plane on a search-and-rescue 
mission over 
international waters in 1996.

Plus 9,230 others.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Werlau and 
the archive's 
research director, Armando Lago, an economist who has 
spent years 
analyzing the costs of the Cuban revolution, expect 
the total number of 
deaths to be far higher. As many as 77,000 Cubans may 
have lost their 
lives trying to escape the island; their deaths, too, 
will eventually be 
added to the archive.

Werlau, who lived in Chile during the Pinochet 
dictatorship, saw 
firsthand how international awareness of human rights 
atrocities helped 
Chile reinstate its democracy. ''The Castro regime 
executed more people 
in just its first three years than the Pinochet 
regime killed or 
'disappeared' in its entire 17 years in power," she 
says. ''Yet Castro's 
victims, who number so many times more -- and who 
include not just 
political opponents but entire families assassinated 
for trying to flee 
-- remain unknown, ignored, or forgotten.

''We just had to do something about it."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/ope
d/articles/2006/01/04/9240_victims_and_counting/
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