Antunez reports torture, horror and murders in reeducation centers in Cuba, comparable to Nazi Gestapo and the Gulags of the former Soviet Union! It is not surprising since it is known that all the methods of suppressing the Cuban people the Communist Regime learned from the Soviets. Antunes affirms that the Police are burring prisoners in clandestine graves! They are cutting ears and fingers in front of other prisoners so they will retrant themselves. They are taking them outside thru the back doors and killing them!! #SoSCuba
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbfqsfu/
The brave Cuban who yelled "Down With Communism", during the Popes mass in Santiago de Cuba and was dragged out and beaten, before being arrested by the repressive machine of dictator Raul Castro has been Identified!!
His name is Andres Carrion Alvarez, 38 years old. He is an Occupational Therapist. Carrion remains detained in Santiago de Cuba.
Bertha Antunez Pertet, talks about racism in Cuba at the hands of the communist. She recalls how in 93 when her brother dissident Jose Luis Garcia Perez (Antunez) was in prison for political reasons, he endured additional mistreatment and humiliation due to the color of his skin and she recalls a horrible incident, that seems like something right out of 19th century Spanish colonialism, where her brother's jailers incited some dogs to attack him and they destroyed parts of his body, but he was refused medical care and was told......____"We are not going to heal you, because you are a black counter-revolutionary".
Nowadays, Antunez is out of prison, but lives in Cuba and in his own way he is a free man. He is an outspoken critic of the Castro Regime and twitters and blogs for freedom. He calls his blogs "Ni me Callo ni me Voy", which means, I will not be Silent and I will not Leave.
Racism is and has been evident from the early days of the communist revolution and even before the bearded men came down from the hills of Sierra Maestra in 1959. The communists want the world to believe that they are for equality, but the reality is very different and in a crowd the black man with be the first to be asked for his identity papers and racial slurs during arrests of dissidents or none dissident is common practice and if they are unlucky enough to end up in prison-they always get the worse treatment.
Interviewed March 2011
Bertha Antúnez Pernet was born in 1959 to a family of limited means. She began to become politically aware in 1990 when her brother, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (“Antúnez”), was unjustly charged with “enemy propaganda” for saying in a public square that Cuba should experience the same political changes that were taking place in Eastern Europe. He was incarcerated and then charged with additional political offenses during his confinement, which extended his sentence until 2007.
Antúnez Pernet became increasingly aware of the gravity of the human rights situation in Cuba through visiting her brother in prison and learning about the conditions to which he and other prisoners of conscience were subjected.
In 1997, Antúnez Pernet and other family members of political prisoners founded an organization called the National Movement of Civic Resistance Pedro Luis Boitel to fight ill-treatment in prison. By 1999, the movement had collected over 5,000 signatures for a general amnesty of political prisoners in Cuba. It has also carried out protests in front of various prisons throughout the island.
I should have posted here when I received the knews of Laura Pollan death, but I felt like the wind was just beat out of me. I know that things like this have been happening in Cuba since the Castro's came to power, but it never stops being shocking. Laura Pollan, president of "The Ladies in White", was one of the most important leaders that the dissidents had and now she is gone and though she lives in our hearts, this sad news is very difficult for us.
She marched for the freedom of Cuba among the blows and shoves of the State sponsored mobs, never bowing her head and even while being injured by the violence, she marched on.
She and other dissidents had reported, being poked with needles by members of these mobs, so the possibility that she was poisoned or infected with a biological agent is very real. The Castro's are well documented on these methods of destroying the opposition in the style of the former Soviet Union!
She was able to accomplish what no one in 5 decades was able to acomplish. The Castro Regime feared her.
Her leadership and her fearless confrontations with the Castro mobs, made us all proud and now she is gone, but not forgotten. Bertha Soler, will now take her place.
Soler said.....___"This is a day of mourning for the Ladies in White and for the opposition in Cuba," as reported by the Associated Press.
The Ladies in White's message to the government is that they will continue protesting!
Laura Pollan legacy will live on and her name will be published in Cuba's history books. This history is being written as we speak by the Cuban resistance. God be with them!
Mariblanca, was one of a group of disidents arrested September 26. While spending time in jail, she was beaten by Cuban police and this is the state she was in when she came home.
I find it hard to belive that the cowards who beat her were born from a woman.
A few days ago a useful idtio wrote from his Twitter page, that the Cuba Revolution had done more for women and children. The trueth y something else......
This is how Cuban police treats a woman. Her crime? To think......
The following vídeo shows all the people arrested September 26 along with Mariblanca. Mariblanca can be clearly seen, before the beating by the police.
A day after a violent police crackdown against Bolivia's indigenous people, police use tear gas and batons against demonstrators gathered to protest the government's actions. Burning tires on the tarmac, supporters of the indigenous shut down the Rurrenbaque airport, freeing some protesters who had been arrested a day earlier in Yucumo.
Withgreatjoyand hardlyableto seemycomputerscreenfor thetears of happiness, I share thegreatnewsthatDr.OscarEliasBiscet,atlast,hasbeenreleased! He was the first Cuban citizens to protest publicly against abortion and a humanitarian to the core. Biscet,a prisonerfromwhatisknownastheBlack Springof2003and partof 75.He was recentlynominated fortheNobel PeacePrize.....FounderoftheLawtonFoundationforHuman Rights.The most peacefuland the mostfeared man bytheCastro regime.....Freeat last!
This is how it starts. Right after Castro took over, people were encouraged to go and beat up demonstrators. It was common to hear a communist say to another citizen, "I could shoot you right now and nothing would happen. Houses belonging to the dissidents would get egged and people would get beaten by their own neighbors-if you don't believe me, go look on youtube.
A school would be encouraged to beat up another school, as was the case with father school, the Instituto Politectecnico de Maraianao, who's principal Prophesor Lipiz (a communist refugee from Spain's civil war) had the students build giant sticks thats looked like pencils, and ordered them to go used them on the students at Belen (a private school that the Castro brothers attended at one point). He had them work on these things for a week, even had them paint them to look like pencils. My father refused of course, which explains why we eventually ended up leaving the country.
This is happening in Venezuela, while Chavez tryes to stay in power at any cost. I'm so proud of them for standing up to this delutional nut case.
While democracy was taking a welcome boost in the Washington Mall, in Caracas it suffered yet another set back as we saw clearly how the repressive apparatus of the state is geared exclusively toward people that we disagree with Chavez. Criminals and people who support Chavez can exert any violent action they want as long as Chavez interests remain unperturbed. Thus today while crime keeps it rampage in Venezuela with death rates worthy of Iraq or Gaza, the government sent a disproportionate display of force to repress students marches. Elsewhere as the red shirts of Lina Ron attacked the Atheneum of Caracas (one of their many attacks this week) the police stood by (as it has been doing through all recent attacks).
All over the world, December 10th is recognized as the International Human Rights Day. In Cuba, as well as in other countries, the basic human rights to witch every human being is entitled, do not exist.
I would like to share with readers of this site, a message from one of many Cuban patriots. He suffered torture, imprisonment and violations of his human rights. His only crime, to have the audacity to think and speak freely. Those basic rights are not allowed in our country of birth. "Though many Cubans are not interested in this subject, throughout the last fifty years, in our beloved Country the basic rights that all human beings should have, have been insulted and trampled and at the same time anyone that has had the strength to defend those rights has been subdued without scruples. Cuba and it's controlling totalitarian regime, have been loyal destroyers of everything that smells like freedom.
Today I remember, how many times I was taken to a police Station and detained for days, with the sole objective of forcing me to renounce my memership of groups involved in democratic activism. Officials that had been prepared and trained to terrorise and neutralize any vestige of opposition, stocked the lives of all activists.
Cuban State Security, is a great apparatus of officials, instructed on how to maintain political order through the subordination of the people and force then to abide by their totalitarian ideology. The majority of Cubans, have determined not to involve themselves in anything that has to do with going against the state in power.
It's heartbreaking to see a nation destroyed. The elderdy completely umprotected, the young desperate to scape reality in any way possible. Some going abroad and others sucumbing to drugs and alcoholism, that little by little lacerate and destroy the Cuban soul.
While the apathics, only critisice, the ones with the courage to make the oposition against the tirany. May of them live locked away in the miserable Cuban prisons. As a Cuban who loves freedom, I will always be commited, with all inside Cuba, with the intention of defending the values and rights of our countrymen in the Island.
One day this suffering will finally end and justive will drop to their knees all those who have mutilated the Cuban Family. I am also committed to this justice. Hurray for the 10th of December and Hurray for Human Rights, And of course,
During the early years of the Castro Regime when my parents were teenagers, they attended two separate schools in Havana. My mom attended Instituto de Mariano and one day after school, my mom and a group of her classmates decided to have a peaceful protest, to speak out against the land reform laws being implemented by Castro. They thought they still lived in a democracy.
The school my dad attended Instituto Tecnologico de Marianao, was run by a Spaniard by the name of Grasiano Lipiz. He was a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, when Franco was in power. Lipiz was a Communist, who was now free to show who he really was. He literally brought wood sticks and handed them out to his students and ordered them to go out on the street and beat up the “worms” from the other school, who were protesting. This is kind of how a civilian police works. They were all just 15 and 16 year old kids. My dad who didn’t even know that my mom was in the other school, remembers, thinking, “Why should I beat them up, they haven’t done anything to me”. He blended in with a crowd and disappeared-he was good at that. Years later when sent to the work camps, he would stand in the back so the sergeant who had a photographic memory, so that he couldn’t memorize his face.
Many students followed Lipiz order and during the scuffle, the police showed up and started arresting the protesters and not the attackers! My mom avoided being arrested when she ran and jumped on a bus. Many of her classmates were not so lucky and were arrested. My grandparents took her out of school after that incident and she lost contact with her friends.
Years later, when my parents shared stories, they realized how lucky they were and how disturbing that evil can rise up in the most unexpected places.This story happened in the early sixties, but thousands of others followed it and this violence against it's citizens goes on today. If you ever wonder why the Cuban people don't revolt; it's fear of retaliation by the authorities, that will stop at nothing to keep them slaves.
People ask Cuban American all the time, how we let Communism happen to our country. We didn't, and my parents generation tried to stop it, in so may ways. The problem was, that every time someone opened their mouth in protest, they paid a heavy prize.
Picadillo was my home town’s trash collector. He was kind of vocal about his views on the new government. Sometimes he would have a few drinks and sometimes he was sober but he would talk about all the misery around him and about things he thought were wrong with Castro’s government.
One day, he disappeared and no one saw him for two weeks. When he emerged, he was no longer talking. He had been jailed and while there, was tortured and told to keep his mouth shut, or they would kill him. He never spoke again.
In 1959, with the rise to power of the Castro brothers, life as we new it had changed forever. My family came from Quivican-a little town south of Havana. My father ran a small welding business, from our house, but under Communist rule, free enterprise is not allowed and the welding shop was closed. My father was so angry and frustrated, that he buried most of his equipment in our back yard. He figured, that at least that way, the government couldn't get the satisfaction of stealing what he worked so hard for.
He raised pigs and sold them for profit, but that too had to end. Raising and killing your own pigs for food was prohibited. We weren't allowed to raise and kill our own farm animals and the authorities branded each one. Everything belonged to the State.
If you didn't participate in the Revolution, the police would call you in for questioning. My father was called to march on the streets, because everybody had to get prepared to defend their country. He hated that with a passion and eventually got sent to a work camp. Work Camps, by the way, were started by Argentinian Revolutionary and murderer, Che Guevara.
With the Communist Revolution came the firing squads, the disappearances, the massive exodus, the food rationing and the long lines. I can't tell you, how many times we stood in line for bread or any other item, only to get to the front of the line and be told, they were out of it.
While the regime wasted our resources, and sacrificed the lives of thousands of Cubans, spreading the seeds of communism, we had to survive on the few crumbs allowed by the rationing card issued to each family. Toilet paper was no where to be found, so we used old newspapers, when we could get them.
From the time a person entered kindergarten, the state kept a cumulative file that would follow you for the rest of your life. This file documented every thing or anything you had ever done. I lost count of how many times I heard my teachers in school say how much the revolution had done for us. The math didn't add up. If it was so great, why did so many people leave, and why was everyone so afraid?
Suicide was very high. I can't still remember conversations about people as young as fifteen, locking themselves in the bathroom and setting themselves on fire. Just behind our house, an old man who lived with his sisters hang himself from a tree. A man taking his cow out to pasture, found him when the cow wondered near the tree. My brother being the nosy person he was, ran over to see, when he heard. He said the man still clinched his tobacco in one of his hands; needless to say, that image gave him nightmares for years.
There was a house on each street, whose job it was, to keep tabs on each neighbor's comings and goings. They knew what time you left your house, what time you got home and who your friends were. They knew what you read, what you ate and what time you ate it. These were the CDR or Comite de Defensa de la Revolucion (Comity of Defense of the Revolution). One year sometime in the seventies, during election time, my mom, who was a rebel, decided to go visit her sister in a neighboring town. She said she wasn't about to participate in a election with just one candidate. It was a nice try, but not successful. Our CDR watch found out from the neighbors we were and went all the way to her sister's house to pick us up so she could vote. We had no choice, but to get in the car and my mom reluctantly voted for the one and only candidate-Fidel Castro.
The police kept a close eye on every person. One day, as my father sat in the movie theater, one of our towns policeman, asked him, "why do you always sit in the same seat?". There was no particular reason; my dad was just a bit obsessive. He had obviously been following him for sometime. It was this same policeman, who personally confiscated my father's hunting rifle, the year he filed papers to leave the country.
I was six years old, my brother was one, when my father left Cuba and I will never forget that day, for as long I live. His flight had been canceled two times before, so when he carried me on his shoulders that day I thought he would be back, just like the other times, but he didn't. The following weeks are very blurry, but I recall my mother telling to stop waiting, because he was not ever coming back.
We were denied an exit visa. It was standard procedure to let the husband leave without his family. It was their way of punishing us for not conforming and when young kids where involved, they had the opportunity to indoctrinate them. It would be another eight years before we could see my father again. Every family had someone that had left Cuba, via somewhere in the world.
My mother was a seamstress and a tailor, a trade also practiced by her maternal grandfather-a Spanish immigrant, who left Spain during the Civil War. I recall getting up in the middle of the night and seeing her sitting in front of the sewing machine. She had an old Singer with an electric pedal adapted to it. When I was 12, she gave free enterprise a try, when she started giving sewing lessons from our house. I recall that time as a very special era in our saga. It was refreshing to see all these women standing around a big table learning to make patterns and designing clothes. I meet my best friend during that time, when her mother joined the class. It was really nice, while it lasted; some lady in town, turned my mom in and she was called in to the police station and asked too join the Federation of Women and give classes for the state. She refused and that was the end of our little adventure in Capitalism.
We bought some things in the black market, as did most people. My mom had to cook the pork meat in the middle of the night, to avoid being discovered. Pork had a really strong odor back in Cuba. I don't know if it was the way pigs were raised, but It doesn't smell the same here in the US. Buying contraband of any kind, was punishable with jail time and food was no exception. The government didn't give a crap if we had enough food or not.
When we were finally given permission to leave, our house had an inventory done and everything in it was documented by the authorities. A few days before departure, they had us vacate the premises and they sealed it.
To this day, the house that my father built and baptized with the name Villa Zurama, is owned by the Cuban government.
I will forever be hunted by the ghosts of communism.
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