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• Daily & Online • Newspaper of the Left • Wednesday, June 18, 2003 •
 

The Cuba debate: Executions, immigration, embargo,
US provocations and Fidel Castro's political blunders

By Sebastian Robles

Havana, Cuba – In March, 2003 a crisis developed in Cuba. A rash of plane and boat hijackings and evidence of meetings between James Cason, head of the USIS (United States Interests Section in Cuba) and political opponents of the government of Fidel Castro prompted the Cuban government to take drastic measures.

Three boat hijackers and 75 political dissidents were summarily tried separately for unrelated events. The three hijackers were executed. The dissidents received jail terms ranging from 6 to 28 years.

In the midst of an economic crisis, in part due to more than 40 years of unrelenting economic sanctions and the blockade by the US government, and in the shadow of the US war against Iraq, the government of the island felt compelled to act sternly in order to avoid a repeat of the “Mariel Crisis” of 1980.

In that incident, over 120,000 Cubans illegally journeyed to the United States – an event dubbed the "Mariel boatlift" - after more than a month of urban unrest and uprisings in Havana and other urban centers. This year, the governing Cuban Communist Party characterized the situation as one in which the US, through James Cason, had been orchestrating another crisis of the same magnitude, in order to justify a military intervention in the island.

Cuba was prepared to withstand a wave of protests over its actions from critics in the US government and its allies, its media and from pro-empire US intellectuals ready to serve the ongoing campaign against Cuba using any and every pretext. Many letters and articles coming from those quarters inundated the media newsrooms and Cuban diplomatic offices, and were broadcast to the world in all forms and shapes.

What the Cuban government, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist Party did not expect were the protests of many old time allies and supporters of the Cuban revolution who condemned the three executions and harsh jail penalties.

Among those raising their voices in protest were those of Portuguese Nobel Prize winner and Communist Jos� Samarago; Latin American left wing intellectual Eduardo Galeano; Noam Chomsky; the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT) allied with the French Communist Party (PCF); the largest left wing party in Italy, Communist Refoundation (PCR); the largest Trotskyist international grouping, the USFI (United Secretariat of the Fourth International) and so on…

The list of critics of Cuban actions who come from revolutionary and Marxist traditions is growing daily. While all those left wing critics defend Cuba when facing US provocations and demand the lifting of the economic embargo, they are dismayed by the application of the “barbaric” death penalty and the long jail terms given to political dissidents.

Some of these criticisms of the actions of the Cuban government coming from the left have materialized in petitions and collective letters.

Reaction to criticisms

Cuba and its government has been increasingly isolated in world politics ever since the demise of the Soviet Union with the continuation of the hostile policies of the US.

Mindful of how criticisms from the left would affect a large layer of supporters around the world, the Cuban government, the Communist Party and intellectuals and trade unionists from the Island wrote polite and sensible letters to some of the critics.

The letter from the Communist Party to left wing organizations around the world was prefaced with a "fraternal parties and organizations" call even though some of the recipients were not ideologically or politically close to the Cuban regime. The Cuban trade unions answered the complaints of the French CGT in a letter encouraging further exchange on the matter and expressing the hope of maintaining the solidarity links that have existed ever since the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

Cuban intellectuals, writers and artists signed a collective letter lamenting that “distance and lack of information” had led so many of their counterparts around the world to condemn the executions and harsh jail sentences. They pledged to try to continue the debate on the issues on a friendly basis.

Even Fidel Castro was very careful in addressing the concerns and criticisms of left wing critics, saying that he “understood” the concerns and reservations “about the methods we were forced to use.”

But some parties and intellectuals outside Cuba who follow the Cuban government and its party without criticism have launched a series of attacks against left wing critics of the executions, accusing them of being traitors, equating them with right wing critics of the Cuban revolution or denying that they have any right to raise criticisms.

In many ways, these parties, including the US Workers World Party, some Communist parties around the world and intellectuals like James Petras, who launched vitriolic attacks against left wing critics of Cuban actions, have helped to widen the perception that the Cuban regime was intolerant not only of imperialist and bourgeois criticisms but also of criticisms from the left.

These orthodox defenders of Cuba's actions launched a petition drive to collect signatures to support Cuba against US imperial provocations and the embargo – a petition that was signed without a problem by many of the critics, who did not see any contradiction between defending Cuba and criticizing the methods of its government.

The Events: Executions of Three Alleged Hijackers, Conviction of 75 Dissidents

The government of Cuba executed the three alleged hijackers on the morning of April 12th after summary trials. It was swift justice as the crime, indictments, prosecution and executions all happened within a period of less than two weeks.

Human Rights Watch recognized that the crimes allegedly committed by the men were serious ones, and may have merited a heavy punishment. But it opposed the use of the death penalty and condemned the summary nature of the trials and the appeals process.

The three men were convicted of hijacking a ferry, the Baragua, on April 2nd. Some 50 people were aboard the boat when it was seized. The hijackers ordered the captain to sail the boat to the United States but the boat encountered bad weather. The Cuban authorities claimed that the lives of the kidnapped passengers had been endangered.

When the boat ran out of fuel in the Florida Straits, officers on two Cuban Coast Guard patrol boats convinced the hijackers to allow the ferry to be towed back to Cuba's Mariel port for refueling. Back in Cuba, the Cuban authorities regained control of the vessel and captured the hijackers.

Neither the passengers on the Ferry boat nor the hijackers were hurt during the police operation. Cuban authorities reported that the hijackers surrendered without much resistance.

The hijackers, according to Cuban authorities, were armed with a handgun and five knives.

Since March 18th, as reported by Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government has arrested and tried 75 dissidents, alleged "independent journalists, human rights advocates and independent unionists.” The defendants have received prison sentences ranging from six to twenty-eight years.

The Cuban government has denied that any of those prosecuted were journalists or human rights advocates and the Cuban federation of labor unions has denied that any of those on trial were members of their unions.

The Cuban government issued a declaration indicating that those tried were not indicted for their political ideas but for treason. The group was heavily infiltrated by Cuban security. Some of those agents were in control of the finances and were responsible for preparing the minutes of the group's meetings.

Security agents working under cover inside the oppositionist group were thus the principal witnesses of the trials which were also expedited. Agents presented evidence showing that the US representative in Cuba in charge of USIS, James Cason, met several times with the convicted "traitors."

Approximately 80 people have been arrested and detained since March 18th, when the crackdown began. State-run television has accused the detainees of "provocations" and "subversive activities."

The Cuban courts used summary procedures in these cases, using a so-called facilitated procedure, which, under articles 479 and 480 of the code of criminal procedure, should be applied only in "exceptional circumstances."

Prosecutions began in early April. In the four days of trials, from April 3 to 7, 75 defendants were tried and convicted; none were acquitted. Trials were held in thirteen courtrooms across the country including in Havana, Pinar del Rio, Camaguay and Guantanamo.

Most defendants did not see their lawyers before trial, and lawyers had only limited time to prepare a defense. Trials were closed to outside observers, such as US and European diplomats and international journalists who tried to attend; only close family members were allowed inside the trials.

The official newspaper Gramna published a short notice of trials and convictions on ….

After strong reactions were heard around the world and there were even heated debates inside the Cuban Communist Party about the executions and harsh jail sentences, Fidel Castro in person made a complete report of the trials of the hijackers and the 75 oppositionists on April 25th in a televised roundtable.

Among those prosecuted and convicted was Raul Rivero, age 57, the founder and editor of CubaPress, an anti-communist online news agency controlled by Miami-based opponents of the government of Fidel Castro. Serving as Prensa Latina's Moscow correspondent from 1973 to 1976, Rivero later headed the science and culture service of the state news agency. He abandoned official journalism in 1991, forced to do so by the government which charged him at the time with dereliction and incompetence.

Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello was another convicted. An economist, and the director of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists, Roque, age 56, had previously served nearly three years in prison. Along with three other dissidents, she was prosecuted after publishing an analytic paper titled "The Homeland Belongs to All," which was labeled as "contrary to the interests of the State." She is a recipient of the 2002 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award of the New York Academy of Sciences. In Cuba this amounts to receiving an honor from the declared enemy of Cuba: the US.

Also convicted: Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, the president of the Lawton Human Rights Foundation, an organization considered a phantom group in Cuba. Biscet, age 42, received a three-year prison sentence in February 2000 for protests that included turning the Cuban flag upside down and carrying anti-abortion placards. Incarcerated from November 1999 until late October 2002, he was rearrested little more than a month after his release.

H�ctor Palacios Ruiz, age 62, a dissident since the late 1980s, founded the Democratic Solidarity Party in 1993. Palacios is one of the leaders of the Varela Project, a highly publicized group that collected around 10,000 signatures inside Cuba for a call for multi-party elections. Members of the Varela Project met with former President Jimmy Carter during his last visit to the island. Carter spoke on their behalf to Fidel Castro and other Cuban authorities.

Many others of those charged shared similar backgrounds. There is no doubt that those indicted opposed the political regime in Cuba and that they had many meetings with James Cason. It is also true that these oppositionists supported ideas and positions shared by the US government. But neither in the indictments nor in the subsequent speech by Castro were these dissidents charged with any violent crime.

Were the convicted 75 scapegoats for US representative James Cason?

There is no doubt that James Cason's work in Cuba is that of instigating and giving comfort to dissidents and oppositionists. The information gathered by Castro’s security agents who infiltrated the meetings and the normal procedures of monitoring Cason's moves around the Island, shows that is the case.

The central charge against the defendants was that they worked with US diplomats to undermine the Cuban government and damage the country's national interests and received, in exchange, some sort of monetary remuneration or, in some cases, promises of asylum rights in the US.

James Cason met many times with these dissidents in his own, known residence in Havana and let the oppositionists use his house for other meetings without his presence. On other occasions, Cason visited dissidents at their homes.

Both Cason and the dissidents – most of them well known to Cuban authorities as many were formerly “rafters” or had already served prison terms - knew at all times that their homes and meetings were monitored by Cuban authorities as is customary. In fact, Cason was required to report to authorities any travel in Cuba beyond his own neighborhood and the offices of USIS.

All the meetings Cason organized, according to Fidel's report, comprised only a few dissidents, between half a dozen and a few dozen people.

In his detailed accusation, Fidel Castro also mentioned minor incidents allegedly carried out by dissidents such as an altercation at an emergency room at a hospital.

The Cuban premier also quoted many provocative comments from Cason to journalists or made at public functions where the diplomat was either the host or invited to speak.

Castro also mentioned Cason delivering “supplies” to and “wining and dining” the dissidents. He also mentioned that these counter-revolutionaries were paid by the US. This would not be surprising but he offered no evidence.

Castro lashed out in his report about Cason's requests to bring right wing US Congressmen to visit dissidents in the island. These requests were denied by the Cuban government as “provocations.”

In fact, most of the case against the Cuban dissidents was based on activities of the Imperial representative James Cason. But Cason was never expelled – as is customary with foreign diplomats found to interfere in the internal affairs of another country – nor did the Cuban government take any action against him.

The Cuban government has never explained why the US is allowed to have a diplomat in Cuba, who is granted the immunity of an ambassador, in charge of “US businesses” in a country under embargo by the US.

One of the incidents in which Cason made a speech against the government – according to Castro – took place at the “US Food and Agribusiness exhibition” held in Havana in September of 2002, authorized and co-sponsored by the Cuban government. Why co-sponsor such an event with a country which is not selling machinery or food to Cuba? Why give Cason yet another platform?

Defendants were prosecuted under the Law for the Protection of Cuban National Independence and the Economy (Ley de Protecci�n de la Independencia Nacional y la Econom�a de Cuba, Ley 88), which took effect in March 1999, and the Law Reaffirming Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty (Ley de Reafirmaci�n de la Dignidad y Soberan�a Cubanas), which took effect in December 1996.

The Cuban government justifies both provisions as a response to the Helms-Burton Act, the US legislation that hardened the trade embargo against Cuba.

Cuban government spokesmen condemned the defendants as "mercenaries" in the pay of the United States.

In the end, the 75 defendants received sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years with an average sentence of more than 19 years. The cumulative total of the sentences was 1,454 years. Notably, the Cuban courts have not imposed such draconian sentences on such large numbers of people in more than two decades.

Following the convictions of the 75, the Cuban government executed the three hijackers.

The three were put to death nine days after their arrest, sufficient time for the government to hold summary trials and for the Council of State, Cuba's highest executive body, to re-affirm the verdicts. The crimes of the 75 were unrelated to those of the hijackers and no connection between the two groups was presented by the Cuban government.

Half a century of US provocation

In June 2001, five Cuban nationals were convicted of spying after a trial held in Miami. In December 2001 they were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. This case has become a cause celebre in Cuba, where the men are seen as victims of a political witch hunt.

The five Cuban prisoners in the US infiltrated anti-communist Cuban groups in Miami to help prevent - and eventually denounce - acts of terrorism planned by Cuban exiles on US territory. These attacks include illegal flights by civilian airplanes, which drop leaflets and occasionally weapons and grenades over Cuban territory.

It is publicly known that these criminal attempts by Cuban exiles in Miami count on, if not the direct help, at least the permission of US agencies to operate out of their Florida bases.

In May 2002, just prior to Carter's visit to the island, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John R. Bolton accused Cuba of developing a limited capacity for germ warfare research. Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich reprised these claims in October.

Both claims resulted in a number of exchanges between the governments and both official and private complaints from organizations around the world. Even Jimmy Carter, during his visit to Cuba, visited some of the Cuban laboratories and had only praise for the medical utilization and advances of the Cuban professionals in peaceful scientific research.

In recent months, tensions between the US Interests Section and the Cuban government have increased, with Cuban officials directly criticizing the head of the Interests Section for his vocal support of dissidents.

A string of hijackings has sharpened Cuban anger over US immigration rules. Seven aircraft were hijacked in as many weeks, and at least three of them were allowed to illegally fly over US territory and land safely in US airports. The hijackers were released after bureaucratic probes and granted exile rights. The Cuban government pointed out that the lenient treatment of airplane hijackers by the US is a message to encourage further actions from elements involved in those operations.

Many observers have pointed out that in any other case, given its current state since 9/11 of heightened, perhaps paranoid, alert against terrorist attacks involving airplanes, the US would shoot down the planes.

In general, the US government has long held a policy of granting political refugee status to Cubans who reach the US illegally. Refugees from Cuba have special monetary, health care and residence privileges not granted to refugees from other countries.

Agreements were reached between the US and Cuba after the "Mariel crisis" in 1980 when tens of thousands of Cubans fled the country to the US in the wake of civil unrest in Havana and other Cuban cities. The US agreed to take effective control of the ocean routes to the US and committed itself to prosecuting hijackers and returning illegal immigrants to Cuba. The US has obviously never enforced these agreements.

It is the opinion of Cuba, and of many other countries, that the US is trying to provoke another massive exodus to further destabilize the internal political and economic situation on the island.

Fidel Castro, in an extensive speech on Cuban television, raised this US provocation as the main reason for the hijackings and the "subversive" activities of the 75, and also for the drastic actions of his government, intended to stop the development of another political crisis.

Two years after the 1959 revolution in Cuba, which overthrew the US-backed military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Each country maintains diplomatic relations with the other through “interests sections” attached to the Swiss embassies in Washington and Havana.

Successive US governments, both Democratic and Republican, have sustained a more than forty-year-old policy of isolation and embargo toward Cuba.

The embargo is indiscriminate, hurting the Cuban population as a whole, and has caused immense economic hardship to the population and deprived them of essentials such as medicines and other resources.

For the past eleven years, the US has been condemned in the General Assembly of the United Nations by an overwhelming majority of the world's governments. The US has ignored those denunciations of the embargo and has utilized its resources in the UN either to veto or block resolutions in favor of lifting the embargo as well as to present resolutions seeking to further isolate Cuba.

US citizens are not allowed to travel to Cuba. The embargo's travel ban, with narrow exceptions for journalists, people with relatives in Cuba and certain other groups, violates the constitutional rights of US citizens to travel, particularly to countries not at war with the US. The ban is specifically designed to hurt Cuba's tourist industry, or what Fidel Castro called “the locomotive without smoke of the Cuban economy.”

In 1998 during Clinton's Presidency, the US Congress passed the so-called Helms-Burton Act, strengthening the embargo against Cuba and re-stating the purposes of the sanctions as being directed toward “regime change” in Cuba. The law was supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

On May 14, 2003, trying to build on the general crackdown on Havana, the US government ordered the expulsion of 14 Cuban diplomats for alleged spying, the latest incident in a marked souring of relations between the two countries since George Bush Jr. came to power.

American officials said the Cubans were expelled "for engaging in activities deemed harmful to the US" - a diplomatic euphemism for espionage. Seven of the diplomats are based in New York where they are accredited to the UN, while the other seven are based in Washington.

The highest-ranking Cuban expelled from the UN was Adrian Francisco Delgado Gonzalez, listed as the third most important diplomat in the mission. The fifth-ranked official, Alfredo Jose Perez Rivero, was also ordered to leave.

Cuba called the US expulsion of the diplomats for alleged spying an "outrageous slander" and said it was part of a conspiracy to create a pretext for a US attack on the island.

"We challenge the US government to present one single piece of evidence of any illegal activity" carried out by any Cuban officials in the United States, said Dagoberto Rodriguez, the head of Cuba's diplomatic mission here. "They know that they are lying like professional Pinocchios... because they monitor us physically and electronically 24 hours a day."

The US Department of State, which ordered the expulsions, and the FBI, which allegedly investigated the diplomats, never presented one shred of evidence of the involvement of the Cubans in any illegal activity while they were in the US.

Rodriguez said at a news conference that his government, "of course, will comply" with the expulsion order, and would "take all the time necessary" to determine its own response. In most cases, diplomatic expulsions are met with reciprocal action, although Cuba did not expel any US diplomats when four Cuban officials were asked to leave the US last fall.

Rodriguez said that the Bush administration is trying "to continue the escalation of tensions" that have characterized US-Cuban relations in recent months. The goal, he said, is to force the closing of the Interests Sections that the two governments operate in each other's countries under the auspices of the Swiss Embassy in the absence of full diplomatic relations.

Closing the Sections, Rodriguez said, would disrupt the immigration process put in place in 1996 after an exodus of Cuban "rafters" trying to reach the United States. The US Interests Section deals with US residence visas for as many as 20,000 Cubans each year. Disruption of the agreements, he said, "could provoke" another migration crisis that "would justify [US] aggression against Cuba." The two governments are scheduled to hold their next twice-yearly meeting on immigration matters in New York next month.

Although he did not provide details, Rodriguez said that his government had been specifically warned in recent days, through the US Interests Section in Havana, that the United States would consider a new wave of illegal migration an "act of war."

US ups the ante after the trials

The US has embarked throughout its history on invasions and armed conflicts. The US has helped to organize coup d'etats against dozens of governments including Nicaragua, Chile, Iran, Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, and Yugoslavia. It is occupying Iraq without a shred of proof of the accusations raised to justify the invasion. Now the US is using the trials and executions in Cuba to step up the far right's campaign against Cuba.

This is a cynical manipulation by the only industrialized western country to maintain the death penalty, a country based on institutionalized racism and widespread discrimination against immigrants, a country which has detained prisoners without indictment since 9/11, which maintains an illegal US concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for prisoners from the Afghanistan war (many now facing tribunals and certain execution if deemed "hard core terrorists" by these tribunals),on territory belonging to Cuba which the US retains by force.

It is clear that the US does not have any moral high ground, political rationale, or legal grounds to indict Cuba for executing three hijackers or for imprisoning political opponents of its regime. But the Bush administration seems to be – as in the case of the invasion of Iraq – impervious to any appeal for respect of the right of self-determination of nations. Or appeal for any kind of legality in its actions.

On April 29, despite vigorous efforts by US diplomats to have it voted off, Cuba was re-elected to another three-year term on the 54-member UN Human Rights Commission, a body Cuba has served on for the last 15 years. When the vote was taken, the US delegation walked out of the meeting.

In mid-April, Washington unsuccessfully tried to push through an amended resolution at the UN Commission that voiced “deep concern” about the “recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the political opposition” in Cuba.

Instead, a weaker resolution was passed, asking Cuba to allow a UN “monitor” — a French judge — to visit the island and report on human rights conditions. The Cuban government maintained the stance it has consistently taken, saying it would not allow such a visit by a foreign “monitor.”

International bodies would use their resources better and serve justice better by demanding that the US accept the “monitoring” of its illegal concentration camps in Guantanamo, accept oversight of the crimes committed daily by its occupation troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and accept a thorough inspection of US prisons, where thousands have been buried without the right to an attorney or contacts with their families since 9/11.

A day after Cuba was re-elected to the UN Commission, the US State Department issued its annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report, in which it accused Havana of sponsoring “terrorism.” The only “evidence” cited by the report to back up this claim was that Cuba “permitted up to 20 Basque Fatherland and Liberty [ETA] members to reside in Cuba and provided some degree of safe haven and support to members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) groups.”

Obviously, this is one more nail in the coffin the US is preparing for the Cuban revolution. An attempt to continue building a case against Cuba that could be used to damage its economy further or perhaps eventually to take more direct, drastic action. But these accusations should be rejected for what they are: lies. These are the same kind of lies that were told against Iraq at the UN and in the media about the WMD and the links with terrorist organizations in that country.

The members of ETA living in Cuba are not sought by the Spanish government. On the contrary, many of them came to Cuba in 1999 by agreement with the Spanish government which asked Cuba to take them. Spain has not asked Havana to extradite any of the Basques living in Cuba — an indication that Madrid does not regard them as terrorists.

As for Colombian guerrilla groups, the head of Colombia's military, General Fernando Tapias, told the US House of Representatives international relations committee in April 2002 that “there is no information that Cuba is in any way linked to terrorist activities in Colombia today... Indeed, Cuban authorities are buttressing the peace movement.”

Even the State Department report is forced to acknowledge that the Colombian government has publicly sought Cuban mediation in Colombia's civil war — which would be impossible if Havana did not maintain contacts with all sides in the conflict. However, the report makes this acknowledgement in a most grudging manner, declaring: “Bogota was aware of the arrangement and apparently acquiesced; it has publicly indicated that it seeks Cuba's continued mediation with ELN agents in Cuba.”

It is obvious that the Bush administration is trying to maintain the low intensity war against Cuba started by the US half a century ago.

Criticizing the Cuban government from the left

The fact that we reject the hypocritical campaign of the US Empire and commit ourselves – along with many other left critics of Cuba – to defend Cuba against every and all military attacks from imperialism and to demand the lifting of all economic and political sanctions does not and should not constitute an endorsement of every brutal measure of Castro's government, whether against opponents or even criminals, as exemplified by the application of the death penalty and the stern jail terms. Nor do we endorse the tactical and strategic blunders of the Cuban regime at every turn of their politics.

Defending Cuba against imperialism is a principle, not something connected to unconditional support for its government. The US Empire has no business in Cuba, and none in Iraq for that matter.

Utilization of the death penalty:

Cuba imposes the death penalty for a number of crimes, not just those characterized as political ones. In every case this is a barbaric practice which has nothing to do with justice, and lots to do with revenge. From time to time, horrific crimes make many people in society wish that they supported the death penalty. This is particularly true when the victims of murder and other crimes are children or when people are faced with mass murder or genocide.

The application of the death penalty does not leave any margin of error or a time for social or political re-appraisals. Once applied, the penalty cannot be appealed, the sentence changed, the innocent freed with an apology. Recently, the state of Illinois imposed a moratorium or reversal of death penalty convictions. The state found that many who were sitting on death row were innocent of the charges in the first place, or were victims of frame-ups. Unfortunately for many thousands more, the reversal of verdicts don’t happen or come too late.

Many supporters of the death penalty insist that its utilization is an effective deterrent against ominous crimes. Crime statistics worldwide and world history have repeatedly shown this claim to be a lie. The death penalty has been proved to be state sanctioned murder, not a deterrent to crime as claimed.

Mental illness, extreme hardship, desperation and other factors make the death penalty just one more in the list of obstacles for criminals, not a central consideration for deterrence. Nor is the building of more prisons and harsher police practices of any use. If anything, an industry of crime has been encouraged in the form of police abuse, torture and oppression.

It is a sign of social evolution that a growing number of countries and peoples oppose the death penalty around the world. In fact, Castro himself recognized this as he indicated that Cuba was in a "moratorium of sorts" in the application of the death penalty. Its utilization by the Cuban government is a regressive movement to more backward attitudes towards “justice.” It is politically unacceptable in a regime that claims to represent the vanguard conscience of world society.

Some supporters of the Cuban regime would argue that revolutionary times require revolutionary actions and that when the revolution is endangered it has the legitimate right to defend itself. But this is not the Cuba under invasion as it was during the "Bay of Pigs" or the Cuba of revolutionary times when the rebels had to overcome the forces of the Batista dictatorship.

A country like Cuba has the right to defend itself by any means necessary against an invasion by US imperialism or against repression by a dictatorship. But comparing such crises to the hijacking of a boat by three common criminals is absurd and trivializes the hard decisions that must be made when mass movements overthrow dictatorial regimes or defend their homelands from Imperial attack.

Harsh jail terms for political opponents:

While Castro and the Cuban government made a good case against James Cason and USIS for a diplomatic expulsion of the US representative, the case was obscured and a simple case of guilt by association was leveled at those actually being sentenced to long prison terms.

They are political opponents in the service of US political interests, for sure. They met repeatedly with James Cason and some of them with Jimmy Carter. They were provided with meeting spaces at Cason's house, with breakfasts and dinners, and more than likely they also received some cash, books, but more importantly they received political support, encouragement and promises for the future.

However the Cuban prosecutors, including Castro, failed to demonstrate how those put on trial were involved in any sort of violent conspiracy or actually carrying out acts of violence. Any government should expect the undermining of its political system from adversary or rival governments. But it has the power of the state to defend its ideas and political regime. This, the education of its own people, is the only guaranteed means to counteract the political opposition of the enemies of such a state.

Since no violence or preparation for violence was uncovered in the case of those who ended up with 6-28 year jail sentences nor presented in trial, never mind proved, the sentences were viewed by many as a bureaucratic over-reaching, a reminder of old Stalinist methods of the worst kind.

What would be the reaction of the Cuban government to a political movement from the left, not coming from the US representatives in the island but from the people, that would challenge the existing regime? What if those left groups or movements counted on support from left wing and revolutionary organizations internationally? The experience of the past has shown that they would also be sent to jail for long periods.

Strategic and political blunders:

Some of the arguments utilized to defend the actions of the Cuban government by its supporters abroad, is that those actions were necessary to protect the Socialist revolution which is confronted with an immediate US invasion.

Wrong on both counts, in our opinion. The gains of the original Cuban revolution of the late 50s and early 60s were greatly undermined by the Cuban regime and the CCP when they tied it to the designs of the Soviet bureaucracy. Thus the revolution become a pawn of Soviet geopolitical maneuvers in Africa, which stopped the first gestures of independent foreign policy from emerging.

The support of the “peaceful road” to socialism in Chile under Allende, which led to the Pinochetist bloodbath in 1973; the advice to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas not to advance towards expropriation of the capitalists and imperialists, which meant the defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution, and Fidel Castro's recent trip to Argentina to support the new center-right President, Nestor Kirchner, are but some examples of the backward steps taken by the Cuban leadership.

In the recent invasion of Iraq by the US, Castro made the respective calls to support the initiatives of the UN, French and German initiatives in particular, under the pragmatist position that “that is all what we have.”

These foreign policies are the continuation of the domestic policies of a Cuban leadership which has been re-introducing capitalism on the island. These were not the actions of a regime in direct struggle for international revolution against Capitalism, but the defensive actions of a bureaucracy in retreat.

There is no revolution going on in Cuba, but the status quo of a bureaucratic regime.

There is no immediate threat of a US invasion of Cuba. The US ruling class has no immediate pressing economic interests or strategic resources they need to take back from the island. But they can't forget the defeats of the past – the overthrow of Batista, the defeat in the Bay of Pigs, the humiliation in Southern Africa, etc – and they have decided to eventually get revenge to save their imperial pride…. through the continuation of the present policies of low intensity political and economic war.

In the face of its own retreats and the continuing hostility of the US government, the Cuban regime feels isolated and weak. This is a regime afraid for itself and its survival and showing it by the harsh measures it took. No revolutionary regime with confidence in the support of the masses, both nationally and internationally, would over-react as the Cubans did over a few hijackers and a few dozen pro-bourgeois political opponents.

Obstinate defenders of anything done by the Cuban government will argue that the US attacks against Cuba would proceed no matter what. They will dismiss criticisms that the regime's executions and prison sentences played right into the hands of the US's long standing policies against Cuba. “If they did not have this, they would find some other excuse.”

Fair enough. None of us is about to forget the lies told about Weapons of Mass Destruction and links to terrorism to justify the invasion of Iraq. But why make the work of the US ideological machine so much easier by handing them these bureaucratic actions, executions and prison terms?

Trials in a few days? Death penalty? Executions nine days after the crime was committed? No probe of violent acts by political dissidents? No appeal process? Not staying sentences? Declining to punish the real culprit of the story, James Cason and his bosses in Washington DC? Instead going for the decapitation of an obviously frail pro-bourgeois opposition? How can these acts be interpreted as progressive actions of a progressive or even revolutionary regime? How can they escape critical analysis?

Far from emerging victorious, Fidel's Cuba emerged weakened from a crisis within the crisis they themselves produced. Many in the mass movement now see them as a left- over of the Stalinist era like North Korea. Many fellow travelers and former friends of Cuba are now alienated or at least having second thoughts about their support for Cuba’s government.

Fidel Castro and the Cuban communist claim allegiance to the international working class and internationalism: why, then, they did not appeal to the international working class and the left to participate in the trials and opened a debate on how best defeat the US provocations before appealing to the firing squads and the prison cells?

Or is the Cuban government's internationalism of the kind that expects the international working class and the left to take its word and follow its commands without questioning them?

Lenin called 'fools'those who limit themselves to publish resolutions from others without arriving to their own, independent positions on the issues.

The Cuban government should take into account that even the pro-bourgeois elements and the counter revolutionary circles in Miami now feel more confident.

If the regime has to resort to using such extraordinary measures – in which three men armed with knives and one handgun must be executed, and a ragtag of failed pro-bourgeois elements must be silenced for decades - then it may be because the regime is about to collapse or at the very least it is in a much weaker position.

From our side, we maintain our support for Cuba in the face of any and all US attacks and provocations. We demand the lifting of the embargo, the withdrawal of US troops from Guantanamo and the closing of its terror-and-death camp there for good, and we will certainly defend Cuba against any Imperial military threats or provocations.

But we insist that the best defense of Cuba is for the Cuban working class to forge a democratic workers' republic, based on the rule of their own organizations and not the Stalinist bureaucracy, and to reject the present course towards restoring capitalism in Cuba.

Cuba can and should be better defended and protected by a foreign policy of support and solidarity with the struggling national liberation movements and the left internationally, not by the exchange of political commitments and praise with center-right semi-colonial regimes such as that of Kirchner in Argentina or with the social democrats, who are the political representatives of European imperialism.

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