Cubadebate

We [in the USA] aren't really interested in democracy and human rights. We just use those words to hide our true reasons.

If democracy and human rights really mattered to us, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico, Peru and Colombia--for example--would be our enemies....

Since 1985, we have stated publicly that we will encourage and openly finance dissident and human rights groups in Cuba; this, too, is in our interests. The United States isn't financing all those groups--only the ones that are best known internationally.

Those dissidents and human rights groups in Cuba--that are nothing but a few people--are only important to the extent that they serve us in a single cause: that of destabilizing Fidel Castro's regime.

--Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in Havana (1)

It is no secret that the US government funds dissident and "human rights" groups in Cuba. See, for example, the official USAID website. There you see budgeted items totaling $1.5 million for groups such as Cuba Free Press and CubaNet (often the source of anti-Cuban "news" at the soc.culture.cuba news group). These items, even in themselves being several thousand times the average Cuban's annual income, are an enormous sum of money. Try to imagine the reaction of the FBI to an amount several thousand times the average American's annual income from a foreign government to subversive groups in the USA. And these items were certainly not the first nor last of such allocations. At this writing, the US government is considering additional funding for dissident groups in Cuba totaling $100 million!

In addition to the considerable resources of the US government, there is the funding from private groups like the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), with its known links to anti-Cuban terrorist groups. On September 14, 2000, The Washington Post reported that the CANF was planning to "quadruple the amount of money it sends to dissident leaders on the island." And that "a portion of the group's $10 million annual budget--he declined to say how much--will begin flowing to the island through sympathetic dissidents by the end of the year."

Remember that these sponsoring groups--the US government and fanatical elements of the Cuban exile community--have sponsored or participated in a military invasion, countless terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage, and a universally condemned, genocidal embargo against the Cuban people.

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Noam Chomsky, in his book, Media Control, (see excerpts) writes about one of the most famous Cuban "dissident" exiles and US media darlings, Armando Valladares and his equally famous prison "memoirs." He was appointed by US president, Ronald Reagan, as US representative to the UN Human Rights Commission and soon distinguished himself as an apologist for human rights violations on a massive scale perpetrated by US-backed regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Chomsky contrasts Valladares' case with a true hero, Salvadoran, Herbert Anaya and his prison memoirs of atrocities. Far from becoming a media darling, it seems he and his memoirs conveniently dropped off the radar screen of US mainstream media--to the very limited extent they were ever allowed to appear. Chomsky writes:

In May 1986, the memoirs of the released Cuban prisoner, Armando Valladares, came out. They quickly became a media sensation. I'll give you a couple of quotes. The media described his revelations as "the definitive account of the vast system of torture and prison by which Castro punishes and obliterates political opposition." It was "an inspiring and unforgettable account" of the "bestial prisons," inhuman torture, [and] record of state violence [under] yet another of this century's mass murderers, who we learn, at last, from this book "has created a new despotism that has institutionalized torture as a mechanism of social control" in "the hell that was the Cuba that [Valladares] lived in. " That's the Washington Post and New York Times in repeated reviews. Castro was described as "a dictatorial goon." His atrocities were revealed in this book so conclusively that "only the most light-headed and cold-blooded Western intellectual will come to the tyrant's defense," said the Washington Post. Remember, this is the account of what happened to one man. Let's say it's all true. Let's raise no questions about what happened to the one man who says he was tortured. At a White House ceremony marking Human Rights Day, he was singled out by Ronald Reagan for his courage in enduring the horrors and sadism of this bloody Cuban tyrant. He was then appointed the U.S. representative at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, where he has been able to perform signal services defending the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments against charges that they conduct atrocities so massive that they make anything he suffered look pretty minor. That's the way things stand.

That was May 1986. It was interesting, and it tells you something about the manufacture of consent. The same month, the surviving members of the Human Rights Group of El Salvador - the leaders had been killed - were arrested and tortured, including Herbert Anaya, who was the director. They were sent to a prison - La Esperanza (hope) Prison. While they were in prison they continued their human rights work. They were lawyers, they continued taking affidavits. There were 432 prisoners in that prison. They got signed affidavits from 430 of them in which they described, under oath, the torture that they had received: electrical torture and other atrocities, including, in one case, torture by a North American U.S. major in uniform, who is described in some detail. This is an unusually explicit and comprehensive testimony, probably unique in its detail about what's going on in a torture chamber. This 160-page report of the prisoners' sworn testimony was sneaked out of prison, along with a videotape which was taken showing people testifying in prison about their torture. It was distributed by the Marin County Interfaith Task Force. The national press refused to cover it. The TV stations refused to run it. There was an article in the local Marin County newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and I think that's all. No one else would touch it. This was a time when there was more than a few "light-headed and cold-blooded Western intellectuals" who were singing the praises of Jose Napoleon Duarte and of Ronald Reagan.

Anaya was not the subject of any tributes. He didn't get on Human Rights Day. He wasn't appointed to anything. He was released in a prisoner exchange and then assassinated, apparently by the U.S.-backed security forces.

References
1.  Hernando Calvo and Katlijn Declercq, The Cuban Exile Movement, Dissidents or Mercenaries, p. 156, Ocean Press, 2000

Further Reading
Cuba Vs. Terrorism, The Anti-terrorism Working Group, Cuba
Karen Lee Wald, "Human Rights and Power Politics," April 20, 2001
Forbes debunked by... FORBES!
Greg Gourley, Director, New Americans of Washington, "The Truth about Cuban Immigration to America"
Wayne Smith, Anya Landau, "CIP Refutes Bolton's Statements on Cuba: Gross Distortion of Reality," Center for International Policy, May 8, 2002
Tim Johnson, "Cuban biological weapons called deterrent, not threat," The Miami Herald, June 6, 2002
Jim Valdes, "Fidel Castro, Bioterrorism and the Elusive Quote"
Wayne Smith, Anya Landau, "Groundless Allegations [against Cuba] Squander US Credibility on Terrorism," Center for International Policy, July 12, 2002  

Cuba: Issues & Answer