Cuban Blogger Beaten by Regime Thugs — This Time, the World Notices
Yoani, who once lived abroad, took an interest in blogging and devised an ingenious way to do so. She emails her writings to friends who live outside of Cuba, who then post them to the blog they maintain for her. Even having access to email is a challenge for Sanchez, but she’s been able to maintain a steady stream of posts since she began blogging in April 2007.
In December of that same year, the Wall Street Journal published a piece about Yoani. She was something new — a Cuban who was not afraid to openly criticize the Castro regime, albeit subtly, and stick by her criticisms. A gifted writer, Yoani’s remarks are often cutting but in a way that isn’t obvious. And perhaps that’s why she stayed under the radar of Cuba’s repressive apparatus until she literally became an international celebrity from one day to the next.
Faced with this new and unprecedented threat, the regime had to think before it acted. It has tried to intimidate Yoani in numerous ways, including summoning her to the police station for questioning and deploying minders to watch her every move. When Yoani won the Ortega y Gasset award for digital journalism (Spain’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize), her request to leave the country to accept the honor was denied by the Castro government. You see, Cuba is one of the few countries in the world where citizens are not allowed to leave and return freely, in violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights — despite the fact that Cuba is a signer of that agreement.
Still, Yoani somehow achieved a status previously believed impossible in Castro’s Cuba — she was untouchable. Or so it seemed. Apparently, the goons whose job it is to keep Cubans in line have had enough of Yoani and her highfalutin’ ideas about freedom and self-determination.
Luckily for Yoani, in the process of becoming an award-winning commentator, she also managed to become somewhat popular among liberals in America and leftists internationally. She writes a regular column for the Huffington Post and has never aligned herself with the U.S. and its policies toward her country’s dictators. Her very existence has such liberals and leftists, for the first time, questioning what they had previously never questioned — namely, the real nature of the Castro regime they blindly idolized for years. And her detention and beating at the hands of Castro henchmen has probably further disoriented them.
It’s important to understand that Yoani Sanchez is not the only person in Cuba who disagrees with her government. Nor is she the only one who does it vocally. Unfortunately, Cuba’s political prisons are filled with such people.
One is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, an Afro-Cuban medical doctor who is a pacifist democracy advocate serving a 25-year prison sentence for his “crime” of being a pacifist democracy advocate. I believe Biscet is the most dangerous man in Cuba. Another is Dr. Darsi Ferrer, also a medical doctor, who risked his freedom and his life to film the reality of Cuba’s health care system, which Michael Moore praised in the movie Sicko. Ferrer was arrested by Castro’s police in July of this year and remains in prison.
So while the international media’s coverage of Havana’s “blogger beatings” is a welcome development, they have a long way to go in order to inform the world about the truth of Castro’s Cuba.
Viva Yoani Sanchez! A courageous young woman unafraid to speak the truth! But just like the courageous Iranian protestors, also clamoring for freedom and justice in their land, the plight of Yoani is ignored by our government, which instead favors “dialogue” with ruthless regimes in the hopes of somehow advancing “peace and understanding” among natiions… We end up sacrificing those who should be our friends in order to appease our enemies, leaving us with fewer friends and bolder enemies.
Yoani! What about Pastor Manning! http://www.israpundit.com/2008/
Pastor Manning Arrested
It’s about the birth certificate and comments made by Rev. Manning about taking Obama down , trying him and hanging him for treason.
pastor manning on obama
ROBERT | MySpace Video
Posted by Ted Belman @ 7:02 am ET | Plink | Trackback | 1 Comment » | 127 views
Ah, yes. We can expect deafening silence on the left side of the aisle when it comes to real dissent.
The “glorious workers’ paradise” in Cuba has only been maintained first by the decaying Soviet Union, but more substantially by the largesse of expatriates in the United States sending cash back to family on the island. (Who, it may be said, were free here to earn as much money as their hard work and creativity could achieve. And they have.)
And, thanks to the First Amendment to the Constitution, the glaring truth is out there for all the world to see — or ignore. (Cue regrettable lapse into ad hominem: Mikey Moore is such a disgusting, lying pig. Sorry.)
My Spanish teacher in the 10th grade was one Dr. Raul Nodarse. He was quite the unusual personality. He and his buddies fought at the Bay of Pigs, and only squeaked out at the last minute when the air support evaporated. He taught comparitive literature at a university in Havana, but took up a gun once he saw what was at stake in 1959.
He wore the most outrageously bad toupee. He brought a saber to class that had belonged to his grandfather; and, should a student be so unwise as to give a wrong answer, he would leap up on his/her desk brandishing his blade, shouting out, “Less 1,000 points!” (You could earn, or lose, bonus points on any given day. Many a student achieved stellar marks — AND a good grasp of Spanish — thusly.) He rode a full-dresser Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The bike — and his passionate nature — were his undoing. He crashed into a tractor-trailer one morning and did not survive.
Apologies for the digression … I guess my point is that many, many Cubans did, and do, care passionately about their freedoms. Enough to attempt to speak about it despite threats of death, or even death itself.
Long live Yoanni. And rest in peace, Doc.
I think it’s very important to report on human rights abuses in Cuba.
One to think very seriously about, right now…is when is the MSM going to report on thugs, in So Cal seriously beating a couple of people who were merely protesting government seizure of health care? By SEIU thugs no less. Oh, I forgot, they support Obama, so it’s ok that they beat up an old man. Um…that’s called fascism as I recall. The National Socialist Workers Party wasn’t a conservative movement…just look at the name.
Only in Obama’s America would it be worse.
Don’t believe me.. check out Lou Dobbs firing .. better not say a bad thing about Barrack Husein Obama… mmmnn mmm mm.
Rich – do you have a link you can provide? Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard a thing about it.
Tish, of course you havent try:
Here
or
Here
Raul, a brutal dictator?
The truth about Cuba’s healthcare system? (I’ve used it — yuk!)
After 50 years it all gets tiring, doesn’t it?
Sanchez sounds like Armando Balladarez before imprisonment — or the any of the other thousands of Ché-like teenagers avoiding their responsibility to be in school by being in the hills in 1958. God bless her and help her.
BUT, the Cubans s$$t on their own plate and deserve whatever happened to them when they sat down to dinner, just like the Americans now are doing in their country, and you won’t cry a tear for them.
PELAUT:Yoanni IS inspiring. Her defiance of marxist thugs needs to be publicized as much as possible, to galvanize resistance to our own Castro wannabe! BTW: the resemblance of the Castro goons to ACORN, and the black panther voting booth intimidators,underscores the danger we Americans are in.
Members of the Congressional Black Congress who visited Castro in Cuba raved about how wonderful he and Cuba are.
I’m wondering when we will hear from the CBC on this issue?