Babalú Blog

Human Rights Watch is calling on foreign nations to hold the socialist Castro dictatorship accountable for human rights violations in its modern-day slave trade in Cuban doctors.

Via Human Rights Watch:

Cuba: Repressive Rules for Doctors Working Abroad

Receiving Governments Should Press for Change

The Cuban government imposes draconian rules on doctors deployed in medical missions globally that violate their fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments seeking support from Cuban health workers to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic should press Cuban authorities to modify applicable regulations and laws that violate the right to privacy, freedom of expression and association, liberty, and movement, among others.

Since March, Cuba has sent roughly 1,500 medical professionals across the world to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic, joining approximately 30,000 Cuban health workers already deployed abroad. Cuban government regulations provide that workers may be disciplined for being “friends” with people who hold “hostile or contrary views to the Cuban revolution.” Health workers may also face criminal penalties if they “abandon” their jobs.

“Cuban doctors deployed to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic provide valuable services to many communities, but at the expense of their most basic freedoms,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments interested in receiving support from Cuban doctors should press the Cuban government to overhaul this Orwellian system that dictates with whom doctors can live, fall in love, or talk.”

According to the Cuban government, over the past nearly 60 years, Cuba has deployed over 400,000 health workers across 164 countries to help tackle short-term crises, natural disasters, and, currently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Since March 2020, the Cuban government has sent several contingents of medical personnel to support local healthcare systems in over 20 countries, including several in Latin America.

Since its first medical mission to Algeria in 1963, Cuba has crafted repressive norms that regulate the lives of those deployed abroad. The rules severely restrict health workers’ freedom of expression, association, movement, and privacy.

Cuba regulates even the most mundane aspects of the lives of Cuban medical personnel on missions, in ways that violate their rights to freedom of association.

Continue reading HERE.

In socialist Cuba not only are you not allowed to speak about democracy, neither are you allowed to speak about those ruthlessly assassinated for speaking about democracy. This is socialism in action.

Via CubaNet (my translation):

Regime stops homage to Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in Ciego de Avila

Cuban dissident Otoniel Cruz Suarez, member of the opposition movement “Awaken Morón,” was accosted by Cuban State Security on Tuesday shortly after buying sunflowers to pay homage to Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero.

According to statements made by the activists to Radio Television Martí, upon his return home yesterday afternoon, the agents took the flowers from him, destroyed them, and threatened him with prison.

“They told me that if I continued my political activism, they were going to put me in prison,” he said.

Cruz Suarez intended to put the flowers in his home in according to a call to pay homage made by the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and the citizen initiative Cuba Decide.

The opposition member had already been arrested the previous Sunday on his way to the municipal park in Moron to demand the release of activist Yanelis Deuz Duran, who had been arrested and held incomunicado since July 8th.

In a video he posted on social media, Cruz Suarez denounced other threats political police have made against him.

“I remain firm in my struggle for liberty and democracy in Cuba,” said the young man.

Continue reading (in Spanish) HERE.

H/T @amandafarinacci on Twitter

By Nike in Havana Times:

Need Changes people

I want to tell you how the day-to-day is being lived in Cuba at this moment. Those who know my country know the difficulty that most Cubans have always gone through to cover our basic needs and that more than living, we have become accustomed to subsisting.

With the current crisis situation we are in, shortages abound of all kinds of products, whether for personal hygiene or food, as we try to get what we need most urgently or what we can. This has generated a change in habits and tastes.

For example, today, even the toothpaste sold at the ration stores, that nobody likes, preferring imported ones, is not available anywhere and has become one of the most coveted and sought-after products. Not to mention imported toothpaste.

I mention toothpaste just to give you an idea.

Another “missing” item at stores is the tomato puree. Until recently I didn’t like the one they sell in the agro-markets and now it seems very good to me. I thank the people, farmers, who produce it and who even add their own label. They are doing something so necessary, seasoned with onion and garlic, which makes it healthier and fresher. Thanks to them the people can obtain a national product, which right now does not exist in state stores.

Read moreReports from Cuba: Need changes people

By Gorki Aguila:

If you wonder what life is like in a socialist society, take a look at what Cuban independent journalist endure in communist Cuba.

Via Periodico Cubano (my translation):

Independent journalist Camila Acosta loses her home again after pressure by regime

Independent journalist Camila Acosta denounced on Tuesday that she was evicted from the home she was renting in Havana after her landlord was pressured by State Security.

Through a live video streamed on social media, Acosta explained this was the second time in less than a month and the fifth time this year that she has been forced to move.

She says the harassment she suffers from the Cuban regime’s oppressors are due to her work as an independent journalist

“This is a direct denouncement. Once again political police has left me on the streets, has once again threatened the property owners of the apartment I was living in, and have once again evicted me,” she explained.

Last February, political police fined the owner of the home where she had rented a room for 3 years 3,000 CUC, ordering them to evict her and threatening to confiscate their property.

Acosta stressed that this is all taking place in the middle of a pandemic, leaving her vulnerable to the disease after both evictions.

“While others have been focused on social distancing, on not going out in public, I have been in the middle of moves,” she said.

The young woman, who is originally from the Isle of Pines, has been living in the nation’s capital for almost 10 years, four of them in rented apartments.

Continue reading (in Spanish) HERE.

I was today-years-old when I learned Cypress Hill rapper B-Real’s mother is Cuban and was a political prisoner of the Castro dictatorship. Watch as he talks about his mom’s daring escape from communist Cuba.

Read moreVideo of the Day: Cypress Hill rapper B-Real talks about his mom’s escape from communist Cuba

It was eight years ago today when human rights and democracy activists Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were assassinated by State Security agents of the communist Castro dictatorship. In communist Cuba, such advocacy is a crime and anyone who speaks out for the rights of Cubans is considered to be directly challenging the authority and legitimacy of the Castro regime. As in the case of Oswaldo and Harold and countless others, the penalty for this crime is oftentimes death.

On July 22, 2012, the names of these two courageous and peaceful human rights activists were added to a constantly growing list of Cuban martyrs that spans six decades.

Let us all take a moment and honor the memory of Oswaldo and Harold on yet another anniversary of their ultimate sacrifice for fellow Cubans and the ongoing struggle for freedom and liberty on the island.

We will continue to celebrate and honor the fight for freedom in Cuba and the sacrifice made by these brave men. Not only will we never forget courage and bravery of Oswaldo and Harold, neither will we never forget the cowards who murdered these innocent men.

Sooner or later, justice will be served.

You can tune in to a live video tribute to Paya and Cepero beginning today at 9 AM HERE.

From our Bureau of Troubles in Propaganda Paradise

Why is it that there are always some grumpy people out there who love to spoil good stories cranked out by the Ministry of Truth?

Today’s cranky misantrhopes are uppity Kenyan doctors who have maliciously complained about the angelic Cuban slave medics hired by the Kenyan government.

According to these sullen killjoys, Kenya didn’t need to rent the services of Cuban slave medics because the country has over 1,000 unemployed doctors who have yet to be enlisted in the fight against the Wuhan plague.

Incredible. How dare these party poopers throw cold water on the humanitarian mission of Castro, Inc.!

The whole world knows that those Cuban medics are like selfless angels from heaven, and that the government that owns them and rents them out is absolutely wonderful.

Again… how dare anyone complain! Castrogonia is providing a model to follow throughout the world. Yes, can’t these evil wretches see that the entire world needs to become like Castrogonia? Why can’t they see that the world would be a much better place if the government owned everything, including one’s wages?

O, the evil of it all. The horror… the horror… This malevolent Dr. Mwachonda deserves to be toppled along with the privileged pedestal on which he stands, just like all those statues of Columbus and Jesus and Lincoln, and all those other evil people that truly enlightened Americans are demolishing.

I say… the time has come to pull down the entire Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union and throw it into Lake Victoria, where the crocodiles will take care of their insufferably rancorous privilege and wrongthink ! Then we’ll all feel so much safer….

Read moreUnemployed Kenyan doctors protest hiring of Cuban slave doctors

Miriam Celaya writes in Cubanet from Havana via Translating Cuba:

Cuba: The “Strategy” of Desperation

If I had to briefly describe the general impression that emerges from the new Economic and Social Strategy of the Cuba’s upper echelons of power, I would choose three preliminary adjectives: wrong, late, and incomplete.

It is wrong because it continues to estimate in a foreign currency what they call “impulse to the economic development of the country” – more noteworthy, in the “enemy’s” foreign currency which supposedly generates all the ills – and in items that are not related at all to the results of the production of the (ruined) national industry: family remittances from abroad, the eternally “potential” foreign investment capital and the eventual foreign tourism income, now disappeared.

It is late because each and every one of the proposed guidelines, such as the “flexibilities” announced for the private sector, financial “autonomy” for state-owned companies, the introduction of micro and small and medium-sized companies, among other measures could and should have been implemented many years ago, especially during the thaw period, with the administration of the then-US President, Barack Obama, when the Castro regime had its best opportunity to implement these and other changes.

On the other hand, the official proposal for economic reforms in the current national and international context (though it is noteworthy that the term “reforms” was not uttered), far from projecting an alleged interest of the power claque to expand the economic potential of citizens or a real desire for change, only evidences despair and a sense of urgency to increase hard currencies.

Read moreReports from Cuba: The ‘strategy’ of desperation