Cuba and the exploitation of International Amnesty

For don Lucien de Peiro

During the last two weeks, specifically from the death of Orlando Zapata, Cuba has led, for not saying monopolized, the informative Falsimedia agenda, in Spain and practically in the rest of countries of the imperialist orbit or in the related means to the same one. The vultures mediáticos have found in Orlando a fresh and useful corpse for his recalcitrant interests intoxicadores. They have boned, gnawed it and it seems that finally they it are spitting, bone to bone, now when they have got fed up with the same one. For it, since it is habitual in these cases, they have flavored the banquet with multiple and constant allusions to the denunciations of International Amnesty against the Cuban government. The use of International Amnesty like sacred reference, since we will see at once, has turned out to be a vulgar exploitation of the work of the above mentioned organization.

Let's start by revising some Spanish means and a pair not Spanish representatives of the orbit anticastrista to begin comprising the dense grade of use of the denunciations of International Amnesty:

The Country

« In the island about 200 political prisoners exist; of them, 65 conscience prisoners are considered by International Amnesty»

On February 25

« Also 65 adopted children demand the liberation of all the political prisoners, who according to information of the Commission of Human rights and National Conciliation (CDHRN) are about 200, of them for International Amnesty like conscience prisoners»

On February 28

« If as the Cuban Government says to us, 65 persons (conscience prisoners, according to International Amnesty) they can spoil only with his words a diet that presumes to be a popular revolution»

On March 1

The Avant-garde

« He thought that the death of this dissident is going to have «serious consequences because he was a prisoner of conscience adopted as International Amnesty (AI)»

On February 24

« Washington thought that the Shoe death reflects the "injustice" of the Cuban diet and asked for the immediate liberation of 200 political prisoners that have International Amnesty taken into account in the island»

On February 25

The World

« International amnesty corrects of cruel the Cuban Government for allowing the death of Shoe Tamayo»

On February 24

« International amnesty is considered from last week by the 'prisoner of conscience' number 55 of the Cuban diet»

On March 04

The Newspaper of Catalunya

« He has thought that the death of this dissident is going to have «serious consequences because he was a prisoner of conscience adopted as International Amnesty (AI)»

On February 24

« At the same time, International Amnesty claimed to the Government presided by Raúl Castro the «immediate and unconditional freedom» of the one that there considers the prisoner of conscience number 55 of the Caribbean country, Darsi Ferrer»

On February 27

Miami Herald

« International amnesty corrects of cruel the Cuban Government for allowing Shoe death»

On February 24

The New York Times

« Amnesty International called the hunger strike death of jailed Cuban activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo to «terrible indictment» of repression on the island and urged Cuban President Raul Castro on Wednesday to be reread all political prisoners»

On February 24

These brief fragments, which scarcely represent small part of everything published in the same means during the last two weeks, reflect two habitual counterfoils in the information of Falsimedia about Cuba: first of all, as it is demonstrated for anyone that continues minimally to the massive means, "surprises" the untensest dedication to facts that only acquire relevancy when they happen in the Caribbean island. What with regard to any other country does not generate unnoticed any debate and it happens (if it happens) for the massive means, as regards Cuba it inspires an endless number of titular, hardened analyses, wise debates (in which, obviously, it is not invited to voices that swim cross-current) and powerful waves of indignation, protest and denunciation (1).

Immediately after this first counterfoil we can derive the second one, which is the one that we are interested in in this writing: the use and, finally, exploitation of the denunciations and reports of International Amnesty of Cuba. There is here where refulge the figure of Salim Lamrani, French investigator who has worked with intensity as regards everything related to the permanent poisoning that the Cuban government endures. In a recent interview for The Republic in Havana, he was answering this way to one of the questions:

« The means stigmatize very often the situation of the human rights in Cuba. On the other hand they never do a comparative study, although only it is enough to take the annual reports of International Amnesty and to compare them. I do it in the book and the result is edifying, of the whole American continent, from Canada up to Argentina, the country that violates less the rights is Cuba according to International Amnesty. Now, it does not mean that Cuba is the paradise. Some human rights violations exist in the island. »(2)

Following his example, I have been allowed to take the word and I have directed my steps to the last annual report of International Amnesty, the correspondent to the year 2009 (3). I believe that the most advisable thing will be that we read letter for letter, word for word and phrase for phrase, everything what has said the report on Cuba and, to establish a comparison, we say, edifying, we will read what the same report has said on an American country that, in principle, it does not generate many doubts about his respect of the human rights. I speak about Canada, with which I am allowed to begin myself:

Canada (p. 140 of the report)

Presentation text: The indigenous peoples that were trying to defend his right to the ground kept on finding big obstacles. In the report of an investigation on the intervention of Canadian officials in the detention and persons' torture abroad it was revealed that some officials had collaborated in human rights violations.

- It kept on causing worry that continued and there should not guarantee the rapid and impartial resolution of the conflicts concerning the ground and the rights of property of the natural resources. In August, the Committee of the UNO for the Elimination of the Racial discrimination expressed that his worry for the plan of constructing a gas pipeline in grounds of Alberta who believes the lubicon they kept on protesting like his. The Commission of Alberta's Public enterprises ignored these worries on having approved the project in October.

- In September, the Commission of Human rights of Canada ordered that a complaint to be investigated on the disparity of the funds destined for the protection organisms of the indigenous children. The government kept on affirming that the Declaration of the UNO on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples was not applicable in Canada because this country had voted against his approval.

- In Ontario it was advancing with slowness the application of the recommendations of the report published in 2007 for the Commission of Investigation of Ipperwash on the circumstances that surrounded the case of Dudley George, native who died in 1995 for shots of the police when it was taking part disarmed in a few protests for the right to the ground.

- The Provincial Police of Ontario made excessive use of the force during a few declarations for the right to the ground celebrated in the Territory of Tyendinaga Mohawk and in his surroundings in 2007 and 2008.

- In October, the Committee of the UNO for the Elimination of the Discrimination against the Woman asked to Canada him «to [adopt] the necessary measurements to correct the shortcomings of the system» in what concerns the investigation of the murders and disappearances of aboriginal women. The Committee asked also them to raise the restrictions imposed on the funds destined on the works of promotion, pressure and investigation of the women's organizations and that there will be created a mechanism of supervision of the recluses.

- In February, after a resolution adopted in 2007 as the Supreme Court of Canada the government reformed the system of the safety certificate of immigration, which nevertheless kept on being unjust. Five men subject to the above mentioned system were set free – in some cases with freedom conditions on bail very restrictive – while they were continuing the judicial procedures that were following against them. One of the men, Hassan Almrei, had imprisoned from October, 2001.

- In March, the Federal Court pushed a resource back against the practice of putting under care of the Afghan authorities, with the high risk of torture that it was containing, the persons stopped during the military operations realized in Afghanistan. The Federal Court of Appeal confirmed this decision in December.

- In October there was made public the report of a commission of investigation on the officials' intervention of Canada in the cases of three Canadian citizens a-Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed the Maati and Muayyed Nureddin – arrested and tortured abroad. In the report it was indicated that the actions of the Canadian officials had helped of multiple forms to violate the rights of three arrested. The government kept on refusing to intervene before the American authorities in favor of Omar Khadr, Canadian citizen stopped in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old and imprisoned in Guantanamo from hacía any more than six.

- In June, alleging procedure defects, the Federal Court of Appeal invalidated a resolution adopted in 2007 as the Federal Court according to which the agreement on third sure countries signed by Canada and the United States was damaging the Letter of Rights and the international law.

- A public investigation of provincial ambience began on the death in October, 2007, in the international airport of Vancouver, of the Polish citizen Robert Dziekanski after agents of the Real Mounted Police of Canada were shooting him with guns Taser (you arm of electroshock). The Department of Public Complaints of this body expressed a report in which one was asking that there be restricted the use of this type of weapon. Four persons died during the year after the police were shooting them with a Taser.

- In September, the Federal Court examined a request of Ronald Smith, Canadian citizen condemned in 1983 to the capital punishment in the American state of Montana. Ronald Smith was opposing the new politics of the Canadian government not to request the pardon of Canadian citizens condemned to death in democratic and respectful considered countries with the democracy. On having finished the year, the Court had not adopted yet a decision.

Centrémonos now in the part of the report referred to the Caribbean island:

Cuba (page 165 of the report)

Presentation text: It kept on restricting the freedom of expression, association and meeting. Safety agents whipped and intimidated journalists and political dissidents. Four conscience prisoners stayed at large at the beginning of year, but 58 remained imprisoned. The Cuban population kept on enduring the negative effects of the American sequestration, especially as regards the right to food.

- In February, the Parliament was named to Raúl Castro by president of the Council of the State, appointment that had prepared the headquarters of the State and of the government. Cuba signed the International Agreement of Civil and Political Rights and the International Agreement of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but he had not foreseen a date for his ratification.

- Five years after the sanctions imposed by the European Union after the detention and condemnation – in March, 2003 – of 75 prisoners of conscience, Cuba and the EU resumed his relations of an official way. The EU raised his diplomatic sanctions and initiated a dialogue with the Cuban authorities on diverse matters, between them the human rights.

- During the first semester of the year economic reforms began getting in the agricultural sector. Nevertheless, the ravages caused by several hurricanes hindered the reforming initiatives of the government. According to official sources, tens thousands of persons remained without hearth as a result of the hurricanes, and the country suffered losses valued for almost billion American dollars for the ambience of the agricultural production. For the first time it was allowed to the Cuban citizens to acquire mobile and ordering phones for personal use, but the access to Internet remained restricted. In October, for the seventeenth year in a row, the General Assembly of the UNO approved a resolution endorsed by 185 countries, in which one was asking the United States to finish the sequestration against Cuba.

- The American sequestration and diverse connected measurements kept on reverberating of negative form in the exercise of the human rights. There kept on being very restricted the familiar reunifications and the freedom of circulation between Cuba and the United States. The extraterritorial application of the American legislation was bordering also

aptitude of the Cuban government to buy to commercial associates of Cuba such products like food, medical provisions and building materials. Nevertheless, the United States was allowed to Cuba to buy basic food for a value for 530 million American, payable dollars in cash and in advance.

- The freedom of expression remained restricted. All the mass media continued under control of the State. The journalists of independent and alternative news agencies kept on suffering harassment and intimidation in the shape of alertness and brief detentions on the part of safety agents. It continued without allowing him the legalization of the political groups of opposition and of numerous civil and professional associations. In December, the Cuban authorities stopped for a brief period more than 30 persons, whom they prevented from celebrating the International Day of the Human rights in Havana.

- In June they stopped the journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira, of the Trade union news agency Press, in his domicile of Havana. They accused it of promoting «provocative acts and mercenaries faced by the Section of Interests of the United States of America in Cuba». A few officials ordered him to stop working like journalist if it did not want to be returned to his hometown. Then they left it at large.

- In July, the authorities prevented tens dissidents from taking part in diverse acts that they were going to celebrate in Havana, between them a meeting of the civil group Agenda for the Transition and an act organized by the Section of Interests of the United States in Cuba in commemoration of the Day of the American Independence. It was forbidden to some of them to displace the capital, it was forbidden to others to go out of his domicile in Havana, and approximately 30 were detained by the police and they set free a few hours later or on the following day.

- On having finished the year, 58 conscience prisoners remained imprisoned, imprisoned by the simple fact of having expressed his political opinions. In February excarceló to four conscience prisoners because of health, but one arranged them that they were leaving the country. There were received reports of acts of harassment and intimidation against prisoners of conscience and political prisoners on the part of guards of prisons how of other recluses.

- It kept on using the judicial system – in particular, the charge of «danger« – to whip political dissidents opposite to the Cuban government. There were many cases of journalists, political dissidents and detractors of the government who were detained for 24 or 48 hours then to be set free without charges.

- In August, Gorki Águila, musician of the group Porno Para Ricardo, was detained in Havana and he accused of «danger«, because in his letters he was criticizing the government. On August 29, the court withdrew the charge of «danger«, but he declared Gorki Águila guilty of the minor crime of civil disobedience and condemned it to pay a fine.

- In April, the president Raúl Castro announced that almost all the death penalties would be exchanged for life imprisonment. In 2008 there were no executions. In December, Cuba abstained for the second time in the voting of a resolution of the General Assembly of the UNO in which one was asking for a world moratorium of the executions.

After the detailed reading of the report for both countries it seems quite clear that the part dedicated to Cuba denounces serious questions although, being honest, the part dedicated to Canada denounces more serious questions still or this way it me it seems.

On the one hand, in Cuba, according to International Amnesty, we have restrictions of the freedom of expression, association and meeting, and the access to Internet was still restricted. Also we have harassment and intimidation to journalists, harassment to political dissidents, prisoners' conscience imprisonment, short but arbitrary detentions of journalists and other citizens, abstention in a voting of the UNO on the capital punishment or inability to form political groups of opposition.

On the other hand, in Canada, according to International Amnesty, we always have it tortures not Canadian prisoners abroad, racial discrimination (of the state), excessive use of the force, murders and disappearances of aboriginal women, men imprisoned for years by bureaucratic questions in matters of immigration, transfer of the prisoners' care to suspicious authorities of tortures, Canadian citizens arrested and tortured abroad, inhibition of the authorities before a minor of Canadian age stopped in the field of concentration of Guantanamo, deaths to hands of the police for use of weapon of electroshock and, based on a legislation approved to the effect, there is established the denial to request the pardon of Canadian compatriots condemned to death abroad.

I understand that every person will have his opinion about the report of International Amnesty, considering in every case exaggerated, short, insufficient or excessive the denunciations for a country and / or other. But beyond the opinion or conclusion that each one has, there is something undoubted, and the fact is that the use, mention or simple reference to the denunciations of International Amnesty on the part of Falsimedia with regard to Cuba is born of a clearly hypocritical exposition, since there where it is of interest or is convenient, the reports of the above mentioned organization are used to reinforce the message or pejorative counterfoil on the respect to the human rights in the Caribbean island, question that not of coincidence is of interest on having reported on, for example, Canada.

Since it was of waiting, some of them have hurried (in the good hour) to denounce that International Amnesty does not have easy access to the Caribbean island, which the reports that with so much I urge were recommending and exhibiting, the reports that almost they have worn out of so much handling them either do not reflect properly the reality represora of the opaque Cuban diet, either they do not fulfill his assignment, although there are the same reports, with suppressed fellow man, that they have come being published during the last years, reports that have changed not even a comma from the beginning of the campaign of poisoning mediática into the death of Orlando Zapata. Finally, we can observe (and we will keep on observing, do not doubt it) a habitual strategy or currency of current change between the anticastristas, the hypocrites or the tricky ones, which go of the hand if it is that there are no the same, and is that the helps or supports of the past turn into obstacles of the present or of the future according to the direction in which the wind blows. If International Amnesty was already not serving to attack Cuba, neglect, that the universe anticastrista and imperialist will find new ways of stigmatizing to a country that similar pressure does not deserve. Minimized the weight of International Amnesty like antiCuban weapon of attack, he will only remain to look for the tickling to the above mentioned organization. Finally, to discredit the source, demonizar to the messenger or to ignore to the once allied sound habitual procedures between which only they try to play the absent-mindedness, destroy, contaminate, poison or, as it usually in these cases, annoy say the partridge, foreign to all rigorousness, well to do, human honesty or journalistic deontology, jealous for propping up his prodigious building of imperialist propaganda.

Notes:

(1) Let's remember more than hundred suicides in the French jails during 2009, a matter that has happened on tiptoe for our means, of course because France is very "democratic" and is not precise to do more blood of the wound.

(2) http://www.larepublica.es/spip.php?article18774

(3) http://thereport.amnesty.org/sites/report2009.amnesty.org/files/documents/air09-es.pdf

(linkage consulted on March 8, 2010)

Cuba and the exploitation of International Amnesty

During the last two weeks, specifically from the death of Orlando Zapata, Cuba has led, for not saying monopolized, the informative Falsimedia agenda, in Spain and practically in the rest of countries of the imperialist orbit or in the related means to the same one. The vultures mediáticos have found in Orlando a fresh and useful corpse for his recalcitrant interests intoxicadores. They have boned, gnawed it and it seems that finally they it are spitting, bone to bone, now when they have got fed up with the same one. For it, since it is habitual in these cases, they have flavored the banquet with multiple and constant allusions to the denunciations of International Amnesty against the Cuban government. The use of International Amnesty like sacred reference, since we will see at once, has turned out to be a vulgar exploitation of the work of the above mentioned organization.

Let's start by revising some Spanish means and a pair not Spanish representatives of the orbit anticastrista to begin comprising the dense grade of use of the denunciations of International Amnesty:

The Country

« In the island about 200 political prisoners exist; of them, 65 conscience prisoners are considered by International Amnesty », On February 25.

« Also 65 adopted children demand the liberation of all the political prisoners, who according to information of the Commission of Human rights and National Conciliation (CDHRN) are about 200, of them for International Amnesty like conscience prisoners », On February 28.

« If as the Cuban Government says to us, 65 persons (conscience prisoners, according to International Amnesty) they can spoil only with his words a diet that presumes to be a popular revolution », On March 1.

The Avant-garde

« He thought that the death of this dissident is going to have «serious consequences because he was a prisoner of conscience adopted as International Amnesty (AI)» », On February 24.

« Washington thought that the Shoe death reflects the "injustice" of the Cuban diet and asked for the immediate liberation of 200 political prisoners that have International Amnesty taken into account in the island », On February 25.

The World

« International amnesty corrects of cruel the Cuban Government for allowing the death of Shoe Tamayo », On February 24.

« International amnesty is considered from last week by the 'prisoner of conscience' number 55 of the Cuban diet», On March 04.

The Newspaper of Catalunya

« He has thought that the death of this dissident is going to have «serious consequences because he was a prisoner of conscience adopted as International Amnesty (AI)» », On February 24.

« At the same time, International Amnesty claimed to the Government presided by Raúl Castro the «immediate and unconditional freedom» of the one that there considers the prisoner of conscience number 55 of the Caribbean country, Darsi Ferrer », On February 27.

Miami Herald

« International amnesty corrects of cruel the Cuban Government for allowing Shoe death », On February 24.

The New York Times

« Amnesty International called the hunger strike death of jailed Cuban activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo to «terrible indictment» of repression on the island and urged Cuban President Raul Castro on Wednesday to be reread all political prisoners », On February 24.

These brief fragments, which scarcely represent small part of everything published in the same means during the last two weeks, reflect two habitual counterfoils in the information of Falsimedia about Cuba: first of all, as it is demonstrated for anyone that continues minimally to the massive means, "surprises" the untensest dedication to facts that only acquire relevancy when they happen in the Caribbean island. What with regard to any other country does not generate unnoticed any debate and it happens (if it happens) for the massive means, as regards Cuba it inspires an endless number of titular, hardened analyses, wise debates (in which, obviously, it is not invited to voices that swim cross-current) and powerful waves of indignation, protest and denunciation (1).

Immediately after this first counterfoil we can derive the second one, which is the one that we are interested in in this writing: the use and, finally, exploitation of the denunciations and reports of International Amnesty of Cuba. There is here where refulge the figure of Salim Lamrani, French investigator who has worked with intensity as regards everything related to the permanent poisoning that the Cuban government endures. In a recent interview for The Republic in Havana, he was answering this way to one of the questions:

« The means stigmatize very often the situation of the human rights in Cuba. On the other hand they never do a comparative study, although only it is enough to take the annual reports of International Amnesty and to compare them. I do it in the book and the result is edifying, of the whole American continent, from Canada up to Argentina, the country that violates less the rights is Cuba according to International Amnesty. Now, it does not mean that Cuba is the paradise. Some human rights violations exist in the island. »(2)

Following his example, I have been allowed to take the word and I have directed my steps to the last annual report of International Amnesty, the correspondent to the year 2009 (3). I believe that the most advisable thing will be that we read letter for letter, word for word and phrase for phrase, everything what has said the report on Cuba and, to establish a comparison, we say, edifying, we will read what the same report has said on an American country that, in principle, it does not generate many doubts about his respect of the human rights. I speak about Canada, with which I am allowed to begin myself:

Canada (p. 140 of the report)

Presentation text: The indigenous peoples that were trying to defend his right to the ground kept on finding big obstacles. In the report of an investigation on the intervention of Canadian officials in the detention and persons' torture abroad it was revealed that some officials had collaborated in human rights violations.

- It kept on causing worry that continued and there should not guarantee the rapid and impartial resolution of the conflicts concerning the ground and the rights of property of the natural resources. In August, the Committee of the UNO for the Elimination of the Racial discrimination expressed that his worry for the plan of constructing a gas pipeline in grounds of Alberta who believes the lubicon they kept on protesting like his. The Commission of Alberta's Public enterprises ignored these worries on having approved the project in October.

- In September, the Commission of Human rights of Canada ordered that a complaint to be investigated on the disparity of the funds destined for the protection organisms of the indigenous children. The government kept on affirming that the Declaration of the UNO on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples was not applicable in Canada because this country was

voted against his approval.

- In Ontario it was advancing with slowness the application of the recommendations of the report published in 2007 for the Commission of Investigation of Ipperwash on the circumstances that surrounded the case of Dudley George, native who died in 1995 for shots of the police when it was taking part disarmed in a few protests for the right to the ground.

- The Provincial Police of Ontario made excessive use of the force during a few declarations for the right to the ground celebrated in the Territory of Tyendinaga Mohawk and in his surroundings in 2007 and 2008.

- In October, the Committee of the UNO for the Elimination of the Discrimination against the Woman asked to Canada him «to [adopt] the necessary measurements to correct the shortcomings of the system» in what concerns the investigation of the murders and disappearances of aboriginal women. The Committee asked also them to raise the restrictions imposed on the funds destined on the works of promotion, pressure and investigation of the women's organizations and that there will be created a mechanism of supervision of the recluses.

- In February, after a resolution adopted in 2007 as the Supreme Court of Canada the government reformed the system of the safety certificate of immigration, which nevertheless kept on being unjust. Five men subject to the above mentioned system were set free – in some cases with freedom conditions on bail very restrictive – while they were continuing the judicial procedures that were following against them. One of the men, Hassan Almrei, had imprisoned from October, 2001.

- In March, the Federal Court pushed a resource back against the practice of putting under care of the Afghan authorities, with the high risk of torture that it was containing, the persons stopped during the military operations realized in Afghanistan. The Federal Court of Appeal confirmed this decision in December.

- In October there was made public the report of a commission of investigation on the officials' intervention of Canada in the cases of three Canadian citizens a-Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed the Maati and Muayyed Nureddin – arrested and tortured abroad. In the report it was indicated that the actions of the Canadian officials had helped of multiple forms to violate the rights of three arrested. The government kept on refusing to intervene before the American authorities in favor of Omar Khadr, Canadian citizen stopped in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old and imprisoned in Guantanamo from hacía any more than six.

- In June, alleging procedure defects, the Federal Court of Appeal invalidated a resolution adopted in 2007 as the Federal Court according to which the agreement on third sure countries signed by Canada and the United States was damaging the Letter of Rights and the international law.

- A public investigation of provincial ambience began on the death in October, 2007, in the international airport of Vancouver, of the Polish citizen Robert Dziekanski after agents of the Real Mounted Police of Canada were shooting him with guns Taser (you arm of electroshock). The Department of Public Complaints of this body expressed a report in which one was asking that there be restricted the use of this type of weapon. Four persons died during the year after the police were shooting them with a Taser.

- In September, the Federal Court examined a request of Ronald Smith, Canadian citizen condemned in 1983 to the capital punishment in the American state of Montana. Ronald Smith was opposing the new politics of the Canadian government not to request the pardon of Canadian citizens condemned to death in democratic and respectful considered countries with the democracy. On having finished the year, the Court had not adopted yet a decision.

Centrémonos now in the part of the report referred to the Caribbean island:

Cuba (p. 165)

Presentation text: It kept on restricting the freedom of expression, association and meeting. Safety agents whipped and intimidated journalists and political dissidents. Four conscience prisoners stayed at large at the beginning of year, but 58 remained imprisoned. The Cuban population kept on enduring the negative effects of the American sequestration, especially as regards the right to food.

- In February, the Parliament was named to Raúl Castro by president of the Council of the State, appointment that had prepared the headquarters of the State and of the government. Cuba signed the International Agreement of Civil and Political Rights and the International Agreement of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but he had not foreseen a date for his ratification.

- Five years after the sanctions imposed by the European Union after the detention and condemnation – in March, 2003 – of 75 prisoners of conscience, Cuba and the EU resumed his relations of an official way. The EU raised his diplomatic sanctions and initiated a dialogue with the Cuban authorities on diverse matters, between them the human rights.

- During the first semester of the year economic reforms began getting in the agricultural sector. Nevertheless, the ravages caused by several hurricanes hindered the reforming initiatives of the government. According to official sources, tens thousands of persons remained without hearth as a result of the hurricanes, and the country suffered losses valued for almost billion American dollars for the ambience of the agricultural production. For the first time it was allowed to the Cuban citizens to acquire mobile and ordering phones for personal use, but the access to Internet remained restricted. In October, for the seventeenth year in a row, the General Assembly of the UNO approved a resolution endorsed by 185 countries, in which one was asking the United States to finish the sequestration against Cuba.

- The American sequestration and diverse connected measurements kept on reverberating of negative form in the exercise of the human rights. There kept on being very restricted the familiar reunifications and the freedom of circulation between Cuba and the United States. The extraterritorial application of the American legislation was bordering also

aptitude of the Cuban government to buy to commercial associates of Cuba such products like food, medical provisions and building materials. Nevertheless, the United States was allowed to Cuba to buy basic food for a value for 530 million American, payable dollars in cash and in advance.

- The freedom of expression remained restricted. All the mass media continued under control of the State. The journalists of independent and alternative news agencies kept on suffering harassment and intimidation in the shape of alertness and brief detentions on the part of safety agents. It continued without allowing him the legalization of the political groups of opposition and of numerous civil and professional associations. In December, the Cuban authorities stopped for a brief period more than 30 persons, whom they prevented from celebrating the International Day of the Human rights in Havana.

- In June they stopped the journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira, of the Trade union news agency Press, in his domicile of Havana. They accused it of promoting «provocative acts and mercenaries faced by the Section of Interests of the United States of America in Cuba». A few officials ordered him to stop working like journalist if it did not want to be returned to his hometown. Then they left it at large.

- In July, the authorities prevented tens dissidents from taking part in diverse acts that they were going to celebrate in Havana, between them a meeting of the civil group Agenda for the Transition and an act organized by the Section of Interests of the United States in Cuba in commemoration of the Day of the American Independence. It was forbidden to some of them to displace the capital, it was forbidden to others to go out of his domicile in Havana, and approximately 30 were detained by the police and they set free a few hours later or on the following day.

- On having finished the year, 58 conscience prisoners remained imprisoned, imprisoned by the simple fact of having expressed his political opinions. In February excarceló to four conscience prisoners because of health, but one arranged them that they were leaving the country. There were received reports of acts of harassment and intimidation against prisoners of conscience and political prisoners on the part of guards of prisons how of other recluses.

- It kept on using the judicial system – in particular, the charge of «danger« – to whip political dissidents opposite to the Cuban government. There were many cases of journalists, political dissidents and detractors of the government who were detained for 24 or 48 hours then to be set free without charges.

- In August, Gorki Águila, musician of the group Porno Para Ricardo, was detained in Havana and he accused of «danger«, because in his letters he was criticizing the government. On August 29, the court withdrew the charge of «danger«, but he declared Gorki Águila guilty of the minor crime of civil disobedience and condemned it to pay a fine.

- In April, the president Raúl Castro announced that almost all the death penalties would be exchanged for life imprisonment. In 2008 there were no executions. In December, Cuba abstained for the second time in the voting of a resolution of the General Assembly of the UNO in which one was asking for a world moratorium of the executions.

After the detailed reading of the report for both countries it seems quite clear that the part dedicated to Cuba denounces serious questions although, being honest, the part dedicated to Canada denounces more serious questions still or this way it me it seems.

On the one hand, in Cuba, according to International Amnesty, we have restrictions of the freedom of expression, association and meeting, and the access to Internet was still restricted. Also we have harassment and intimidation to journalists, harassment to political dissidents, prisoners' conscience imprisonment, short but arbitrary detentions of journalists and other citizens, abstention in a voting of the UNO on the capital punishment or inability to form political groups of opposition.

On the other hand, in Canada, according to International Amnesty, we always have it tortures not Canadian prisoners abroad, racial discrimination (of the state), excessive use of the force, murders and disappearances of aboriginal women, men imprisoned for years by bureaucratic questions in matters of immigration, transfer of the prisoners' care to suspicious authorities of tortures, Canadian citizens arrested and tortured abroad, inhibition of the authorities before a minor of Canadian age stopped in the field of concentration of Guantanamo, deaths to hands of the police for use of weapon of electroshock and, based on a legislation approved to the effect, there is established the denial to request the pardon of Canadian compatriots condemned to death abroad.

I understand that every person will have his opinion about the report of International Amnesty, considering in every case exaggerated, short, insufficient or excessive the denunciations for a country and / or other. But beyond the opinion or conclusion that each one has, there is something undoubted, and the fact is that the use, mention or simple reference to the denunciations of International Amnesty on the part of Falsimedia with regard to Cuba is born of a clearly hypocritical exposition, since there where it is of interest or is convenient, the reports of the above mentioned organization are used to reinforce the message or pejorative counterfoil on the respect to the human rights in the Caribbean island, question that not of coincidence is of interest on having reported on, for example, Canada.

Since it was of waiting, some of them have hurried (in the good hour) to denounce that International Amnesty does not have easy access to the Caribbean island, which the reports that with so much I urge were recommending and exhibiting, the reports that almost they have worn out of so much handling them either do not reflect properly the reality represora of the opaque Cuban diet, either they do not fulfill his assignment, although there are the same reports, with suppressed fellow man, that they have come being published during the last years, reports that have changed not even a comma from the beginning of the campaign of poisoning mediática into the death of Orlando Zapata. Finally, we can observe (and we will keep on observing, do not doubt it) a habitual strategy or currency of current change between the anticastristas, the hypocrites or the tricky ones, which go of the hand if it is that there are no the same, and is that the helps or supports of the past turn into obstacles of the present or of the future according to the direction in which the wind blows. If International Amnesty was already not serving to attack Cuba, neglect, that the universe anticastrista and imperialist will find new ways of stigmatizing to a country that similar pressure does not deserve. Minimized the weight of International Amnesty like antiCuban weapon of attack, he will only remain to look for the tickling to the above mentioned organization. Finally, to discredit the source, demonizar to the messenger or to ignore to the once allied sound habitual procedures between which only they try to play the absent-mindedness, destroy, contaminate, poison or, as it usually in these cases, annoy say the partridge, foreign to all rigorousness, well to do, human honesty or journalistic deontology, jealous for propping up his prodigious building of imperialist propaganda.

Notes:

(1) Let's remember more than hundred suicides in the French jails during 2009, a matter that has happened on tiptoe for our means, of course because France is very "democratic" and is not precise to do more blood of the wound.

(2) http://www.larepublica.es/spip.php?article18774

(3) http://thereport.amnesty.org/sites/report2009.amnesty.org/files/documents/air09-es.pdf

(linkage consulted on March 8, 2010)