Monday, November 28, 2016

Fidel Castro's dark legacy: abuses, draconian rule and 'ruthless suppression'

Fidel Castro’s death has sparked eulogies for a 20th-century giant but also lamentations about the Cuban revolution’s dark side: executions, political prisoners, surveillance, censorship.

The dictator’s security apparatus controlled and cowed his people even while dispensing free healthcare and education, a profoundly mixed legacy which has polarised opinion about Castro in death as in life.

“Over more than five decades documenting the state of human rights in Cuba, Amnesty has recorded a relentless campaign against those who dare to speak out against the Cuban government’s policies and practices,” the advocacy group’s Americas director, Erika Guevara-Rosas, said on Saturday.

Authorities jailed hundreds of prisoners of conscience solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and assembly in a campaign of “ruthless suppression”, she said. “The state of freedom of expression in Cuba, where activists continue to face arrest and harassment for speaking out against the government, is Fidel Castro’s darkest legacy.”

Human Rights Watch said thousands were jailed in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated and that entire generations were denied political freedoms, a system based on abuses which felt increasingly anachronistic. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Cuba has an illegal 'Internet' that connects thousands of computers...
  2. How Fidel Castro lived like a king...
  3. Castro the commie hypocrite who lives like a billionaire...
  4. The truth about Cuba's communist 'miracle'
  5. Cuban punk rocker gives the Castros the finger...
  6. Yoani Sanchez and the Generation Y blog from Havana Cuba...

No comments:

Post a Comment