Speak up against totalitarian rule
The Miami Herald Wednesday, April 30, 2008
By Frank Calzon
In his book The Case for Democracy: The Power to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, Natan Sharansky, the former Israeli Cabinet member and one-time Soviet dissident, writes that three conditions must exist for people to break free of totalitarian rule:
People must want freedom enough to risk much of what they have to get it.
Other people in the world must believe that those who are seeking freedom deserve it and be willing to help them.
Democratic nations must be willing to condition their foreign policies to support political reform in an oppressive country.
Developments in Germany and Cuba this week, attest to Sharanksy’s wisdom on all three counts. In Cuba there was an episode reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for human rights. Ten Cuban women — mothers, wives and daughters of political prisoners in Cuba and part of a group known as the Ladies in White — gathered at a park to deliver a petition to the Interior Ministry seeking the release of their loved ones. Cuban government thugs set upon the women. A hundred police and security guards showed up, insulted the women, roughed them up and dragged away.
The incident touched Europeans. In 2005 the European Parliament awarded the Ladies in White the Sakharov Award for daring to assert their Freedom of Conscience.
Meanwhile, in Bonn a group of German human rights activists was picketing the Cuban government’s consulate. The Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights sponsored the demonstration, which came on the eve of the organization’s annual congress. The congress will focus on the abuse of human rights in Cuba, Tibet and several other countries with totalitarian governments.
So two of Sharansky’s conditions are being met. What remains to be seen is whether the European nations, which will be meeting in Brussels in July to review their common Cuba positions, will muster the will to link their political, economic and cultural foreign policies to substantive reforms by the Castro brothers.
As the courageous Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci once wrote, “There are times in life in which to remain silent is an error, and to speak up becomes an obligation.”
More and more men and women in the world seem willing to support the legitimate democratic aspirations of people living in Cuba, Tibet, Burma and other totalitarian states and to speak out against the world’s assassins and executioners.
Maybe that’s because there hasn’t been time enough for Germans to forget the suffering inflicted upon them by the East Germany STASSI and border guards who like Cuba’s border guards shot to kill anyone trying to flee. Much the same can be said about those who fled communism in Poland, although there, after declaring martial law, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski eventually resigned and opened the door to a rule of law and Solidarity.
Jaruzelski’s decision was good not only for the Poles but also for himself. Unlike other dictators, he continues to live in his country. The point to emphasis here is that most of Eastern Europe remembers communism and willingly supports democracy’s advocates in Cuba. The Ladies in White and the ever-growing numbers of political prisoners in Cuba are constant reminders that the struggle for human rights is universal. The presence of the international media in that Havana park provided some protection to the Ladies in White.
Perhaps one day, like the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Spanish and other human rights activists, those who defend human rights in Cuba will obtain the freedom they seek and, then, lend support to efforts to defend human rights and liberty elsewhere.
Having witnessed the iron fist of Raúl Castro come down on the Ladies in White, it would be tragic should Europeans suddenly turn silent instead. The communist military regime in Havana will not last forever. The Cuban people will remember those like José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain, who support the Castro brothers’ regime, as well as others like the demonstrators in Bonn, who embrace Europe’s heritage of freedom and offer support to Cubans in their time of need.
Frank Calzón is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.