CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
73,000 Killed
January 1, 1959 – present
According to the University of Hawaii’s, Professor R.J. Rummel, Castro has been responsible for an estimated 73,000 deaths. In Miami, Cuban exiles have built a memorial consisting of over 10,000 documented killings, not including those engaged in armed opposition. Many of the deaths came from the infamous firing squads led by Raul Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara in the first few years after the regime’s taking power, but they continue.
Tugboat Massacre:
37 killed, including children
July 13, 1994
On July 13, 1994, the Castro regime’s forces murdered 37 citizens, including 10 children, while trying to flee the island. The mothers pleaded. The group tried to surrender. The officers, continued the massacre, laughing, until they were spotted by a foreign ship. The bodies were speared out of the water. The Regime promoted the officers and celebrated the event.
Shootdown of Civilian: Killing of US Citizen
February 24, 1996
On February 24, 1996, a US Citizen and three Cuban exiles prepared to fly over the Florida straights, not knowing that Raul Castro himself had made elaborate plans to kill them that morning, using a MIG jet fighter to destroy the unarmed American civilian aircraft over international waters. Raul Castro has admitted to ordering the operation, but has never been charged for this crime.
Prison Torture
This 2008 documentary, highlights the Castro regime’s notorious torture tactics. Scientifically designed methods of physical and mental torture were designed and implemented not only in Cuba, but exported to other countries such as Vietnam, where they were employed against US soldiers. Some of the infamous torture included throwing inmates into a well while tied to a boulder, and leaving them their for minutes, bringing them back, and repeating the dose. Other tactics include sitting prisoners on a bottomless chair over a slow fire, or confining them to windowless cells, or locking them naked in below 0 freezers. Unfortunately these are only samples.
Firing Squads
Since taking power, the regime unleashed the use of firing squads, with thousands of killings in the first few years of its existence, executed directly by Raul Castro and Che Guevara. In one famous case, a number of defendants were found innocent as charged, but Castro ordered their killing anyways. The practice continues today. High profile cases include, the 1989 execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa, whom Castro perceived as a growing threat to his power, the 1994 massacre of the 10 children and 31 adults, and the 2003 execution of three youths whom were arrested trying to take a ferry to the US. They were executed within days of their arrest after a summary trial.
Control of Education, Food and Medicine
Since its early days the Castro Regime implemented a system to deny food, and education to anyone who was not supportive of the government. Students are graded based on their loyalty to the system and this ideological record often determined their eligibility for university. Similarly, families who were less then enthusiastic are denied food, or asked to discuss their “situation” with the CDR. The CDR is a person on each city block, who is a party member assigned to oversee and report any uncooperative citizens on their block. Doctors are often discouraged from assisting Dissidents and members of pro democracy groups.
Recent Assassination:
Oswaldo Paya
July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1987 to oppose the one-party rule of the Cuban Communist Party. He attracted international attention for organizing a petition drive known as the Varela Project, in which 25,000 signatories petitioned the Cuban government to guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and to institute a multi-party democracy. In 2012, while traveling through the island with a foreign visitor, Paya’s car was driven off the road by another car and crashed into a tree killing Paya. Castro’s regimes has refused international investigations of the accident.
Recent Assassination:
Laura Pollan
October 14, 2011
Laura Pollan founded the dissident group Ladies in White, which holds pacific protest marches with the wives and spouses of prisoners of conscience in Cuba to demand their release. Dressed in their trademark all white clothes, the ladies are are routinely and violently repressed by the Cuban government, as they leave mass. Their courage gained international attention when the European Parliament awarded them The Sakharov Prize. In late 2011, the otherwise healthy Laura Pollan, was unexpectedly hospitalized and within days, she died in a Havana hospital. Those closes to her insist her death was not an accident.
Prisoners of Conscience
January 1, 1959 – present
Pictured above is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a physician who first obtained the government’s attention when he authored a study denouncing the regime’s policy of coercing women into having forced abortions, specially when there was any risk in the pregnancy that could affect the regime’s official statistics. Since then, Dr. Biscet has been imprisoned three times for a total of 12 years. As an advocate of non-violence resistance, nominee to the Nobel Peace Prize and winner of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, Dr. Biscet has become a symbol of the Regime’s imprisonment of non-violent dissidents.
