|
|
NEWS
Funeral for a
Tyrant
A morally disorienting gathering in Havana.
By Otto J. Reich
http://www.nationalreview.com/
This time the rumors are real: Castro is dying of stomach cancer. He may
have already died, even before the funeral preparations were finished,
so the news is not out. Confirmation of the terminal illness comes from
the usual sources but in a non-conventional manner. The Cuban government
has been summoning to Havana representatives of the major international
media to negotiate the best seats, camera angles, and interviews with
the despot’s political survivors, and to inform them of the ground rules
for coverage of the state funeral.
The foreign media are being told that the model for Castro’s funeral is
that of Pope John Paul II a year ago. The Cubans actually believe — or
pretend — that the death of a tyrant deserves the same attention as that
of the world’s great men of peace.
This is one of Castro’s lasting legacies to his countrymen: moral
disorientation. The Cuban ruling class has been so isolated from reality
for so long by fear and Castro’s airtight press control that they equate
the burial of a mass murderer with that of a prince of the Church. No
doubt there will be “dignitaries” at the funeral: fellow revolutionary
leaders from the last repressive regimes on Earth: Iran, North Korea,
Syria, and Sudan, for example; and leaders of failed states like
Zimbabwe and Bolivia; and representatives of the world’s resentful Left
and the Hollywood Left (pardon the redundancy).
Some examples of distinguished invitees will include terrorists whose
organizations once instilled panic in entire populations but are now
forgotten except to their victims. Many of them were trained in Cuban
camps back when Castro called for world revolution and predicted he
would outlive capitalism: Argentine Montoneros, Uruguayan Tupamaros,
Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Salvadorean FMLN, Colombian ELN, MIR, FARC, and
others; Chileans, Brazilians, Guatemalans, Angolans, Ethiopians,
Palestinians, Syrians, even Vietnamese. The list is virtually endless.
Not long ago, Castro himself admitted publicly to having “supported wars
of national liberation in every country in this hemisphere with the
exception of Mexico”. I believe everything except the exception; his
hand has been present in much of Mexico’s violence as well.
One security problem the Cubans will face is that some of the
“revolutionaries” who they trained in techniques of assassination,
torture, kidnapping, bank robbery, explosives, and other tricks of the
trade now hate each other and may use the occasion to settle old debts.
The explosions heard in Havana may come not only from ceremonial
cannons. The guests will have to be carefully screened for
poisoned-tipped umbrellas and other Cold War artifacts.
Among the guests coming to Havana for the Third-World Burial of the
Century will be Western capitalists anxious to see how they can exploit
Cuban workers, who are assigned to the employer by a Cuban state entity
which then collects the salary and delivers five percent — yes, five
percent — to the worker and keeps the rest to pay for the expenses
incurred by the generous socialist state. There will be the bottom
feeders of the capitalist world willing to go anywhere or do anything
for the Almighty euro or peso. You know the ones, those who have given
capitalism a bad name, the exploitation of man by man, and whose example
is in turn used by the revolutionaries against the good capitalists.
There will recognizable faces of American and other TV, oblivious to the
irony of “covering” a press event orchestrated by a government which has
not allowed a single free or independent newspaper, magazine, radio or
television station for almost five decades.
Caught up in the spectacle of the funeral, the smiley faces of the free
world’s morning shows, the “serious” news readers of evening newscasts,
of 24-hour news channels and “prestige press” will unlikely mention the
“Ley Mordaza” (literally muzzle law), law number 88 of 1998, which calls
for penalties of up to 30 years in prison for any Cuban caught telling
the foreign press of any flaw in Cuba’s economic or human-rights record.
It is unlikely they will ask to interview the prisoners who have
violated Castro’s Orwellian laws and are serving terms of as much as 27
years for committing journalism without a license or stating that the
economy does not produce enough to feed the people.
There may be international labor leaders in attendance, who will equally
disregard the absence of any but the official Cuban Communist labor
organization. Not wishing to offend their hosts, they will not mention
the Castro law which condemns to eight years in prison anyone guilty of
even attempting to establish a non-government labor union. On second
thought: Why should they mention it now, when they have been silent for
so many decades?
Some of those leaders present may even be government officials from
democratic states, having been elected in free elections such as the
ones which disappeared in Cuba half a century ago. That irony will
escape them also. Then there will be some genuinely elected Christian or
social democrats, from Europe and Latin America. Those who have been
silent about, and therefore complicit in, the longest dictatorship in
this hemisphere’s history. A wise man once said that “All it takes for
evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” The history of Cuba in
the past 50 years proves him right.
— Otto J. Reich served President Bush from 2001 to 2004, first as
assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere and later in the
National Security Council. He now heads his own international
government-relations firm in Washington.
* * *
News Archive
| Home
|
 |
|
