droits de l'homme
Critique constructive, mensonge et vidéo
Cuba a t-il imprudemment décidé de jouer avec le feu en autorisant un honorable dirigeant (Ricardo Alarcon) à débattre “librement” avec des étudiants ? Ce pauvre Alarcon habitué à plus de respect a fait vraiment pitié.
Cuba a t-il imprudemment décidé de jouer avec le feu en autorisant un honorable dirigeant (Ricardo Alarcon) à débattre “librement” avec des étudiants ? Ce pauvre Alarcon habitué à plus de respect a fait vraiment pitié. A la question “Pourquoi le peuple de Cuba n’a pas la possibilité de se rendre dans des hôtels ou de voyager dans des endroits déterminés dans le monde ?” Il a répondu visiblement surpris par tant d’audace : “Si les six milliards d’habitants de la planète pouvaient voyager où ils voulaient, la cohue serait énorme dans le ciel”. Cette réponse grotesque montre à quel point les dirigeants cubains sont peu habitués à répondre a de vraies questions.
Depuis, des enregistrements vidéo de ces critiques ont commencé à circuler sur Internet et ont été repris par des médias étrangers. Sur les images, Alejandro Hernandez, un étudiant de l’Université des sciences informatiques, s’insurge contre la consigne officielle qui préconise un mode de scrutin fermé.
“Le peuple n’a pas d’indicateurs pour mesurer la qualité de la gestion des dirigeants, demande Alejandro Hernandez. J’ai vu les photos et les biographies de tous les délégués et députés, candidats à l’Assemblée et je me suis dit: ‘Qui sont-ils?’ Je ne sais pas qui ils sont. (…) Qu’est-ce qui se passe quand l’homme qui t’a fait devenir révolutionnaire, qui est Fidel Castro pour nous tous, qui t’a donné cette idéologie, te conseille le vote uni et que ta conscience te dit de faire autre chose? (…) Je me demande quelle est la limite entre le bourrage de crâne et la persuasion”.
Très bonne question : tout le monde connait d’ailleurs parfaitement la réponse à Cuba, mais il est déconseillé de la donner, du moins en public. Mais déjà poser une question c’est prendre un risque énorme. Raul Castro sera t-il le Gorbatchev de Cuba ? Il avait invité les Cubains à donner « librement » leur opinion sur les problèmes du pays, et des milliers de réunions ont été organisées sur les lieux de travail et les quartiers. La quesion est : Raul Castro peut-il controler le mouvement une fois qu’il a commencé ? Visiblement non.
Un autre étudiant, Eliecer Avila, critique de son côté la politique économique des autorités. “Pourquoi le commerce intérieur de tout le pays a migré vers le peso convertible alors que nos ouvriers, nos travailleurs et nos agriculteurs touchent leur salaire en monnaie nationale dont le pouvoir d’achat vaut 25 fois moins, soit deux ou trois jours de travail pour acheter une brosse à dents?” “Pourquoi n’existe-t-il pas un échange plus constant entre, par exemple, le Conseil des ministres et le peuple?”demande t-il très justement ?
Tout le monde sait à Cuba que le socialisme n’est qu’un décor de pacotille destiné à masquer la calamiteuse gestion d’une petite oligarchie militaro communiste. Mais les journalistes qui ont commencé à écrire la dessus ont écopé de 20 ans de prison en mars 2003. Alors pourquoi provoquer ce débat en public ? Il semble que les rivalités pour la succession de Castro poussent certains dirigeants cubains à commettre de grosses imprudences. Ce pauvre Alarcon en a fait l’amère expérience. Mais qui donc a encouragé ces étudiants à parler : aucun cubain n’est assez fou pour prendre un tel risque sans avoir une bonne raison de le faire.
C’est pourquoi dès le 11 lendemain, une autre vidéo, recadre l’affaire. On y voit, toujours à l’université, les quatre mêmes étudiants, qui dénoncent la façon dont la première vidéo a été utilisée. « Je n’ai jamais éprouvé dans ma chair une manipulation aussi criminelle que celle-là », déclare l’un d’eux. Et Eliecer Avila : « Tout ce qui se dit est un mensonge total. Nos propos avaient pour objectif d’améliorer le socialisme et non de le détruire. » . Heureusement car sinon c’était la prison pour 20 ans.
droits de l'homme
L’organisation internationale contre la torture lance une “intervention d’urgence” pour José Daniel Ferrer
MIAMI, États-Unis.- L’Observatoire pour la protection des défenseurs des droits humains (OPDDH), a lancé ce vendredi une campagne d'”Interventions urgentes” en faveur du prisonnier politique et de conscience cubain José Daniel Ferrer García, leader de l’Union patriotique de Cuba (UNPACU), selon une note de Radio Televisión Martí.
droits de l'homme
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio) Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries. They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio)
Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries.
They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes. Some nights they would connect through routers and play strategy video games that made them feel powerful and free. Whoever wants to know them should know that they’ve had “emerging teachers” since elementary school and were taught grammar, math and ideology via television screens. However, they ended up being the least ideological of the Cubans who today inhabit this Island, the most cosmopolitan and with the greatest vision of the future.
On arriving at junior high school they played at throwing around around the obligatory snack of bread while their parents furtively passed their lunches through the school gate. They have a special physical ability, an adaptation that has allowed them to survive the environment; they don’t hear what doesn’t interest them, they close their ears to the harangues of morning assemblies and politicians. They seem lazier than other generations and in reality they are, but in their case this apathy acts like an evolutionary advantage. They’re better than us and will live in a country that has nothing to do with what we were promised.
A few months ago, these same young people, starred in the best known case of school fraud uncovered publicly. Some of those hoping to earn a place in higher education bought the answers to an admissions test. They were used to paying for approval, because they had to turn to private tutors to teach them what they should have learned in the classroom. Many of those who recently enrolled in the university had private teachers starting in elementary school. They are the children of a new emerging class that has used its resources so that their children can reach a desk at the right hand — or the left — of the alma mater.
These young people dressed in uniforms in their earlier grades, but they struggled to differentiate themselves through the length of a shirt, a fringe of bleached hair, or through pants sagging below their hips. They are the children of those who barely had a change of underwear in the nineties, so their parents tried to make sure they didn’t “go through the same thing,” and turned to the black market for their clothes and shoes. They mock the false austerity and, not wanting to look like militants, they love bright shiny colors and name brand outfits.
Yesterday, with the start of the school year, they received a lecture about the attempts of “imperialism to undermine the revolution through its youth.” It was like a faint drizzle running over an impervious surface. The government is right to be worried; these young people who have entered the university will never become good soldiers or fanatics. The clay from which they are made cannot be molded.
Excerpt from:
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
droits de l'homme
A Caricature of a Cuban Woman
Woman drinking (14ymedio) 14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness
14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness. Instead of the urgent demands they should mention, all I hear is this appreciation directed to a power as manly as it is deaf.
It’s not about “helping” to wash a plate or watch the kids, nor tiny illusory gender quotas that hide so much discrimination like a slap. The problem is that economic and political power remains mainly in masculine hands. What percentage of car owners are women? How many acres of land are owned or leased by women. How many Cuban ambassadors on missions abroad wear skirts? Can anyone recite the number of men who request paternity leave to take care of their newborns? How many young men are stopped by the police each day to warn them they can’t walk with a tourist? Who mostly attends the parent meetings at the schools?
Please, don’t try to “put us to sleep” with figures in the style of, “65 percent of our cadres and 50 percent of our grassroots leaders are women.” The only thing this statistic means is that more responsibility falls on our shoulders, which means neither a high decision-making level nor greater rights. At least such a triumphalist phrase clarifies that there are “grassroots leaders,” because we know that decisions at the highest level are made by men who grew up under the precepts that we women are beautiful ornaments to have at hand… always and as long as we keep our mouths shut.
I feel sorry for the docile and timid feminist movement that exists in my country. Ashamed for those ladies with their ridiculous necklaces and abundant makeup who appear in the official media to tell us that “the Cuban woman has been the greatest ally of the Revolution.” Words spoken at the same moment when a company director is sexually harassing his secretary, when a beaten woman can’t get a restraining order against her abusive husband, when a policeman tells the victim of a sexual assault, “Well, with that skirt you’re wearing…” and the government recruits shock troops for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White.
Women are the sector of the population that has the most reason to shout their displeasure. Because half a century after the founding of the caricature of an organization that is the Federation of Cuban Women, we are neither more free, nor more powerful, nor even more independent.
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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman