FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION UNDER ARREST: EILEEN TOPLANSKY
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/freedom-of-expression-under-arrest?f=must_reads
In Cuba, freedom of expression is still trampled. Tania Bruguera “was [placed] under arrest at the Acosta Police Station in the Diez de Octubre municipality in Havana” because she wished to use social media and demand “freedom of expression for Cuba’s citizens.” But “claiming that her performance [was] not an artistic work but a political provocation, Cuban authorities denied her request to hold a rally at Havana’s revolutionary square on Dec. 30, 2014.”
Bruguera has been labeled a “CIA agent” and “a mercenary” by Cuban pro-government bloggers. The planned gathering was a hopeful endeavor as a result of the announcement from the Obama administration that Cuba and the United States “would reinstate diplomatic ties that were severed half a century ago.”
Dubbed “Yo Tambien Exijo” (I Also Demand), it is a campaign that uses social media to invite Cubans to have a say in the future of their island. Each participant would have one minute to express his or her views on the future of the island of more than 11 million people.
Bruguera was in Italy and returned to Cuba to make arrangements for the rally. But she soon learned that Cuba’s National Mixed Media Arts Council (CNAP) denied her the institutional support since her production “would negatively impact public opinion, in a key time of negotiation between the Cuban government and the government of the United States, in which they seek to reestablish their diplomatic and commercial relations in full.”
This recent movement is “reminiscent of a performance demonstration in Havana in 2009 known as El Susurro de Tatlin.” At that time “Tatlin’s Whisper” was intended to “examine the relationship between apathy and anaesthetization of the images in the mass media.” The most vital aspect of this performance was to give voice to the Cuban people whose freedoms have been suppressed under the communist regime of the Castro brothers. Thus, participating spectators would “face a piece of news using similar images to those they [had personally] experienced” in an effort to empathize with the event. This event was meant to function “like a projection for the future” when people could express their personal ideas and “when freedom of speech did not have to be a performance” but would be a integral part of the Cuban world without fear of reprisal, jail, or death.
This short-lived “privilege of expression” of those who enjoyed “a sort of momentary democracy” clearly has not been allowed to flourish. And, yet the Ladies in White, (Damas de Blanco) an “opposition movement in Cuba consisting of wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents continues to protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets” as a potent reminder of the tyranny that Cubans have lived with for over 50 years.
They have not given up hope that someday Cubans will have a say in their own lives, without the interference of a pope and a president who desire to “lead the lives of the Cuban people.” Rather the ardent desire is that the “Cuban people [will be] the principal actors of their own history.”
Well-known Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, recently released from house arrest, explains that “Cuba is a country surrounded by the sea and is also an island fenced off by censorship.”
Blogger Jeovany Jimenez Vega has long counted himself “among those who opt for the end of the embargo” but only “and this is non-negotiable — if this act is accompanied by … the unconditional deference to the human rights of [the Cuban] people [.] ”
Thus, in Cuba, under the despotic Communist party, censorship continues and the Cuban people are “deprived of such basic civil and political rights as that of opinion and freedom of thought, assembly and association.” Furthermore, Cubans are deprived of access to an uncensored Internet. Vega asserts that “at first glance one has the impression that the US gave up too much for the little offered by Cuba.” While Vega likes to think that “there is . . . much that reflects a splendidly generous Obama,” he acknowledges that “. . . it is too far for the President to be able to hear the cries of helplessness and the din of the crowds; to be able to perceive the intangibles of fear, pain from beatings, and the taste of blood.” Thus, Cubans “are left alone vis-a-vis the Monster.”
Far too many voices have been stilled on the island that is a mere 90 miles away from the mainland of the United States. In fact, still unknown “are the whereabouts of the activist Antonio Rodiles.”
From my perch in America, I see that Cubans’ hopes have once again been dashed by an American president who is an adherent of communist principles and a protector of communist regimes. While Vega asserts that the fight in Cuba for “the liberty of Cuba will be, more than ever, the Cubans’ task alone”, I worry that Americans are not speaking up on behalf of their own need to protect their liberties under a president who continues to flagrantly ignore the American Constitution at every opportunity. Obama is certainly no supporter of the Vanik-Jackson mentality where “[t]he American people [were] committed to a human detente — the free movement of men and ideas on which a stable and more lasting peace [would] be based.”
Eileen has been a medical librarian, an Emergency Medical Technician and a Hebrew School teacher. She is currently an adjunct college instructor of English composition and literature. Active in the 1970’s Soviet Jewry Refusenik movement, she continues to speak out against tyranny. Eileen is also a regular contributor to American Thinker. She can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
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