Sticking to an old and discredited script

Posted on Fri, Jun. 16, 2006

Sticking to an old and discredited script
OUR OPINION: IN CUBA, TRUTH AND THOSE WHO TELL ARE ENEMY OF THE STATE

One of Cuba's chief apologists came to Fort Lauderdale this week to
offer the tired litany of denials and distortions that Fidel Castro has
been using for decades to prop up his government. Ricardo Alarcón, a
ranking apparatchik in the Cuban dictatorship, appeared via satellite at
the convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
direct from Cuba, but he might as well been in Alice's Wonderland.

Mirta Ojito, the veteran Cuban-American journalist who interviewed Mr.
Alarcón, asked all the right questions. But he gave no straight answers.
His act would have been laughable if the hardship suffered by Cubans
weren't so severe.

Crackdown on dissent

Ms. Ojito cited one study that named Cuba the second-largest prison in
the world for journalists. Why does Cuba jail so many reporters? Mr.
Alarcón called such reports inaccurate. He suggested other countries
were worse on journalists. And, yes, he blamed the CIA. The 27
journalists socked with 20-year-plus prison terms in 2003 were all
agents of the U.S. government, he said.

In fact, those journalists were among 75 democracy activists imprisoned
by Mr. Alarcón's regime in a crackdown on dissent that continues today.
They were subjected to summary trials with defense lawyers who worked
for the state. The evidence against them included books, typewriters and
their own articles. The journalists were convicted of a crime that
exists in no free country: revealing truths about life on the island and
exposing government abuses in the process.

Truth is a dangerous toxin for a dictatorship that relies on systematic
repression and elaborate lies to stay in power. Mr. Alarcón doesn't want
anyone to know that the promises his regime has made for 47 years have
been a big lie.

Catastrophic failure

Despite the sacrifices demanded of Cubans all these years, Cuba is no
socialist paradise or egalitarian society. Asked to explain why there
are so few blacks in high government posts, Mr. Alarcón protested that
people ''blacker than my suit'' hold positions of power. This
conveniently skirts the relative absence of blacks in the power structure.

Though the regime owns all the media and restricts Internet access,
independent Cuban journalists report on human-rights abuses and the
hundreds of political prisoners. These reporters also describe the
difficulties faced by Cubans just trying to obtain basic food, shelter,
transportation and healthcare. The revolution's greatest achievement has
been to make all but a favored few destitute.

Mr. Alarcón and his cronies, not the CIA, are the only ones to blame for
their catastrophic failure. That's why criticism is banned. In Cuba,
truth and those who tell it remain the enemy -- the enemy of the state.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14831040.htm