At the risk of again being accused of “appealing to readers’ emotions,” I am posting the following story. It surprised me not because of the chain of events, but because the protagonist is a French student—not a journalist, not a political activist—just a graduate student writing her thesis on Cuban opposition and resistance groups. The story:
Marie-Bérengère Ruet, a graduate student in the Parisian Institute of Political Science (Sciences-Po), spent two months in Cuba to gather material for her thesis on Cuban opposition and resistance groups. During her stay, she met with, interviewed and befriended several opposition activists. As she explained, Cuban authorities considered the dissidents whom she interviewed “dangerous deliquents,” and “capitalist terrorists who are paid by the CIA to destabilize the regime. But from what I saw, they were penniless activists who lived in run-down studios and shared one computer and one camera between eight bloggers to get their information out. To go online, they have to sneak to Internet terminals in foreign embassies.”
On April 15, eight uniformed men from the Interior Ministry security force (Minit) arrested her, took her to immigration department headquarters for interrogation, and finally deported her. Her computer and the files it carried were confiscated, as well as many of her thesis notes.
[Fortunately, I imagine the experience itself has enough in it for a full thesis.]
Ultimately then, a curious student was deported merely for talking to members of the opposition. This is a further piece of evidence of the Cuban regime’s unfortunate intolerance of giving voice or attention to dissenting opinions in the country.
Events like this make it an eternal struggle to make sure one has the most accurate information about affairs on the island…
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Not a single name of any of the people this woman presumably researched is given. None of the blogs they’ve already had posted on the Internet is shown, so the reader isn’t in any position to assess what kind of things these oppositions are writing.
The only thing readers here can know about this story is the side of the woman who was kicked out of Cuba. Some readers may not be aware of the fact that the United States government budgets literally tens of MILLIONS of dollars to organize and orchestrate opposition to the Cuban government and the system it represents and defends.
This is all quite open as one can read in the website maintained by the United States government: http://www.cafc.gov
It’s not possible really to take a position based on receiving only one side of the story. But I think you ought to consider whether or not, based on what Washington says OPENLY that it is doing, if the Cubans don’t have some real basis for taking actions such as these?
I can’t imagine that this young woman with the pleasant smile in the photograph told the Cuban authories when she got her visa that she intended to do the kind of “research” which she says she was doing. Nevertheless, the fact that she reports that the subjects of her research go to foreign embassies to post their presumably hostile materials on the Internet, should give one something to ponder.
Dear Melissa -
Whatever disagreements you may have with the government of Cuba, do you really think they are completely paranoid and that they have nothing in the world to worry about?
Goodness no; after so many years of plots to invade, overthrow, assassinate and generally squash the regime, I think Havana has every right to worry about terrorism and “foreign mercenaries,” especially from the United States. And yes, the United States certainly has channeled funding openly to civil society groups and individuals it believes will bring about “change,” or provide the roots of dissidence that will enable democracy to flourish when the Castros are gone (someday).
But I would be wary of assuming that a young French student whose story has been posted in Europe (and as far as I can tell, nowhere in the United States) might not be representing the story correctly because of the way the United States funds dissidents in Cuba.
Again, with so few individuals on the island able to disseminate information to the outside world, you are correct in pointing out that it is difficult to tell what is true.
But while worrying by the Cuban government is a-ok, tossing out students is not. The United States certainly worries about terrorism and “enemies of the state,” and goodness, look what a human rights mess that became when it was implemented with abandon.
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