Socialist choir in Cuba

[Tony 10]

Wouldn't that shatter popular but fashionable misconceptions?

[Jonathanb977 10]

It's with regret that I announce that the Amnesty International 12 May presentation on Cuba is cancelled. For now. Our Cuba coordinator is unable to attend that day due to work commitments. I'll be rearranging.

 

Apologies if this inconveniences anyone.

 

Jonathan

[Jonathanb977 10]

Bit of an update. Amnesty International has criticised Cuban authorities for preventing independent journalist Guillermo Farinas from leaving Cuba to collect an international freedom award, European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

 

The regime detained, temporarily, many campaigners during international human rights day recently.

[LordChaverly 10]

Bit of an update. Amnesty International has criticised Cuban authorities for preventing independent journalist Guillermo Farinas from leaving Cuba to collect an international freedom award, European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

 

The regime detained, temporarily, many campaigners during international human rights day recently.

 

Jonathan, keep up the good work in exposing the Sheffield Socialist Choir - the court clowns and applause monkeys to one of the oppressive regimes in the world.

 

No doubt when Cuba goes the same way as other communist tyrannies, the Choir can still find a receptive outlet for their eulogies of socialist life in North Korea. I am sure that the great leader Kim Jong-Il will give them a warm welcome.

[Jonathanb977 10]

Please may I offer a recap / update?

 

Sheffield City Council is supporting an exchange-based visit to Sheffield by the Camerata de Música Aúrea Choir (CMAC) of Cuba. The hosts are to be the Sheffield Socialist Choir. The choir's website boasts about the council's prompt involvement. It looks like some sort of exchange visit.

 

The Sheffield Socialist choir has already been to Cuba, more than once. Its members discussed with enthusiasm the regime's triumphs in the pages of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign newspaper upon their return recently. (A grimly hilarious magazine - don't ever pass up the chance to peruse it...think Pravda, circa 1974. Really.)

 

Just a quick reminder of the regime we're talking about here: the Economist magazine’s well respected democracy index groups countries into four categories: "Full Democracies", "Flawed Democracies", "Hybrid Regimes" (these first three are all considered democracies), and "Authoritarian Regimes" (considered dictatorial). Cuba sits in the last category.

 

I have challenged members of Sheffield Socialist choir to condemn, unequivocally, on their website, the absence of meaningful democracy and human rights in Cuba. I await a response keenly.

 

I wrote to the Council and to Sheffield University to ask if they bothered to extract a commitment from their hosts in the Socialist Choir to basic rights. Neither organisation addressed my point directly in replies I received. (In the case of the council, this reply arrived seven months after I wrote to my Lib Dem councillor, without apology or explanation for the delay.)

 

The University is essentially a private company, as I understand it, so is I suppose at liberty to do as it wishes. The council, of course, has a responsibility to the people of the city.

 

Both the University and the Council simply stated that they are supporting this because it's a multicultural event and will encourage dialogue between the UK and Cuba.

 

I have some questions for the council:

 

Will it really encourage multi culturalism or dialogue? As far as I can see the choir they're bringing over is one approved by the Cuban Government, and as such it will only dare promote the pro Castro party line, will it not? I can't find much out about them, but what little I can see points to their being Castro loyalists. Nothing else would be tolerated by Cuba’s leaders. Are sheffield’s ratepayers therefore subsidising publicity for a repressive Government that locks people up for wanting to vote? This project is called, laughably, the `voices of Cuba’ project. It seems to me that what’s on offer is probably the voice of the unelected Cuban Government. Am I right? Can we see the research you carried out?

 

The council claims also that it isn't funding this, stating instead it's just providing a civic reception and trying to find venues for the choir to use. OK. Who's forking out for that then? There must be a cost attached, mustn't there?

 

And can everyone on this forum have an invitation if it turns out to be consuming our resources in these difficult times?

 

It seems to me that as a first step, if the council is supporting an organisation, any organisation, financially or otherwise, it should require that organisation to meet basic equal opportunities standards by supporting human rights explicitly. I’m happy for anyone to come and make music in the city. I just don’t like the fact that this project is seemingly pretending to be something it’s not, and it appears that nobody in the council bothered to research it before signing up to it.

 

If anyone wishes to enquire of his or her councillor what they make of all this, I'd be fascinated to know if they receive any response.

 

The youtube link is here:

[LordChaverly 10]

Thanks Jonathan for the up-date and for exposing this outrageous abuse of Council taxpayers' money. It is ironic that, at a time when the peoples of the Middle East are so bravely seeking to rid themselves of their oppressive, tyrannical regimes, Sheffield City Council is providing support to the applause monkeys of another vile tyranny.

[RonJeremy 10]

Jonathan - you should be applauded for your comments - exposing the apologists and supporters of this evil regime

[Jonathanb977 10]

The case of our council and the choir continues to lurch along. Because I'd originally been sent an initial `fob off' reply by my councillor instead of one that actually addresses the point I'd made, I put the further questions I've listed in the thread above (who's cash are you using, is the choir that's coming over a set of Castro stooges, etc) to the council in an e mail. I was then sent a holding reply but I've had no detailed formal response, as yet. When (if?) I receive one, I'll post its contents on this thread in case folk wish to see.

 

My original challenge to Sheffield Socialist Choir (last April, a full year ago) was `put something on your website condemning the lack of human rights and democracy in Cuba.' And it's this that drove my more recent correspondence with the council. If they're using ratepayers cash or other resource to support this stuff, then as a minimum they need to ensure their partners are signed up to basic rights.

 

The choir have, in the last couple of days, put something on their site. They don't condemn human rights abuses in Cuba specifically - but in fairness they do offer a more generic commitment.

 

Movement, then, of a sort.

[Jonathanb977 10]

And please might I add in Cuba itself there is better news. The 75 political prisoners have now been released - many of them forced into involuntary exile, but released nonetheless. Those released to Spain have been in contact with human rights campaigning organisations and have expressed gratitude for the support offered. Their view of apologist organisations who attempted to shore up the Cuban regime's line isn't known.

 

So, we need to keep up the pressure on the Cuban authorities more than ever now, to bring an end to the repressive laws and practices which are stifling the most basic human rights in Cuba and to ensure that the 2003 so called `Black Spring' is never repeated.

[Jonathanb977 10]

Amnesty International has called on the Cuban authorities to release an activist on hunger strike who was detained for his human rights work three months ago and is set to face trial at the end of March.

 

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, the president and co-founder of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy, was arrested last December in relation to a meeting he organized at his home in August 2010 and anti-government banners he displayed outside his home.

 

Néstor, his brother Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina and three other members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy - Enyor Díaz Allen, Roberto González Pelegrín and Francisco Manzanet - have been charged with public order offences relating to an attack on his home by a mob opposed to the meeting.

 

The five men were arrested in August 2010 but released the following month. Only Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina was rearrested.

 

"Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina has spent more than three months in prison for expressing his opinions, defending democracy and promoting human rights in Cuba," said Gerardo Ducos, Cuba reearcher at Amnesty International.

 

"Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience jailed solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression and is calling on the Cuban authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally, or bear the responsibility of the impact of the hunger strike on Néstor’s physical integrity.

 

"Néstor's imprisonment is yet another example of the suppression of the rights to freedom of expression and association in Cuba."

 

Held at Combinado de Guantánamo prison, Nestor started his hunger strike on 15 February. The next day he was transferred to an isolation cell and denied water for eight days.

 

Nestor's health deteriorated during his hunger strike and on 28 February he was transferred to a health post in the prison. He was then transferred to Augustino Neto Provincial Hospital on 1 March.

 

Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by state security agents in Guantanamo on 9 December 2010. He was pepper sprayed and manhandled into a police car in front of his 10-year-old daughter who was left alone in the street as her father was taken into custody.

 

While in detention Néstor says he has suffered beatings and threats from other inmates.

[Jonathanb977 10]

On Saturday 21st April 2012 at the Sadacca Sheffield & District Afro & Caribbean

Community Association, Wicker, Sheffield 1, Cuba Solidarity Campaign are organising a Latin American day School - I'm going to attend to participate in the session on human rights in Cuba. Contributors to and readers of the thread might wish to come along.

 

Jonathan

[callippo 10]

how ironic that the Afro Caribbean Community Association appear to be into 'Cuba solidarity'. Ironic, because blacks in Cuba, even though they make up a big chunk of the population, have got next to nowhere within what amounts to be being a whites only, or at least a 'blacks out', regime.

Edited April 23, 2012 by callippo