The one and only truthful fact about your article is that indeed, tourism is a very valuable economical asset for Cuban people. The rest of your sayings are pure lies and hypocritical half truths. Canadians should be proud to enjoy Cuba’s warm sun and spend money in that welcoming tropical paradise. By choosing Cuba as a favoured destination, Canadian tourists contribute to the income of a government that provides free education and free medical services for all its people.

A country where every single man and woman can study to university completely free of charge and benefit from a high quality education. In Cuba, every single person can have any medical assistance needed, without having to spend a dime or having to rely on private insurance. What country can claim the same? Canada? The United States? Countries that are stated as developed and civilized? Where attending university is strictly reserved for high income families or implies having to embrace an adult life head over ears in debts? Countries where citizens can be placed on a waiting list for months before getting a cancer diagnosis or where a patient can wait several hours in an emergency room before having a doctor look at them? THESE are situations when Canadians should worry about where their money goes!

The people you refer to as political dissidents are in fact puppets of the US government, who have been working hard for nearly 50 years to overthrow Castro’s government, trying to influence the Cuban’s opinion, as well as the international opinion, with falseries and propaganda. It is certainly not an accident that Cuba is finger-pointed as a tyranical country at this particular time of year when tourists are choosing a holiday destination. These false information spreaders are just an additional asset to the attempted threat on Cuba’s right to sovereignty and social system, along with the US economical blockade. The people you refer to in your article have not been emprisoned for matters of liberty of expression, nor for demanding democracy, nor for human rights matters, and neither for criticizing Fidel Castro. They are serving a sentence because they worked and were dearly paid by US organisations, which goal is to stir up hostility against Cuba’s government. These organisations, in this particular case the so-called independant libraries, the Cubanet Web site and the Cuban Institute in Miami, hypocritically claim to fight for human rights, liberty, and democracy, very popular duperies that are commonly used by politicians to manipulate the public opininon and to justify their agressive intrusion into internal affairs of other Nations. These groups are in fact financed by powerfull US agencies, the USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which spends not less than 30 million each year to support different organisations such as political parties, workers unions, dissidents movements and information medias in countries worlwide including Cuba. Readers may get more info about NED at www.antiwar.com ).

All the prisoners you mentioned in your article, Julio Cesar Lopez Rodriguez, Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, Librado Linares Garcia, Marcelo Cano Rodriguez and Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzales were judged for their crimes on a fair trial and are serving a sentence that was stated upon the Cuban law, which they were deliberatly breaking. It is punishable by law in any country, including Canada, by similar sentences, to instigate with or work for a foreign Nation in the purpose of overthrowing one’s government or to stir up hostility against it. It is a manipulation of media, convenient for certain, to make it seem like is happening in Cuba something tyranical and unseen anywhere else. If you want to protest about unjustly emprisoned people, you should tell Canadian readers about the 5 Cubans that are serving sentences in the United States jails since 1998 (from 15 years to 2 life sentences!)? Five Cubans who had infiltrated terrorist groups in Miami and were working to gather information and therefore prevent agressions against Cuban people and its government. THESE are man of honor, who’s cause was just and rightful, who acted out of love for the Cuban people and the benefit of their country’s social ideals. Readers may get more information about the Cuban Five at www.freethefive.org . You want to talk about poor conditions and cruel treatments that prisoners have to endure? Why don’t you mention the Guantanamo prison on the US millitary base? Let it be said and heard, that is the ONLY place in Cuba where human rights are being brutally violated and it is not on behalf of Fidel Castro!

It is deplorable that an internationally known organisation such as Amnesty International draws bias information on Cuba from US financed press agencies and spreads it abroad as reliable facts without even questionning the real purposes of these sources, which are definitively not independant nor objective. A movement that claims to be independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion, surprisingly also confesses not having set foot in Cuba for years. In our opinion, it is therefore obvious that any information on Cuba coming from Amnesty International can’t be considered as reliable.

We hope that hundreds of thousands of Canadians will fly to Cuba again this year and enjoy its warm sun and spirited people. We believe that people’s interest is growing towards Cuba’s social values and we trust them to see beyong such lies as this NP’s article. There is a lot to learn about this socialist island, its differences and the incredible story of their never-ending fight to live as they choose.

Karine Walsh
Association québécoise des amiEs de Cuba
Novembre 25th 2007