Social_Critic wrote:Cuba is a lot worse than Colombia because the Cuban regime is an absolute dictatorship.
At first, you simply asserted that Cuba was worse than Colombia, with no supporting argument or evidence whatsoever. This assertion was presented as a self-evident truth.
I challenged that assertion, and you decided to defend it by with the claim that political repression in Cuba is "multilayered." I still do not understand precisely what this jargon is intended to convey. You gave some examples of "multilayered" repression, such as arbitrary arrests, loss of housing, etc., but there is no indication that these things are not happening in Colombia as well, and none of these violations sound worse than the widespread political assassinations in Colombia.
Now you assert that Cuba is worse because it is an "absolute dictatorship." Apparently, an "absolute dictatorship" has no need for paramilitary death squads, like those which are currently rampaging through Colombia. Your suggestion is that there is no need for semi-official paramilitary forces to carry out the repressive designs of the ruling regime, because official forces and agencies are able to act directly on behalf of the government - "All they need to do is go pick up the individual they want, torture him or her as they think is needed, and then murder him."
If this was really happening
on a widespread scale, then, yes, I would agree, Cuba is worse than Colombia. In Colombia, this kind of political terrorism is very widespread indeed, and thanks to a diplomatic cable that was wired from the US embassy in Bogata, Nov. 19, 2009 (
http://cablegatesearch.wikileaks.org/ca ... 2&q=257-89), we can assign a precise number to all the murder and mayhem -
257,089 registered victims of paramilitary violence!
The reason that the fascist government of Colombia uses paramilitary forces to repress the population is obvious - plausible deniability. In a small way, this attempt to preserve a veneer of legitimacy, as laughable as it is, is still a sign of progress. In the 1980's, when Reagan launched his war of terrorism against Nicaragua, the American public and Congress would not allow him to directly and openly use official government resources. Instead, he had to use covert resources, and although the Contras committed terrible crimes on his behalf, it was still necessary to conceal these crimes, at least superficially, and to distance the US government from them through plausible deniability. The crimes were still committed, but at least not so openly.
And so, if official government forces are running around, kidnapping, torturing and assassinating people, just like the death squads in Colombia, then that would make Cuba worse, because what the Colombian government prefers to conceal and distance itself from, Cuba would be doing openly and brazenly. All that remains for you to do, in order to complete your argument, is to demonstrate that these crimes committed by official government forces in Cuba are as widespread as the crimes committed by semi-official paramilitary forces in Colombia, or at least demonstrate that the former approaches the latter in scale.
There were 257,089 registered victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia by 2009. If official organs of the Cuban government had committed at least half as many acts of political violence, or even a third, then I would say, yes, Cuba is worse, or at least just as bad. Can you demonstrate that there have been 85,000 victims of such violence in Cuba over the same basic period of time? Can you show that there has even been 40,000? 20,000? 10,000? You don't even quote isolated incidents from the documentary record, let alone demonstrate a widespread trend.
According to the "Universal Periodic Review: HRW Submission on Cuba," April 18, 2013 (
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/18/univ ... ssion-cuba), there are many violations of civil rights in Cuba, including "short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, travel restrictions, and forced exile." There are also kangaroo courts that lay down longer term sentences. Nothing is said about assassinations or executions. This report is highly critical of the communist regime, and the author goes to great pains to demonstrate that "Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent." Presumably, if there were evidence of political murders, whether by government or paramilitary forces, or even credible allegations of such, then it would have been included, because HRW is going to such great pains to depict Cuba in a negative light. However, they still have some intellectual integrity, and although HRW may love to report on political assassinations by official government forces, they are not willing to make up incidents out of their own imaginations.
You, Social_Critic, seem to have no such scruples. Actually, you are smart enough not to assert anything too specific. You allege that the government of Cuba is directly murdering dissidents, any "individual they want," but you do not bother to indicate the scale of these atrocities. How many people precisely are being "picked up," "tortured," and "murdered" by the government each year? Can you give me at least one isolated incident from the documentary record?
I find it strange that you don't like to quote from the documentary record at all. I am trying to defend the assertion that Colombia is worse than Cuba, but I do not excuse or justify the abuses committed by the communists. I admit that Cuba "has an Orwellian set up." But the question remains, who is worse, Colombia or Cuba? Maybe Colombia has
even more of an Orwellian setup, with much more violent and widespread repression of the population. In fact, I think that is certain. I reached this conclusion from a review of the documentary record, as reported by the very same HRW that you encouraged me to look at. The reports on Cuba contain nothing about executions and assassinations, but there are some fairly bad crimes being documented, and I have quoted some of them. In this debate, you are attacking Cuba, and I have been forced to defend it with the argument that it is not nearly as bad as Colombia. In essence, you are on the anti-Cuba side, and I am (somewhat reluctantly) on the pro-Cuba side.
Why then is the guy on the pro-Cuba side the only one who is quoting real facts from the documentary record about Cuba's violations of human rights?The answer is childishly simple. Your antipathy to Cuba is not based on documented facts. It is based on feelings and imagination.
I challenge you to produce a well documented instance where a direct agent of the Cuban government, "pick[ed] up the individual they want[ed], torture[d] him or her as they [thought was] needed, and then murder[ed] him." Just one incident. The slaughter began in earnest under Uribe (shortly after Colombia became the world's leading recipient of US military aid in 1999, coincidentally), so please restrict your examples of Cuban political assassinations to the last ten or fifteen years. I know in advance that you will be unable to demonstrate a widespread trend of such assassinations, as could easily be done in the case of Colombia, so do the best you can to produce just
one isolated incident. No matter what your example is, no matter how violent and disgusting it is, I should be able to find
ten such incidents from Colombia, probably from the same year as your hypothetical Cuban atrocity.
I keep trying to tell you, but your propaganda-derived certainty will not yet you accept it:
Colombia is worse than Cuba by orders of magnitude.My sense of certainty is derived from the evidence. Simply read the HRW reports on Cuba. They are indeed troubling, but they are nothing compared to the same agency's reports on Colombia. That is were the slaughter is really going down.