Cuba TV: Dissident Faked Hunger Strike
HAVANA TIMES — Cuban state TV accused the dissident Martha Beatriz Roque of “faking” her recent eight-day hunger strike held to demand the release of an imprisoned opposition member, reported DPA on Tuesday night.
The broadcast accused the international media of spreading “lies” and the US government of instigating Roque’s “feigned hunger strike.”
The accusation was the first information given by the Cuban media on the hunger strike that supposedly involved 29 dissidents and began on September 10.
The strike ended on September 18, after Roque learned that the authorities had told the family of the prisoner, Jorge Vázquez Chaviano, that he would soon be released.
Cuban TV said as many as 13 of hunger strikers were fakers.
“The strategy of the hunger strikes was used by Martha Beatriz to attract international media attention,” said the state television, which showed alleged evidence of how the dissident secretly received food through a window of her home in Havana.
Roque, a 67-year-old economist, was previously jailed in the “Black Spring” round up of 75 dissidents in 2003.
Activists Orlando Zapata (2010) and Wilman Villar (2012) died in separate hunger strikes in recent years on the island. Also the opponent Guillermo Fariñas, the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2010, has repeatedly resorted to hunger strikes in protests against the government, recalled DPA.
Yo, ‘Mariana’ you sound a lot like ‘Susan L’, a bit more clever, perhaps, but that’s easy to achieve.
Your theme, in common with ‘Susan L’ is, if only “these aggressive comments” would stop, “polarized and therefore limited [in] mentality” comments, would “subsist”.
Obviously both S & M – hmm, interesting initials – would like myself and other comments to go away. Ain’t going to happen ‘girls’. Give it up.
‘M’ writes, “There is no black & white truth in the Cuban situation” – or anywhere else in the world, ‘girl’. Were you a Playboy bunny?
‘M’ continues, “all attempts to reduce it to one of the extremes is nurturing the divisions and conflicts that keeps us in a permanent diaspora, inside as well as outside our country.”
Diasporas are always external, outside the country they left. In effect, it is no longer their country.
‘M’ asks, “Please, be serious and be adults when thinking of something so delicate and complex as the Cuban society.” That goes without saying.
‘M’ also asks, “If you are not Cuban, be humble and keep silence. This is not your business at all.” I am always humble in the face of our common humanity. The commonality makes it imperative that silence is NOT appropriate.
‘M’ asks Cubans as well to “be humble too and try to see the truth behind the black and white discourses. ”
‘Humble’, of course, is synonymous with acquiescence. Where ‘M’ comes from is obvious.
It’s very sad to read all these agressive comments. As far as this polarized and therefore limited mentality subsists, our nation will continue to be in distress and suffering. There is no black & white truth in the Cuban situation and all attempts to reduce it to one of the extremes is nurturing the divisions and conflicts that keeps us in a permanent diaspora, inside as well as outside our country.
Please, be serious and be adults when thinking of something so delicate and complex as the Cuban society. If you are not Cuban, be humble and keep silence. This is not your business at all. If you are Cuban, be humble too and try to see the truth behind the black and white discourses. Cuban reality has shown to be always greater than all limitations, hunger strikes (fake or real), and media fanfarre.
‘Moses’, why does my bullshit detector meter go off the scale, shattering the glass when I read what you just wrote?
You claim when you first visited Cuba you were “wide-eyed and hopeful”. Of what? Subverting the government? A few days ago you wrote in a comment to Grady, “As a capitalist, I must resist your desire to redistribute wealth to undeserving members of my society. I believe in a merit-based society with equal opportunity to succeed and fail. I believe that ´the poor will be with us always”.
So why would you go to Cuba, “hopeful that Fidel had indeed found a better way”?
You’ve also told us about the privileged life you lead – going out for $200 dinners, a frequenter of Havana’s exclusive Miramar section. Are we to assume somewhere along the line you struck it rich, perhaps living off the back of your “beautiful, smart, successful Cuban wife that you seem compelled to write about?” Just trying to make sense of the story you tell.
You write, “In as much as I look Cuban and spoke a little Spanish, I was able to blend in immediately and live, as much as possible, as Cubans live.” Speaking “a little Spanish” definitely does not allow blending in. It marks you as ‘a gringo trying to speak a little Spanish’. And living “as Cubans live”, in Miramar?
You write, “I learned about Cuban racism, nepotism, corruption, and political hypocrisy in very short order.” Not as a tourist you didn’t. I’ve been there. Where did you learn it from?
You write, “I also witnessed foreigners who would visit the island full of socialist idealism only to return to their comfortable, shortage-free lives back home. Especially the ones [with] unlimited internet access” And unlimited toilet paper and toilet seats I betcha!
Yeah, well that’s what all tourists do don’t they?
Despite “all the crap I am still dealing with”, you write, “I still live in a country 1000% more free and with more opportunities to succeed at whatever I choose.”
Well that’s certainly true if you are lucky enough to earn a good income – or if your wife is.
And then you get into purple prose again, writing that Fidel “is an ego-maniacal despot who has held the Cuban people back for 53 years out of personal vanity.”
And what should we call the 13 US presidents who have maintained a blockade against the Cuban people for those same 53 years – psychopathic power-hungry mass torturers of 11 million Cuban people?
You write, “Why else would he give four hour speeches? Have you ever read transcripts of any of them? I know you haven’t, otherwise you wouldn’t have written that.
You are obviously conditioned by the speeches delivered by your president where five minutes is way too long. You have ‘news bite’ presidents- presumably geared to the attention span of folks like you.
You assure us your 20 plus trips to Cuba were motivated by love, and not espionage as seems the only other logical alternative explanation based on your ideology – for your “beautiful, smart, successful Cuban wife”.
Unfortunately, as with Marta Beatriz Roque, what you write on this website reduces your credibility to negative values – she for taking money from US government sources, you for the very obvious propagandist role you have been playing on HT that you never acknowledge.
Lots of luck in your goals, but no [Cuban] cigar.
You ask, “Why give these frauds a reason to fake anything?” Uh, it’s the CIA who’s given them a reason, remember?. The CIA PAID HER. Some people will fake anything for money, it seems, orgasms or hunger strikes.
Au contraire, Monsieur Cheeseman. When I first visited Cuba I was as wide-eyed and hopefull that Fidel had indeed found a better way. But for the good ole´white boys that I had battled all my life here in the ´States, maybe he might have succeeded I had once truly imagined. But in as mucha as I look Cuban and spoke a little Spanish, I was able to blend in immediately and live, as much as possible, as Cubans live. I learned about Cuban racism, nepotism, corruption, and political hypocracy in very short order. I also witnessed foreigners who would visit the island full of socialist idealism only to return to their comfortable, shortage-free lives back home. Especially the ones unlimited internet access unlike their Cuban comrades. I realized that for all the BS I had to deal with in my life as an American and all the crap I am still dealing with, I still live in a country 1000% more free and with more opportunities to succeed at whatever I choose. Fidel, after all the smoke has cleared, is an ego-maniacal despot who has held the Cuban people back for 53 years out of personal vanity. Why else would he give four hour speeches? By the way, the 20 plus trips were motivated by love. I have a beautiful, smart, successful Cuban wife . No big secret. Sorry to disappoint.
I think you are at the wrong page of your US regime apologiser’s manual, Moses. You’re quoting the free speech and democracy page but you need to turn to the noble prisoners repressed by the Cuban government page.
That’s because the avocado strike was, if you’ll remember, supposedly over the disputed date for the release from jail of one of MBR’s criminal associates … the one whose eventual non-release was the “victory” that finally brought this epic Avocadiad to its mock-triumphant end.
As for the attention the stunt gained in the imperial media, that happened because the empire willed that it should happen. The avocado strike and its cynical promotion in the anti-Cuban media were integral parts of the same staged phenomenon. They were equally predetermined.
I reject your assertion that your recitation of the US regime’s banal and dishonest “free speech and democracy” canard is a “more important issue” than the exposure of the avocado strike propaganda stunt as fakery.
First off, the avocado strike is highly amusing as a fraud/detection story, you have to admit. It’s a laugh … but it’s more than just entertainment.
The avocado strike fraud also neatly illustrates and parallels the deeper, permanent fraud of a supposed “democracy” movement that is in reality bought, paid for and micro-managed by the former colonial power striving to reimpose a client regime of its choice on a country whose independence it pig-headedly refuses to accept.
Such diktat by an arrogant foreign empire is the very antithesis of democracy.
The avocado strike fraud also exposes brilliantly the wider fraud of the US empire’s relentless propaganda war against Cuba through servile media. The gradual inflation of the strike publicity bubble, day by avocado-munching day, in yellow US media is beautifully balanced by the abrupt puncture of the bubble on Cuban TV afterwards. The disingenuous partisan credulity of the empire’s media comes through very clearly. (Those willing dupes should really have taken MBR’s diet with a big pinch of salt… and perhaps with some chilli, black pepper, lime juice, onion, tomato and a garnish of coriander.)
It’s quite hard to take you seriously as a debater, Moses, but you’re certainly an assiduous and facile street pedlar of the current US disinformation and spin. And you don’t come across as the crazed gusano, Randist true-believer type which is the norm for cyber-irregulars fighting the empire’s colonialist propaganda war against Cuba. What brought you to make your 20+ trips to Cuba anyway? You can’t ever have been sympathetic, surely. Were you a US journalist? I’m guessing that because it would fit with your faux-naïf, formulaic but eclectic approach to imperialist right-wingery.
Do tell, Moses… your secret’s safe with me and the rest of the internet.
Richard, are you intentionally failing to focus on the underlying and more important issure here? Lets assume all the hunger strikers are card-carrying CIA agents as you allege. Also assume that they are full on fakers. Why give these frauds a reason to fake anything? Let them speak freely. Take away the whole attention-grabbing agenda. What do you think grabs more international headlines…hunger strike or a calls for more democracy. What is Cuba really afraid of?
Compassion, Hubert? Of course you jest. They require no compassion just for voluntarily enduring a diet of avocado and salad for a week. (I’m very fond of avocado myself.) Nor do I feel sorry for them for having been caught out in their deceit. Justified shame is actually in the best interests of the wrong-doer. It will be good for them.
No, why I’m glad to know that they were faking it is because it means that their employer, the US regime, has not, as it first appeared, turned to promoting the extremist and inhumane hunger strike tactic in its imperialist regime change effort against Cuba.
When the planet’s most heavily armed and violent country seriously loses its bearings morally and politically, as the US has done in recent years, that’s dangerous for everybody. I’m sincerely glad that the empire’s Cuba subversion policy, while still arrogant, hypocritical and illegal, at least hasn’t gone further astray towards cynical inhumanity, as the avocado strike would have implied if it had been a real hunger strike and not just a faked propaganda stunt.
Mr Cheeseman, so much compassion from you for your political enemies!
It’s good to know that the avocado strikers were secretly eating. It means that the empire did not, after all, put the health and lives of its Cuban agents at risk for a mere propaganda stunt.
How about giving the dissidents some time on national State Controlled TV in order to explain or defend themselves???
If they were ¨fakers¨ then the joke is on the regime. The next hunger strikers (and I am sure there will be more) will have to die I guess to prove that they are real. How about not giving dissidents a reason to resort to such drastic measures to air their grievances? The geniuses in the regime will figure out one day that the genie is out of the bottle. Allow freedom of speech and the need to starve yourself to death to get attention no longer makes sense. Duh!