[R-G] Letter to Post 1: Re: Your article “The real Cuba”

[Anthony Fenton]

Letter to the Editor of the National Post
Arnold August
May 30th, 2008

Re: Your article “The real Cuba”

In your May 30th edition you reproduce a letter written by the Cuban  
Ambassador to Canada, Ernesto Senti Darias in response to the letter  
written by the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Wilkins. However, you  
chose to introduce your own comment (“The real Cuba”) in the same  
issue. You indicated that you wanted to put Mr. Senti’s letter “in the  
proper context”. You add that “we also owe it to our readers”.  
However, when you reproduced the May 21st statement by the US  
Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Wilkins, you did not choose to place his  
article “in its proper context”. For example, in your May 30th  
rebuttal to Mr. Senti, you admit to the “U. S. socioeconomic  
inequality and imperfections in America's electoral system” and write  
that “such criticism is valid…”  This being the case, why did you not  
choose on May 21st to place the U.S. ambassador’s comment in its  
proper context? Did you not owe it to your readers?

I am aware that Canadians have written to your newspaper since the  
American Ambassador’s letter. However, you chose not to produce any of  
them or even excerpts of these letters. Did you not owe it to your  
readers? You feel obliged to reproduce Ambassador Senti’s letter, but  
at the same time try to discredit it even before your readers have a  
chance to read the letter and digest it in order to make up their own  
mind. You readers could then perhaps forward to the Editor any  
questions or comments that they may have and provide an opportunity to  
Ambassador Senti to reply.

In your May 30th comment, you write that Ernesto Senti “completely  
ignor[es] the litany of human rights abuses listed by Mr. Wilkins.”  
There is only so much that one can write in a letter in response to M.  
Wilkin’s attempt to completely falsify the Cuban reality and its  
entire history. I wrote a letter to you as a Canadian citizen on May  
22nd in response to Ambassador Wilkinson’s letter dated May 21st. I  
chose to deal with one aspect of the U.S. Ambassador’s letter, what  
you call “the litany of human rights abuses listed by Mr. Wilkins”. I  
attempted to place the U.S. Ambassadors comments “in its proper  
context”. You did not acknowledge nor reproduce in part or in full my  
letter. Do you not owe it to your readers to allow them to even read a  
rebuttal based on facts?

Mr. Wilkins in his May 21st letter calls for the release of political  
prisoners in Cuba. The small group of Cuban political prisoners to  
which the Ambassador is referring have been arrested and tried on the  
basis of the Cuban Penal Code. This criminalizes those “who in the  
interest of a foreign state, commit an act with the objective of  
damaging the independence or territorial integrity of the Cuban  
state...”  They have also been tried on the basis of two other pieces  
of legislation that have been adopted in response to the Helms-Burton  
Law (1996) and Torricelli Law (1992). The goal of these two American  
laws consists of further tightening the blockade against Cuba in order  
to starve the Cuban people into submission, that is create havoc and  
provoke a revolt against the Cuban constitutional order. Full evidence  
was presented in court showing that the accused were working in close  
collaboration and being funded by the U.S. Interest Section in Havana  
to destabilize the Cuban political system and apply the goals of the  
Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws. The Cubans who were tried and  
convicted were done so not because of their political beliefs but  
rather their financial and other forms of collaboration with a foreign  
country against their own people in violation of the Cuban laws and  
penal code.

Most countries have such laws. For example, the U.S. itself has  
several statutes which criminalize the injection of foreign funding  
into the American political process.

The U.S. Ambassador mentions the “Ladies in White” in his article as  
an example of what he calls persecution. This group of individuals  
comprises one example of people receiving funding from the U.S.  
interest Section in Havana, money coming from a convicted terrorist in  
the U.S.  What actually happened during the incident to which the  
Ambassador is referring that took place a few weeks ago in Plaza de la  
Revolución? These individuals showed up in Plaza de la Revolución,  
Havana on a week-day morning when people were going to work or to  
school. The “Ladies in White” are known by Cubans as being  
mercenaries. The Cuban authorities with female police officers removed  
them from the area in a non-violent way and brought them to their  
homes in order to avoid any incident caused by this provocation.

You write in your rebuttal that in Cuba “free elections are non- 
existent”. I was the first Canadian to have spent a great deal of time  
in Cuba during the elections in order to write a full detailed book on  
the political system based on my studies and own observations. When  
this book was published in 1999, all of the mainstream media including  
your predecessors ignored it, as you have ignored all other  
testimonies and letters that I have written on the subject. Do you not  
owe it to your readers to allow them to get to know the other side of  
the story, how elections take place on the island?
It has also come to my attention, that the National Post has included  
in the last lines of paragraph four of the Cuban Ambassador’s note the  
sentence “the U. S. govern Trudeaupian ment regarding terrorism  
(sic)”. This phrase was never in the original message, nor was it  
included in the copy you sent to the Cuban embassy for acceptance.  
There was even an obvious error with regards to the word “government”.  
Does this amount to an attempt to link the Cuban government with a  
slanderous statement regarding Pierre-Elliot Trudeau? You will recall  
that Trudeau at least had the guts to go to Cuba and recognize the  
Cuban reality and thus hail it. Do you not owe it to your readers to  
be far more professional in your journalism? Please let your readers  
know through this letter that the Cuban government and people have the  
greatest respect for Trudeau regarding his position and stance on Cuba.