http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=60&ItemID=8029Havana was the scene of the “first congress of the Cuban dissident movement” on May 20-21, 2005. Organized, planned and financed by the United States and the Cuban extreme right in Florida and broadly covered by the media, this meeting did not achieve the expected success and impact. This new provocation elaborated by Washington with the aim of bringing about a reaction by the revolutionary government was a spectacular failure. Though it had a colossal budget, the congress, which was supposed to bring together close to 360 “dissident” organizations, each one comprising thousands of activists according to organizers, was barely able to draw a hundred people with deep internal divisions as a backdrop. Furthermore, the meeting took place without any intervention by Cuban authorities, even though during the weeks leading up to the gathering the “dissidents” had denounced repressive maneuvers that never happened.1
The United States Congress itself participated in the staging of this meeting. In effect, a House subcommittee passed a resolution supporting the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society (APCS) of Martha Beatriz Roque, controversial president of the rally.2 Further, the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided a budget of $6 million to the extremist Miami organization, Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia, in order to help finance the gathering.3
The “dissident” demonstration was able to proceed without incident and in the presence of several foreign diplomats and journalists, which contradicts the allegations of government repression. So it is that the ambassadors of Poland and the Czech Republic participated in the meeting. Forming part of the strategy of destabilizing Cuban society orchestrated by Washington, Roque's organization also included among its affiliates the tiny Miami terrorist group, Alpha 66, responsible for several bloody attacks on the Cuban population.4
Several other “dissident” organizations strongly criticized the meeting held by Roque. For example, Yacel Benitez, representative of a homosexual movement, stated that “this assembly is to raise money for
to live on and not to overthrow the Castro regime.”5 Oswaldo Payá, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, formally accused Roque of being at the service of the Bush administration and of acting against the interests of the Cuban people: “We will not go to the May 20 meeting because it is a fraud against the opposition.”6
more...
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
