Cubans may well be denied the right to travel overseas, form political parties, the right to association, unlimited Internet access and a choice of alternative Presidential candidates, but at least they can can go to the 400 libraries and read about it in other countries.

Surely we're not going to have that same old argument about Cuba along the lines of -

access to internet - blocked by US therefore severely limited access - restriction NOT imposed by Cuban government

political parties - what like Conservative and Labour? Republican and Democrat?

elections - Cuba has them and they are more democratic than ours

travel - thousands of doctors and other workers around the world, Cubans in all parts of the globe, just not flocking to Blackpool beach - take a look at a Cuban beach and your surprise will fade..

Surely not again...?

youve just said the biggest load of bollocks ive ever heard....
hahahaha
cuba is a dictatorship. doesnt matter how tropical and revolutionary it looks, its a fucking dictatorship.

Access to the Internet has been restricted by Cuba on the basis of 'protection'.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3386413.stm

so-called 'anarchist' and aptly-named Bill Gates, where are the places in the world you find more democratic, more egalitarian than Cuba. I'm interested.

The world is at it is. Cuba is not perfect but is struggling towards a better society. Most places are far worse. If you don't agree, cite some facts - not just 'Cuba is a dictatorship'.

the fact your imprisoned and tortured for being gay in your beloved Cuba?
Daft commies do my fucking head in.

Gay people are neither imprisoned nor tortured in Cuba. Havana has a thriving gay scene.


This is just bollox. Try again. Or better still, don't and fuck off.

poor anarchist... his news about Cuba comes from a very very old epoch... maybe if he had now the chance of going to Cuba and walk along the Malecón... but probably he prefers to persist thinking the same way the cuban revolution enemies "thinks"...

Modernize you, my dear anarchist

haha, i'm a 'fascist'? because i dont believe in pseudo-revolutionary dictatorships? and what kind of response is putting up a picture of some smiling cubans? thats naive propaganda at its best theyre ya daft fucker....its like finding a picture of some smiley folk from nazi Germany era and saying 'look, see how great it was, theyre all dead happy....'
please, read up on your little stalinist shithole before commenting. i've travelled to Cuba, its full of rich american tourists and starving locals who beg outside the restaurants and cash machines.
I bet your nothing but a daft middle class prick who thinks hes a revolutionary for wearing a fucking che guevara t-shirt.
no borders, no leaders, no states.

When Cuba adopted Soviet-style communism it also adopted Soviet-style prejudice and puritanism. Ever since Stalin promoted the ideology of “the socialist family” and recriminalised gay sex in 1934, communist orthodoxy dictated that homosexuality was a “bourgeois decadence” and “capitalist degeneration”. This became the Cuban view. “Maricones” (faggots) were routinely denounced as “sexual deviants” and “agents of imperialism”. Laughable allegations of homosexuality were used in an attempt to discredit “corrupting” Western influences, such as pop music, with the communists circulating the rumour that the Beatles were gay.

In the name of the new socialist morality, homosexuality was declared illegal in Cuba and typically punishable by four years’ imprisonment. Parents were required to prevent their children from engaging in homosexual activities and to report those who did to the authorities. Failure to inform on a gay child was a crime against the revolution.

Official homophobia led, in the mid-1960s, to the mass round-up of gay people, without charge or trial. Many were seized in night-time swoops and incarcerated in forced-labour camps for “re-education” and “rehabilitation”. A few disappeared and never returned.

One gay man recalls: “We were taken to Camagüey, at the other end of the island. It was a camp surrounded with barbed wire, with watchtowers manned by guards with machine guns.”

The camp inmates included not just homosexuals, but also criminals, students, Catholics and political dissidents. They were set to work at 3 a.m., cutting sugar cane with machetes. It was backbreaking labour on meagre food rations. The gay prisoners were often beaten, and occasionally raped, by criminal gangs in the camps. Some gays were killed; others committed suicide.

At the First National Congress on Education and Culture in 1971, the cultural repression of homosexuality intensified. It was decreed that homosexuals were “pathological”, “antisocial” and “not to be tolerated” in any job where they might “influence youth”. Widespread anti-gay purges followed in schools, universities, theatres and the media. Gay professors, dancers, actors and editors ended up sweeping roads and digging graves.

The repression did not begin to ease until the mid-1970s and even then it was not because the Cuban leadership recognised their error. They halted mass detentions and reduced prison sentences largely because they were shamed by international protests – some organised by the newly-formed gay liberation movements in the US and Europe, and others by left-wing intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, in defence of persecuted gay writers and academics.

A more significant softening of official attitudes took place in the early 1990s. With the advent of AIDS, the Cuban authorities initially cracked down hard, quarantining everyone with HIV in special sanatoria. But, by the early 1990s, the authorities felt compelled to adopt a more liberal approach, abandoning their detention policy – partly because it was costing too much! More significantly, Cuban health officials realised that they had to show greater tolerance towards the homosexual community in order to win their trust, confidence and support for safer sex.

Another factor that influenced changes in government attitudes was the secondment to Cuba of East German doctors and psychologists during the 1980s. They viewed homosexuality as a natural minority condition, and this eventually prompted more enlightened thinking among Cuban medical staff and health educators.

It was not until 1992 that President Fidel Castro finally declared that homosexuality was a “natural human tendency that must simply be respected”. He has, however, never apologised or expressed remorse for his past homophobia and persecution.

Today, the legal status of lesbian and gay people in Cuba is still ambiguous. Amnesty International regards the lack of clear, categorical civil rights for homosexuals as being tantamount to illegalisation.

While the 1979 penal code formally decriminalised homosexuality, gay behaviour causing a “public scandal” can be punished by up to twelve months’ jail. This vague law, which is open to wide interpretation, has often been used to arrest gay men merely because they happen to be effeminate and flamboyant.

Discreet open-air cruising in public squares and parks is nowadays mostly tolerated, although often kept under police surveillance. Most gay bars are semi-legal private house parties and are subject to periodic police raids. In 1997, Havana’s biggest gay bar, El Periquiton, was closed down by the police. One organiser of an unofficial gay bar, Lorenzo, confides: “The police can knock the door down at any moment and arrest everyone here ... instead of sending you to jail, these days they just fine you.” A typical fine for those who run gay bars from their homes or courtyards is about 1,500 pesos, which is nearly seven months’ wages. The police also usually confiscate the lights, sound systems and record collections.

Homosexuals are still deemed unfit to join the ruling Communist Party, because being gay is supposedly contrary to communist ethics. This can have an adverse impact on a person’s professional career in a society where all senior appointments depend on party membership.

Lesbian and gay newspapers and organisations are not permitted. The Cuban Association of Gays and Lesbians, formed in 1994, was suppressed in 1997 and its members arrested. Gay Cuba?

So I'm not an expert on Cuba at all, but I recently saw this film:

The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
 http://www.powerofcommunity.org/

Get it via bittorrent if you don't want to buy it:

 http://onebigtorrent.org/details.php?id=1777

It's really good, so good it made me think, wow, I'd quite like to move there, rather than living in a state commited to a global programme of Imperial Genocide (the UK)...

Another film on Cuba that looks good is:

638 WAYS TO KILL CASTRO
 http://www.638waystokillcastro.com/

 http://onebigtorrent.org/details.php?id=1375 (though seeders are needed)

Oh and reposting rants from Peter Tatchell isn't very impressive...  http://www.galha.org/glh/213/cuba.html he doesn't have such a good track record...

I propose you to inform yourself a little more about the Cuban ideas and practice related with sexuality, diversity and other human rights.
Don't try to repeat inconsistent lies extracted from some not updated "Black Book" dedicated to the Cuban Revolution, published in the CIA headquarters.


 http://www.cenesex.sld.cu/

 http://www.cenesex.sld.cu/webs/cenesex.htm

 http://www.cenesex.sld.cu/webs/diversidad/diversidad.htm

In 'modernize, ya daft commie twat ' "anarchist" provides us with an unattributed c+p from Peter Tatchell - former Labour Party candidate, Green Party member and purveyor of distorted reporting on all things gay.

 http://www.galha.org/glh/213/cuba.html

I reckon its the cubaphobic simon myself.