Categories of Human Beings

Categories of Human Beings / Rosa Maria Paya
Posted on July 7, 2013

Where are the documentaries about the Bahamian concentration camps where
there are school-age children and women with their lips sewn shut?

It has been a few weeks since South Florida's media and social networks
have been denouncing the systematic abuses to which refugees from Cuba
and other nations are subjected in the Bahamas. The trigger was a series
of clandestinely made cellphone videos that showed officers kicking
people and subjecting them to different tortures. Those who made the
videos public assure these were taken in the refugee detention camps in
Nassau, and even when people have recognized their friends and relatives
in the videos, the Bahamian Chancellery has denied that these are authentic.

These detention centers seem to be the scene of systematic human rights
violations, but they are not a new phenomenon. The oldest data I know of
refers to the New York Times of August, 1963, which discusses the
intervention of Cuban air and naval forces in the former British island
during which 19 refugees were kidnapped and taken back to Cuba. But even
more astonishing is the reaction of the international community before a
situation that has been taking place for years, and for which there are
not many echoes beyond the modest ones from the voices of Cubans and
Cuban Americans.

In the past 20 years, there is no trace of these events in two of the
most important American newspapers, even when the Interamerican Human
Rights Commission (IACHR) has issued reports thereon from allegations
dating from 1998. For its part, the Spanish newspaper El País lists the
names of the two Caribbean islands when it comes to hurricanes while
other Iberian newspapers only mention them to highlight the progress of
the oil drilling carried out in collaboration with Cuba.

The reaction is different when it comes to the equally unjust
humiliations suffered by the prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base in
Guantánamo. The acts of condemnation in this case reach high political
dimensions including the Human Rights Commission of the Russian
Chancellery, the Swiss President of the International Committee of the
Red Cross, the United Nations, the American Catholic Church, some
leftist French party and thousands, perhaps millions of people from
around the word who are in favor of the closing of this prison in the
easternmost end of Cuba.

However, curiously enough, in that very end of my country the Provincial
Prison of Guantánamo, run by Cuban authorities, is known for its
inhumane treatment, the lack of hygiene, a poor diet and occasional
beatings to which the people who are surviving there are subjected to.
Most of the country's prisons are run in similar conditions.

It would seem as if the men in orange uniforms held at the naval base
belonged to a different category from that of the non-uniformed
emigrants of the Caribbean. One hypothesis could be that the people of
the Middle East evoke greater sympathy or compassion than the Caribbean
people, but since it is precisely in that region where countless human
rights violations have been committed in the past and continue to be
committed to this day by the authorities of those countries, and the
international condemnation has historically suffered its ups and downs,
this argument doesn't hold water. It would be scandalous if the level of
the scandal was related to the category of the oppressors.

It is not the US Marines who are torturing Cubans and Haitians in the
Bahamas; it is not "the Yankee empire" against "the oppressed people of
the world." Therefore, the perception is that the abuses committed by
the authorities of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas are less attractive
to the international community.

I cannot help questioning the motivations of the forces behind these
reactions. If it is not compassion for those who are suffering, a sense
of justice and respect for international treaties, could it be that the
level of solidarity is determined by the unpopularity of the oppressor?
Doesn't the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim that all
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights? A world in
which lobbies have the last say and pressure groups have more interests
than convictions is scary.

Who is lobbying for our brothers whose rights are violated with the same
impunity in Havana and Nassau? Where are the documentaries about the
Bahamian concentration camps where there are school-age children and
women with their lips sewn shut? Where is the absolute condemnation for
the humiliations that these people who emigrate suffer from, which are
not subjected to any accusations? Why throughout the 20 years this
situation has been taking place has it not become popular among youth to
favor the closure of the prison camps in the Bahamas?

Apparently, the sense of impunity is contagious, and the Bahamian
officials feel they can beat Cubans in the same way in which the
repressive bodies of the State Security in the Largest of the Antilles
have no mercy toward opposition members. Each of them should know that
impunity is not sustainable over time, and that time is running out.

Rosa María Payá

Translated by Chabeli

6 July 2013

Source: "Categories of Human Beings / Rosa Maria Paya | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/categories-of-human-beings-rosa-maria-paya/