Cuba jails dissident musician

By John Mendez

The world’s last bastion of the failed Stalinist ideology, Cuba, has yet again arrested the outspoken musician Gorki Aguilar.

Jeane Kirkpatrick once said of her penchant for standing on the floor of the UN and naming the names of those held in Soviet gulags, “Statistics don’t bleed; it is the detail which counts.” It was important then and it is important now.

After years of government harassment and frequent imprisonment, the Cuban dissident was arrested in Havana yesterday and is reportedly going to stand trial in a Cuban kangaroo court for the crime of "dangerousness" on Thursday. He faces up to 4 years in prison.

“Dangerousness” may mean different things to different people but to Raul Castro it means being critical of his governance. So while we celebrate our democracy over the next few months leading into the general election, Gorki Aguilar may very well be sitting in a Cuban jail cell simply for speaking his mind; A striking thought in 2008. Yet, there continues to exist such a fundamental indifference for the human rights of Cubans on the island prison by a large portion of the American public that being incarcerated for merely criticizing the government will not invoke outrage. As in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s day, it is “both a puzzling and a profoundly painful phenomenon of our times.”

BUCL.org has started a "Free Gorki" Campaign.

Thomas Lifson adds:

Where is Oliver Stone? How about Sean Penn? George Clooney? The Hollywood left has swooned over Cuba for decades, but ignores the real tyranny affecting fellow artists. These people should be laughed at if they do not condemn Cuba.