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Cuba’s Communist Extraterritorial ‘Laws’

comunismo cubano

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Communist regimes hold on to power as long as they can successfully permeate inefficacy within opposition forces. This feat is carried by a combination of social control schemes which include state terrorism, systemic calibrated advancements ploys, and the enforcement of a state-driven counterculture that portrays the false reality that is vital to the imagery it must domestically reflect.

The overall dictatorial objective can be summed up as a comprehensive social domestication program. Cuban Communism publicly warned, in quasi extraofficial manner, that its “laws” have extraterritorial reach regarding opposition activity or expression.

“Hacemos Cuba”, a state-run television news program, focused its calibrated docket of May 15th, on reminding Cubans everywhere, especially those that live in exile, that the communist government possesses the legal framework to levy criminal charges for civil and political activity deemed “subversive”, in absentia, seek extradition or apply its laws in regime-friendly countries. The “Cantinflesque”, disjointed manner of presenting news and political opinion on the official media in a totalitarian regime is always something of a mixture of bad satirical comedy blended with surrealism. This forcibly includes the show’s conductor, as well as the state prosecutor who elaborated on the theme of the segment.

The legal and the moral are two different things. Tyrannies throughout history have carried out crimes against humanity according to “legal” dictums. The Nazi inflicted Holocaust, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Lenin’s Ukraine famine policy were all legally sanctioned by unjust laws, as St. Thomas of Aquinas referred to these immoral judicial instruments that contradicted Natural Law (NL). Contemporary secular parallels of Natural Rights drawn from NL could be first generation of preemptive rights, unalienable rights such as liberty. The point to keep in context here, is that all socialist legality is morally spurious and thus unjust.

Headquarters of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) in Havana, Cuba. (EFE)

Law 88 (1999), popularly referred to as the muzzle law, has been a more recent attempt of the Cuban dictatorship to “lawfully” repress speech that questions or critiques regime legitimacy or policy. José Reyes Blanco, the state prosecutor utilized in the news program stated, “Those who are not in Cuba can be perfectly subject to the application of these laws. They can also be prosecuted or extradited with international legal cooperation in order to answer criminally for the acts they have committed.” The Castro government official added, “Cuban laws allow the prosecution of people who are not in the country. That is to say that they are financing and are not in Cuba, or have a level of participation because it may be that some finance, but others convene, others coordinate. All persons who have a level of participation can be prosecuted in absentia.”

What could possibly be putting Cuban Communism in panic mode at this moment? After all, this immoral and unjust “law” has been in force for over 22 years. Why this official pronouncement on a television show? Besides, it is a fact that the “successful” durability of communist tyranny on the Island has rested on the politics of sheer terror when its authority has been questioned. Additionally, throughout the Marxist regime’s 62-year infamous reign the Cuban nation outside of its territory, the exile community, has actively sought the country’s liberation by all moral means, violent and non-violent.

The Castro-Communism is currently facing enormous pressures from the place where it least expected when it launched its delirious socialist project upon Cuba and Latin America. The “new man”, that generation that indoctrination, counterculture, legalism, and a comprehensive repressive apparatus was supposed to produce a new variant of a person: a communist citizen. Guess what? The result of this new generational product of Cuban Communism is a conscious citizenry that is clear that it wants to live in the territory-less Cuban nation, possibly in Hialeah, Florida, or in a free Cuba.

The Marxist-Leninist authorities in Havana have their work cut out for them. Knowing full well that the Cuban exile community, 23% of the country’s population, despite generational passages and the fortune of living in free and prosperous places, is still adamant that Cubans on the Island must enjoy the same liberties that they have. Free Cubans, for the most part, are not willing to accomplices and settle for a Caribbean version of China. The monster is wounded and worried.

Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.

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