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Police round up 30 homosexuals

Sandokan

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Police round up 30 homosexuals
=http://www.cubanet.org/News 2009/June 2009.html]Cuba: News June 2009

HAVANA, Cuba, June 18, 2009 (Aliomar Janjaque Chivaz, LGBT Cuba Noticias / Cubanet/index) – Blogger Amauri Dovodelavilla Torriente, who has a blog dedicated to the fight against HIV/AID, was arrested last weekend in a police round up of some 30 homosexuals in Havana.

The arrests, carried out by National Police, took place around the Capitol.

“I was arrested at 10 on Saturday morning and released at 2 in the morning Saturday,” said Dovodelavilla Torriente. “When I asked the motive of the arrests, no one responded.

It is humiliating and inhumane to be arrested without reason just because one is gay and wants to speak to colleagues in a public place.”
The acclaimed documentary "Improper Coduct" by Cuban exiles Nestor Almendros, a highly respected cinematographer, and Orlando Jiménez Leal effectively depicts the widespread and systematic oppression and persecution of those who didn't fit Castro's image of ‘macho’. The film remains a powerful antidote to the overly “rose-colored vision many political radicals have” of revolutionary Cuba.
 
The Hollywood and liberal elites in places such as New York and Washington have championed the rights of gays and want to ban groups such as the Boy Scouts, but when it comes to monsters such as Fidel Castro, they are silent.

Gay life after the Cuban revolution has been a horrible nightmare of repression, persecution, massive raids, incarceration, concentration camps and death. Gay people in Cuba today do not live, just barely survive. This I know because of family and friends still living there.
 
Unfortunately Cubans still seems to suffer under a ridiculous macho culture that is luckily declining in the West. Raids like the one described is simply revolting; no government should ever usurp the power to interfere with who adults choose to be with. Many societies has actively fought homophobia and granted homosexuals full citizenship without any damage happening to society, in contrast these societies has benefited from letting a large minority take part in life on en even scale with anyone else. I hope for the Cubans that they will too see such a change.
 
''The film remains a powerful antidote to the overly “rose-colored vision many political radicals have” of revolutionary Cuba. ''

Yeah, I think there might be films and books like that, about every torture regime, if only people would read and watch them, to balance their political views about thise countries.
 
Unfortunately Cubans still seems to suffer under a ridiculous macho culture that is luckily declining in the West. Raids like the one described is simply revolting; no government should ever usurp the power to interfere with who adults choose to be with. Many societies has actively fought homophobia and granted homosexuals full citizenship without any damage happening to society, in contrast these societies has benefited from letting a large minority take part in life on en even scale with anyone else. I hope for the Cubans that they will too see such a change.
The nightmare for gays and lesbians in Cuba, despite the well-orchestrated Castro propaganda, which includes tours of gay life in his "paradise", is hardly over.

Many naïve gays and lesbians, as well as members of the U.S. media, fall prey to these deceptive tours and they return praising the open gay life on the island. I marvel at their "observations." It reminds me of the many American tourists and reporters who visited Hitler’s Germany and failed to see the horrible reality of the Nazis.
 
Police stop entry to UN AIDS activity

HAVANA, Cuba, July 15 (Aliomar Janjaque, Fundación cubana LGTB Reinaldo Arenas / Cubanet/index) – Police agents arrested 19 young homosexuals who tried to attend a weekend of an AIDS prevent group held in the basement of the Capital building, according to a gay and lesbian group.

The Reinaldo Arenas Cuban Foundation of Lesbians, Gays, Transvestites and Bisexuals said the police also deported eight youths to their hometowns in the interior.

The foundation said the activity was sponsored by a United Nations AIDS and HIV awareness group.
Castro’s draconian anti-homosexual policies cohere with his enslavement of the Cuban population. These perpetrations share a totalitarian underpinning that expropriates self-ownership and bars basic human choice (where one can live, whom one can love, etc.). A regime that reduces human beings to chattel is hardly loath to forbid particular affection.
 
The Hollywood and liberal elites in places such as New York and Washington have championed the rights of gays and want to ban groups such as the Boy Scouts, but when it comes to monsters such as Fidel Castro, they are silent.

Gay life after the Cuban revolution has been a horrible nightmare of repression, persecution, massive raids, incarceration, concentration camps and death. Gay people in Cuba today do not live, just barely survive. This I know because of family and friends still living there.

What influence would those people have over Cuban laws? I've never understood this idea that just because you don't protest in the street over every bad situation everywhere in the world that you're somehow a hypocrite. News Flash: Americans focus on things happening in America.
 
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The Hollywood and liberal elites in places such as New York and Washington have championed the rights of gays and want to ban groups such as the Boy Scouts, but when it comes to monsters such as Fidel Castro, they are silent.
I've never heard of someone wanting to ban the Boy Scouts, but I don't think that they should be govt. funded since they're basically a religious organization.

Gay life after the Cuban revolution has been a horrible nightmare of repression, persecution, massive raids, incarceration, concentration camps and death. Gay people in Cuba today do not live, just barely survive. This I know because of family and friends still living there.
Well go figure on that. Communism FTW.
 
What influence would those people have over Cuban laws? I've never understood this idea that just because you don't protest in the street over every bad situation everywhere in the world that you're somehow a hypocrite. News Flash: Americans focus on things happening in America.
Are you part of the liberal elite and the reason you remained silence? If you focus in "things happening in America", why are you interested in this thread?
Toothpicvic said:
I've never heard of someone wanting to ban the Boy Scouts, but I don't think that they should be govt. funded since they're basically a religious organization
With regard to the ban, an atheist lost a battle to ban the Boy Scouts of America from recruiting in Portland Public Schools because the organization requires a belief in God. The court said it found "no basis for concluding that religious teaching or indoctrination is a substantial purpose or activity of the Boy Scouts." Non sense, the Boy Scout is a youth organization which the goal to train youth in responsible citizenship, character development, and self-reliance.

The release of "Before Night Falls," a brilliant film by artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel, based on the life of the late Cuban exiled gay writer Reinaldo Arenas, there is a second chance to take a peek at the reality of gay survival in Castroland. This film, wonderfully acted by Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Arenas, accurately displays the tortured and traumatic existence of Arenas.
 
This film, wonderfully acted by Spanish actor Javier Bardem...

Yum! If Javi's in it, I'll watch it. :mrgreen:
 
Because of what Reinaldo Arenas the writer had to say about reality in Cuba, he was disregarded in the U.S. by the intellectual and academic community - very much dominated by the pro-Castro left. His books were virtually ignored, and in many instances left-leaning groups disrupted his lectures.
 
And the sad part is, they aren't likely to get political asylumn if they swim to Miami!

This country is just as homophobic as Cuba is!
 
Homosexuals arrested for attending theatrical gay representation
Cuba: Arrestan a homosexuales por asistir a representación teatral gay

Havana, 23 of October, Aliomar Janjaque, Cuban Foundation LGTB, Cubanet/index) – Nine young homosexual were detained at night the past Tuesday 20, when they went to the staging of Theorem the of the Vindication, a gay themed play presented to commemorate the World-wide Day of the Test of HIV. The event was conducted in the residence of Henry Solis Estévez, professor of acting and promoter of the celebrations for the community LGTB, Party Gay Freedom, according to I inform Jaime Last, gay of 34 years, assistant to the activity.

The agents of the Security of the State allowed the access to the house to the first assistants, but later they began to turn whom they approached the place, mainly young LGBT, being asked to them identification. The agents did not explain the reasons by which they arrested the homosexuals. The official who arrested “the Cambel”, a travesty 19 years old, from Boyeros municipality, shouted that they took prisoner for being “una pájara” (a queer bird).

“Only 28 people managed to arrive at the house and were present at the staging, in charge of the independent theater group Tripod and directed by Yusmania Noublet”, informed Soli's. The nine arrested, none of which had pending causes with justice, were taken to the police station of Santiago de Las Vegas and released hours after the conclusion of the activity, without being fined or receive any other explanations.

Alexander Perez Perez, gay actor of 20 years of age and protagonist of the work, said:

“I thank the Cuban Foundation LGBT Reinaldo Arenas in memorial, for offering us a space where we have the opportunity to express ourselves.”
If the gays and lesbians of America want to help their Cuban counterparts and put an end to their misery as well as to help themselves avoid falling into similar predicaments by being easy prey of a deceptive political system, they should learn more about the realities of their brothers and sisters trapped in Cuba. Advancing the truth about them will set them free.
 
“I thank the Cuban Foundation LGBT Reinaldo Arenas in memorial, for offering us a space where we have the opportunity to express ourselves.”
Reinaldo Arenas committed suicide at 47 in Manhattan. Arenas was a homosexual who was 15 when Castro was received in triumph in Havana, in January 1959, and knew all the ins and outs of homosexual life from that of poor peasants to high-ranking aides of Castro protected by their positions. He was also a gifted writer. Frustrated from doesn’t having his novels published in his own country, he wound up in the El Morro prison for several years for having smuggled his manuscripts abroad, where they were published to considerable praise.
 
Arenas was able to get to the United States during the Mariel boatlift, and he said:
I remember that, after I arrived in the United States, a Cuban exile who lived in Washington said to me: 'Don't ever quarrel with the left.' For people like him, to attack Castro's government was to fight against the left. But after twenty years of repression, how could I keep silent about those crimes? On the other hand, I never considered myself as belonging to the 'left' or to the 'right,' nor do I want to be included under any opportunistic or political label. I tell my truth, as does the Jew who has suffered racism, or the Russian who has been in the Gulag or any human being who has eyes to see the way things really are. I scream, therefore I exist."
Well said, amen.
 
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