April 08, 2005
Letter from Dr. Hilda Molina
Dr. Hilda Molina is a top Cuban brain surgeon who was denied a visa at the Argentine Embassy in Havana last year. She desperately wanted to visit her grandson in Buenos Aires. fidel suspected she might not be back, and so, instead of showing the world his 'family man' "concern" about uniting families, as he pretended to do in the case of Elian, he told her no, declaring that she was a commodity product belonging to the state, and therefore could never leave the country. Shamefully, the Argentines caved in and denied her an exit visa in response to savage pressure from fidel.
This wasn't the first problem Dr. Molina has had with fidel. She was a prominent doctor, a top researcher, and a member of parliament and even knew fidel. However, that meant nothing when she defied fidel over his preferential system of health care for foreigners versus, well, you know what kind of health care Cubans get under fidel. It made her sick. She also defied fidel over stem-cell research, because she didn't want to chop up aborted babies for the research as he did. For those two unforgiveable things, fidel has made her life hell on earth for the past ten years.
Of course she can't get a job or make use of her talents anymore. All she can do is write letters now and hope one of her messages in a bottle reaches some civilization.
After she was thrown out of the embassy last December and into the waiting arms of fidel's henchmen, I have been trying to learn of her status, because she is still stuck in Havana and cannot get out. Today, my friends at CADAL, a respected free-market, pro-liberty think tank in Buenos Aires who have been monitoring her case closely, have forwarded a letter from Dr. Molina, and I have translated it into English for Babalu (and corrections are welcome):
City of Havana, Cuba
8 March 2005
To:
United Nations Human Rights Commission
Interamerican Commission of Human Rights
Human Rights Watch
Center for Openess and Development in Latin America
Organizations and personalities who struggle for respect for human rights
Excellent Sirs:
I am writing to you all with a proposal to denounce one more time the multitude of human rights violations, especially those related to the rights of families, which is systematically and with impunity propagated by the government of Cuba.
First: In 1994, I considered unacceptable among other things, the official political decision to dollarize funding of the medical-neuroscientific institution, and the consequent discrimination against my compatriots who are affected by grave neurological illnesses and who are invalids, I renounced to all links to the regime and this society, including my post as representative in Cuba's parliament.
Since the precise moment of my resignation, my family and I have been victims of an interminable string of calumnies, and in supreme cruelty, I have been prohibited from travelling abroad. Over more than 10 years, I have solicited it without rest, the absurd permission to travel required by Cubans in general; the government denies me this permission, arguing that my scientific position is prominent, and "that my brain is the patrimony of the nation." The consequence of this variant of captivity that I am subject to, implies a public violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
- The Cuban government impeded me from temporarily visiting Argentina for a reunion, after 11 years of forcible separation, with my son, who is a naturalized Argentinian, and with his wife who is an Argentine citizen.
- The Cuban government has forbidden me from the possibility of knowing my grandchildren who were born in Argentina. They, who will soon be 10 and 11 years old are in danger of grave psychological disequilibrium due to the growing separation from their paternal family.
- The Cuban government is impeding me from assisting hundreds scientific academic events in diverse ways, all of which I am consistently invited.
- The Cuban government remains insensitive to the pitiful wishes of my old mother who is gravely infirm, impeding the normal reunification of our family.
To resume and conclude the arguments I have previously expounded upon, I will reiterate that the government of Cuba:
-Violated the sacred rights of my grandchildren to live and grow happily in the sight of all their family, as is known in the Convention on the rights of the child.
-Violated the more sensible rights of women, mothers and grandmothers. Actually, at 62 years of age, I find myself undefended, infirm, and incapacitated.
-Violated the rights of my family, and tortured psychologically my old dying mother and my innocent little grandchildren.
-Violated my rights as a professional, impeding my free entry and exit from Cuba, to complete scientific academic engagements.
Second: The tragic situation of my family does not constitute an exception in Cuba over the last 46 years. It is precisely the family, one of the institutions most destroyed in this case for five decades of communist government.
1. The Cubans are not dependent on the permission of the government to travel abroad and return to the country, without constantly having their rights of free movement violated by the arbitrary state organs that delay or deny, provoking the tearing apart of thousands of innocent families, that submerges them in paralyzing fear, so they are incapacitated to reclaim the respect for their rights most elemental.
2. Thousands of families have suffered and are suffering from the distance of their loved ones, subject to an unjust prison for reasons of conscience.
3. Since 1959, hundreds of thousands of families have been humiliated, repudiated, calumnified and swiftly incarcerated, only for their decision, materialized or not, to reside overseas. And over many years, hundreds of thousands of families were condemned to incommunication with their loved ones if they managed to abandon their country.
4. Thousands of families have suffered and are suffering from the habitual absence of some of their family members, involuntarily from the government, in distance and at many times for illogical reasons.
The family, the pillar institution of society, is gravely infirm in Cuba, because those who govern account with absolute power to capriciously administer the rights of all, giving no importance to the lives of those they destroy.
It is true that in different latitudes of the planet, the rights of the weakest and most debilitated are violated daily. But this is censurable reality and unjustified, and not to be combated by defending and perpetrating other injustices. The existence of this unjust reality in the world, does not justify that personalities and organizations responsible for the defense of human rights, assume attitudes of acceptance, support or complicity done by a government that has cemented its power on the cries of fathers, sons, grandchildren, and innocent grandmothers; and on this systematic and public violation of the sacred rights of Cubans and their families.
May God have mercy.
Dr. Hilda Molina
Tel: 53-7-8782256 (home)
Posted by Mora at April 8, 2005 07:51 PM
Comments
This woman humbles me with her courage determination and sheer humanity.
Mariana Grajales exemplified the Cuban woman in colonial days
Dr. Molina has brought back that greatness to today's fight.
God bless her !
Posted by: KillCastro at April 8, 2005 11:56 PM
fidel, that family man, is exposed for all his lies about family unification in the case of Elian. Dr. Molina sheds his hypocrisy like ropa vieja. And she's right about this. I worry what castro's revenge on her for this might be - she indicts communism by name in this letter.
Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at April 9, 2005 10:39 AM
In the suicidal letter from Miguel Quevedo(BOHEMIA);he said Fidel killed to Manolo Castro. Who was him?,and said Fidel was to blame for Bogotazo. And Aline says him is to blame by suicide from Eddy Chibąs,it was a homicide?.
Posted by: Boutros at April 9, 2005 07:11 PM
Boutros, Quevedo's letter does not say that castro was to blame for the Bogotazo, but rather that he participated in it, which is an undeniable fact. The letter does not say that castro was to blame for the suicide of Eddy Chibįs; in fact, all it says about Chibįs is that the people wanted him. And this ties into one of the main points of the letter, i.e. that the people, and, more importantly, those whose job it was to inform the people chose to ignore facts that should have been harbingers of things to come.
Posted by: Miguel-O-Matic at April 10, 2005 11:21 AM
But who was Manolo Castro?. He killed to Gaitąn?. Aline-reads again idiot Miguel matic-,her daughter says he is to blame for mysterious suicide from Eddy Chibąs.
Posted by: Boutros at April 10, 2005 02:49 PM
Venezuelan Bohemia Magazine had any relation with Cuban one?.
Posted by: Alex at April 10, 2005 05:41 PM
Shows right there how cut off from the news Cubans are if she thought writing a letter to the un human rights commission would do any good.
Posted by: Jay at April 10, 2005 09:28 PM
Boutros, since you ask so nicely ;-> I will simply refer you to one of the many biographies of fidel castro available, e.g. fidel: A Critical Portrait by Tad Szulc. Peace.
Posted by: Miguel-O-Matic at April 10, 2005 11:32 PM