March 22, 2008
The Chinese model
Cuba owes China a lot.
For instance, if not for China, Cuba, not China, would be the world's No. 1 jailer of journalists, and maybe, just maybe, that might be too much for international defenders of the castro dictatorship to ignore.
So it's no surprise that the castro dictatorship today defended Beijing's crackdown on Tibetan protesters and condemned any talk of a boycott of the Summer Olympics in China later this year. After all, there may come a day when Cuba will need identical support from China in support of its own bad behavior
"The government of Cuba condemns with all of its energy attempts to organize a crusade aimed at undermining this noble undertaking," the Cuba government said, according to the Associated Press.
You can tell a lot about a dictatorship by who is friends are.
China's must be in desperate straits if it needs Cuba, with barely one-half of 1 percent of China's population and a basketcase economy, to defend it.
And you have to wonder whether Cuba, with a new tyrant-in-chief, is considering how it would apply this "Chinese model" to repressing dissent on the island.
Posted by Marc at March 22, 2008 10:07 PM
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Comments
Marc -
CHINA may be the #1 Jailer of Journalists in raw numbers. How does CUBA look if the numbers are adjusted to population? -S-
Posted by: Dr.Shalit ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 23, 2008 10:17 AM
According to Reporters Without Borders, there are 31 journalists imprisoned in China. That's a little more than 0.23 per 10 million of China's population (using CIA population figures.)
By comparison, there are, according to my count at Uncommon Sense (www.marcmasferrer.typepad.com), 27 journalists imprisoned in Cuba. That's 23.7 per 10 million population.
So the bottom line is, Cuba imprisons journalists at a rate of more than 100 times than the Chinese.
Of course, both the Cuban and Chinese dictatorships never met an independent journalist that they didn't want to throw in jail.
Posted by: Marc R. Masferrer at March 23, 2008 04:25 PM
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