Dissident Accuses KaSStro of 'Economic Apartheid'

[posei...@sympatico.ca]

 

From: ricardo a gonzalez <ricar...@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Dissident Accuses Kastro of 'Economic Apartheid'
Date: Thursday, March 29, 2001 7:42 PM

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Thursday March 29 2:55 PM ET
Dissident Accuses Cuba of 'Economic Apartheid'

Nota: It is not Cuba but KaSStro who does impose this apartheid on cubans.!

By Andrew Cawthorne

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Fidel Castro's government maintains a system of
``economic apartheid'' and ``economic repression'' that favors foreigners
and denies Cubans basic opportunities, a dissident economist said on
Thursday.

``The economy is linked to human rights, and in Cuba there is no economic
advance precisely because the violation of these has become law in every
aspect of the marco- and micro-economy,'' wrote Martha Beatriz Roque, head
of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists.

The comments by Roque, a prominent opposition activist freed last year after
serving three years' jail for sedition, came in the latest edition of the
institute's alternative look at the Cuban economy.

In a list of complaints against Cuba's state-run socialist economy, Roque
first criticized the placing of workers.

Cuba routinely dismisses local dissidents like Roque as insignificant
U.S.-backed ``counter-revolutionaries'' known abroad only through Western
news agencies.

``Here in Cuba, people don't choose their job, rather the state selects the
person, who is fabricated according to its manner from the moment he leaves
the mother's womb,'' she wrote.

Roque also detailed what she said were ``scarce'' possibilities for people
to work in Cuba's tiny and tightly restricted private sector, and state
control over those who work with foreign companies on the Caribbean island.

``Between two workers opting for the same post, the one most committed to
the regime will be chosen, even though he's not the most capable,'' she
wrote in stinging criticisms of the Cuban economy of a sort seldom made in
public.

Roque criticized the lack of opportunity to form unions independent from the
state-affiliated Cuban Workers' Central, and limits on selling cars or
houses.

``There exists an economic apartheid, where no Cuban can invest in his own
country, he would have to leave and return as a foreign citizen.

``We cannot hope for development, social progress or an improvement in
standard of living while the economic repression weighs on the people of our
country,'' she said.

Other articles in the institute's report slammed ``the obvious disaster'' of
Cuba's current sugar harvest; highlighted the slow recovery of Cuba's
agricultural sector since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago; and
criticized the lack of availability of medicines in state pharmacies.

Jorge Fernandez Colom, another dissident economist working for the
Institute, denounced the Castro government's handling of the Internet.

``The Internet is totally controlled by the government, its accesses are
limited to selected state organs and, lately, dependent (state) media,'' he
wrote, adding that such restrictions applied only to native Cubans, not to
foreigners.

Cuba says limited Internet access is due to lack of resources, not political
reasons, and has accused the foreign media of ``an anti-Cuban campaign'' on
the subject.

In general, Havana rejects criticism of its economic model, saying
Western-style capitalism is increasingly discredited abroad and Cuban-style
socialism is the best way to protect people's social rights.

Cuba's economy slumped drastically in the years after the Soviet collapse,
but has been gradually recovering of late, with 5.6 percent gross domestic
product growth last year, and 5.0 percent expected in 2001, according to
official figures.


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