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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
Tit For Tat: Cuba Raises Flags To Cover American Ticker
 Anita Snow - Associated Press
| | A news ticker flashes on the U.S. diplomatic mission facade reading 'Hugo Chavez affirms the....' in Havana February 6, 2006. | 
| Cuba hoisted 138 huge black flags, representing the nation's mourning for over 3,400 Cubans killed by U.S. sponsored violence since the 1959 revolution to block an electronic sign beaming messages from the facade of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
(Photos: Reuters/Claudia Daut) |
Havana - Black flags bearing a single white star were raised Monday outside the American mission in memory of those Cuba says have been killed in violence against the island, blocking an electronic sign on the building that has enraged communist officials.
Fidel Castro attended but did not address the hundreds of people gathered at the ceremony, which appeared aimed at underscoring Cuba's claims that the United States organized, financed or at the very least tolerated many of the attacks against the island over the decades. The scores of flags also managed to block the new electronic sign streaming news and human rights messages across the facade of U.S. diplomatic offices.
A large group of young people in the crowd carried huge signs made from the black and white photographs of some of the 3,000 Cubans the communist government says have been killed in acts of sabotage since shortly after the revolutionary triumph that propelled Castro to power 47 years ago.
"Instead of hate, our people have been a noble example in favor of life," said the Rev. Raul Suarez, a minister who also sits on Cuba's parliament.
America's top diplomat in Havana has said the sign will stay, despite protests from Cuba. The government also surrounded the U.S. mission with several billboards, including one with a mock ad for a horror film, "The Murderer," featuring likenesses of President Bush and the anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles with bloody vampire teeth.
Castro blames Posada for the 1976 jetliner explosion off the coast of Barbados that killed 73 people. The communist government accuses the United States of planning to free Posada from a detention center in El Paso, Texas, where he is being held on immigration charges.
Cuba also criticized the United States on Monday for allegedly pressuring an American hotel in Mexico to kick out a summit meeting between Cuban energy officials and U.S. oil executives. The Cubans' ouster prompted also prompted denunciations by Mexican politicians.
The energy meeting in Mexico City, which wrapped up Saturday after moving to a Mexican-owned hotel, was the first private-sector oil summit between Cuba and the United States.
Flags Fly in Cuba against Terrorism
Prensa Latina
Havana - One hundred black flags with a white star in the middle are flying in the wind in front of the US Interest Section in Havana, in denunciation of terrorism against Cuba and the thousands of victims it has caused.
The flags were raised Monday evening at a solemn ceremony which was presided over by President Fidel Castro at the Jose Marti Anti-imperialist Tribune and attended by relatives of terrorism victims, representatives of social and religious organizations and government and party officials.
After the ceremony, a group of the relatives began a 24 hour vigil to recall the death of 3,478 Cubans who have been victims of continued terrorist policy from successive US administrations against the revolutionary process on this Island.
They were all wearing black T-shirts as a sign of mourning and carried the photos of their lost family members.
Among them were the closest relatives of those who fell back in the 1961 Bay of Pig invasion and others who were killed in the mid-air bombing of a Cubana Air plane off the coast of Barbados, in which the entire national youth fencing team perished.
Some of the victim´s relatives took the floor to denounce the hypocrisy of the Bush administration in its advocated war against terrorism, while at the same time sheltering confessed criminals.
"The world is witnessing the clearest conduct of double standard of a Goverment that on one side frenziedly condemns terrorism and, on the other, incarcerates five Cubans precisely for fighting that scourge, while protecting the Western Hemisphere´s worst terrorist," Carlos Alberto Cremata told the audience.
Cremata, president of the Committee for Victims of the Crime of Barbados, recalled that this year Cubans will be remembering the 30th anniversary of that abhorrent action, masterminded by Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch.
For her part, the mother of one of the five Cubans unjustly jailed in the US, Irma Sehweret, charged Bush and US security services for protecting terrorists in South Florida.
Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino and René González, were arrested in Miami in 1998 and sentenced to harsh prison terms of 15 years and double life imprisonment in a politically biased trial in that city.
The Cuban Five, as they are known in international campaigns for their release, had penetrated organizations of extreme groups of Cuban-American that organize and launch terrorist actions against the Island. |
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