Posted by: tungsten
Posted by: FLATCH
How can I even take that seriously? Moral standing.
Well... a bunch of stuff including the standard link to his favourite website
So a professor that nobody has ever heard of has sent a paper defending Cuba to the UN?
To be honest I don't think Cuba is terrible and the embargo was juvenile, but Cuba was also never a boy scout. The country has done a very admirable job of providing for its people, even during the embargo and I think other countries can learn from them, but you always seem so eager to ignore heavy-handedness on open society when it is by people you admire. Their record on freedom of speech and freedom of the press is terrible. That is how authoritarians keep control. Castro didn't rule as long as he did by letting people think what they want. Neither did Chavez or Maduro.
These are actual Cuban laws:
A provision regarding contempt for authority (desacato) penalizes anyone who "threatens, libels or slanders, defames, affronts (injuria) or in any other way insults (ultraje) or offends, with the spoken word or in writing, the dignity or decorum of an authority, public functionary, or his agents or auxiliaries." Penalties are from three months to one year in prison, plus a fine. If the person demonstrates contempt for the President of the Council of the State, the President of the National Assembly of Popular Power, the members of the Council of the State or the Council of Ministers, or the Deputies of the National Assembly of the Popular Power, the penalty is from one to three years in prison.[6]
Anyone who "publicly defames, denigrates, or scorns the Republic's institutions, the political, mass, or social organizations of the country, or the heroes or martyrs of the nation" is subject to from three months to one year in prison. This sweeping provision potentially outlaws mere expressions of dissatisfaction or disagreement with government policies or practices.[6]
Clandestine printing is a crime against public order and anyone who "produces, disseminates, or directs the circulation of publications without indicating the printer or the place where it was printed, or without following the established rules for the identification of the author or origin, or reproduces, stores, or transports" such publications, can be sentenced to from three months to one year in prison.