Scott St. Clair: Cuba Libres, not Cuban Liberation, on minds of visiting Washington State Lawyers

After reading the January 2012 issue of the Washington State Bar News with its three pieces extolling the virtues of communist Cuba, I’m ashamed to admit I’m an inactive member of the bar (Washington State Bar Association #7854).

In October of last year over two-dozen Washington state lawyers, including WSBA president Stephen Crossland, took a junket to Cuba ostensibly to engage in lawyer-to-lawyer exchanges. What resulted, however, were three puff pieces in the most recent Bar News that read as if they were written by the Cuban Ministry of Propaganda and Hubris.

For the uninitiated, a Cuba libres is a cocktail made with copious quantities of dark rum, a product for which Cuba is as well known as its cigars and asylum-seeking baseball players.  

Apparently a good time was had by all, but no political prisoners or local human rights groups (they’re prohibited by law anyway) were visited by the lawyers so far as I could tell. Instead, Crossland wrote about cigars and Cuba’s sports legacy – they love their baseball. Former WSBA governor Patrick Palace gushed

  about crime-free Cuba and how his law office has now adopted a Monday-morning cappuccino break modeled on what he experienced while there.

But the worst was “On Law and Life in Cuba” by attorneys Hugh Spitzer and Doug Ende, an article so one-sided that the simple minded might be persuaded that Cuba is indeed paradise on earth all thanks to lawyers. Concluded the article:

Cuba is no longer the mystery and “forbidden fruit” of the Western Hemisphere. It is a country struggling to remain true to its ideological roots while at the same time experimenting in fits and starts with significant economic and political change. We were gratified to see that lawyers and the rule of law are integral to this change.

Yet the U.S. State Department’s 2010 Human Rights Report: Cuba (released in April 2011, six months before the lawyers’ trip) paints a different picture. In just under 12,000 words, Cuba is described as a human-rights and political-freedom hell on earth. Consider this opening paragraph:

The government denied citizens the right to change their government. In addition, the following human rights abuses were reported: harassment, beatings, and threats against political opponents by government-organized mobs and state security officials acting with impunity; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including selective denial of medical care; arbitrary detention of human rights advocates and members of independent organizations; and selective prosecution and denial of fair trial. Authorities interfered with privacy and engaged in pervasive monitoring of private communications. The government also placed severe limitations on freedom of speech and press, constrained the right of peaceful assembly and association, restricted freedom of movement, and limited freedom of religion. The government refused to recognize independent human rights groups or permit them to function legally. In addition, the government continued to place severe restrictions on worker rights, including the right to form independent unions.

Heaven help anyone who wants to change the government or stand on a street corner and call current dictator Raul Castro and his brother, former strongman Fidel, the murderous thugs they are. According to the State Department, the consequences of doing so could lead to prison and torture, not just “could lead to one’s career being stymied,” as the article states.

Sure, Cuban law and their constitution say a lot of real nice things. But, as the report repeatedly documents, what’s written on paper and what happens on the street corner when a squad of security police put a beat down on protesters are two different things. How Soviet Union is that?

Unless and until there are free elections, free speech and a free press – essential elements of a free society lawyers are pledged to support and fight for - Cuba will remain a communist dictatorship, visits from junketing, cigar-smoking and rum-quaffing Washington State Bar Association officials and members notwithstanding.

Scott St. Clair is a recovering lawyer and former investigative journalist with The Freedom Foundation.