Cuban authorities ‘responsible’ for activist’s death on hunger strike – Amnesty International
Cuban authorities ‘responsible’ for activist’s death on hunger strike 20 January 2012
“The responsibility for Wilman Villar Mendoza’s death in custody lies squarely with the Cuban authorities, who summarily judged and jailed him for exercising his right to freedom of expression.” Javier Zúñiga, Special Adviser at Amnesty International Fri, 20/01/2012
The death in custody of a Cuban prisoner of conscience after a hunger strike is a shocking reminder of the Raúl Castro government’s intolerance for dissent, Amnesty International said today.
Wilman Villar Mendoza, 31, died this morning in Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital in the city of Santiago where he was transferred from prison on 13 January due to health problems allegedly arising from a hunger strike protesting at his unfair trial and imprisonment.
He was serving a four-year prison term on charges related to his participation in a public demonstration against the government.
“The responsibility for Wilman Villar Mendoza’s death in custody lies squarely with the Cuban authorities, who summarily judged and jailed him for exercising his right to freedom of expression,” said Javier Zúñiga, Special Adviser at Amnesty International.
“His tragic death highlights the depths of despair faced by the other prisoners of conscience still languishing in Cuban jails, who must be released immediately and unconditionally.”
“The Cuban authorities must stop the harassment, persecution, and imprisonment of peaceful demonstrators as well as political and human rights activists.”
On 14 November 2011, police arrested Villar Mendoza and eight other members of the Cuban Patriotic Union dissident group in the eastern town of Contramaestre for taking part in a protest against the Cuban government.
While he was in detention, police intimidated Villar Mendoza, telling him he would be disappeared or face imprisonment on criminal charges stemming from an earlier arrest if he did not stop his protests and leave the dissident group.
He was released after three days in police custody but was then summoned to Contramaestre Municipal Tribunal on 24 November. Judges tried him in private and refused to accept testimony from his wife or other defence witnesses.
The judges sentenced the activist to four years’ imprisonment and immediately transferred him to Aguadores prison, in the provincial capital Santiago. The same day, he began a hunger strike in protest at the ruling.
As Villar Mendoza’s health deteriorated over recent days, members of the Cuban Patriotic Union and the Ladies in White opposition group organised a vigil outside the hospital. On 18 January, state security officials broke up the gathering and detained more than a dozen people.
Wilman Villar Mendoza is not the first prisoner of conscience to die in Cuban custody.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of conscience jailed after the “Black Spring” crackdown on opposition groups in March 2003, died in prison on 23 February 2010 after several weeks on hunger strike.
Amnesty: Cuba Releases 3 Prisoners of Conscience
Amnesty: Cuba Releases 3 Prisoners of ConscienceBy PETER ORSI Associated PressHAVANA January 23, 2012 (AP)
Amnesty International said Monday that three Cubans held without charge for 52 days following their arrest at a protest were released last week, hours after the human rights group named them as prisoners of conscience.
The release of the three also came a day after a hunger-striking dissident died, prompting condemnation from island dissidents, rights watchers, the United States and other nations. Amnesty had planned to designate Wilman Villar, 31, a prisoner of conscience but he died in custody before it could.
Ivonne Malleza Galano, Ignacio Martinez Montejo and Isabel Haydee Alvarez were set free Jan. 20 but threatened with "harsh sentences" if they do not stop their anti-government actions, the human rights monitor said in a statement Monday.
It said all three were detained at a Nov. 30 protest in Havana at which Malleza and Martinez held a banner that read "Stop hunger, misery and poverty in Cuba." Alvarez was arrested for objecting when security forces took the other two into custody.
"Amnesty International had adopted them as prisoners of conscience, as they were detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and had called for their immediate and unconditional release," the statement said.
Cuba considers dissident activity to be counterrevolutionary, and the dissidents to be mercenaries out to bring down the communist-run government. It denies holding any political prisoners in its lockups.
Amnesty, which has strict criteria for who constitutes a "prisoner of conscience" including a history of nonviolence, had not recognized any Cuban inmates as such since the previous spring, when the last of 75 dissidents jailed since a 2003 crackdown were freed.
Villar was arrested in November in the eastern city of Santiago following an anti-government protest.
The Cuban government denied that he had been on hunger strike or was even truly a dissident. It described him as a "common criminal" sent to prison for domestic violence, said he received all the medical attention he needed and alleged that his case was being manipulated for political ends.
Authorities' indignation continued Monday as official newspapers Granma and Trabajadores published an editorial titled "Cuba's Truths." Taking up the entire front pages of both publications, it attacked critics' own records on human rights and defended the island, citing achievements in health care, education and literacy, and calling the accusations a smear campaign by Cuba's enemies.
"The so-called political prisoner was serving a sentence of four years, following a fair process … and a trial according to the rule of law, for brutally and publicly beating his wife, threatening police and violently resisting arrest," the editorial said
The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which monitors detentions of dissidents in Cuba, sent an open letter to the government demanding access to the investigation.
It said it wanted to confirm or rule out its belief that Villar was unfairly and disproportionately punished for his political activities, held in solitary confinement and given inadequate medical care when he went on hunger strike. Signed by Commission founder Elizardo Sanchez, a dissident and former prisoner himself, the letter doubted that Villar was truly imprisoned for beating his wife.
"The family incident from July 2011 should be clarified, as well as the reasons why he would be freed and sent back to the family home despite the possible risks from a supposed situation of domestic violence," it read.
A Cuban-American jailed in Cuba since 2006 is freed and sent home because of ill health
Posted on Friday, 02.03.12
A Cuban-American jailed in Cuba since 2006 is freed and sent home because of ill health
Julio Rafael Mesa Fariñas, freed by Cuba on Friday, was in a cell next to Alan Gross during part of his incarceration.By Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
The Cuban government freed a former Hialeah truck driver jailed since 2006 for a people-smuggling attempt in which a smuggler died and allowed him to fly home because he was ill.
Julio Rafael Mesa Fariñas, 51, said he was taken to the Havana airport Wednesday directly from a cell next to the one where U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross is being held and flew to Miami with the help of U.S. diplomats in Havana.
During his six years in prison, Mesa said, he was hospitalized several times because of hunger strikes, was bitten twice by guard dogs while handcuffed and suffered hypothermia when he refused to wear prison uniforms.
Cuban officials told him that he was being freed because of his ill health. He is now in a wheelchair and suffered a seizure Thursday that landed him in a hospital, Mesa told El Nuevo Herald during a lengthy phone interview Friday.
Mesa said he and two other Cubans set out from Mexico's Caribbean state of Quintana Roo aboard a 40-foot boat in April of 2006. They had been hired to pick up 44 people trying to escape from the southern coast of Pinar Del Rio Province.
The Cuban government alleged the boat was intercepted by one of its Coast Guard vessels, failed to heed a warning to stop and took "aggressive actions" that required guardsmen to open fire. Geovel González Morera, one of the smugglers, was shot and killed and Rosendo Salgado was shot in the foot. Salgado and Mesa, both U.S. citizens, were sentenced to 26 and 20 years in prison, respectively.
"There was no warning of any kind. A flare went up and they automatically opened fire. They assassinated Morera," said Mesa, who added that he plans to file a lawsuit against Cuba "for Morera's murder."
Mesa noted that during the clash a guardsman threw a rock that hit him on the head, causing partial paralysis and landing him in a hospital for a month. While odd, he said, the rock-throwing is noted in the documents of his court case.
He launched several liquids-only hunger strikes at the Combinado del Este prison in Havana to demand a transfer to La Condesa, reserved for foreigners, or a reduction of his sentence, Mesa added. Former political prisoners Oscar Elias Biscet and Angel Moya confirmed Friday that they met Mesa in prison and that he staged several hunger strikes. Other details of his tale could not be independently confirmed.
Mesa said he was in and out of several hospitals because of his hunger strikes, and spent two periods in the prison wing of the Military Hospital Carlos J. Finlay in Havana's Marianao section. That is the hospital where Gross is being held.
Gross was arrested in late 2009 and was sentenced to 15 years for delivering sophisticated communications equipment to the Cuban Jewish community. The equipment was paid for by the U.S. government as part of a program that Havana has labeled as "subversive."
Mesa said during his second stay at the military hospital where he was held for 60 days before he was released, Gross appeared to be thinner and "unwell" but "in good spirits" and that he had benefits that Cuban prisoners did not, such as air conditioning in his room and a special diet.
Guards did not allow them to talk, he added, but he heard Gross shouting that a State Security official "had lied" by promising benefits, such as a reduction in his sentence, if he cooperated with the investigation.
Also held at the military hospital is Rolando García Pereira, a U.S. resident convicted of people trafficking in 2001.
Mesa left Cuba during the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and during a return visit he met a woman and they had a son. He promised smugglers to pick them up for $20,000, he said, and was working off the debt when he was captured.
He said that after Cuban officials told him that he would be freed, two U.S. diplomats in Havana visited him to arrange his departure. He received a valid U.S. passport, and a daughter sent him the money for the flight to Miami.
It was not immediately clear whether Mesa could face criminal charges in the United States for the people-smuggling case.
As he left Havana, Mesa said, Cuban immigration officials stamped every single page of his passport so he could never use it again. Arriving in Miami in a wheelchair and with a stamped-up passport after a six-year absence, he said he was greeted with a "Welcome home. No questions. No nothing."
Conjectures About 2012 / Miriam Celaya
Conjectures About 2012 / Miriam CelayaMiriam Celaya, Translator: Norma Whiting
A recurring theme among the last days of 2011 and early 2012 by Cubans and foreign individuals interested in the Cuban reality has been about the outlook for the year just begun, given the chronic nature of the national economic crisis, the ongoing measures (reforms) of the General-President, with his Galapagos kind of pace, the announced increase in the worldwide recession and the political events that will have an important influence on the situation in the medium term, namely, the presidential elections that will take place in the United States and, fundamentally, those in Venezuela.
The warning signs that constitute the tip of an iceberg floating adrift erratically became more pronounced in Cuba in 2011: the removal of some subsidies, the end of the monthly lifetime allowance in hard currency (50 CUC) to staff having completed health "missions" in other Third World countries, the shut-down of several work centers and other silent layoffs, the reduction in ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas) student programs, especially at the Latin American Medical School, increases in food prices and other staples, worsening economic living conditions in the poorest sectors of society (the majority), in contrast against increases in the standard of living of a small sector of the new middle class, among others. This, coupled with the general apathy and the growing feeling of helplessness on the part of groups that will not benefit from Raulista measures, is a picture that points to the further deterioration of social situations and the potential increases in crime, among other adverse factors.
One of the strongest contradictions is the slow pace of government reforms, which, so far, has been unable to stop the deterioration of the system, compared to the rapid social impoverishment that is directly reflected in the disappointment, uncertainty, and lack of confidence in the future, especially a future dependent on the power group that controls both the macro economy and national politics. There don't seem to be many flattering indicators, or reasons for hope. If the welfare of Cuban families hinges on setting up a kiosk or an eatery, on remittances received from relatives abroad –those who have that luxury- or on expectations that hang on the generosity of the government, we might as well start turning out the lights and closing the doors: that is not a future.
On the other hand, none of the new economic "rights" has been matched by social and political rights, as is logical under totalitarian regimes. Cubans have been so thoroughly disenfranchised and have been subjected to such "paternalistic" controls that even we in the opposition factions and independent civil society have sometimes unconsciously wished that freedom of expression, of association and of the press be "allowed", as if they weren't natural rights inherent to the human condition. What can we expect from others who have let discouragement win!
Nevertheless, 2011 was also witness to a surge in alternative and civic groups and to obvious links between the two. A spontaneous process of modest but visible growth has been taking place within the independent civil society, which could be consolidating gradually. Undoubtedly, though it is a small sector, corresponding to the conditions of the dictatorship, this is the reflection of the will of Cubans with emancipated mentalities, determined not to ask permission to be free, convinced that it is vital to transform reality within ourselves. A few years ago this was unthinkable. Similarly, along with the growth of civic spaces, we can expect strong resistance from the authorities, and an eventual increase in repression.
The fate of one and all in this 2012 will be marked, among other situational factors, by the interests that have already been outlined more clearly, which, in very general terms, are: the olive green elite and all of its caste, by virtue of recycling itself in order to maintain power; the great entrepreneurs, members of that same caste or associated with it, for maintaining an economic monopoly and increasing their private capitals; new small businessmen and owners, for increasing their profits, making use of the meager reforms, and perhaps for fighting for other reforms; the ever-unfortunates, for surviving another year of shortages; we, the disobedient dreamers, for increasing activism in order to promote awareness of democratic changes and for seeking new ways to foster them.
Some readers may think I'm pessimistic, but that is not the case. My greatest optimism consists precisely in viewing reality face-to-face and continuing to wish for changes. Today, the despair of tens of thousands of Cubans is one of the main allies of the regime. However, we must not give up. We might find the opportunity and perform a miracle in the midst of all this dark, murky and imprecise present. Nobody knows how much time we have left, but it is not the time to throw in the towel. Those of us who are alive and want to achieve will not allow fatigue and defeat to win the game.
Translated by Norma Whiting
January 9 2012
Medical Policy, or Political Medicine? / Ernesto Morales Licea
Medical Policy, or Political Medicine? / Ernesto Morales LiceaErnesto Morales Licea, Translating Cuba, Translator: Unstated
A little less than a year ago I lived for two weeks thinking I had cancer in my lymph nodes. In November, 2010, a team of pathologists at the "Carlos Manuel de Cespedes" Provincial Hospital in Bayamo signed a yellowish paper, prepared on a typewriter with a number of typing errors, telling me I had a Hodgkin lymphoma of the nodular sclerosis type.
The news was soon running like wildfire in a city of two hundred thousand people where my name, due to journalist-politician confrontations, had gained unfortunate notoriety.
Fifteen days later, another team of pathologists, these belonging to the "Hermanos Ameijeiras" Hospital in Havana, would make my mother let loose a flood of withheld tears,by telling us that opinion was nothing but a monstrous error.
The tests repeated in Havana on my lymph nodes showed an alteration (hyperplasia) which may have been the product of an ancient virus, which did not contain any sign of malignancy.
The diagnostics that would save me from the clutches of chemotherapy came after procedures as tortuous as a bone biopsy of the hip, a medullogram, and another nasal tissue biopsy (only practicable by introducing a kind of fine scissors in my nose to the larynx, and cutting a piece of tissue), from which I suffered for several days.
On returning to my eastern city, with another paper telling me that at age 26 I was not facing any cancer, never let me know what the five pathologist from Bayamo did or did not see when they determined that I had Hodgkin's lymphoma.
That's right: literature searches and dozens of questions to other physicians let me know that these kind of lymphoma cells have a clear structure, well-defined, classical, which make any confusion very difficult.
I will never assert that behind an opinion that destroyed the nerves of my family and my friends, was the dark and powerful hand of the State Security, as several of those close to me asserted, alarmed at the inconceivable error. It is not my specialty to found my opinions on subjective bases, without arguments in hand: that is the specialty of the slanderers.
However, now that after the incredibly sudden death of Laura Pollan some well-known Cuban dissidents (Elizardo Sanchez, Guillermo Fariñas, Jose Daniel Ferrer, among many others) have signed a declaration of refusal to be hospitalized for illness, I find it impossible not to recall my own experience.
The national tragedy reaches such extremes of justified paranoia: when apparatchiks of State intelligence have the power to expel students from the University, to decide who can and cannot travel outside the country, to block a person from purchasing food at a supermarket, or entering a public movie theater; when these apparatchiks are present even in the most anodyne and least important institutions of society, why not believe their interests would also prevail in a hospital?
This statement of the Cuban Democratic Alliance, saying that only in case of emergency surgery do they want to be transferred to a "hospital of the regime" (read: all Cuban hospitals), and only if a doctor they trust tells them so, I believe represents one of the most terrible statements that could be known for a long time: not even in the medical system do the disaffected feel they have full rights.
Not even in a quasi-sacred ground such as health care, where professionals swear the Hippocratic oath to defend the lives of their patients at all costs, an area that should not ever yield to pressures or influences of any kind, not even there can Cubans who oppose the government can feel safe.
Yoani Sanchez once told me how the emergency medical attention she received at a clinic in Havana, was reported later, in minute detail, by a reporter who aired a television report against her.
Just as I will never know how much was error and how much was intentional in a diagnosis that ripped away a large part of my youth, it's likely we may never know to what extent two deadly viruses entered the body of Laura Pollan naturally, if she was already infected with them, and whether they were really the cause of death of the Lady in White. That's one of the many consequences of the obscurantism with which everything moves at the official level in Cuba.
But we do know a hard truth: the values of a society are too riddled with rot if even the responsibility, the incorruptibility of medical ethics must be distrusted by those who disagree with government policy. With or without reason.
(Originally published in Martí Noticias)
October 20 2011
The Paths of the General / Luis Felipe Rojas
The Paths of the General / Luis Felipe RojasLuis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G.
This article was written by Luis Felipe Rojas for 'Diario de Cuba'. It has been re-posted on this blog:
In regards to the year which has just begun, it is evident that the directions of the Cuban government are like forked transit lines. With more desires to give orders to its members than to implement any sort of political economy, on January 28th they will hold the First National Conference of the Communist Party (PCC).
Towards the end of March the General-President will receive the Vatican authorities, rosary and timbrel at hand. And during the middle of the year he will once again be in the limelight, with our without the fulfillment of promises. Cuba will once again see how dreams and demands dissipate.
On a tour which was expected to come sooner or later, the Castro leadership has gone up against itself. Against the inflated staffs, administrative corruption, and economic inefficiency. The three whips of Cuban society have been exposed in numerous public meetings: the communist congress and the ordinary session of the National Assembly.
We would have to see if the Cuban technocrats are willing to change their mentality and cast away their furies against the same projects as always. While the historic direction holds tight to the old art of snapping orders and marching, thousands of Cubans try to improve their lives selling what they themselves cultivate, carrying out service jobs or applying their talents to new technologies.
However, enthusiasms aside, the penalization of difference still weighs heavy over the heads of the majority of Cubans, as well as the rake against free association and the establishment of unions, and laws like Social Dangerousness which seem to belong in the Middle Ages.
Without being able to defend their most basic rights, the Cuban citizenry, since the beginning of the millennium, has been trapped in the delicacies of capitalism and civilization which has been placed before them. They produce foreign currency, which they cannot freely enjoy. They substitute imports with medical services which they can rarely enjoy and, on top of that, they carry the weight of errors committed by the senile leadership.
The more moderate forces among the rulers (which are not always visible) opt for a change of tactics and for a reasonable strategy which would favor the betterment of the citizen. A consensus of the majority of workers has demonstrated the weariness produced by slogans and inefficiency of promises.
The criticisms of Raul Castro and the dissidents of the government are going to crash against the accommodated tendency of the bureaucrats. Attempting to impregnate from stamps of eternal solidarity with Cubans, the maximum leadership deprives them of health services which are obliged to serve their third-world contemporaries.
At this point, many are asking themselves about the relationship between the statistic offered by Cuba of 4.9 children who have died per each thousand born alive, and the fact of not publishing the statistics of the budget cuts in the public health sector. Will this statistic be upheld despite the cuts? As for the popular sophism of 'tossing the house out through the window', there is also the fact that there are many necessities, due to a weakened system of primary attention.
Upon being asked if he was a militant (of the Communist Party, of course), a well known professor for the University of Oriente responded, "No, I am the culprit". The joke has transcended university property and illustrates the disillusion of that 'minority' (in the words of Rafael Rojas) which, in regards to political strength, has transmuted to another social ill.
Translated by Raul G.
9 January 2011
“Discriminated“ Professions / Fernando Dámaso
"Discriminated" Professions / Fernando DámasoFernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated
I'm not treading on thin ice if I argue that the legalization of self-employment — which never should have been outlawed — has been well received by most citizens and, for many, has become a significant form of subsistence for their families, despite the high taxes, the bureaucracy and the inspectors and other complications.
However, in the legalization, I want to call attention to a group of professionals who have been discriminated against because they have not been authorized to practice their professions on their one. I'm referring to doctors, dentists, professors, architects, engineers, lawyers and others. These, if they work for themselves, cannot exercise the professions for which they studied and gained work experience — but may work in other occupations such as parking attendants, taxi drivers, restaurant owners or workers, or repairers of eyeglasses, lighters or shoes, and so on, none of which they prepared for or have experience in. When a country can afford to ignore its professionals in this way, it is either because there is a surplus or because something isn't working. I think its the latter.
Photo Peter Deel
The argument for such a prohibition is that if they are authorized to work in their professions, the State would be without a great number of them, due to the miserable salaries they receive and their poor working conditions. I don't doubt it because it's very easy to check, but the solution is not to continue banning something that might come to pass in excess.
I think different possible solutions can be analyzed. I'll limit myself to two: the first, which could be difficult to apply in this time of economic crisis, would be to raise their salaries to make them competitive with what they would receive working for themselves, and to improve working conditions. The second, which could be a transition phase, would be to limit them to working part of the day for the State — with the associated wages — and part for themselves, at their own risk.
This would satisfy both interests: the State's and the individual's, with one as important as the other. It's nothing new: in the years of the Republic it worked this way in different sectors, such as health, education and others.
One or the other of these possible solutions, or some other approach, should be tried sooner rather than later, the full legalization of work, and every citizen engaged in whatever suits him, for which he is prepared, when he desires, without absurd prohibitions, within the framework of free competition.
This would result in economic improvement, bettering the services and developing the nation. What's more, we would not experience the bitter originality of having doctors driving cabs, architects making pizzas, or lawyers serving food. It's true that no decent work is a disgrace, but please, each one in his place. Good is good but not too much.
January 3 2012
“Nosocomofobia“ or Fear of Hospitals / Rebeca Monzo
"Nosocomofobia" or Fear of Hospitals / Rebeca MonzoRebeca Monzo, Translator: Unstated
I dread the hospitals on my planet! At least those I'm entitled to go to. I told a doctor friend who works in a clinic in my neighborhood, a recent graduate who is still rotating between different health centers to acquire practice.
She not only told me I was right, but told me the great state of unhealthiness she found in most of the centers where she rotated. The doctors, she tells me, denounce these situations, but their complaints fall into the void. According to what else she said, the Gonzalez Coro Maternity Hospital, formerly the Sacred Heart Clinic, is in a deplorable state with regard to hygiene.
She adds that they often accumulate bloody gauze, and debris of all kinds used in healing, at the end of a dark corridor, overflowing, with no one taking them out and burning them, as is required.
That's a great deal of bacteria, Staphylococcus, and all kinds of germs, which are filtered into the rooms of the sick, so close to this deposit, where hygiene is not optimal. Likewise, the holes for the electrical outlets are eaten away, leaving room for small cockroaches, already so typical of our hospitals. In the same bad condition are the door frames, detached in part from the masonry which they should seal.
The same is true in the clinic where she's now rotating, they don't collect the waste with sufficient regularity: disposable gloves, syringes and other items used with the patients, and far from the incinerators which have been established in order to avoid contamination, they throw them in the trash container right at the entrance of the emergency room.
I told her of my shock and dismay when I took my sister to the Angiology Institute, which is nothing more than an old pavilion of the once famous Covadonga clinic, which is what everyone keeps calling it, even though that is no longer its name.
There, while waiting for them to heal some leg ulcers on a patient, I watched with horror as a nurse applied the medicine with her right hand, while holding a piece of pizza in her left, which she ate with impunity in front of the patient. That is just one of the facilities, that like so many of its kind, were once the pride of our country. From this, you understand, was born my nosocomofobia.
November 26 2011
Cuban media blame Twitter for Castro death rumour
Cuban media blame Twitter for Castro death rumourLast updated 05:00 06/01/2012
Cuban state media has accused the social networking site Twitter of helping spread a rumour that former leader Fidel Castro had died, and criticised anti-Castro expatriates it dubbed "necrophiliac counter-revolutionaries" for jumping on the story.
An article on the state-run Cubadebate website accused Twitter of allowing an account holder with the sign-on "Naroh" to start the rumour this week from an Italian server, then quickly deactivate the account.
It said Twitter then helped spread the disinformation by allowing the hash tag "fidelcastro" to become a trending topic. It briefly became the fourth most popular in the world as it drew many more people to the subject.
The site also accused Twitter of censoring subjects in the past that were in favour of the Cuban government.
There was no immediate reaction from Twitter.
Rumours that a celebrity or other public figure is dead are common on social media sites and can spread quickly because of their nature.
Cubadebate also blamed anti-Castro expatriates anxious to see Castro's demise for gleefully furthering the rumour, saying "necrophiliac counter-revolutionaries, aided by some media, immediately started to party".
Castro, 85, turned power over to his brother Raul in 2006 during an illness that nearly killed him. He is officially retired, although he occasionally publishes opinion columns.
In recent months, Castro has alluded to the limits of age but has also taken pride in his longevity. Cuba boasts that along with besting the actuarial tables, the former Cuban leader has survived hundreds of assassination attempts at the hands of his enemies in the United States.
Cubadebate noted that a false story about Castro's demise was spread on the internet and elsewhere back in August.
On that occasion, there was even a computer virus embedded in a spam email titled "Fidel is Dead", which featured a doctored, grainy photograph of the former Cuban leader that appeared to show him lying in a coffin.
As usual, the Cuban government has declined to make any official comment about Castro's health. But the former leader hasn't been silent. On December 31, he sent a get-well letter to a Cuban baseball star that was read over state television.
Cubadebate on Wednesday reiterated a refrain it used the last time the Castro rumours began, saying that the latest hubbub was spread by "people inventing things in the virtual world that even the CIA could not accomplish in real life".
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/6218745/Cuban-media-blame-Twitter-for-Castro-death-rumour
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