Countries with political prisoners, persecuted and exiles, are dictatorships

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The greatest effort at simulating democracy by 21st Century Socialism’s regimes in the Americas is to be seen as revolutions or movements to liberate the peoples, avoiding, at all cost, to be identified as “dictatorships”. Using multiple narratives, they seek to present and maintain “21st Century Socialism or Castrochavism” in the “political” arena when -in reality- their transnational organized crime’s activities belong in the “criminal” arena. One aspect that puts an end to all simulation is the existence of political prisoners, persecuted and exiles, that are visible and definitive proof these are dictatorships.

Inmate is any person deprived of his/her freedom and a prisoner is “any person that is an inmate, generally due to causes that are not a crime”. A political prisoner is “a person jailed or otherwise detained who has not committed any crime catalogued as punishable but whose ideas are a challenge or threat to the established system”, it is about “someone subjected to imprisonment for having expressed his/her political views. A prisoner of conscience is anyone who has been arrested that “has neither used, nor advocated violence”.

To exile is “to compel a person to leave a territory forcing him/her to live outside of his/her homeland”. Exile is “the fact of finding one self far from his natural place due to the expatriation of an individual, while some circumstance, generally for political reasons, prevents him/her from going back due to the threat of being jailed or killed”. Luis Roniger in his book “Political Exile and Democracy” defines exile as “a mechanism for institutional exclusion aimed at revoking the full use of citizenry’s rights and beyond that, to prevent the exiled’s participation in the national political arena”. Some authors make a distinction between forced and voluntary exile, but if we consider the individual’s personal will to be his/her own free-will and free determination”, there is no way to catalogue exile as voluntary because the threat against freedom and life is precisely what triggers it.

Political persecution by Castrochavist regimes in the 21st century is a system, methodologically and uniformly applied in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and at one time in Ecuador with Correa, implemented in Kirchner’s Argentina and with indications of its return with Fernandez/Kirchner. It is the repetition of the dictatorships’ abuse during the 20th century, institutionalized and executed through “the judicialization of political persecution” that consists of accusing the victims for crimes not committed, crimes specifically catalogued in order to violate the accused’s human rights, make the reach of the law retroactive, or crimes committed by the regime’s members.

To accomplish the judicialization of political persecution, they: 1. Manipulate and modify the legal system, change the penal codes and include as a crime the use of an individual’s basic freedoms (despicable laws). 2. They control and subject prosecutors and judges who, instead of being a guarantee for the defense of freedom and human rights, become violators of them (despicable judges) and violating the legal due process turn into “executioners” instead of administrators of justice. 3. Impose “fear” as a procedural rule in order to induce false confessions, betrayal, and incriminations under the duress of loss of life or freedom for family members and their family’s circle.

That mechanism for the total control of the judicial system is already a definitive indicator of a dictatorship because, in order to accomplish the judicialization of political persecution, they have already discarded the fundamental components of democracy that are; respect for human rights and individual freedoms, the existence of the rule of law, the separation and independence of the branches of government and with their persecution, imprisonment, and exile, they do away with necessary elements for free and fair elections and the unincumbered political organization.

With such a judicial system in existence today in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that is truly a system of judicialized persecution, citizens are imprisoned and exiled. The violation of human rights in 21st Century Socialism is fully documented and written in despicable laws, procedural legal records of judicial tribunals, and rulings and sentences dictated by judges, magistrates, and tribunals that are instruments for the violation of; human rights and basic individual freedoms, the “presumption of innocence”, the “legal due process”, the “retroactivity of the law”, the “impartiality of the judge” and more.

To identify dictatorships in the Americas, you only have to see the 161 jailed political prisoners, hundreds under house-arrest, and millions of exiles from Cuba, the 318 political prisoners and millions of exiles from Venezuela, the 32 jailed political prisoners, hundreds under house-arrest, and over 1,500 exiles from Bolivia, the 136 jailed political prisoners and over 120,000 exiles from Nicaragua.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.