Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail, Canada, Wednesday, March 3, 1999
Last April, Jean Chrétien flew down to meet Cuba's Fidel Castro, becoming the first Canadian prime minister to do so since 1976. By all accounts they got along famously. Mr. Chrétien praised Cuban-Canadian friendship and told a few jokes. Mr. Castro praised Cuban-Canadian friendship and told a few jokes. Mr. Chrétien had just one thing to ask of his host: Could Cuba please release four Cubans who had been jailed for criticizing the government.
On Monday, 10 months later, Mr. Castro gave his answer. He put the four on trial for sedition. Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne, Rene Gomez Manzano and Vladimiro Roca -- the so-called Group of Four -- face jail terms of up to six years for "subverting the order of our socialist state." Their crime: urging voters to boycott Cuba's rigged one-party elections and scolding foreign investors for propping up the Castro regime.
The decision to press on with the trial despite protests from Canada and others is yet another example of Mr. Castro's determination to crush all opposition to his ragged dictatorship. It is also final, definitive proof that Canada's Cuba policy has failed. With the opening of this caricature of justice, that policy lies gutted like a trout on a pier.
Ottawa calls its policy "constructive engagement." When it took office in 1993, Mr. Chrétien's government decided to step up contacts with Cuba. More high-level visits, more trade and investment, more development aid.
The idea was to set Canada apart from the United States, which has tried for years to bring down Mr. Castro with a trade embargo and other pressure tactics. The U.S. strategy had clearly failed; so Ottawa would try a gentler, more Canadian approach. By "engaging" Mr. Castro, we would win his confidence and persuade him of the error of his ways, meanwhile tweaking Uncle Sam's nose and winning a new market for Canadian exporters.
In a visit to Cuba in 1997, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy persuaded Mr. Castro to let Canada help Cuba build a "civil society" -- a favourite Lloydism. Canadian MPs would visit Cuba to impart their wisdom about parliamentary democracy. Canadian lawyers and judges would tell their Cuban counterparts how an independent justice system works. Canadians would even help Cuba strengthen its citizens' complaint process, a kind of national suggestion box.
All this came to pass. The practical effect on human rights in Cuba: zero. Mr. Castro's human-rights record remains the worst in the Americas. Cuba is still a one-party state where elections are a sham, the judiciary is still a tool of state oppression, independent newspapers and free trade unions don't exist, and more than 300 Cubans still languish in jail for "counter-revolutionary crimes."
Far from allowing a civil society to flourish, Mr. Castro has been cracking down. Just two weeks before the trial of the Group of Four, the rubber-stamp National Assembly passed a new anti-subversion law that sets penalties of up to 20 years in jail for anyone "collaborating" with the tough U.S. policy on Cuba. Clearly aimed at Cuba's tiny group of independent journalists, the law would make it a crime, for example, to talk to the U.S.-funded Cuban-language Radio Marti. Cuba's fear of bad press is so intense that it jailed a Cuban doctor for eight years after he talked to the foreign press about a dengue fever epidemic in the city of Santiago.
Mr. Castro's one concession to Canada, if it can be called that, has been to release a dozen or so political prisoners and let them come to Canada -- in other words, to send them into exile. When Mr. Chrétien came tuque in hand to Havana last April, bleating about the value of "dialogue over confrontation," his host used him as a backdrop for a rant against the U.S. embargo, which he compared to genocide.
Yet his gains from the cozy relationship with Canada have been huge. His strategy for many years has been to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies on the Cuba issue. Helped by the stupid Helms-Burton law, which seeks to penalize foreign companies that do business with Cuba, he has been making new friendships in Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. The friendship of Canada, a country renowned for championing human rights, is by far his biggest coup. And he didn't even have to ask.
In its summary of Canada's Cuba policy, the Department of Foreign Affairs explains why Cuba has been so keen on Canada's friendship. "Given our long-standing relations, Canada's status as a technologically advanced North American nation, and the lack of a heavily politicized agenda, Canada has been seen as a trusted interlocutor with a balanced perspective." Down at the pub, they call that a dupe.
E-mail: mgee@globeandmail.ca