The English word translation “brave” into English is “brave, courageous.”
If you search the Internet for information about the Prime Minister of The Bahamas, Mr. Philip Edward Davis, you will see that next to his name there is the adjective mentioned in quotation marks.
I do not know why the Prime Minister of the Bahamas is described as courageous, but I am absolutely convinced that the action that his government has just taken by deporting to Cuba the young political prisoner of 11-J Marco Antonio Alfonso Breto demonstrates indifference to the suffering of this young man and a despicable attitude of a government supposedly committed to the defense of the values of Western democracy. Which, obviously, has nothing “brave” about it.
Marco Antonio Alfonso Breto was one of the young people who went out to demonstrate against the murderous Cuban dictatorship on July 11, 2021 in the neighborhood of La Güinera, one of the most humble in Havana and where a policeman shot one of the demonstrators in the back.
According to information published by Cubanet on February 4, the young man was initially sentenced to nine years in prison, unusually accused of the alleged commission of a crime of sedition. Faced with such a dissipation and not because they are good, which they are not, but because of the countless protests on social networks and in the trials themselves, the judges reduced that initial sanction to five years of forced labor in one of the hundreds of camps that the dictatorship has created on the prison island.
While in one of those camps, Alfonso Breto escaped in November 2022 and left for the U.S. on a boat. However, as Cubanet pointed out, that attempt to reach this country was thwarted when the boat was intercepted and transferred to a detention center in The Bahamas.
Everything indicates that Alfonso Breto loves freedom but also fights for it. He demonstrated this on July 11, 2021 when he went out to protest against the communist dictatorship, when he escaped from a prison in Cuba, when he faced the dangers involved in undertaking a sea crossing in a precarious boat from the island to the U.S., and when he escaped from the detention center in The Bahamas. But the “brave” prime minister of that country has been a damn interested in the struggle that this young man has undertaken in search of freedom and deported him to Cuba.
Marco Antonio Alfonso Breto suffers from epilepsy. In the news that Cubanet published this Sunday, February 4, informing about his deportation, it can be read that when his mother saw him for the first time in prison, the young man showed obvious signs of torture and beatings. The “brave” prime minister of the Bahamas does not seem to know that political prisoners are tortured in Cuba.
Marco Antonio is currently in one of the dungeons of Villa Marista, in Havana. Have they beaten him again, as they did with him and with all the political prisoners of 11 J when they entered the prisons and made them pass between two rows of soldiers who beat them with their tonfas and kicked those who fell to the ground? Doesn’t the “brave” Philip Edward Davis know that now this young man, in addition to serving part of the unjust sentence imposed on him by the henchmen of the dictatorship, will be accused of the crimes of “Violation of Sanctions and Precautionary Measures Depriving of Liberty” and “Illegal Departure from the National Territory”? Don’t you know that you can be punished with more than six additional years in prison?
The Bahamas, like all other member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), has a sordid history of backing the Cuban dictatorship.
Perhaps the “brave” Mr. Philip Edward Davis believes, like so many others who still support the Cuban dictatorship, that it will last forever. But they are wrong, although there are still many timorous people in Cuba who allow themselves to be trampled on, there are also many Cubans who keep dignity and rebellion rooted in their souls as a support for what the flag of the star that illuminates and kills means, the same one with which Aniette Gonzalez, another young Cuban political prisoner, wrapped herself. And they are also mistaken if they believe that when Cuba is democratic, because it will be, we Cubans are going to forget that history of collusion with the dictatorship.
I feel deep pain for what has been done to this young man and to the more than a thousand who are imprisoned in Cuba today for peacefully fighting for a truly inclusive and better country. And I wonder how it is possible that the exiles of Miami have not organized themselves and have already gone in front of the Bahamian Consulate to protest against this injustice.
No, Mr. Philip Edward Davis, you have not shown yourself to live up to the label of “brave” that has been given to you, much less that of “honorable.” On the contrary, you have done something really despicable and I am sure that many worthy men in the world will agree with me.
Harrisonburg, VA, Monday, February 5, 2024
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces
