Can Mariela Castro Explain Away Cuba's Support for the Death Penalty for Gays?

Yoani Sanchez - Award-Winning Cuban Blogger
Posted: December 1, 2010 11:49 PM

Can Mariela Castro Explain Away Cuba's Support for the Death Penalty for
Gays?

I still can't believe that the Cuban delegation at the United Nations
added its vote to a group of "countries that include homosexuality as a
crime under the law, including the application of capital punishment for
that reason, in five of them." I didn't invent the quoted phrase, it
comes from a statement published by CENESEX (The National Center of Sex
Education) to try to explain this absurdity, to justify the abominable.
On a peculiar list, where some of the great suppressors of individual
liberties appear, this Island also appears, despite the official
discourse that has assured us for some time that abuse of homosexuals is
chapter from the past.

It goes without saying that no one consulted Cubans before ratifying --
in our name -- a resolution that gives carte blanche to the death
penalty for reasons of the victims' sexual orientation. Not a single
word is said by the official press, no transvestites have been able to
go out and protest in the Plaza of the Revolution or in front of the
Foreign Ministry to demonstrate their displeasure with this act of
political expediency. Initially, it was the Benin delegation that pushed
for a change in the resolution about extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions in the world; two weeks ago the UN didn't remark on whether
the accused faced this situation for loving a person of their own
gender. Frightened, we witness the circle joined by the intolerant, the
complicity established between the doctrinaire, the silence before
violations committed by others, to buy silence for when they themselves
will have need of it.

It is sad that an institution like CENESEX that has worked to promote
respect for diversity, engages in verbal acrobatics so as not to call
things by their name. Mariela Castro, Director of CENESEX, cannot take
cover behind the terse words of a statement where one finds no
condemnation proportional to the mistake committed by our delegation to
the UN. This coming Sunday she will appear on a national television
show, Journeys to the Unknown, to present a documentary that touches on
the theme of tolerance towards gays and lesbians. I think that would be
a good time to explain to us why her response has not been stronger, why
her silence has the ring of an accomplice.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a new compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban
bloggers in English.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/can-mariela-castro-explai_b_790852.html