ALLIANCE OF OPPRESSION: CUBA AND CHINA'S THREAT TO GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
In July 2022, we published an article denouncing the alliances between authoritarian regimes like Cuba and China as one of the greatest global threats to democracy. Collaboration between autocrats strengthens their power and makes them more effective in surveilling, isolating, and persecuting human rights defenders.
Cuba and China restored their relations in the post-Tiananmen era after decades of rivalries stemming from their alliances with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Fidel Castro's enthusiastic support for the Communist Party's massacre in Tiananmen Square on June 7, 1989, marked the beginning of a new era in relations between the two dictatorships. An alliance that emerged from foundations stained with the blood of tens of thousands of victims of the Tiananmen Massacre.
China has played a crucial role providing material and financial aid to Cuba and expanding the internet in Cuba, particularly in implementing technologies to censor websites, social media, and selectively cut off internet access for human rights activists and journalists. Such technology has also served the Cuban regime to block VPNs and reduce the spaces for civil society to mobilize in support of democracy. In return, the Cuban regime supports the Communist Party of China in international forums, using its diplomatic apparatus to justify the genocide against the Uighurs and endorsing China's systematic human rights violations in Tibet and Hong Kong under the pretense of respecting human rights in those regions.
The meeting above between the Chief of Police in China and the Cuban regime’s Minister of Interior is an example of how dictatorships exchange information to become more effective oppressors of their people.Photo from Muy 20, 2023. China’s Chief of Police Wang Xiaohong meets Cuba’s Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas. Both perpetrators discuss ways to crackdown on pro democracy movement. According to the official news report from the State Council of he People’s Republic of Cina, “The two sides should strengthen cooperation in preventing the "color revolution," offering security support to the Belt and Road Initiative, combating transnational crimes and building law enforcement capacity, and work together to build a China-Cuba community with a shared future, Wang added.”
By colour revolution they refer to a series of nonviolent uprisings and protests that occurred in several countries in the early 21st century. These movements were characterized by their use of color symbolism, such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. The term "colored revolutions" originated from the fact that each movement adopted a specific color as a symbol, which represented their aspirations for democratic change and political reform.
Source. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China.
Adding to the alliances between authoritarian regimes, a report published by The Wall Street Journal reveals that China and Cuba have allegedly signed a secret agreement for the construction of an eavesdropping station in Cuba. China would pay the Cuban regime billions of dollars for the installation of a spy base just 100 miles south of Florida. This facility would enable Beijing to intercept electronic communications from the southeastern United States, where numerous U.S. military bases are located, and monitor ship traffic. The White House spokesman, John Kirby, has called The Wall Street Journal's reporting "not accurate," and the Cuban regime has also denied the report.
At Democratic Spaces, we condemn any alliance between the dictatorships of China and Cuba, as well as alliances with Russia and other dictatorial regimes globally. These alliances serve to enable dictatorships to exchange information on how to effectively bolster their hold on power. They pose an imminent threat to the security of the United States and other democracies. They also serve as a reminder that the Cuban dictatorship actively assists China in its aspirations to replace the democratic global order of the West with an authoritarian model that prioritizes maintaining power and purported economic progress at the expense of a society dominated by the Communist Party, based on the semi-enslaved labor of millions of people in the countryside and the establishment of a totalitarian Orwellian system of control, complete with concentration camps, censorship, and imprisonment for anyone who raises their voice for democracy and rights.
It is time for democratic governments in Canada and around the world to thoroughly assess the alliances between the dictatorship in Cuba, China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other authoritarian regimes. We urge governments and legislative bodies to exert pressure on the Cuban dictatorship to release all political prisoners and respond to the democratic demands of the Cuban people for free, fair, pluralistic, and multi-party elections.
