By Reihana Mohideen
Six hundred thousand Cubans rallied in Havana's Revolution Square on August 7 to pay tribute to a 19-year-old police officer killed on August 4 while trying to foil the hijacking of a passenger boat in Havana Bay. The rally was a massive show of support for the Cuban government's handling of the hijacking of three launches, in the preceding two weeks, when some Cubans attempted to leave Cuba illegally for Florida in the United States.
Recent Western media reports have focussed on the hijackings and some anti-government demonstrations, variously reported at between 20,000 to 30,000 (US State Department figures) and 200 (Agence France Presse).
According to AFP reports, on August 5 there were anti-government and counter-demonstrations in the Malecon, the main coastal avenue, and in a number of streets in central Havana. Some 200 demonstrators ran down the streets of central Havana shouting "freedom, freedom" and breaking windows and attacking commercial buildings. But, according to AFP, hundreds of counter-demonstrators, mainly workers, also rallied in the Malecon. Prensa Latina reports that "thousands of Havana workers went out into the streets to confront the demonstrators and to show their support for the revolution".
According to Karen Wald, a Cuban resident and renown writer and analyst on Cuban affairs, the anti-government demonstrators were "basically marginalised, unemployed young people with little political or social consciousness, in some cases venting a lot of the frustrations everyone feels ... there is widespread belief that many of them were paid to 'act out' these frustrations".
Wald states that when the "vast majority who still know why they have a revolution surged out into the streets in response, the stone-throwers disappeared. Unlike in many other countries, the police and army weren't called out to disperse them".
AFP quoted President Fidel Castro who warned that "If the United States does not take fast and efficient measures to impede illegal departures from Cuba our government will have to permit massive emigration and allow the return of US boats which come to Cuba to pick people up". This has raised the prospect of another "Mariel boatlift", when, in 1980 some 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the US.
"We cannot continue guarding US coasts," Castro stated. "Either they take serious measures to guard their coasts or else we will stop blocking the exit of those who want to leave the country and we will stop blocking the arrival of those who want to seek their relatives here."
Castro was referring to the US ploy of making legal entry to the US practically impossible — some 90% of Cubans who apply for travel visas to visit family in the US are refused — and at the same time welcomes those Cubans who leave by illegal means. The US' policy is defections, yes; family visits, no. Cuba, meanwhile, has provided every facility to help Cubans who wish to emigrate, to do so.