In a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, four former Cuban political prisoners condemned presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for praising the late dictator Fidel Castro.
Sanders told “60 Minutes” in an interview Sunday and in subsequent remarks Monday that it was “unfair” to categorically condemn Castro’s rule of Cuba, saying he ran a successful “literacy program.”
Breitbart News reported the former political prisoners pointed out in their letter that Cuba had high literacy rates and was the region’s wealthiest country before the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Along with the economic collapse under Castro, the people suffered the mass murder of thousands of dissidents, imprisonment in gulags and the loss of freedom of expression, they said.
“As former political prisoners who served many year in Fidel Castro’s prisons, enduring tortures, beatings, years of solitary confinement, and inhuman treatment, we are offended that a presidential candidate of your party dared to praise a tyrant who shed so much blood of innocent Cubans,” they wrote.
The letter is signed by Luis Zúñiga, Ernesto Díaz, Ángel Defana and Jorge Luis García.
They pointed out that after 61 years of socialism, the average income in Cuba is $20 a month. That’s well below the $1 a day set by the World Bank as the lowest level of subsistence.
“Mr. Sanders either lies or ignores the events in Cuba. Socialism is the worst political system any country may go through,” they charged.
The dissidents pointed out that Cuba had 12 universities and an 87% rate of literacy before Castro, meaning his “literacy program” was not needed.
What Castro imposed was a “political indoctrination program” that remains at the core of the educational system.
“Mr. Sanders praises the Education and Healthcare systems in the island, but is it any good that, besides mandatory indoctrination, only students who are members of the political organizations of the regime are allowed access to higher education?” they ask.
“Does Mr. Sanders know that Special Rapporteurs of United Nations have sent letters to the Cuban regime complaining that Cuban doctors have become modern slaves? The regime sends doctors to work at other countries and the regime collects their wages while only giving doctors between 75 and 90% of the wage. In addition, their passports are removed and keep them all under close surveillance to prevent any ‘desertion.'”
The former prisoners said “the suffering of the Cuban people under the socialist regime of the Castro brothers has been so intense and long, that the least remedy for Mr. Sanders’ indolence is a public apology.”
“Mr. Bernie Sanders has all the right to profess any political ideology he likes, but no right at all to lie about the crimes and ills the policies of Fidel Castro, his brother, and their political system have caused to millions of Cubans, most of them now U.S. citizens,” they wrote.
They warned that Sanders’ rhetoric is not only offensive to Cuban refugees and survivors of communism but to the Democratic Party.
“We are not the only ones hurt by Sanders’ words,” they said. “The Democrat Party that you preside over is also hurt when the truth is distorted so blatantly as Mr. Sanders, a presidential candidate of your party, has done. We would like to hear his apology, but do not expect it. Socialists are usually arrogant.”
