His supporters on the Left were blinded by hatred of Uncle Sam

Iwonder how many of the people lamenting the death of Fidel Castro are, like me, supporters of Amnesty International? After all, admiration for Castro is common on the Left of politics, and the Left has an honourable tradition of supporting human rights.

I know some on the Right consider the term “human rights activist” as an insult, associating the term and the endeavour with daft ideology and politically correct sanctimony.

Not me. I’m a journalist and I’ve reported from countries where the basic rights that allow me to do my job are not always respected. No one who writes about politics should ever take lightly the importance of being able to freely describe, assess and criticise the actions of people in power.

Without that, a country and its people are not free. They are prisoners of their government.

So Amnesty’s latest report on Cuba is worth reading. Here’s an extract, from a section headed “Arbitrary arrests and detentions”: “Reports continued of government critics, including journalists and human rights activists, being routinely subjected to arbitrary arrests and short-term detention for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement.

“The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented more than 8,600 politically motivated detentions of government opponents and activists during the year.”

To be fair, Amnesty is relying on others for its information: the world’s leading human rights advocate has been banned from Cuba since 1990. So here’s a Human Rights Watch report on Cuba in 2015: “The Cuban government continues to repress dissent and discourage public criticism. While in recent years it has relied less on long-term prison sentences to punish its critics, shortterm arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders, independent journalists, and other critics have increased dramatically. Other repressive tactics employed by the government include beatings, public acts of shaming, and the termination of employment.”

Now, it’s possible that some of Castro’s admirers are unaware of these things. Some on the paranoid fringes of the Left, always susceptible to conspiracy theory and paranoia, think these reports are baseless or exaggerated or confected by a CIA or military-industrial complex they credit with rather too much competence. Others are simply naive, persuaded by the romantic tourist image of old Havana: how could somewhere with salsa and mojitos and those charming vintage cars also be a place that jails thousands of political prisoners?

But what about the people who know and accept that Castro’s Cuba routinely arrests and abuses those who criticise or merely scrutinise their rulers? How can that moral blindness be justified? Yes, I know the health service is very good and education is good and living standards are (relatively) good.

But these things are good for the people who aren’t in jail. Cubans locked up for daring to express their opinions don’t have such a good time.

And yes, the regime that the Castros replaced was pretty awful. As for the United States, of course its dealings with Cuba have not been spotless.

But none of this adequately answers the questions that must be levelled squarely at those weeping for Fidel and what they claim is his noble work.

If Cuba is the earthly paradise Castro’s admirers often suggest, why does its government attempt to stop its people leaving it? How many people have risked their lives sailing on rafts trying to get to Cuba?

If the Castro regime is so enlightened, why does it jail people who criticise it, or merely try to scrutinise it? If the Castro regime is so confident that it enjoys the loving support of a happy and free people, why does it deny them a proper chance to vote on their own leaders?

And the biggest question of all: how on earth can people who claim to be committed to human rights and political freedom admire the man responsible for all this?

The answer, of course, is America. There is a persistent strand of thinking on the Left that cannot accept the simple fact that America, for all its flaws, has been the greatest contributor to human wealth, health and freedom the world has known. The intellectual heirs to the Western advocates of the USSR, they magnify America’s vices and ignore its virtues, concluding that any enemy of the US must deserve their backing.

By this logic, the fact that the US consistently opposed Castro and sought to end him is proof positive that he was right and his actions justified. Similar thinking is all too visible in the anti-American Left’s approach to Israel, the wider Middle East, and Russia.

As the misguided mourning of Fidel Castro shows, blind hatred of America leads people who believe themselves to be fighting for freedom and decency to support men and movements who achieve quite the opposite.

‘How could somewhere with mojitos and those charming vintage cars jail thousands of political prisoners’