FIDEL Castro’s legacy has continued to prompt intense debate with a Tory MSP highlighting that one of the late Cuban leader’s outrages was to ban Christmas.
A motion lodged in the Scottish Parliament by Labour left winger Elaine Smith noted Castro’s achievements in building a “world-class health and education systems” despite a United States blockade.
Smith also urged Holyrood to recognise Cuba’s “impressive record of international solidarity abroad, including sending medical workers to the world’s poorest regions, leading the fight against Ebola and providing the largest medical contingent after the 2010 Haitian earthquake disaster” before concluding “his spirit will inspire future generations and show that another world is possible”.
But Tory MSP Ross Thomson amended Smith’s motion condemning Castro for persecuting gay men and women and for “banning Christmas” between 1969 and 1998.
“When he came to power in the 1950s the people of Cuba were promised a democracy but, instead, Cuba became a one-party dictatorship; [the motion] further understands that, as the festive season approaches, Castro banned Christmas from 1969 to 1998,” said Thomson’s amendment.
It urged MSPs to note that “on July 13 1994, there was the infamous “tugboat massacre” at which, it understands, Castro’s forces killed 37 would-be escapees, most of them children and their mothers and further believes that homosexuality was declared a “deviation incompatible with the revolution”.
The amendment also highlighted the expulsion of gay men and women from university and from prohibiting them from having contact with children and young people.
The exchange of views follows a clash among SNP parliamentarians over Castro’s legacy last week.
In his weekly column for The National, East Lothian SNP MP George Kerevan wrote: “There are great positive lessons to be learned from Castro’s Cuba. He managed to link national identity and national independence with a progressive, socialist project.”
But the assessment drew an angry response from Kerevan’s Westminster colleague Stewart McDonald, who tweeted: “Nothing progressive about the imprisonment of gays, incarceration of those with HIV or locking up trade unionists and political opponents.”
And Amnesty International’s verdict was negative. “Fidel Castro’s 49-year reign was characterised by a ruthless suppression of freedom of expression,” it said.
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