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Two weeks after Ángel Carromero spoke out about his personal account of the car crash that killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, many governments, including Spain and the U.S., have ignored Carromero’s allegations that the Cuban government caused the car crash, jailed Carromero under inhuman conditions and forced him to publicly give a false account of events. When approached, Spain’s foreign minister claimed to have no evidence to support Carromero’s version, despite evidence like photos of the crash site and SMS messages sent from survivors directly after the crash.
“Perhaps the Spanish foreign minister disrespects Carromero enough to conclude that he is lying in spite of all the indications that he is not. Or perhaps he feels compelled to bow to political considerations: the Spanish government’s cultivation of the Castro regime, its gratitude for the release to Spain of several score Cuban political prisoners, its hopes that four Spaniards in Cuban custody will, like Carromero, be freed. Other Western governments desperately want to believe that Raul Castro is a reformer who is slowly liberalizing Cuba.
“All these calculations assume that the possibility that the regime deliberately targeted and killed Payá is ultimately unworthy of international attention; that impunity for such a crime is a regrettable necessity; or that the case says nothing about the Castros’ real intentions. Were they alive, Andrei Sakharov and Oswaldo Payá would surely disagree.”
