cannabisnews.com: Fidel Castro Declares War on Cuba's Rising Crime!





Fidel Castro Declares War on Cuba's Rising Crime!
Posted by FoM on January 07, 1999 at 07:20:19 PT

HAVANA, President Fidel Castro, who has kept a tight rein on Cuba's isolated society during 40 years in power, has vowed to get tough on rising crime on the island, particularly prostitution, drugs and human smuggling. 
But in a marathon speech, broadcast into early Thursday, Castro pinned most blame for the recent crime surge on foreign influences associated with Cuba's opening to tourism and business from abroad this decade. "Crime is one of the factors that have grown in these times, as new forms of delinquency have arisen that we are not accustomed to," Castro told a 5,000-strong audience at a ceremony for the 40th anniversary of his Revolutionary National Police force in Havana's Karl Marx theatre. The communist leader's five-hour speech-- given on Tuesday behind closed doors but broadcast on state-run television from Wednesday night-- was Castro's first detailed public analysis of a crime phenomenon that has shocked Cubans this year. Although still at relatively low levels compared with other Latin American and Caribbean nations, the crime rise-- including murder, rape and robbery-- has startled a society that has been tightly-controlled since Castro's 1959 revolution. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party have been railing against crime all year, while the Roman Catholic Church has called for a renewal of moral values in Cuban society. On the streets, authorities have responded with a crackdown -- putting more police on the streets, rounding up prostitutes, pimps and hustlers, closing discotheques, and forming neighbourhood vigilante groups known as "Popular Detachments of Revolutionary Vigilance." Castro, 72, acknowledged the "growing tendency" of prostitution in Cuba. He said 6,714 prostitutes were rounded up in Havana in the first 11 months of 1998. Some 190 pimps were also caught, of whom 56 percent were jailed and the rest fined, he said, adding: "That seems a lot of fines ... stronger measures are needed." Castro and his government are proud of cleaning up Cuba in the years after the revolution and are clearly stung by perceptions the situation is again getting out of hand. Before the revolution, Cuba was sometimes disparagingly referred to as "the bordello of the Caribbean," famed for its women and casinos. While largely wiped out in the intervening decades, prostitution and other problems reemerged in the 1990s as Cuba opened up once more to foreign tourists and its superpower ally, the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving islanders increasingly desperate for ways to make money. Castro also acknowledged that Cuba was increasingly being used as a transit point for regional drug-traffickers, leading to a nascent internal market. "It's hurtful, isn't it? It hurts me a lot," he said. The Cuban leader said 216 foreigners had been arrested on drug crimes in the last three years, of whom 165 were still in jail. The number of drug hauls in the first 11 months of 1998 was 269-- nearly double the previous year-- with total seizures of 3.52 tonnes of marijuana, cocaine and hashish, he added. Drugs were a "mortal venom for our youth and our people," Castro said, adding the problem had been been fuelled by the availability of dollars since the 1993 legalisation of possession of the U.S. currency for Cubans. 
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on September 02, 1999 at 11:06:50 PT
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