.. OR FREEDOM FIGHTER? YOU DECIDE.

FIDEL CASTRO~

Human rights record

Main article: Human rights in Cuba

"In 2001, Hallgeir Langeland , a left-wing member of the Norwegian parliament, nominated Fidel Castro for the Nobel Peace Prize for sending medical and engineering aid to developing countries.[6] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/1225789.stm>
Thousands of political opponents to the Cuban government have been executed, primarily during the first decade of his leadership;[111] however, exact numbers are not known. Some Cubans labeled "counterrevolutionaries", "fascists," or "CIA operatives" have been imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial.[112] Military Units to Aid Production , or UMAPs, were labor camps established in 1965 which confined "social deviants" including homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses in order to purge "counter-revolutionary" influences from certain segments of the population.[113] These camps were closed in 1968 in response to international outcries.[114] Professor Marifeli Pérez Stable, a former Castro supporter now living in the United States, reflected on the cost of the Cuban revolution: "[There were] thousands of executions, forty, fifty thousand political prisoners. The treatment of political prisoners, with what we today know about human rights and the international norms governing human rights ... it is legitimate to raise questions about possible crimes against humanity in Cuba."[115] Supporters of Fidel Castro respond that, as is the case with Professor Perez Stable, critics' views are often tainted by a clear allegiance to bourgeois democracy and capitalism, and thus clearly biased in their evaluation of the socialist leader and system.[116] Castro acknowledges that Cuba holds political prisoners, but argues that Cuba is justified because these prisoners are not jailed because of their political beliefs, but have been convicted of "counter-revolutionary" crimes, including bombings.[117] Moreover, he claims opposition to the Cuban government to be illegitimate, and the result of an ongoing conspiracy fostered by Cuban exiles with ties to the United States or the CIA, and with abundant representation and access to the American media. Defenders also point out that one man's "terrorist" may be another "freedom fighter", as Winston Churchill himself noted, and that the use of negative political labels is always questionable, especially when those using them have clearly traceable political agendas that stand to benefit from such characterizations. Many Castro supporters also say that Castro's measures are justified to prevent the fall of his government, demonstrably under constant economic and military pressure from the US and allies for more than half a century, whereas his opposition says he uses the United States as an excuse to justify his continuing political control".