Sticks, Iron Bars and Cables

Through pious hands the Plan Against Disturbances to Order and Counterrevolutionary Riots, reached the bloggers and independent communicators. The plan was prepared by the Ministry of the Interior under the supervision of the Communist Central Committee, which distributed it to the addresses of Interior Ministry, police, firefighters, business and institutions, provincial and municipal governments and the military sector of each of the country’s territories.

The index of the document includes Objectives, Missions, Structure of the Forces, Armaments, and appendices with guidelines, an Action Model, to create Rapid Response Brigades in workplaces.

It attempts to enlarge and organize the repression, so that every police unit can respond in an organic manner to the supposed disturbances of order “provoked by counterrevolutionaries,” a phrase that embraces everything from critical opinions on a bus, in a workplace or a school, up to a meeting of several people on a corner, a “suspicious house” or a cultural institution.

The assignments list “observing the areas of possible disturbances of order, maintaining the organization of the Unit forces with improvised weapons, extinguishing fires and informing the higher command post.”

The structure of the Plan is divided into “organizing the workers at work, and if the situation requires it, alerting those off duty. Weapons which can be used are “sticks, iron bars and cables.” The Administrator of the center will be in charge and the workers will carry out the Plan.

The attached Appendices describe plans for the protection and defense of the Unit, for repelling altercations and disturbances, and for giving alerts; and it contains an Act of cooperation and the citation from the Constitution that creates the Rapid Response Brigades.

Although these plans describe concrete actions, it’s to see if the Administration, the Union and other internal factors in the community can act with the agility of military commandos that they give them assignments before possible subversive activities.

The fear and uncertainty of the political and military authorities are the essence of the Plan Against Disturbances to Order and Counterrevolutionary Riots. The intent to convert the workers and employees into an armed parapolice force with sticks, iron bars and cables shows how desperate they are to keep power at all costs.

Perhaps these measures are effective in military centers, like police stations, firehouses and military schools. Perhaps people in the mass organizations serving the Party or the Communist Youth agree to beat others for a price upon the denunciations of old informers and delinquents, themselves blackmailed by the heads of the police sectors.

Whoever has just elaborated and distributed the new repressive plan to convert the workers into hit men of the citizens is forgetting the discredit of the official discourse, the economic crisis that is crossing the island and the absence of the revolutionary fervor that favored the executions and the political impunity during the decades of the 70’s and the 70’s of the past century.

The attempt to convert injustice into justice by using violence is a call to insanity. Let’s hope it’s the last.

Translated by Anonymous and Regina Anavy