MEXICO CITY.- After the incident at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, where they died at least four young Cubans of the Military Service, a campaign against compulsory service has been activated on social networks. Mothers and fathers are publicly expressing their disagreement and refusing to hand over their children. At the same time, the official media have omitted how many and which of the victims were recruits without the required preparation. Instead, they have presented the surviving boys as heroes, without offering more details about the victims.
Along with the official silence and the manipulation of the facts, an army of cybercombatants has also been deployed to defend the State, attributing that in most countries of the world Military Service is compulsory; and that therefore Cuba would not be doing anything reprehensible.
These profiles are sharing false information.
Currently it is not the majority, but less than a third of the total number of countries, that maintain compulsory military service each year, as CubaNet was able to verify when consulting a data base of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States.
The CIA has registered that some 66 countries maintain the Military service regulated in the legislation as obligatory. However, of these there are 14 that only apply it exceptionally or selectively, affecting a minimal part of their male population randomly. For example, in the case of Brazil, although it is not voluntary, only between 5 and 10% of its young people are recruited each year. Something similar occurs in Guatemala and Equatorial Guinea. While in the Netherlands, Indonesia, Somalia and El Salvador it has not been applied for years, although it is still regulated by law.
Cuba also stands out among the countries with a longer period of duration. While 12 months of service are regularly established worldwide, Cuba subjects those who will not enter university to two years, only surpassed by Chad and Egypt (3 years), Israel (32 months) and, of course, North Korea .
Cuba does recruit children
Last May, this medium exposed Cuban diplomat Yisel González García, who denied before the UN the mandatory nature of military service in Cuba. The official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), during the examination of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to Cuba in Geneva, also avoided directly answering the question about the age of military recruitment. Instead, she said that children are not recruited on the island. The official lied.
The Cuban Military Service incorporates boys from the age of 17 (underage according to international standards), which is lower than the average age of recruitment in the world (18 years), although some countries such as Angola, Senegal and Turkmenistan have as Minimum age 20.
As could be verified in the CIA database, only Cuba and North Korea recruit minors every year in a forced way. In fact, the Asian nation has the longest recruitment period, despite having reduced it in 2021 to 7-8 years for men and 5 years for women.
The Cuban regime violates the optional protocol of 2000 related to the convention on the rights of the child, because the recruitment of minors is allowed. In theory this should be exceptional, voluntary and informed. But in practice teenagers and parents are intimidated and forced to sign their approval. There is no voluntariness that the official speaks of.
In addition, in Cuba a right is violated that is absolute and cannot be disrespected even in emergency situations: the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The impossibility of appealing the objection was shielded in the Magna Carta.
Why do they keep military service?
Compulsory conscription was eliminated by most European countries after the end of the Cold War, except for some of the former Soviet and neighboring Nordic countries. However, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia and the geopolitical tensions in the area, the mandatory service reappeared on the continent. Sweden, for example, readopted it in 2018 after 10 years without it; and Greece did it in 2017, due to the dilemmas with Turkey. While Norway extended the obligation to women. Currently, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the debate on whether it is necessary or not has been revived once again.
War conflicts or their imminence are precisely the main motivation for maintaining compulsory military service in a country. Similarly, in Latin America, Asia and Africa, most of the countries that maintain conscription suffer from adverse contexts or armed conflicts in their territory, as is the case in Colombia.
In Cuba, the discourse of a besieged square has been the justification used historically. Six decades after they established the Military Service, the supposed North American invasion for which they say they are preparing has not happened, nor are there any signs that it will happen. Every year, Cuban adolescents and young people are forced to join despotic and imposing structures that harm them physically and psychologically.
“Cuba needs to have a Military Service, but that does not imply that it has to be compulsory. Every country that has an army requires people in reserve; in case of an attack”, explains Laritza Diversent, director of Cubalex.
The lawyer adds that the chances of aggression against Cuba are greatly diminished. “In practice, it has been shown that the United States has no intention of invading the country.” The human rights expert also questions whether it is really necessary for an impoverished country to sustain the considerable expense of maintaining its army. For her, if the government insists on recruiting reserves, the ideal would be for them to make this service optional and make incorporation advantageous to encourage young people to choose to join it, not force them. Just like in other countries.
The Cuban government, which has not had to participate in a war of its own for six decades, wallows in this warmongering rhetoric while at the same time talking about educating young people in certain values. “Make them men” is one of the usual lines with which its defenders promote the usefulness of the service. Although what it really means is to normalize violence and subject thousands of boys to all kinds of harassment, including death. CubaNet presented last July an incipient database that collects 16 cases of death in the Cuban Military Service.
In addition to the motivation to confront this imaginary attack, why does Cuba maintain compulsory military service?
“It constitutes an inexhaustible source of human resources, which can be used indiscriminately for their benefit. Either in processes linked to militarization or also to production with cheap labor. The boys of the Youth Army of Labor are used to taste and pleasure not only in the camps but also in lesser known matters, and even the high command in personal matters, “says the lawyer of Cubalex Alain Espinosa.
effectivelyYoel Alejandro Cala told CubaNet that one of his tasks in the military service was to visit the mistress of one of the chiefs in charge of the facility and bring her food that came from the military warehouses.
“It was forced labor, almost slavery. One day they put us to repair a road because Raúl Castro was going to Camagüey, which the province had won the seat on July 26. They kept us working a whole day without giving us food. They only gave us a rotten orange and two saltine crackers, while the military did eat well”, declared to CubaNet the memer known as Barba Memes.
In this period, young people are not only trained militarily. The government has young arms to work with no choice but to follow orders. Rolando Leyva told this medium that one of his obligations was to work the land of the farm Wit Sheet, of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. “In practice, one of the many properties of the commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida in the surroundings of Santiago de Cuba.”
That Cuba employs the boys as cheap labor would not be a unique case. In fact, Benin has been alerted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) of using recruits in forced labor and has had several calls for attention.
“Another not minor point is that it constitutes a form of control of a large population group. This control manifests itself in two ways. The first is to avoid any type of action against them, and the second is that they can use them to repress the rest or to confront those who may be dissatisfied”, adds Espinosa.
On July 11, 2021 young people from the Military Service or soon to be called were summoned for suppress demonstrations that shook the entire country.
The Cuban government had not had such a strong criticism from the citizens against the Compulsory Military Service as until now. The death of the recruits in Matanzas has been the most visible sign of the consequences of military service, where every year they dispose of frightened and defenseless young people. Where they suffer disproportionate punishments if they dare to think instead of complying, if they dare to question something out loud, if they dare to behave like the teenagers they are. But that is nothing new. Outside the barracks, the same totalitarian government has other ways, but with the same authoritarianism of a society that is also defenseless and frightened.
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