Reader Bob Strauss writes:

What’s not being said in reference to the Amnesty International “gulag” exaggeration is that Fidel ran his own gulag for many years right next door to Guantanamo. Castro really did run what qualifies as a gulag.
This is something I know a lot about having grown up friends with a Cuban exile family.

Why isn’t the media mentioning that Castro’s concentration camps had some of the most vile torture components ever psychopathically devised? And that he imprisoned political prisoners by the tens of thousands?

One of Fidel’s main installations was at Boniato, a stone’s throw from Guanatanamo at Santiago de Cuba. In fact, this prison was where Fidel tried out his latest and most heinous psychological torments on political prisoners. It was the place the Cuban state police tuned up their methods. Castro was a big fan of the East German state police, and he was always interested in trying out their sick innovations. Yet none of this is mentioned when commentators are showing how the so-called “gulag” at Guantanamo is nothing remotely like the Soviet gulag: only Russia is being mentioned.

Fidel’s prison concentration camps had three main locations: Isla de Pinos, La Cabana in Havana, and the aforementioned Boniata near Santiago de Cuba. It absolutely was a gulag, and Castro’s prison system still treats political prisoners in ways that he never wants Amnesty International to get a close-hand look at.

Update: Val Prieto at Babalu Blog has more.

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Related:

Fidel Castro’s dupes
A chorus of Fidel Castro defenders
Disappearing into a Caribbean gulag
Amnesty International Sees the Tree, Misses the Entire Forest
A sane editorial from the Washington Post: “American Gulag“