Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the death of Fidel Castro, it is tempting to follow the old custom of never speaking ill of the dead. However, I agree with the comments of Professor Carlos Erie, who has written:

If this were a just world, these facts should be etched on Castro's tombstone;

He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust.

He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators throughout the world.

He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba but a precise number is hard to reckon.

He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.

He forced nearly 20 per cent of his own people into exile, and prompted many thousands to meet their deaths at sea.

He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.

He outlawed private enterprise and wiped out Cuba's large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.

He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.

He censored all means of expression and communication.

He establish a fraudulent school system that provided indoctrination rather than education.

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He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps … incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most modern dictators ...

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He turned Cuba into a labyrinth of ruins.

As was said about Castro in a letter in the Miami Herald:

He had a peaceful death, but in his final days he should have experienced a lot of suffering; he should have been dragged through the streets of Havana, like Mussolini in Italy, and then hanged.