Cubans burning books. Like anyone cares.
The court papers published on the Internet detail a March 19 raid on the home of Julio Valdés, during which he was arrested and the contents of his library were cataloged and seized, along with medicines, photographic film, an audio cassette and radios. Among the "subversive" library materials cataloged in the trial proceedings were copies of "Cuba's Repressive Machinery" by Human Rights Watch, issues of TIME magazine, pamphlets on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Catholic periodicals, "Letters from Burma" by Aung San Suu Khi, and the text of speeches made by various persons during the European Parliament's ceremony awarding the Sakharov Prize, in absentia, to Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá. The court condemned Julio Valdés for "accumulating books, magazines and pamphlets by counter-revolutionary authors in foreign countries, principally in Miami, Florida, United States of America, which exhort civil disobedience, twisting historical events and the achievements of illustrious thinkers and revolutionary patriots..." in order to "provoke the destruction of the political, social and economic order now existing in Cuba...."
After sentencing Julio Valdés to twenty year in prison, the presiding judges in his case also decreed: "As to the disposition of the photographic negatives, the audio cassette, medicines, books, magazines, pamphlets and the rest of the documents, they are to be destroyed by means of incineration because they lack usefulness."
This will be ignored by the Left, which routinely discounts Cuban dissident information from sources which are known to be anti-Castro. In much the same way, defectors in Iraq were ignored when they were associated with groups that were anti-Saddam.
I suppose to get testimony the Left will listen to, it has to come from that subset of people labeled "pro-Castro dissidents," or "pro-regime defectors." Might be a little hard to locate such.