The digitalized state-terrorism of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua can no longer remain unpunished

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) This past 23rd of February, Meta the parent company of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp announced “it had dismantled networks with false accounts in Cuba and Bolivia that were linked to the governments of those countries and were being used to broadcast official messages and to discredit persons.” The same dismantling it had done of a similar network in Nicaragua in 2021. It involved interrupting a series of serious and flagrant crimes being committed by and in the dictatorships of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Digitalized State-terrorism that cannot remain unpunished.

Ben Nimmo, Meta’s Global Threat Intelligence lead official, reported in a video-conference “there was an attempt to hide who was behind this, but our investigation found links with the Cuban government” adding further “something similar had happened in the case of Bolivia” because “the investigation led us to links with the government, the official party Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS in Spanish) right after its return to power in 2020, and to a group self-labeled as Digital Warriors.”

As reported by Infobae in its 23 February of 2003 edition, in Cuba, that “for decades was one of the least-connected countries of the world,” Meta “deactivated 363 Facebook accounts, 270 web pages, 229 groups and 72 Instagram accounts” and their operation included other social networks such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.

David Agranovich, Meta’s Director of Global Threat Disruption, while reporting that “in Bolivia around 1,600 accounts, web-pages and groups that were working in bunkers in La Paz and Santa Cruz, were deactivated” and also stated “they were coordinated efforts to use false accounts, publish support to the Bolivian government, to criticize and harass the opposition.” Moreover, he explained that around 650,000 persons followed one or more of the web pages of the Cuban network and around 510,000 joined the Cuban groups” and that “in the Bolivian case, over two-million accounts were following these web-pages.”

Regarding Nicaragua, back on 1 November of 2021, Facebook publicly declared that it was “eliminating a troll’s farm” indicating that it was “administered by Daniel Ortega’s government and his political party Frente Sandinista de Liberación” further stating that it had “eliminated 937 Facebook accounts, 140 web-pages, 24 groups, and 363 Instagram accounts” and that “the operation encompassed a blog network, web sites, and social network assets in TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Blog Sport, and Telegram” as confirmed by the Reuters news agency.

The investigations’ results, provided by Meta officials, constitute definitive proof of flagrant crimes of material falsehood, ideological falsehood, use of counterfeited instruments, the existence of a criminal consortium structured in groups, slander, defamation, supplantation of persons, creation and dissemination of fake news, terrorism, attempts against public trust and more crimes committed from, and with the coordination of regimes led by Raul Castro/Miguel Diaz-Canel, Evo Morales/Luis Arce and Daniel Ortega/Rosario Murillo. This is Castrochavism or 21st Century Socialism.

The establishment, operation, and expansion of fake accounts in social media networks by 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships is the new method to execute “digitalized State-terrorism” given the fact that dictatorships “commit crimes from the government and power they wield with the objective to instill fear in the population so that it will adopt behaviors that would, otherwise, not be possible.”

To use fake accounts to disseminate also fake contents, attributing favorable aspects that dictatorships do not have, is a crime. It is a greater crime, however, to use counterfeiting to pursue the destruction of defenders of freedom and democracy, the true opposition who, inside or outside of the territories controlled by dictatorships, are permanently persecuted with “the assassination of their reputation” or “the assassination of their character” consisting of “the deliberate and sustained process aimed to destroy a person’s, institution’s, social groups or nation’s credibility.”

These operations are very expensive because, besides gaining access to the technology, equipment, and the paid broadcasting of fake messages and counterfeited narratives, dictatorships from Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, have hundreds of individuals perpetrating those crimes from centers or bunkers established by the regimes. The resources to defray the cost of these crimes are shady funds originated by other crimes such as the embezzlement, corruption of public funding and eventually from narcotics’ trafficking, given the narco-State nature of these countries.

The “technological State-terrorism” encompasses a long list of crimes, but all are categorized in the penal legislations of member States of the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime or the Palermo Convention. Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have signed and ratified said convention. The application of this convention further corroborates the existence of “structured groups” of criminals under the command and responsibility of Castro/Diaz-Canel, Morales/Arce, and Ortega/Murillo.

To end the impunity the Palermo Convention is the legal instrument to be applied. Proof of crime is public and amply existent and criminals are identified. The only thing lacking is that democracies and their leaders have the will to meet their obligations.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas