Madam, - Your Editorial of August 2nd airbrushes the abuses of human rights in Castro's Cuba with a brief acknowledgment of the regime's "highly centralised" nature and a passing reference to its "represssive and coercive record". I find this surprising in the context of the attention which your paper rightly pays to human rights abuses in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Fidel Castro has made highly beneficial contributions to public health and education in Cuba and also demonstrated great solidarity with developing countries worldwide. But any balanced judgment of his legacy needs also to take account of many other factors, including the persistent abuse of human rights in Cuba, the use of young Cuban soldiers as proxies for the Soviet Union and the total intolerance of dissent.
I doubt whether the tens of thousands of Cubans who have risked their lives fleeing to the US would agree with your generous assessment that Castro's regime "has been continually legitimised by internal achievements". On the other hand, it might be possible to deal with this uncomfortable reality by dismissing these people as "counter-revolutionary Cuban exiles based in Miami" , as you do in the final paragraph of your Editorial. - Yours, etc,
PAUL SCOTT, Lucan, Co Dublin.