Fidel Castro is no more. Love him/hate him. Whatever. The world cannot ignore him, especially in death.

He was one of India’s greatest supporters during the non-aligned movement. He was also, undoubtedly, one of those are world leaders who later in life, publicly denounced his government’s homophobia and his own ‘neglect’ of LGBT persecution.

In an interview put out by Reuters on  31 August 2010 quoting a Mexican newspaper, Fidel Castro took the blame for a wave of homophobia launched by his revolutionary government in the 1960s, but said it happened because he was distracted by other problems.

The former Cuban president told La Jornada the persecution of gays, who were rounded up at the time as supposed counterrevolutionaries and placed in forced labor camps, was a “great injustice” that arose from the island’s history of discrimination against homosexuals.

He said he was not prejudiced against gays, but “if anyone is responsible (for the persecution), it’s me.”

“I’m not going to place the blame on others,” he said.

Castro, then 84, said he was busy in those days fending off threats from the United States, including attempts on his life, and trying to maintain the revolution that put him in power in 1959.

“We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death,” Castro said.

“In those moments I was not able to deal with that matter (of homosexuals). I found myself immersed, principally, in the Crisis of October (Cuban Missile Crisis), in the war, in policy questions,” he said.

Official persecution of gays continued into the 1970s before homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1979. Today, Cuba’s medical service provides free sex-change operations.

Fidel Castro will be remembered.

  Fidel Castro, Gay, LGBT, Rainbow