"Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said he acknowledges the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Revolution in his country, according to a newspaper interview published Tuesday....
Read more"Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said he acknowledges the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Revolution in his country, according to a newspaper interview published Tuesday.
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Cuba sent openly gay men to labor camps without charge or trial.
"They were moments of great injustice, great injustice!" Castro told journalist Carmen Lira Saade from the Mexican daily La Jornada. "If someone is responsible, it's me."
His comments came in the second installment of a two-part interview. The first half of the interview -- a wide-ranging, five-hour conversation at his home -- was published Monday.
"We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death, that we didn't pay it enough attention," Castro said of the way gays and lesbians were treated.
In 1979, Cuba decriminalized homosexual acts and more recently, there have been efforts to legalize same-sex unions."
By Shasta Darlington, CNN
August 31, 2010 -- Updated 1710 GMT (0110 HKT)
