For 60 years the Castroit communist regime, which declare itself an atheist state, has restricted religious freedom. Churches and religious groups are required to register with the Ministry of Justice to obtain official recognition.Religious repression in Cuba The half century crackdown on Christianity in Cuba
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Religious repression in Cuba: The half century crackdown on Christianity in Cuba
POSTED BY JOHN SUAREZ
FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2018
Dedicated to those whose final words before Castro's firing squads were "Long live Christ the King!"
Priests were taken at gun point and forced out of Cuba in 1961
The Cuban dictatorship has had a hostile relationship with religion since the beginning when it officially declared itself an atheist state and expelled scores of priests on September 17, 1961, cancelled Christmas in 1969 under the pretext to prevent work shortages for the 1970 ten million ton sugar harvest but continued the ban until 1997, and sent mobs to intimidate Cubans attending religious services. In the first years 90% of Cuba's Jewish population fled the dictatorship shrinking from 15,000 to 1,500 persons of the Jewish faith.
The Catholic Church in Cuba was attacked; many of its clergy and religious figures exiled or sent to work camps. Being a practicing Catholic would mean being blacklisted from certain professions such as teaching. Christmas was ended as a national holiday in 1970 and replaced with holidays celebrating the 1959 communist revolution. This means that the ability to separate the political from the personal and the religious has been undermined and atrophied under the dictatorship of the Castro brothers. It was not supposed to be this way.
The revolutionaries in Cuba came down from the hills in 1959 wearing rosaries, and the leadership used this image to reject the charge that they were communists. Fidel Castro claimed throughout the 1950s and in the early days of the revolution that their aim was to restore democracy, but the reality was that they had always planned to consolidate their rule and establish a communist regime.
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Quote from the article:Cuba, where Religious Freedom Continues to be Repressed
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By Frank Simon
May 28, 2018
Cuban churchgoers. Photo: lahabana.com (The photo has been removed, no reason given by Havana Times)
HAVANA TIMES — “In the ‘60s, Catholics had stones thrown at them and a cord line was even put up at mass time so nobody could enter the churches because they used to say we were counter-revolutionaries. The only element of truth in all of that is that the priest did criticize the new government’s atheism, but he never planted bombs or fired shots,” Pedro tells me.
Anita is now an old woman but she remembers how she was banned from going to university in spite of her high grades as a student, because her records featured the dishonorable Baptist label. “It seems that the Revolution had already forgotten that its first great martyr was Frank Pais, was a Baptist.”
Thousands of young believers were sent off to Camaguey province, convicted for their respective religions, aging between 15-25 years old. “They were forced labor camps, where we had to be reeducated to become the ‘new man’ and that meant a system of exploitation where the slightest inkling of human rights weren’t respected, some people even committed suicide,” Jesus tells me. He recalls that at the work camps there were also homosexuals, teenagers without any work ties, political opponents and people of all persuasions. He heard a guard accidentally tune the radio to an evangelical radio station one morning, and one of the most beautiful hymns started playing “torre alta y roca mia,“ then, he told me, “I felt like I was going to come out of that abusive time alive.”
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The Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (Military Units to Help Production), known by its abbreviation UMAP, were concentration camps stablished by the Castro regime in Camagüey Province. These camps were in operation from November 1965 to July 1968. In November 26, 1963, the regime approved law 1129, which established the Obligatory Military Service (SMO). The regime alleged, as a justification, that those disqualify to serve in the military service would be sent to the UMAP camps. In reality, the regime sent to those camps dissidents, Catholics, Baptist, Methodists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Santería practitioners, priests, artists, intellectuals, gays, lesbians, prostitutes, pimps, hippies, drug addicts and anyone considered anti-social. According to Tahbaz, former Cuban intelligence agents have estimated that approximately 35,000 people were interned in the UMAP camps. Some died from torture, others committed suicide, were rape, beating, mutilated and many were traumatized for life, as shown in Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal 1988 award-winning documentary “Improper Conduct” that recorded the testimonies of victims and witnesses (YouTube).
The Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and gays were victims of the worst treatment at the UMAP camps. A poster placed at the entrance to the forced labor camps, where homosexuals were confined, read: “The work will make you men”, replica of the slogan “The work will make you free” used in the Nazi concentration camps. The regime intended to correct the homosexual behavior with rigorous work, which it considered a social deviation.
The Castroit regime Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), control all aspects of religious activities. It deny authorization for such activities, issue fines, thread confiscation of churches, impose travel restrictions, use violence against religious leaders, and more. According to CSW, “ORA exists solely to monitor, hinder and restrict the activities of religious groups.”
The Catholic Church, that has the larger number of members, under the guidance of Cardinal Jaime Ortega until his retirement in 2016 when he reached 75, has been in cohort with the regime. He has been very critical of capitalism and the U.S. embargo.Evangelicals in Cuba: Controlled, Repressed, but Still Multiplying
Evangelicals in Cuba: Controlled, Repressed, but Still Multiplying - The Christian Post
By Voices Contributor Michael Mutzner | Sat 18 Aug 2018
(PHOTO: REUTERS/ENRIQUE DE LA OSA)Worshippers carry a statue of Jesus Christ during a Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession on Good Friday in Havana, April 6, 2012.
Like every other UN Member State, Cuba was reviewed earlier during this year in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) conducted by the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. At this occasion, our Geneva Liaison Office worked on a report explaining the situation of the Evangelical churches in Cuba. Following years of steady growth, Evangelicals currently amount to about 10% of the Cuban population. While a small minority of churches are protected, most still face some forms of restriction and yet hope for the government to guarantee more freedom. In this current context, it has not been possible for an Evangelical Alliance in Cuba to be created yet.
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Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington, called on Francis to resign on the grounds the pope knew for years about the sexual misconduct of an American cardinal and did nothing.
The Castroit regime employ tactics to prevent pastors from performing their activities that appear to be in opposition to the regime policies. This repressive tactics includes arbitrary detentions, warnings, dismissal from jobs, surveillance, harassment, and in some cases forced exile.
In spite of the pressure on religious leaders to vote 'yes' in a referendum on the new constitution, Christian leaders issued public statements criticizing the proposed constitution. They opposed the new definition of marriage, were frustrated by limiting access to education and media, and barring financial investments among native Cubans. Also the support for “freedom of conscience” by the previous constitution, was eliminated.
Communism is basically a religion that will established Heaven on earth. The Castroit regime has taking over Christian churches and control them through The Cuban Council of Churches (CCC) a branch of the government.Protestant denominations launch new evangelical alliance
Protestant denominations launch new evangelical alliance - CSW
13 Jun 2019
Protestant leaders gather at a Methodist retreat centre in Cuba for the launch of the new alliance.
Seven Protestant denominations in Cuba, including the five largest in terms of membership, joined together to launch a new Cuban Alliance of Evangelical Churches on 11 June in a show of inter-denominational unity unseen on the island since the 1959 Revolution.
A statement signed by the leaders of the seven denominations said: “The primary reason behind the creation of this alliance is that the denominations which form part do not feel represented by the Cuban Council of Churches before the authorities and the Cuban people and feel motivated to work united in the defense of Biblical values.”
The move to unify under a new evangelical alliance follows an unprecedented campaign led by the same denominations against a new constitution which was approved in a general referendum in February. The new constitution contains significantly weakened language on freedom of religion or belief and freedom of conscience as compared to the previous constitution. Since the referendum, the five largest Protestant denominations have told CSW that the Cuban government has barred them from receiving any visits from abroad.
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