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Protest marchers beaten, detained

Cuban Dissidents Nearly Doubles Participation in Hunger Strike Against Regime to 43 People
Cuban Dissidents Nearly Doubles Participation in Hunger Strike

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by Frances Martel, 15 Feb 2019

The head of the dissident organization Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) announced Friday that the number of pro-democracy activists staging a hunger strike against the regime’s violence has risen to 43 people, following a week of raids of UNPACU members’ homes in which police beat and arbitrarily imprisoned many of its leaders.

UNPACU, along with several other dissident organizations, is protesting the imposition of a fraudulent vote on a new Communist Party constitution scheduled to take home on February 24. Miguel Díaz-Canel, the nation’s “president” and second-in-command to Communist Party leader Raúl Castro, already issued a statement this week saying the country will adopt the new constitution, which expands the state’s power, suggesting that the ruling tyranny will not take votes into consideration.
Click link above for full article.
The Castroit regime increased violent repression against pro-democracy activists has the reaction of increasing the number of people in hunger strike to 43, an unprecedented act of protest to bring attention to their cause. Unfortunately most of the mainstream news media have not reported the story, negating the hunger strike activists the opportunity of reaching world opinion to hear their plight.
 
The Referendum Triggered Arbitrary Arrests in Cuba
The Referendum Triggered Arbitrary Arrests in Cuba – Translating Cuba

March 7, 2019Categories14ymedio, Translator: Sheilagh Carey

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Text of the sign: “#We All March. We don’t vote at the polling places of the assassins.” Among the most repressed independent organizations were the Patriotic Union of Cuba, Women in White, the United Antitotalitarian Forum, and the Cuban Association of Electoral Observers, among others. (@bertasolerf)

14ymedio, Havana, March 5, 2019 — The detentions for political reasons in Cuba increased to 310 in February compared to 144 in January, the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) denounced in its monthly report published this Wednesday. The number is substantially below the figure reported by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, last Sunday, which placed arrests at 405.

According to the CCDHRN, before the referendum held on February 24, a “large mobilization” of the police and para-police forces took place, capable of exercising “preventive repression and intimidation” on citizens classified as disaffected or non-sympathetic to the Government.
Click link above for full article.
Threats, arrests, fines, confiscations of work materials, invasion of independent activists homes, and house arrests are some of the many strategies employed against those promoting a position that differs from the yes vote for the referendum backed by the Castroit regime and for which an intense campaign has also unfolded in national media, schools, and public transportation. The regime does not care about the violations of international electoral standards.
 
Lady in White leader Berta Soler violently assaulted and arrested by Cuban State Security on Good Friday
Lady in White leader Berta Soler violently assaulted and arrested by Cuban State Security on Good Friday | Babalu Blog

April 20, 2019 by Alberto de la Cruz

The video is disturbing to watch. Berta Soler, the leader of Cuba’s peaceful human rights group the Ladies in White, is seen crossing the street all by herself. She is not seen protesting, carrying a placard, or yelling slogans, she is simply on her way to a Good Friday event.

However, the mere fact she is out in public was reason enough for the Castro dictatorship to violently assault and arrest her. As is evidenced in the video below, Soler crashes down into the street and is dragged away across the asphalt by uniformed State Security agents like an animal:

[video]https://www.radiotelevisionmarti.com/a/236879.html[/video]l

This is the “change” they keep telling us is happening in Cuba. This is what the socialist regime so many people tell us we should be embracing and engaging with does to those who dare to dissent.

Cuba is no different in 2019 as it was in 1959. Sixty years later, it is still a totalitarian hellhole run by the same corrupt Castro family dictatorship.
Read the full report of Soler’s violent arrest (in Spanish) at Martí Noticias.
Look how the Castroit regime treat those that dissent with it. Berta Soler in her way to mass in Good Friday was violently arrested by two women of the Ministry of the Interior. Her head hit the street pavement and she was dragged to a police car and transported to the police station. She was released after two hours without being interrogated. What a sexist and racist regime.
 
Aymara Nieto Muñoz: Courageous Cuban Woman and Mother of Three Faces Four Years in Prison for her Political Activism
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Aymara Nieto Munoz: Courageous Cuban Woman and Mother of Three Faces Four Years in Prison for her Political Activism

John Suarez, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2019

Mother of three sentenced to four years in prison for her nonviolent political activism


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Aymara Nieto Muñoz: Political prisoner and mom of three girls

The Municipal Court of Boyeros, in Havana, Cuba on April 25, 2019 confirmed a sentence of four years in prison for Aymara Nieto Muñoz. This mother of three young daughters is a member of the Ladies in White, a human rights movement that seeks freedom for all political prisoners in Cuba.

The first time I heard of Aymara Nieto was on September 20, 2015 when she along with three other activists risked everything to reach Pope Francis and receive his blessing. Scores of activists had been rounded up by the secret police to prevent them attending mass, but Aymara and three other activists managed to evade capture and one of them was able to reach His Holiness.

Click link above for full article.
Aymara, a member of the Ladies in White, has been already condemned to 4 years in prison by the Castroit regime kangaroo court as punishment for her activism in defense of human rights. She has already spent one year in prison since her arrest on May 6, 2018. Another four member of the Ladies in White remain in prison accused of non-payment of fines imposed for evading rings of security (when going to mass on Sunday), attack and contempt, all bogus charges. In the photo she is making the sing of Liberty with her fingers

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Aymara Nieto with her family
 
Police Surround and Raid Homes of Several Unpacu Activists in Santiago de Cuba
Police Surround and Raid Homes of Several Unpacu Activists in Santiago de Cuba – Translating Cuba


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The homes of activist Yadira Serrano and her father, Dr. Roberto Serrano, were raided by police on Monday in Santiago de Cuba. (Facebook)


UNPACU - Patriotic Union of Cuba

14ymedio, 3 June 2019 — On Monday morning, Cuban police and State Security forces raided the homes of Dr. Roberto Serrano and his daughter, activist Yadira Serrano, in the municipality of Songo la Maya, in Santiago de Cuba, according to information received by 14ymediofrom the opponent Carlos Amel Oliva, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu).

The homes of the father and daughter are located one on top of the other and during the police search a laptop, two mobile phones, two USB memories and numerous documents were seized.

Along with the police searches, the main headquarters of Unpacu and another house, where the Freedom and Democracy Academy was planning an activity, are surrounded and access to their interiors is not allowed.

Dr. Serano, who works as a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor at a medical center of Songo La Maya, recently made public his support for a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which accuses the Government of Cuba of using practices akin to slavery with regards to physicians who carry out missions abroad.
Click link above for full article
.The Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) is the opposition organization that has the largest number of political prisoners in the regime prisons. Nothing will change, as long as the power remains in the hands of the Castroit regime that use its power to illegally detain and jail dissidents.
 
A Lawyer Who Does Her Profession Proud
A Noble Cuban Lawyer: Laritza Diversent | National Review

By JAY NORDLINGER
June 7, 2019 6:57 PM

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Laritza Diversent at the Oslo Freedom Forum in May 2019 (Jay Nordlinger)

Laritza Diversent is a Cuban lawyer, now living in the United States, because she was forced to flee her country. She has a beautiful name, doesn’t she? The last name is of French-Haitian origin.

I met her at the Oslo Freedom Forum. She told me her story, in brief outline, and I will relate it to you.

Her father “worked in the fields,” as she puts it. He had fought in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel Castro. He was always loyal to the regime — right to the end. (He passed away some years ago.) Laritza’s mother is still living, and is in Cuba. She has a handicap (unspecified, and I don’t feel like pressing).

Was Laritza political, when she was a girl? No. She was indifferent to politics. She never wanted to be involved in the Communist Youth League or anything like that. Her parents told her to study as much as she could, to maximize her opportunities in the future. That’s what she did.
Click link above for full article.
On September 23, 2016, the regime security agents without a valid warrant resorted to force and invaded the Cubalex headquarters. They took away computers, cell phones, a server, security cameras, printers, digital media, archives and money. They acted with total impunity without any regard for the law. Laritza was devastated and eventually under pressure and harassment by the regime has no choice but to leave Cuba. Now she and her son are living in the U.S., where she continuous her Cubalex work. Her courage and determination is inspiring.
 
In the last two years the Castroit regime has step up the repression against activists and dissidents, forcing many of them to leave the island. The regime state security threatened them with physical injury, harass their families and prison in order to force them to leave. In a number of cases they have been escorted by state security to the airport and forced into exile. (Cuban security forces are forcing dissidents into exile: human rights group)
 
CIA agents defused bombs in Fidel Castro's most notorious prison that were set to blow after The Bay of Pigs
How Castro rigged a Cuban prison with five tons of explosives and three undercover CIA defused it | Daily Mail Online

How three CIA agents defused bombs in Fidel Castro's most notorious prison that were set to blow after The Bay of Pigs: Newly unclassified files reveal the hail-mary plot by undercover officers to escape from communist Cuba's Alcatraz

• David Christ, Walter Szuminski and Thornton Anderson were all captured in August 1960, attempting to bug the Havana room of Chinese diplomats

• The men were ordered to serve 10 year sentences in one of the country’s most notorious prisons, the Isle of Pines: a fetid facility off the southwest coast

• After the botched CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro lined its walls with explosives to deter invasion, knowing the jail to contain enemies of his regime

• The three CIA men risked it all, banding together with various factions of prisoners and sharing their expertise to hatch a plan to diffuse the bombs

• They trained prisoners to to tackle the wiring of the five tonnes of explosives and incredibly the effort was a resounding success - leaving guards none the wiser

• The trio managed to maintain their cover for a staggering 949 days in Cuban detention, until their release from the facility in March 1963

By LUKE KENTON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 23:12 EDT, 11 July 2019 | UPDATED: 17:27 EDT, 12 July 2019
Click link above for full article.
What can you expect from Fidel Castro who did not care that 6.6 million Cubans would be annihilated in a nuclear war. Castro, on October 26, 1962, in a letter to Khrushchev wrote: "I tell you this because I believe that the imperialists' aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous, and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba -- a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law – then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other.”

Khrushchev response in October 30, 1962, “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the enemy. You, of course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it would have been the start of a thermonuclear world war.”
 
In “The Fog of War” by Errol Morris, McNamara, in a meeting chaired by Fidel Castro in January 1992 in Havana, asked three questions to him, “Number one: did you know the nuclear warheads were there? Number two: if you did, would you have recommended to Khrushchev in the face of an U.S. attack that he use them? Number three: if he had used them, what would have happened to Cuba?"

Castro said: “Number one, I knew they were there. Number two, I would not have recommended to Khrushchev, I did recommend to Khrushchev that they be used. Number three, 'What would have happened to Cuba?' It would have been totally destroyed."
 
Christ knew that even the slightest change in Castro’s mood could level the six-thousand-or-so prisoners inside the Isle of Pines to relative dust, and drastic action needed to be taken.

Castro could care less about killing 6,000 prisoners. After all his regime has disposed thousands of Cubans. According to the Cuba Archive (Cuba Archive – Helping Cubans attain their rightful freedoms, foster a culture of respect for life and the rule of law, and honor the memory of those who’ve paid the highest price.) work-in-progress report close to 8,000 documented deaths and disappearances, of which 7,325 are attributed to the Cuban state during the Castro dictatorship; 382 cases are attributed to the state under Raúl Castro, since July 2006, including 51 extrajudicial killings (reported or suspected), 120 from denial of medical care or health reasons, and 52 suicides.
 
U.S. Calls on Cuba to Drop Criminal Charges against Journalist
Cuba's Journalist Roberto Quinones -- U.S. Calls on Cuba to Drop Criminal Charges against Journalist | National Review

By MAIREAD MCARDLE August 21, 2019 3:39 PM

The U.S. on Wednesday urged Cuba to drop criminal charges against journalist Roberto Quiñones, who is facing a year in jail.
“We condemn the injustices committed against Cuban journalist Roberto Quiñones, arrested for reporting on Cuba’s repression of religious freedom,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday in a statement. “We will continue to use targeted sanctions to cut off resources from the Cuban regime which uses its income to repress its own people.”

Quiñones, a reporter for CubaNet, was detained in April while covering a trial in Guantanamo, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was charged with resistance and disobedience, and after he refused to pay the fine authorities demanded of him he was sentenced to a year in prison. He has appealed his sentence.

The Trump administration has cracked down on Cuba, targethrough ting tourism and foreign investment in particular and reversing many of the results of President Obama’s thaw in relations between the two nations. The administration intends to keep the economic pressure on Cuba as an incentive to reform the country’s authoritarian government.
On April 22 the Castroit regime estate security beat and detained Roberto Quiñones a CubaNet reported when he was covering a trial related to religious freedom, and fine him. On August 7 he was sentenced to one year in prison for refusing to pay the fine. He appealed the sentenced but it was confirmed and the regime will through him in jail September 9.

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) criticized the Castroit regime and ordered it to suspend the punishment and “not continue to overrun human rights.”
 
Police Take the Journalist Roberto Quinones to Prison
Police Take the Journalist Roberto Quinones to Prison – Translating Cuba

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Roberto de Jesús Quiñones was taken to prison on September 11, 2019. (Cubanet

Translator: Sheilagh Herrera

14ymedio, Havana, September 11, 2019 — The journalist Roberto Quiñones was arrested this Wednesday and driven to jail by the police, after he didn’t report on September 5 to the provincial prison of Guantanamo to complete a one-year sentence.

Three National Revolutionary Police (PNR) agents arrived at Quiñones’s house after four in the afternoon and arrested him, as his wife Ana Rosa Castro detailed to the information website Cubanet.

“Roberto was prepared. He had his things gathered, so they wouldn’t delay in taking him. They told him that he had the right to a phone call, that way he would give me the details of his exact location. Later they informed me that they took him to the provincial prison,” added Ana Rosa.

Recently, Quiñones had announced that he would not report voluntarily to the prison. “The president of the court that sanctioned me and the judges of the provincial court that did the other setup of a staging of a supposed act of justice, insisted that I am a dangerous citizen, I have thought that in that case the best thing is to wait for them to come arrest me in my own house,” he argued.
Click link above for full article.
Roberto is a lawyer and he knows he did not break the law. He was arrested by the regime police and drove to the station. He says that this was abuse and then“the officer hit me so hard that I was bleeding by the time we arrived. The officer even ruptured one of my eardrums. I was in such bad shape that the station chief told them to take me to the hospital.” The officer said I had resisted arrest. He was sentenced by the regime kangaroo court to one year in prison, which was enforced on September 11.
 
Roberto, as a lawyer, have continued defending opposition members and human rights activists. The regime is worried about the independent journalists, duo to the fact that many young people have joined their cause. And a number of journalists are tired of working for the regime media. He says that “I'll keep fighting for my ideals in Cuba, no matter the cost.” Roberto is a man of great moral character.
 
Political arrests in socialist Cuba during September nearly doubled previous month, highest number all year
Political arrests in socialist Cuba during September nearly doubled previous month, highest number all year | Babalu Blog

October 3, 2019 by Alberto de la Cruz

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Cuba’s socialist dictatorship carried out 481 political arrests on the island during the month of September, nearly double the 267 political arrests recorded in August. This makes September’s political arrests the highest number recorded so far this year.

This is what socialism looks like in Cuba. This is socialism in action.

Via Martí Noticias:

OCDH: September was the month with the highest number of arrests this year

The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) headquartered in Madrid announced on Wednesday that the government of Miguel Diaz-Canel nearly doubled the number of arbitrary arrests in September, so far the month with the most repression this year.

There were 267 arrests in August. In September, the network of OCDH observers on the island documented at least 481 arbitrary arrests, mostly in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and Villa Clara. The number is the highest monthly total seen this year.

Click link above for full article
The regime continues to repress and punish the dissidents. Beside the arbitrary arrest it use other repressive tactics, including beatings, public shaming, travel restrictions, and termination of employment against critics. It is ironic that the Castroit regime is a current member of the Human Rights Council for the 2017-2019 period. The fox guarding the hen house.
 
A jailed Cuban activist is in grave danger. He must be released.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c3f136-00be-11ea-9518-1e76abc088b6_story.html

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Cuban opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer in Havana in May 2016. (Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images)

By Editorial Board
November 8, 2019 at 10:31 a.m. PST

IN HIS many videos on social media. José Daniel Ferrer appears as a robust and determined activist for democracy in Cuba, heading a group named the Patriotic Union of Cuba, or UNPACU. But in a short prison visit on Thursday, more than a month after Mr. Ferrer was detained Oct. 1 by authorities, his family says they saw a broken man, hunched over, having lost half his weight, covered in bruises. He was barely able to speak but told them hastily he has been threatened that he will not leave prison alive.

This horrific scene is cause for alarm, outrage and international protest. Mr. Ferrer is a leading opposition voice to the Cuban regime. He previously served several years in prison after the 2003 Black Spring” arrests of the followers of Oswaldo Payá, champion of the Varela Project, a citizen initiative calling for a referendum on democracy in Cuba. Mr. Ferrer founded UNPACU in his hometown of Santiago de Cuba after his release, and he has been tireless and unrelenting in his pursuit of human rights and in his criticism of the authoritarian regime established by Fidel Castro six decades ago.
Click link above for full article.
José Daniel Ferrer, ex-political prisoner of the Black Spring, the 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents, was arrested on October 1 and his family has only been able to visit him once very briefly. The Castroit tyrannical regime is killing him slowly, like it has done with other opposition leaders.

Amnesty International on November 5 demanded the Cuban regime explain the charges against José Daniel Ferrer, who was arrested a week ago, or release him from jail. The international community should demand the immediate, unconditional release of Jose Daniel Ferrer
 
José Daniel Ferrer, ex-political prisoner of the Black Spring, the 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents, was arrested on October 1 and his family has only been able to visit him once very briefly. The Castroit tyrannical regime is killing him slowly, like it has done with other opposition leaders.

Amnesty International on November 5 demanded the Cuban regime explain the charges against José Daniel Ferrer, who was arrested a week ago, or release him from jail. The international community should demand the immediate, unconditional release of Jose Daniel Ferrer
The Cuban government attacks its most notable political prisoner in unusual editorial
Access Denied

By Nora Gámez Torres
November 20, 2019

Amid an international campaign for the release of a dissident, Granma, Cuba´s Communist Party newspaper, dedicated an unusual editorial on Wednesday to attacking the country’s best-known political prisoner, José Daniel Ferrer, and the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Under the governments of Fidel and Raúl Castro and their current successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel, the names of very few dissidents and members of the opposition have ever appeared on state media, an attempt to deprive them of public visibility. But the intense international campaign, with calls from Amnesty International, regional organizations and politicians from several countries to release Ferrer, seems to have forced the government to respond with accusations of its own directed against a frequent target: the United States.

Granma accused the U.S. of leading “a new slander and discredit campaign against Cuba,” using “the arrest of the counterrevolutionary José Daniel Ferrer” as a pretext. The unsigned editorial said Ferrer was “a salaried agent serving the United States, with a long history of provocative actions against public order and legality.”
Click link above for full article.
The Castroit tyrannical regime is extremely worry by the international campaign for the release of the dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer. It had mounted a political campaign to discredit and damage his reputation and justify his imprisoning for over a month without charges. In the meantime it is severely punishing Ferrer in prison to get rid of him one way or another.
 
Cuban Government "Whitewashes" Spying Against Its Citizens, Claims Human Rights Group
Cuban Government "Whitewashes" Spying Against Its Citizens, Claims Human Rights Group – Translating Cuba

14ymedio, Havana, December 4, 2019 — There were at least 218 arbitrary arrests in Cuba during the month of November, a month which also saw the publishing of a Decree that legalizes or “whitewashes” spying on citizens, claimed the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights in its most recent report published this Tuesday.

Havana, Matanzas, Villa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba were the provinces that were most affected by the arrests, said the organization headquartered in Madrid, adding that “dozens of those affected were also violently arrested, fined, and threatened by police.”

The majority of those arrested “were trying to perform political activities the headquarters of their organizations, attend Mass, or travel to another province or municipality of the country.” Many others were “besieged in their homes to prevent them from going out to the street during celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the city of Havana.”
Click link above for full article.
The Castroit tyrannical regime is the only one in the Americas that prohibit peaceable public demonstrations. Prominent activist leaders have been arrested or prohibited from leaving their homes, before and during public demonstrations. The Ladies in White continuous to be harass and detained by the regime when going to mass on Sunday.
 
The Case of Xiomara Cruz in Cuba: Systemic medical malpractice or a slow motion political murder?
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: The Case of Xiomara Cruz in Cuba: Systemic medical malpractice or a slow motion political murder?

The mystery surrounding Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz's illness.

John Suarez, December 26, 2019

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Medical mystery? The plight of Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz


If Cuba is a medical super power as Castro regime apologists claim, then why can it not diagnose and treat what ails Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz? Over social media today the news about the Lady in White and prisoner of conscience was dire.

According to the Ladies in White today over Twitter, the Lady in White Xiomara Cruz lost consciousness early this morning, is currently in intensive care, and according to the Doctor who took her in, she should be receiving medication intravenously.

Family, friends and activists have reason to be concerned about her plight and that a political agenda is behind her not receiving a correct diagnosis and treatment.

Xiomara was arrested on April 16, 2016 for speaking out during a human rights demonstration in Havana's Central park. She was placed on parole in January of 2018. She was re-arrested in mid-September 2018 under the charge of being "threatening." On September 19, 2018 she was tried and sentenced to one year and four months in prison. She was sent to a prison 400 kilometers from her home. This was an added hardship for her family to visit her, and keep an eye on her well being.
Click link above for full article.
Obviously, the Castroit regime is determined to murder the Lady in White Xiomara Cruz and get away with it, like it happened before with other dissidents.
 
Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Wilman Villar Mendoza
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Wilman Villar Mendoza

"When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." - Josef Stalin

Wilman Villar Mendoza: May 30, 1980 - January 19, 2012
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Some psychologists argue that as the number of victims increase into the hundreds, and thousands that compassion collapses out of the human fear of being overwhelmed. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin put it more succinctly: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." In the case of Cuba the communist regime has killed tens of thousands, and many have become numb in the face of this horror. Therefore on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first communist regime in Russia, that caused so much harm around the world, will focus on the small corner of Cuba and on an infinitesimal sampling of some of the victims of Cuban communism.
Click link above for full article.
One of the few non-violent ways used to attract attention to the Castroit regime 60 years dictatorship is engaging in a hunger strike as an act of political protest. It is very sad that these hunger strikes have to be used to bring world opinion to bear against the oppression and denial of freedom by the regime and force change.Wilman Villar Mendoza death, has strengthened the regime image of brutality and disregard for human life.
 
Cuban Reporter Charged with Illegal Possession of Journalistic Equipment
Cuban Reporter Charged with Illegal Possession of Journalistic Equipment - Havana Times

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Cuban reporter Iliana Hernández faces charges of illegally possessing reporting equipment. (Photo via Iliana Hernández)

January 28, 2020

HAVANA TIMES – Cuban authorities should immediately drop all criminal charges against journalist Iliana Hernández, return her equipment, and allow her to report freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On January 8, at around 7:50 a.m., agents from the National Revolutionary Police and Cuban Intelligence Directorate raided the Havana home of Hernández, a contributor to the independent Cuban news website CiberCuba, and confiscated documents and equipment, including her computer and cell phone, according to Hernández, who spoke with CPJ via phone.

Following the raid, agents gave Hernández a citation saying she had been charged with receiving stolen property, and ordering her to appear before police on January 13, according to Hernández and a copy of the citation that she posted to Twitter. Authorities released Hernández later on January 8 on 1,000 Cuban pesos ($39) bail, but did not return her equipment, she said.

The crime of “receiving stolen property,” which relates to the possession of goods that a person could “rationally suppose” were obtained illegally, is punishable by up to one year in prison, according to the Cuban penal code.

On January 13, Hernández presented herself at the police station and provided agents with documentation certifying that she had lawfully obtained the computer, phone, and other items, but said the officers would not accept the documents.
Click link above for full article.
Another attack on independent Cuban journalist by the Castroit regimen. This is clearly part of a campaign of political persecution designed to silence journalist Iliana Hernández. For 61 years the Castroit regime have governed Cuba, severely restricting the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, freedom of movement, and due process. The regime has repressed independent journalists, as well as artists or citizens who try to voice their demands. During all this time the regime has maintained a monopoly over the media.
 
UN Asks Cuba to Release and Compensate Three Opponents
UN Asks Cuba to Release and Compensate Three Opponents – Translating Cuba

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Iván Amaro Hidalgo, on the left, was arrested in August 2016 wearing a shirt with the motto Democracy YES! Dictatorship NO!

14ymedio, Havana, 17 February 2020 — The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations Human Rights Council considers that jailed Cuban opponents Josiel Guia Piloto, Marbel Mendoza Reyes and Iván Amaro Hidalgo were convicted of vague crimes and without adequate legal defense.

After learning of the cases from the Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD), an NGO, and evaluating the allegations of the Government of Cuba, the agency reached these conclusions and calls on Havana to grant the activists “immediate, full freedom” and grant them “the effective right to obtain compensation and other types of reparation, in accordance with international law.”

Josiel Guia Piloto, president of the Republican Party of Cuba (which is not legally recognized), was arrested 22 times between 2011 and 2014. In 2016 he was arrested and, a year later, was convicted of “contempt and public disorder.” The UN considers it proven that the police stopped him without justification in order to “generate an exchange of words” that resulted in his arrest and prosecution “from the fabrication of a suspicion by police.”
Click link above for full article.
More than 90,000 people are in prison in the island under the Castroit regime, making it the highest incarceration rate in the world. The regime holds thousands of prisoners on vague charges. The judicial system is control by state security forces, which manufacture crimes against political activists.
 
More than 90,000 people are in prison in the island under the Castroit regime, making it the highest incarceration rate in the world. The regime holds thousands of prisoners on vague charges. The judicial system is control by state security forces, which manufacture crimes against political activists.
This highest incarceration rate in the world, where about 99% of the people tried are found guilty, is proof of the failing Castroit tyrannical regime judiciary. People are sent to jail for “lack of ties with mass organizations (control by the regime)”, for being “prone to crime”, for” pre-criminal social danger.” These are frequently apply to activists and others citizens critical of the regime, who pose a risk to the regime.
 
The Death That Changed Our Lives
The Death That Changed Our Lives – Translating Cuba

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Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in February of 2010 after a long hunger strike. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 February 2020 — The phone rang with a distant sound, as if it were at the end of a long hallway. I responded and the voice on the other end spoke of death, a hunger strike, and prison and mentioned a name I had never heard. On February 23, 2010, Orlando Zapata Tamayo died, after 86 days without eating, and his death led to one of the most painful and fruitful moments in Cuba’s recent history.

There was a time when news traveled slowly, when we learned years later what had happened in our own country and just a few meters from our house. But that long era of secrecy and information darkness began to break down one day ten years ago, after the death of a man who refused to eat in protest of the conditions of his imprisonment.

Zapata was born in 1967, he worked as a bricklayer and at the time of his death he was little known. But he had already starred in several actions on the street and appeared in the book The Dissenters, which the ruling party had prepared to denigrate its opponents. When he stopped breathing, there were only a couple of public photos of him, but in a few days his face, with its sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones ,became familiar to millions of people inside and outside the Island.
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Orlando Zapata Tamayo died a hero who did not compromise after an 85 day hunger strike to demand better prison conditions. Conditions in the Castroit gulag are despicable, cruelty against the prisoners have no bound. For the Castroit regime he was nothing but a "worthless nigger" like his jailers called him. Zapata was not willing to kill for his ideals, but to die by them. He represent the soul and spirit of liberty.
 
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Decree 370 has been used by the Government to fine several reporters and activists in recent months. Yoé Suárez (left) and Camila Acosta (right) were recently summoned by Cuban State Security regarding violations of the decree. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 March 2020 — This Friday, reporters Yoe Suárez, a collaborator with Diario de Cuba and Camila Acosta, from Cubanet, were summoned by State Security, as reported by both on social networks. Acosta was also fined 3,000 CUP for allegedly violating Decree 370, which regulates the use of the internet in Cuba.

The journalist was fined for criticizing the government and publishing articles from the independent press on social media. The authorities invoked Article i of Decree 370, which penalizes the dissemination of “information contrary to the social interest, morality, good customs and the integrity of people.”

Acosta attended the “interview” at the station at 7th and 62nd, in the Havana municipality of Playa, where a State Security agent was waiting for her. “The repressor Alejandro was waiting for me, the same man who for months has been leading the harassment of dissident Cuban women in Havana.”

Acosta was checked to prevent her from entering the premises with a tape recorder. Inside, Captain Rubisel Ortega and three men who identified themselves as inspectors from the Ministry of Communications were waiting for her. One of them, Rolando Ballester, showed several posts that the reporter had posted on Facebook as proof that she violated the law.
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“He who says freedom of the press, says freedom, says freedom of assembly; freedom of assembly and the right to choose freely, not only the President, but also for the workers to choose their leaders. Rights which cannot be taken away”. Fidel Castro Speech, January 5, 1959, Camaguey, Cuba.

The Castro regime took away all those rights from the Cuban people since 1959, 61 years ago when he started to persecuted and jailed over 50% of the labor leaders, destroying the rights attained by the workers and the labor movement. He eliminated those who criticized the revolutionary process, coercing them to leave the country under threat, sending them to prison or executing them. That was his goal, which unfortunately became reality.
 
Orlando Zapata Tamayo died a hero who did not compromise after an 85 day hunger strike to demand better prison conditions. Conditions in the Castroit gulag are despicable, cruelty against the prisoners have no bound. For the Castroit regime he was nothing but a "worthless nigger" like his jailers called him. Zapata was not willing to kill for his ideals, but to die by them. He represent the soul and spirit of liberty.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo a plumber and bricklayer of black race and humble origin, a member of the nonviolent Alternative Republican Movement, had been sentenced to several months in prison for public disorder, disrespect, and disobedience, and released on conditional liberty. He was arrested by the political police of the Castroit regime after the crackdown against the independents journalist in the spring of 2003 for his participation in a fast to protest the harsh treatment of the political prisoners and sentenced to three years in prison. Due to his activism and protest in prison his sentence was increased to 36 years!
 
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