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Protest marchers beaten, detained

Cuban police detain dozens of dissidents on human rights anniversary
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/10/3810668/cuban-police-detain-dozens-of.html

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

Cuban police detained dozens of dissidents, beat up others, blocked their telephones and sealed off their homes Tuesday to forestall a string of protests and other gatherings planned to mark International Human Rights Day.

Among those detained were the leader and more than 20 members of the Ladies in White, who tried to gather in a corner of Havana. Another 30 activists were also detained in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

Police left 16 dissidents bleeding and arrested six others when they raided the home of Roger Curbelo, a member of the Christian Liberation Movement in the eastern town of Puerto Padre.

“All of us are full of blood,” Garcia said of the 16 activists who remained holed up in the home late Tuesday. Some were hit with police batons and others with rocks thrown from a mob of about 1,000 government supporters that harassed the home, he added. They locked the telephones of several dissidents in an effort to silence reports of other arrests, and Yoani Sanchez tweeted Tuesday morning that “Like in a bad horror movie, I am losing communication with … activists.”

The crackdown appeared to be one of the broadest in years because of the increased activities planned by the opposition for the anniversary of the U.N.’s Universal Human Rights Declaration.

Ladies in White leader Berta Soler and her husband, former political prisoner Angel Moya, were hauled off by plainclothes police as they headed to a protest planned by the women’s group in front of Havana’s popular Coppelia ice cream shop.

At least another 20 Ladies in White and two men were detained, some with force, as they arrived in groups of twos dressed in their traditional white clothes, according to a report by the Agence France Press news agency.

As the women were detained, some shouted “Freedom” and a pro-government mob gathered near the shop held up posters of Fidel and Raúl Castro and shouted “filthy rats,” “death to the Ladies in White,” Spain’s Efe news agency reported. Also harassed by State Security agents and mobs was Estado de SATS, directed by Antonio Rodiles, which had launched its First International Conference on Human Rights in Rodiles’ home without government approval.

Rodiles said police had sealed off his entire city block and were arresting or turning away supporters who turned up for the gathering. Ten to 15 supporters slipped into his home before the barricades went up, but he had been expecting 80 to 200 to attend. Among those detained were two Argentines, Pedro Robledo and Valentina Aragona, who travelled to Cuba to participate in the gathering.

Security officials organized block parties around Havana and the rest of the island, delivering beer and rum and blaring revolutionary music to celebrate what are Cuba’s claims of achievements inhuman rights, such as health and education.

Other detentions were reported in western Pinar del Rio and Matanzas east of Havana. Some dissidents were warned to stay at home Tuesday or face arrest. Dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer said police detained 23 Ladies in White and sealed off another 22 in the Santiago home of Solange Claramunt to disrupt their plans for a street protest in Cuba’s second largest city.

Six men were known to have been arrested in the region, and many others could not be reached because of the blocked phones, added Ferrer, who helped found the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), one of the island’s most active dissident groups.

But police only monitored and did not confront about 15 dissidents who marched through the streets of his hometown of Palmarito de Cauto and nearby Palma Soriano, he said.

In another contrast with the crackdowns elsewhere on the island, Guillermo Fariñas, one of the best-known dissidents said that Tuesday was the first time since 2002 he was not arrested when he tried to mark human rights day in his hometown of Santa Clara.

Farinas said police did not interfere as he led 45 members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and three Ladies in White on a two-mile walk to a local cemetery to pray at the tomb of Juan Wilfredo Soto García, a dissident who died in 2011 after a police beating.

Police nevertheless detained about 20 other dissidents in the region as they tried to mark the human rights day, said Fariñas, who won the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize for freedom of human conscience in 2010.

“Don’t think that the repression has changed,” he cautioned. “The intolerance continues.”
The Castroit regime state security agents detains dozens of pacific demonstrators, beat others bloody, blocked their telephones, and sealed off their homes for planning to protest on International Human Rights Day. Shame on the Castroit fascist’s regime.
 
The regime police left 16 bleeding and arrested other 6 when they raided the home of Roger Curbelo, a member of the opposition Christian Liberation Movement. And yet there are those that still defend the brutality of the Castroit regime.

When this was happening, Obama, who had just finished lecturing us on freedom at the Mandela funeral, walked over to shake hands with the tyrant Raul Castro II and exchange pleasantries.
 
Cuban police seize toys that dissidents planned to donate to children
Cuban police seize toys that dissidents planned to donate to children | The Miami Herald The Miami Herald


BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

Cuban police seized hundreds of toys from dissidents in a string of raids early Friday described by a pro-government blogger as a crackdown on a planned “provocation” — giving the toys, paid for by Miami exiles, to children.

Among the homes raided were those of José Daniel Ferrer, a former political prisoner and founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), and the headquarters of the dissidents Ladies in White in Havana.

UNPACU members said State Security agents and police raided Ferrer’s home in the eastern town of Palmarito de Cauto at 5 a.m. Friday as well as the homes of two other group members in the nearby cities of Santiago de Cuba and Holguín.

Police search warrants specifically mentioned “toys, money and other goods of illegal origin,” said UNPACU member Yusmila Ferrera. Dissidents planned to distribute 700 toys throughout the island to mark Three Kings Day, Cuba’s traditional gift-giving day.

The raiders of Ferrer’s home seized all the stockpiled toys plus five computers, several cellphones and about $600 in cash, Ferrera said. More toys, other computers, phones and $180 in cash were seized in the two other raids.

Belkis Cantillo, head of the Ladies in White in eastern Cuba, told El Nuevo Herald that she and 11 group members were staging a sit-in Friday in a house in Palmarito “to demand the return of what they [police] stole from us today.”

Ferrer and nine other UNPACU members were hauled away by police during the raids. All except Ferrer were released one hour later, and there was no word on his whereabouts as of Friday evening, said UNPACU member Andris Verdecia.

Ladies in White leader Berta Soler said police also raided her group’s headquarters in Havana at 5 a.m. and seized the toys, food, 70 chairs, a laptop and three printers, toilet paper and 100 towels and bed sheets that were to be donated to the children’s parents.

“This has been a plunder,” Soler told El Nuevo Herald from the headquarters, the home of the group’s late founder, Laura Pollán.

Soler said she and her husband Angel Moya, who like Ferrer was jailed from 2003 to 2011, were detained by police Friday morning as they left their home in the eastern Havana suburb of Alamar but were released after the raid was completed.

The Havana Ladies in White will continue, she said, with their plans to hand out toys to 150 to 200 children on Saturday in their annual gift drive, started in 2004 to mark the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, when the three kings delivered gifts to the baby Jesus.
Click link above for full article.
How can be good a scheme to search homes, steel money, toys, properties and jail the people living on them for the only crime to distribute those toys to poor children on January 6 the Feast of the Epiphany , when the three kings visited the newborn Jesus given him gifts of frankincense and myrrh. In the Spanish speaking countries that night the three wise men bring gifts to the children in the “Día de los Reyes.”

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The three Kings: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar, bringing gifts to baby Jesus.

As far as is known, no regime law ban as illegal money, toys, food, chairs, computers, printers, bed sheets, towels or toilet paper. The regime is afraid of these items “powerful forces” to undermine its tyrannical system. Castroism has reached an all-time low.

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The three Kings: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
 
The Castroit regime State Security robbing children of their Christmas gifts, their joy and happiness. They made a political issue of a gesture of kindness, a small act that will make children feel happier and fulfill their dreams. Castro II monarchical regime viciousness is second only to Kim Jong Un North Korea barbaric monarchy.
 
Toys for children are supposed to be something normal in Christmas anywhere in the world, except under the Castroit regime that consider such activity an illegal act.
 
The Human Toll of Raul Castro´s Rule: 7/31/2006-12/15/2013
Cuba Archive: Verdad y Memoria - A Truth and Memory Project - The Human Toll of Raul Castro´s Rule: 7/31/2006-12/15/2013

As 2013 comes to an end, Raúl Castro remains Cuba's supreme leader after six and a half years —considerably longer than the average president's term in most countries. Following is a relation of deaths and disappearances attributed to the Cuban state under Raúl Castro from 7/31/2006 to 12/15/2013. 42 additional cases (for a total of 208 documented cases) are reported for which the Cuban state is considered directly or indirectly responsible. Many more cases are feared, particularly in prison and in exit attempts by sea, of which reports are very hard to come by.
Documented Cases: 166*
Forced Disappearances: 2
Extrajudicial / Deliberate Killings: 15
Suspected Extrajudicial / Deliberate Killings: 10
By Hunger Strike in Prison: 4
Denial of Medical Care / Medical Condition in Prison: 86
Suicide or Alleged Suicide in Prison or Provoked: 46
Accidents / Negligence in Prison: 3

See here profiles of selected cases and a list in the full Report

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106578108/The Human Toll of Raul Castro´s Rule.pdf
Sergio del Valle, who fought alone side Raul in The Sierra Maestra, used to call him "Raúl the Terrible", in allusion to the first Russian to crown himself tsar. Raul as Minister of Defense was in charge of the Cuban political police, where he acted in a cruel and ruthless way. Raul and Fidel have transformed Cuba into a shambles, and he will turn Cuba into an even worse tyranny.
 
Raul Castro is impulsive, dogmatic and sometimes brutal, in 1959, during the surrender of Santiago, the second largest Cuban city; Raul presided over the execution of more than 70 soldiers and officers who were machine-gunned and their corpses thrown into a ditch.
 
The good news is that the Castroit horrors and violence against the Cuban people is almost at an end. Fidel Castro and his murderous brother Raúl are like the walking dead. They have not realized that they and their kind are all practically extinct.
 
41st Sunday in a Row: Ladies in White Beaten, Arrested
Capitol Hill Cubans: 41st Sunday in a Row: Ladies in White Beaten, Arrested

For the 41st Sunday in a row, dozens of the The Ladies in White were beaten and arrested throughout the island.

The Ladies in White is a pro-democracy group composed of the mothers, wives, sisters and other relatives of Cuban political prisoners.

At least 17 were arrested in Havana, 18 in Matanzas, 7 in Bayamo and 8 in Holguin.

Meanwhile, in the easternmost province of Santiago de Cuba, over 29 were arrested, including the regional leader of the group, Belkis Cantillo.

To add insult to injury, at a funeral yesterday for the father of Ibis Maria Rodriguez, a member of The Ladies in White, the political police physically assaulted Ibis and other dissidents. It also arrested her husband, Fermin Zamora Vazquez.

Pictured below: Police operation ready to confront The Ladies in White, as they peacefully walk together after Eastern Mass in Matanzas.

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This is what the Ladies in White get for peacefully practicing their faith on Easter Sunday under the Castroit tyrannical regime, a brutal beating and arrest throughout the island.
 
April 27, 2014: The 42nd Sunday in a row of repression in Cuba
Uncommon Sense: April 27, 2014: The 42nd Sunday in a row of repression in Cuba

Political repression is a daily, if not hourly, occurrence in Cuba, but for the past 41 Sundays the Castro dictatorship has taken care to make Sundays especially oppressive. Police and other thugs have beaten, arrested, kidnapped, etc. numerous activists, especially in eastern provinces of the island. You can set your watch by it.
It happened again on Sunday, April 27.

April 27, 2014: Another Sunday of repression in Cuba

Cuban Ladies In White and other anti-Castro activists arrested on the 42nd Sunday in a row in various Cuban provinces.

Iván Hdez Carrillo @ivanlibre
Follow

#Cuba Domingo #42 de represión contínua contra opositores y @DamasdBlanco de la provincia de Matanzas. Nombre de arrestados a continuación.

12:30 PM - 27 Apr 2014

Iván Hdez Carrillo @ivanlibre
Follow

#Cuba Alexander Aguilera Sosa, opositor de UNPACU, fue arrestado en Perico. En Los Arabos fueron arrestados Yudaimis Fernández y José López

12:40 PM - 27 Apr 2014
As we can see every Sunday under the Castroit tyrannical regime the Ladies in White peaceful human rights group are violently assaulted and arrested by the regime state security agents in their way to attend charge mass.
 
Top dissidents detained in Cuba
Top dissidents detained in Cuba | Miami Herald Miami Herald

Most were freed later in the day but one alleges he was severely beaten

By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban police detained four top pro-democracy activists and at least 40 other dissidents Wednesday in a crackdown in which an independent journalist alleges he was severely beaten by a State Security agent.

Most of the dissidents were freed later in the day, but the large number of detentions fueled complaints that the government of Raúl Castro government has been turning to tougher and, at times, violent means of repressing dissent.

Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez characterized the events as “short-term, arbitrary detentions for political motives” and said the number of detainees could top 44 because several activists haven’t been accounted for.

Sanchez’ Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported a record 3,821 such arrests in the first four months of this year. That compares to the previous high of 2,795 during the first four months of 2012. The detentions are usually designed to intimidate dissidents and keep them away from opposition gatherings,.

Two well-known dissidents, Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez, and his wife, Yris Pérez Aguilera, were hauled away by police during an early morning raid of their home in the town of Placetas, the Cuban Democratic Directorate said.

The wife sent a text message from her cell phone saying that the couple had been taken to police headquarters in the nearby city of Santa Clara, the Miami-based Directorate reported. It was not known whether they had been freed as of Wednesday night.
There was no immediate explanation for the couple’s detention, although they are considered to be among the most hard-line dissidents on the island and are leaders of the National Civic Resistance Front Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Police have raided their home at least four times since February, seizing phones, computers and documents they brought back from a lengthy trip abroad last year. It took them to several cities in the United States, Europe and Latin America.

Magaly Norvis Otero, a member of the dissident Ladies in White, said she and at least 30 other women and 15 men were detained when they tried to attend the Havana trial of the husband of group member Yalenis Cutiño. She accused him of domestic abuse.
“As the women and the others arrived at the trial, police arrested us and took us to jail. I know of at least 30 women and 15 men but there might be more,” Norvis told El Nuevo Herald by phone.

Among those detained were Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, and her husband, Angel Moya, a dissident who served about eight years in prison.

Norvis said many of the dissidents detained were freed after about four hours, but she had no immediate word on Soler or Moya.
El Nuevo Herald calls to the cell phones of the four top dissidents were not answered. A call to Sanchez was interrupted by a recording of the first few seconds of the conversation with the human rights activist.

Independent journalist Roberto de Jesus Guerra, meanwhile, said that a State Security agent in plainclothes attacked him as he walked toward the Czech embassy in Havana to file one of his reports on its Internet connection.

“Without saying a word,” the man punched him repeatedly on the face and gave him a bloody nose, Guerra said. Two other men in the type of motorcycles used by State Security did nothing for awhile, he said, and then told the attacker, “OK. Don’t hit him any more.”

“I am going to the doctor now and later to the police to file a complaint, although they never do anything because they are the ones beating us,” he told El Nuevo Herald.

Norvis, who is married to Guerra, said the beating was the latest in a series of government harrasments of Guerra and the independent news agency he heads, Hablemos Press.

Three Hablemos Press reporters have been detained in recent weeks, she said. The couple also has received anonymous death threats as well as obviously faked photos of Guerra with a woman, she said.

“These have been days of a lot of tension, with the government using very dirty methods,” Norvis said.
Notwithstanding the principles of freedom and human rights as delineated in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, there are those who voice support for lifting sanctions against the Castroit tyrannical regime that censors and denigrates its citizens. No communist regime had ever turned benevolent, and these people still applaud and support them.
 
Breaking news: Martha Beatriz Roque speaks out against increased repression
Breaking news: Martha Beatriz Roque speaks out against increased repression | Babalú Blog

By Carlos Eire, on June 12, 2014, at 2:36 pm

This just in from dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, via email.

Martha's main point: the friendlier the Europeans and Americans become to the Castro regime, the more intense its repression becomes.

Loose translation:

An awful day (Un día fatal)

by: Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

June 11 was an unusually busy day as far as repression is concerned. My land-line telephone wouldn’t stop ringing, and neither would my mobile pone, bringing me news of people arrested in Havana and elsewhere throughout the island. I was reminded of the three days in 2003 when we were overtaken by a wave of repression and 75 of us in the opposition ended up in prison.

As I write this, the vast majority of dissidents remain under arrest in various municipalities: Camagüey, Santa Clara, Placetas, and Havana.

Our dissident community’s communication network was not overlooked: members of the Red Cubana (Cuban Net) were also subjected to repression, and nine of them were arrested at the door of our headquarters: Yuleidi López González, Marta Domínguez Calero, Maritza Concepción Sarmientos, Judith Muñiz Peraza, Juan Carlos Díaz Fonseca, Billy Joe Landa Linares, José Antonio Sieres Ramallo, Rodrigo Alberto Rodríguez Verdecia y Alejando Domínguez Moreno. In Güira de Melena, Jorge Bello Domínguez was arrested too.

As the police were conducting their round-up of dissidents, I went out to my stairway, to observe the detention of a married couple from Guanabacoa, only to discover that my way was blocked by a woman in civilian clothing, who was of African descent and approximately 35 years of age. She said that I couldn’t go down to the street, and when I challenged her authority, asking for her identity card, all she said was she had "left it at home."

I attempted to get past her, but she punched my left arm so hard with a closed fist that she knocked me down. When I stood up, another black woman in civilian clothing came up the stairs and stood right in front of me, blocking my path. I asked for her identity card, and she said the same thing as the other woman: “I left it at home.”

At that instant, an official from State Security showed up and he displayed his identity card, with its three-letter acronym DSE. He said that I was not allowed to go downstairs and that this also applied to Arnaldo Ramos Lazurique, who was in my house at that time. He added that the noise made during my encounter with the two plaincothes police women had brought him to my door.

I asked the uniformed official why I had been beaten up and one of the woman who punched me said that I had slipped and fallen. She knew that striking me was illegal and that I could make trouble for her.

As a result of this attack, my left arm is now swollen and I have pains in my lower back and the upper portion of my right leg.

In response to the tolerance shown towards Cuba by countries of the European Union and by leftist governments in Latin America, the Castro regime has increased its intolerance towards its opponents from one end of the country to the other. The regime is adhering to a formula that is proportionally keyed to foreign leniency: the more support the regime receives, the harsher its treatment of the opposition becomes.

La Habana, 12 June 2014.
Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello is a Cuban political dissident. She is an economist by training, and the founder as well as director of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists. She is a recipient of the 2002 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award of the New York Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the Canadian, English, and Finnish PE.

Martha's main point: the friendlier the Europeans and Americans become to the Castro regime, the more intense its repression becomes.
 
With no consequences in sight, Cuba continues to crack down on free speech
With no consequences in sight, Cuba continues to crack down on free speech - The Washington Post

2014-12-31T212816Z_01_EOC001_RTRIDSP_3_CUBA-USA-DISSIDENTS.jpg

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera posses for a picture in Havana December 31, 2014. Bruguera was one of several people freed on Wednesday after they were held overnight to thwart an unauthorized open microphone demonstration which Bruguera had organized for the day before. The crackdown has tested Cuba's new detente with the United States.

By Editorial Board January 1, 2015

A CUBAN performance artist named Tania Bruguera planned a simple event for Tuesday: She would set up a microphone in Havana’s Revolution Square and invite anyone who wished to step up and talk about the country’s future. Dozens of dissidents planned to participate under the slogan “I also demand” — which might be taken as an allusion to their exclusion from the secret normalization negotiations conducted by the Obama administration and the regime of Fidel and Raúl Castro.

That the deal announced Dec. 17 by President Obama did not include any protections for Cuba’s pro-democracy activists quickly became obvious. SECURITY forces detained Ms. Bruguera as well as several dozen other activists. The free-speech performance never took place. “I spoke to Tania Bruguera and let her know part of her performance was done,” tweeted Yoani Sánchez, an independent journalist whose husband, Reinaldo Escobar, was one of those detained. “Censorship was revealed.”

The incident should have been an embarrassment to Mr. Obama, who said that he decided to restore normal relations with Cuba in order to “do more to support the Cuban people and promote our values.” But the administration shrugged off the crackdown. On Wednesday, the State Department issued a statement saying it was “deeply concerned,” the same words it uses to describe human rights violations in China, Vietnam and other countries where the United States has no leverage and plans no action. Talks on the opening of embassies will go forward.

The State Department declared that “as part of the process of normalization of diplomatic relations, the United States will CONTINUE to press the Cuban government to uphold its international obligations and to respect the rights of Cubans to peacefully assemble and express their ideas and opinions.” There was no reference to consequences in the event Havana does not comply. That’s hardly a robust stance to strike with a regime that is desperate for the economic resources that would come with expanded travel by U.S. citizens and other benefits unconditionally promised by Mr. Obama.

The president could have conditioned those measures on guarantees that free speech would be respected and peaceful dissidents left unharassed — steps that fall far short of the full establishment of democracy required by U.S. law for the lifting of the trade embargo. That would have been in keeping with Mr. Obama’s own promise in 2008 that “significant steps toward democracy” must precede a normalization of relations — and his pledge in a 2013 meeting with dissident leaders to bring them into any bargain with the regime.

Instead, the Castro regime has been left free to CONTINUE stifling dissent, while reaping the economic and political benefits of Mr. Obama’s “ENGAGEMENT .” Raúl Castro declared in a speech shortly after the agreement was announced that the Communist political system would remain unchanged. Two weeks later, not one of the 53 political prisoners the White House said would be freed, about half of the total identified by human rights activists has been reported released.

Instead, Cubans who seek basic freedoms continue to be arrested, harassed and silenced, while the regime celebrates what it portrays as “victory” over the United States. If support for the Cuban people and American values is supposed to be the point of this process, then it is off to a very poor start.
Up to November 30, 2014 at least 8,410 dissidents have been politically arrest by the Castroit tyrannical regime, compare to 6,424 arrest during 2013, 6,602 in 2012, 4123 in 2011 and 2,074 in 2010, according to the Cuban National Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. (http://www.14ymedio.com/nacional/CCDHRN-Noviembre_CYMFIL20141203_0001.pdf). Four times more politically motivated arrest have taking place from 20120 to 2014, a tremendous progress in the repression department. As can be seen repression is on the rise under the Castroit tyrannical regime. The numbers don’t lie.
 
Twenty years after more than 37,000 thousands Cubans braved the sea to head to the US in the "rafter crisis," they are still fleeing the Castroit regime despite the so call “economic reforms.”

In August 1994 a large protest took place along the Havana Malecón (the protest was known as the Maleconazo) against the Castroit communist regime, due to the economic crisis.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard at least 3,722 Cuban rafters were intercepted at sea or made it to shore in the 2014 fiscal year.

The estimate number of Cuban balseros attempting to escape from 1959 to 2014 surpass 230,000. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that only one in four “balseros”(rafters) who have attempted to escape has been successful (only 57,500), 33% have been captured and many of them send back (over 75,900), and 42% have died in the attempt. The estimate number of casualties that died at sea attempting to escape is over 96,600, a terrible death toll.

Efforts to flee the island of Dr. Castro will continue as a direct result of the growing disenchanting of the young people with the totalitarian regime that offer no future.
 
December 10, 2014, Human Rights Day, was commemorated in the island of Dr. Castro with widespread arrests against peaceful opposition activists.

According to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, at least 240 known political arrests took place throughout the island that day.

Raul Castro II, BS talk about civility in Cuba. Under the Castroit tyrannical regime there is no civility. There is no freedom of speak and association, impartial elections, the dissidents are persecuted and in the words cases eliminated, people live in fear of the regime. The educational and healthcare systems are in shambles. At only 90 miles from the US apartheid still exist in Cuba under the Castroit monarchical regime.
 
The proximity of Cuba to the US has been a blessing for the Cuban people during the 55 years that the Castroit tyrannical regime has been in power. It has provide a place to escape to for those who have manage to leave or escape from the island of Dr. Castro. In other cases the regime has forced them out of the country, like during the Mariel boatlift when prisoners, homosexual and dissidents were expelled.
 
The Castroit regime greater fear is a scenario like Gadhafi or Saddam Hussein. The Castro’s clan been dragged along the streets by the people they have oppressed for 55 years, and facing the fire squad as they have done to so many before.
 
Over 65 Cuban Dissidents Arrested Today
Capitol Hill Cubans: Over 65 Cuban Dissidents Arrested Today

Over 65 Cuban democracy activists were arrested today in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

All of those arrested were members of the opposition groups, Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) and Citizens for Democracy (CxD).

Their crime? Trying to attend Mass at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity.

They were intercepted by nearly 200 Castro regime agents, who began to beat and arrest them.

Among those arrested were Roberto Perdomo, Mileidi Maceo, Mileidi Gómez, Ismaray González, Rubén Alvarado, Graciela Dominguez, Yarisnier Vargas, Maidolis Oribe, Moraima Díaz, Barbaro Tresol, Roberto González, Ricardo Guzmán, Yanny Núñez, Eliezer Quintana, Carlos Oliva, Alexeis Martinez, Ernesto Oliva, Carlos Rafael Torres, José Augusto Fuentes, Lázaro Barrera, Ricardo Torres, Lorenzo Malesu, Ernesto Tamayo, Héctor Velázquez and Onel Nápoles.

Note: Ernesto Tamayo had been currently released under the Obama-Castro deal. He's the second former political prisoner from the "Group of 53" to be re-arrested this week alone -- Mario Alberto Hernandez was also arrested in a separate incident.

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As Obama administration Cuba policy keeps developing, repression and violence continues to increase, as proofed by more than 65 democracy activists beating and arrested by mobs organized by regime state security, when attending church services. So far, no word from the Obama Administration.
 
Cuban Regime Arrests Over 100 Activists on Human Rights Day
Cuban Regime Arrests Over 100 Activists on Human Rights Day

BELÉN MARTY

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Activists held protests in Havana, Cuba, on Wednesday to demand recognition of human rights, resulting in hundreds of arrests. (@IntelGator)

The Cuban government marked International Human Rights Day on Wednesday, December 10, in a unique way: by arresting over 120 political dissidents from across the island. The arrests included 67 members of the organization Ladies in White, comprised of the spouses of political prisoners. Also among those detained were two journalists from the independent media outlet 14yMedio.

José Daniel Ferrer, executive secretary of civil liberties group the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), also reported police attacks on several members of his organization. Ferrer, a former political prisoner, said that special forces had targeted several activists, including Juan Salgado Jurado, coordinator of the UNPACU chapter in the eastern city of Manzanillos.

In response, activists gathered as early as 11 a.m. local time on the same day at the corner of 23 and L Street in the middle of Havana. Berta Soler, a representative of the Ladies in White, led demonstrators in protests against the regime.



Cuban security forces blocked access to protest sites in Las Tunas and Holguin, including the UNPACU headquarters in the Altamira neighborhood of Santiago de Cuba, preventing several activists from engaging in the demonstrations.

Dissident blogger and journalist Yoani Sánchez announced through social media that police had arrested two of her reporters for the digital media outlet 14yMedia. “[Police say] they have done something illegal,” Sánchez reported, “but all they’ve done is journalism!”

According to Martha Beatriz Roque, a female police officer from Unit 111 used her pistol to beat Lady in White activist Adis Niria Dallet Urgelles. Regarding the protests, Beatriz told Martí Noticias that “the Cuban people are angry.… I can tell you there are a lot of people who believe in the freedom to speak their mind and say it anywhere.”

In an interview with the PanAm Post, Lady in White Yohanna de la Cruz, who was present during the protests in Havana, confirmed police detained her two fellow activists until 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday. “In Cuba, they arrest you just for thinking differently,” she explained.

According 14yMedio, police still have dozens of activists from across the island in custody.

Ferrer relayed other incidents of police misconduct and claimed that a lieutenant colonel told Jurado, once he was detained, that he would have the option of either leaving the country or “make a lot of money” if he helped poison dissident activists Martín Ovidio and Ferrer.

In an interview with the PanAm Post, Lady in White Yohanna de la Cruz, who was present during the protests in Havana, confirmed police detained her two fellow activists until 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday. “In Cuba, they arrest you just for thinking differently,” she explained.

Cuba Celebrates Human Rights?

Castro regime apologists also held gatherings on Human Rights Day, and could be seen at the popular Coppelia ice cream parlor, shouting, “Long live Fidel, long live Raúl Castro!”

The state newspaper Granma wrote on Thursday that Cubans have every reason to celebrate human rights on the island, claiming the country sets an “example in its protection of children.” The newspaper also praised the island’s access to information and communication technology as public services.

“Plazas and parks around the country have hosted various activities that mark days of reflection and debate in university centers,” Granma wrote of Human Rights Day in Cuba, without a word on the protests and arrests by police.

Karel Becerra, International Relations secretary of Independent and Democratic Cuba (CID), noted the Cuban government’s apparent hypocrisy: “The unquestionable right of a human being is his life and his right to speak. Whoever violates these basic rights is executing a charade to conceal their true nature,” said Becerra, currently in exile in Argentina.

“A government that puts people to death by firing squad for speaking out or ‘endangering’ the government’s authority has no moral standing to speak of human rights,” the activist told the PanAm Post.
The human rights abuses of the Cuban people by the Castroit regime have been documented by the UN, the European Union, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and many other organizations all over the world. Given the Castroit regime record of human rights abuses it was inevitable the blasting by the U.N.’s Committee Against Torture.
 
Image: Female Cuban Dissident Pelted With Tar
Capitol Hill Cubans: Image: Female Cuban Dissident Pelted With Tar

Among the hundreds of political arrests today was the case of Digna Rodriguez Ibañez, a member of The Ladies in White in Santa Clara,who was attacked by Castro regime agents and pelted with tar.

Will U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) condemn such attacks against female activists?

Will President Obama condemn the racist connotation of such attacks against Afro-Cuban activists?

See the image below (or here) of Digna Rodriguez Ibañez, pursuant to the attack:

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The image illustrated the vicious repression that the Cuban dissidents are subjected, the racism of the Castroit regime and its acolytes. The regimen keeps its violent repression against the dissidents, many of them black. The regime, which produce such racist reaction, keep criticizing racism in the United States. Cuban society continues to be today a profoundly racist society.
 
They were tricked 53 years ago, only to find out that all the promises of a better tomorrow were just that, promises, empty promises that he never intended to keep. The majority of casualties in foreign wars ware black Cubans, and 80% of prisoners are black Cubans. It has become very difficult for the regime to keep using the race card.
 
The Harvest of the Sowing of Violence
The Harvest of the Sowing of Violence / Cubanet, Rafael Alcides | Translating Cuba

By Rafael Alcides

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Repression Against the Ladies in White (Internet photo)

Cubanet, Rafael Alcides, Havana, 13 May 2015 – Extremely worried, doctoral candidate in physics Antonio Rodiles and his wife the actress and political activist Ailer Gonzalez, in their home, related to me two events that I have prayed over, that those events that started with the blood of Moncada wouldn’t end up being a circular story. Ailer and Antonio spoke of the increased police repression after December 17, most particularly of the brutality with which the oppressors are being dispatched.

On Sunday the 26th of last month, with their trucks crammed with martial arts experts at the end of the usual parade of the Ladies in White, Carlitos, the son of Jesus Menendez, an elderly diabetic with heart problems, was grabbed, dragged and thrown in the back of the truck like a sack of potatoes. Yury, Blas Roca’s grandson, was put in plastic handcuffs so tightly that his hands turned black and they didn’t cut them off. Up Calabazar, the truck with the prisoners inside was left in the sun to bake them a little. They grabbed Antonio among the many present and pushed him with blows to the back before throwing him headfirst into the truck. An endless number of books could be written about the mistreatment and repression of the Ladies in White, apparently excluded from government’s media campaign to end violence against women.
Click ling above for full article.
You have to be blind to defend a regime that treat and abuse these peaceful women like criminals. If you still have a mother or grandmother about the same age of “The Ladies in White”, you would probably have to stop the way you think and analyze yourself seriously.

Is it right for these women to receive this kind of beating? These women already suffer enough punishment for having their love ones behind bars for exercising their freedoms.
 
For Eighth Straight Sunday, Nearly 100 Cuban Dissidents Arrested
Capitol Hill Cubans: For Eighth Straight Sunday, Nearly 100 Cuban Dissidents Arrested

For the eighth straight Sunday, nearly 100 Cuban dissidents were arrested as they tried to attend Sunday Mass and peacefully congregate after.

In Havana alone, 59 members of The Ladies in White were arrested, along with 25 other human rights activists.

That's two months in which -- week after week -- dozens of dissidents have been arrested.

That's two months in which -- week after week -- the Obama Administration has remained silent (to not rock the boat in their negotiations).

That's two months in which -- week after week -- the media and the world turn a blind-eye (following Obama's lead or Obama leading from behind).

Below is a picture of Ruben Dario, a 23-year old Cuban dissident who was beaten today for accompanying The Ladies in White.

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Many in the mainstream media remain silent on the assault by mobs organized by the state security of the regime against the Ladies in White. These peaceful ladies are asking only that their cause be acknowledged and the repression expose.

The majority of the people depend mostly on the mainstream media for their news, but thanks to ideological blinders of many in the mainstream media they know very little about the attacks by the Castroit regime goons against the peaceful Cuban dissidents.
 
Dissident group: 641 political arrests during May in Cuba
Dissident group: 641 political arrests during May in Cuba | Fox News Latino

Published June 03, 2015 / EFE

The dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, or CCDHRN, reported Wednesday that in May there were at least 641 politically-motivated arrests on the communist island, almost double the number registered the previous month and the highest monthly total in the past 10 months.

"The current and palpable uptrend in indiscriminate and often violent political repression against women and men who are only intending to exercise basic civil and political rights in a completely peaceful way continues to be alarming," said the report on political repression put out each month by the CCDHRN.

The organization also said that in May 88 "peaceful opposition figures" were victims of physical attacks, vandalism, harassment and "acts of repudiation" attributable to the secret political police or State Security.
Click link above for full article.
The Castroit monarchical military regime, embolden by the Obama administration conciliatory approach and no concern for consequences, triggered a wave of terror against peaceful dissidents exercising basic civil and political rights, surpassing all previous repressions in the island.
 
Cuban mother denounces her disabled son's unjust imprisonment as blackmail by Cuban regime
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Cuban mother denounces her disabled son's unjust imprisonment as blackmail by Cuban regime

Posted by John Suarez
Thursday, June 25, 2015

"There are political prisoners in Cuba; the son of a member of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was sentenced to 12 years in jail for the sole reason of being the son of a MCL member."- Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, September 23, 2011 interview

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Rosa María Rodríguez Gil addresses the UNHRC in Geneva

One day a secret policemen approached Rosa María Rodríguez Gil and demanded that she become an informant spying on other members of the human rights group of which she is a member. She rejected their offer saying that she would not be subjected to blackmail. They warned her that her learning disabled son, Yosvani Melchor Rodríguez, would pay. Three days later he was arrested on March 19, 2010 and held in custody for nine months then subjected to a show trial and given a 12 year prison sentence.

Rosa responded by denouncing the blackmail and demanding the immediate release of her innocent son. Two years later and her son is still unjustly imprisoned and international attention draws some attention to his plight. Early one morning her sister, Dalia Margarita Rodríguez, who is a cancer survivor, gets a phone call they ask her if she is related to Rosa and they ask Dalia her son's name. She answered all their questions truthfully and then they tell her to talk to Rosa and to take care of her son or that he would end up the same way.

https://link.brightcove.com/service...e&secureConnections=true&width=420&height=270[video]https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1722935254001/?bctid=4318506705001&autoStart=false&secureConnections=true&width=420&height=270[/video]
Click link above for full article
Carlos Erie, Professor of of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, wrote this great comment:

"It's not often that one gets to see the inner workings of Castrogonia's international repressive apparatus.

Here is your chance to see that machine at work. In this case, it's at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva -- a council in which the Castro regime holds a seat.

The Castronoid representative interrupts her testimony and calls a point of order, insisting that the speaker is not properly accredited. His objection is seconded by the usual gang of thugs: Venezuela, China, Russia, and Pakistan.

Five representatives of other nations --U.S.A., France, Ireland, Canada, and Estonia-- challenge that motion and ask that Rosa Maria Rodriguez Gil be allowed to speak.

The subject of her testimony is the imprisonment of her son by the Castro regime.

Her son has been in prison since 201o and is serving a 12-year prison sentence. His crime? Being the disabled son of a dissident who refused to turn into a snitch for Castro's Gestapo.

If this were a just and rational world, her chilling testimony would be enough to derail all "normalization" talks with the Castro regime, or at least to change the tenor of the talks.

Of course, no such thing will happen."
 
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