Thursday, November 30, 2017

Christian Liberation Movement National Coordinator marks one year in prison

Eduardo Cardet Concepción, age 49,  has spent the past year arbitrarily detained in a Cuban prison. Cardet, a medical doctor, husband and father of two has been jailed for his nonviolent activism generally and specifically for giving an honest assessment of the life and legacy of Fidel Castro. Following Castro's November 25, 2016 death, Cardet explained to a foreign journalist that "Castro was a very controversial man, very much hated and rejected by our people." On November 30, 2016 when he returned home to Cuba he was beaten up in front of his wife and children by Cuban state security and jailed. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Eduardo Cardet is the national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement. [His predecessor, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, met with a suspicious death along with  Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012.] Today, November 30th marks one year in prison. 


Eduardo Cardet: One year of unjust imprisonment. 

By Rosa María Rodríguez #RosaMariaMCL



I make this denunciation to international public opinion and to people of good will, who join the campaign for the liberation of our national coordinator Eduardo Cardet.

For a year now he has been unjustly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. I accuse the Cuban government of kidnapping him unjustly because they are violating their own laws, under which he would already have to be on probation.

Freedom and life

We are liberation.


Rosa Maria Rodriguez Gil. Member of the Coordinating Council of the MCL 

Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Martyred student leader Pedro Luis Boitel Abraham

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204)
Pedro Luis Boitel Abraham  (1931 - 1972)
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. 

The ninth entry focuses on a student leader, who fought by Fidel Castro's side to bring an end to the Batista dictatorship and restore Cuban democracy. However as Castro came to impose a communist regime on Cuba and to achieve that the University could no longer be a bastion of academic freedom and independent student activism. This led to this young man opposing the regime and being sent to prison for 11 years in 1961. He served his sentence, but the dictatorship refused to free him. This drove him to start a hunger strike that ended in his death in 1972.  

Previous entries in this series were about Cubans trying to change the system nonviolently. The first entry concerned Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a humble bricklayer turned courageous human rights defender who paid the ultimate price in 2010 for speaking truth to power.  The second entry focused on Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a Catholic lay activist, nonviolence icon, husband, father of three and the founder of a Cuban opposition movement that shook up the Castro regime with a petition drive demanding that human rights be respected and recognized in Cuba. This action and speaking truth to power led to his extrajudicial killing in 2012. The third entry focused on one of the great crimes of the Castro regime that has been well documented by international human rights organizations and reported on ABC News Nightline that claimed the lives of 37 men, women, and children. They were trying to flee the despotism in Cuba to live in freedom and were extrajudicially executed. In the fourth focused on an act of state terrorism when two planes were shot down on a Saturday afternoon at 3:21 and 3:27 on February 24, 1996 over international airspace while engaged in a search and rescue flight for Cuban rafters killing four humanitarians. Their planes were destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 aircraft on the orders of Raul and Fidel Castro.  

In the fifth focused on Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Wilman Villar Mendoza who died on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment on January 19, 2012 at the age of 31 left behind two little girls, a young wife and grieving mother. The sixth entry focused on one of the many non-Cuban victims of Cuban communism. Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty years ago. The identity of the soldier was never revealed to Joachim's family. No one was ever brought to justice.  The seventh entry focused on a young woman, Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez, who tried to warn a friend who was being targeted by the secret police for a violent end. They went to the authorities to make a formal complaint, but nothing happened. Four months later she was murdered in front of her two children stabbed 18 times. Eight months later her friend was the victim of a brutal machete attack and nearly killed. Yunisledy was just 23 years old.  The eighth entry focused on Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, a young men shot in the back and killed by a state security agent in 2015. His "crime"? Building a boat with other friends to flee the Castro dictatorship and live in freedom.

Pedro Luis Boitel at the CMQ radio station
Pedro Luis Boitel was born in Cuba to a family of modest means of French origin. He studied at the University of Havana while working as a radio technician. Opposing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista he joined the July 26 movement led by Fidel Castro. The majority of the movement's members like Pedro were anti-communists.

Once Batista left for exile and Fidel Castro took control the anti-communist members of the July 26 movement became an obstacle to absolute power. Following the revolution, Boitel returned to University were his fellow students nominated to run for the presidency of the Federation of University Students in 1960.  Fidel Castro personally intervened to remove him from the presidency. Pedro Luis Boitel's threat to the emerging communist regime was that he refused to betray the Federation of University Students and sought to maintain academic freedom and autonomy.

As time went on and the dictatorial nature of the Castro regime became more apparent, the student leader became an opponent to Fidel Castro. Condemned to a decade in prison in 1961 he served the cruel and unjust sentence but as the date of his release came and went prison officials refused to free him. In response to the years of cruelty, torture and now denial of his freedom he went on hunger strike on April 3, 1972. Pedro Luis Boitel died forty five years ago on May 25, 1972 after 53 days on hunger strike in Havana in the Castillo del Principe. Academic freedom and autonomy ended in 1960 replaced with fear, repression, and ideological litmus tests to attend university. It has still not been restored today.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Reflections on the electoral fraud in Cuba

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how.” - Josef Stalin (1923)

Raul Castro goes to "vote." What is wrong with this picture?
 In a free society one elects who will represent them and one can petition their neighbors to vote for them and run for office. In a communist regime one decides on whether or not to suffer the consequences of not affirming the dictatorship by voting in an exercise in which there is no choice in representation. The Castro regime held what it called "municipal elections" on Sunday, November 26, 2017. The act of electing who will rule was made by those in power before the publicized vote took place.

This has not taken place in Cuba since 1950.
Yoani Sanchez reported over twitter that "[t]hese municipal elections were presented by the official propaganda as a backing for the "legacy" of Fidel Castro, it was very important for the Government to achieve greater participation, just 3 months before the end of Raúl Castro's presidency."


There was an electoral farce in Cuba this past Sunday. The 58 year old communist dictatorship in Cuba blocked 175 opposition candidates from running. Only one political party, the Cuban Communist Party recognized as legal in the constitution. St. Kitts and Nevis Oberver in the November 27, 2017 article Cuba Marks Castro’s Death with Pseudo Democratic Elections reported that "[s]tate-run media is championing the belief that the elections are a way for citizens to show support for Fidel Castro’s ideas. In the provincial and national votes, candidates were chosen by commissions made up of Communist Party representatives."

Finally, ballots marked Plebiscite were not counted and reported. Rosa María Payá of CubaDecide reported over twitter that the "[e]lectoral college arbitrarily denied the request to count the canceled ballots, without answering arguments of the claim. Now there is a spectacular siege of State Security to violate our citizens' rights and the Electoral Law itself."
 teleSUR, a Chavista news outlet with a pro-Castro slant was tone deaf in the November 27, 2017 title it picked to report on the proceedings in Cuba last Sunday: "Elections in Cuba: Like Nowhere Else!" The first paragraph continues in "awe" of the "election" in Cuba reporting, "No banners. No posters. No placards. No advertisements. No slogans. No campaigning. It is Election Day in Cuba, yet I cannot see any sign of it. Some 27,000 candidates are competing for 605 seats in the Cuban National Assembly, yet I cannot see one."

The reason for the lack of campaigning to convince every day Cubans to vote for them is because they do not have a say. Cuba is a dictatorship, elections are a farce, and a public relations campaign to legitimize the dictatorship.

This is not a choice but a farce or a fraud masquerading as an election in a Stalinist exercise of control.

The Concert of Europe: Conservatism's successful seven decade frustration of communist aims

"Every country has the government it deserves." - Joseph De Maistre, diplomat  (1753 - 1821)

A street of Paris in May 1871: The Commune by Maximilien Luce (painted 1903-05)
Earlier today was visiting the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France and the collections of art that span 1848 through 1914. Coming upon this work by Maximilien Luce some questions arose in my mind: "What would Paris be like if the communists had succeeded in 1848? Would this museum even exist?" Think of the loss in lives, art, and treasure over the past century when communist regimes killed over a 100 million and plunged hundreds of millions more into lives of squalor.

Karl Marx announced in his 1848 manifesto the arrival of communism in Europe in the midst of ongoing revolutions. There were multiple reasons for the unrest: poor grain harvests, blight in potato crops, and depressed economies across Europe over the previous three years and conditions were ripe for revolt and radical new doctrines to be well received. Conservatives in Europe, following the disastrous French Revolution of 1789 and the continent wide blood bath of the Napoleonic wars, organized against revolution creating a conservative order. In the United Kingdom, conservatism was manifested in the writings of Edmund Burke and his critical reflection on the French Revolution. Policies of reform successfully countered revolutionary impulse.

Visiting France once is confronted with a different conservative tradition. On the European continent the conservative ideas of Joseph de Maistre held sway. De Maistre represented a counter-revolutionary and authoritarian strain of conservatism that rejected the French Enlightenment and the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. Having suffered the effects of the Revolution of 1789 in France de Maistre "argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy," and "for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters as a prerequisite for stability in Europe." Unlike Burke, his writings are a reaction to the destruction of his way of life in the French Revolution. Nevertheless his ideas would have a profound impact on French conservatives. De Maistre died 27 years before Marx's Communist Manifesto,  but his ideas lived on to resist the bolsheviks.

Joseph de Maistre in Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg wrote in 1821: "False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."  This can still be seen today by those who continue to circulate the writings of Karl Marx, despite the disastrous human cost this theory has exacted upon the world.

Marx and the communists organized into revolutionary transnational networks to overthrow the existing order but following the French revolution, a conservative counter-revolutionary network already existed to resist the new threat.

Édouard Dubufe (1819-1883), The Congress of Paris, 1856, Musée national du château de Versailles
 The end of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars led to an enduring peace forged by conservative European statesman. It was a peace that endured without a major war, more or less, until 1914. The architects of the peace were Klemens von Metternich of Austria, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (usually known as Lord Castlereagh), Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord of France. Out of the ruin of a continent wide war emerged the Concert of Europe.  Wikipedia described it as follows, "[t]he Concert of Europe, also known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna, was a system of dispute resolution adopted by the major conservative powers of Europe to maintain their power, oppose revolutionary movements, weaken the forces of nationalism, and uphold the balance of power."  The last gathering of the Concert of Europe was in 1878 in Berlin. These were statesmen who understood the necessary relationship between freedom and order. Metternich gave it context, "[t]he word 'freedom' means for me not a point of departure but a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word 'order.' Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order."

"Lamartine, rejects the Red Flag," Feb 25, 1848. By Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux
The Concert of Europe had no formal structures and operated as a powerful network to counter both nationalists and communists from 1815 to 1914. The weak point turned out to be France. The monarchy was restored on April 6, 1814 with Louis XVIII and was succeeded by Charles X in 1824 but the new King of France was driven out of office by the July Revolution of 1830 on August 2, 1830. The King of France was replaced by a King of the French within the constraints of a constitutional monarchy. Louis Philippe I was the new king under the more liberal Orléans line, replacing the Bourbons. 18 years later he would abdicate his rule on February 24, 1848 and flee to England. The second Republic would be declared on February 26, 1848. This was the end of the French monarchy in France. Conservative forces were able to shut down radical revolutionary projects using violent repression combined with reforms to meet the demands of the populace preventing a repeat of 1789. Metternich explained the conservative need to accommodate and shape change as follows, "[t]he events which can not be prevented, must be directed."

Barricades in Paris in 1848
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and French provincial nobility, at a critical point in the February Revolution rejected the red flag of the revolutionaries and made the case for maintaining the French Tricolor flag:
"I spoke as a citizen earlier, well! Now listen to me, your Foreign Minister. If I remove the tricolor, know it, you will remove me half the external force of France! Because Europe knows the flag of his defeats and of our victories in the flag of the Republic and of the Empire. By seeing the red flag, they'll see the flag of a party! This is the flag of France, it is the flag of our victorious armies, it is the flag of our triumphs that must be addressed before Europe. France and the tricolor is the same thought, the same prestige, even terror, if necessary, for our enemies! Consider how much blood you would have to make for another flag fame! Citizens, for me, the red flag, I am not adopting it, and I'll tell you why I'm against with all the strength of my patriotism. It's that the tricolor has toured the world with the Republic and the Empire with your freedoms and your glory, and the red flag was that around the Champ-de-Mars, dragged into the people's blood."
The painting by Emmanuel Philippoteaux, depicting the moment Lamartine rejects the red flag is on display at the Museum Carnavalet in Paris. This "revolution" brought General Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, to power. He was the President of France from 1848 to 1852. The French Constitution barred him from running for re-election so he organized a coup d'état in 1851 and became Napoleon III, the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. His rule ended due to his defeat in the Franco - Prussian war.

In 1853 Napoleon III ordered Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann to transform Paris from a city of a dense network of streets, overcrowded, dingy, dirty, riddled with disease and lacking an effective sewage system. What today makes Paris so distinctive, "the grand, wide boulevards that march in straight lines through the city, lined with bustling cafés and tempting patisseries" is Haussmann's creation.
"Conceived and executed in three phases, the plan involved the demolition of 19,730 historic buildings and the construction of 34,000 new ones. Old streets gave way to long, wide avenues characterised by rows of regularly aligned and generously proportioned neo-classical apartment blocks faced in creamy stone."
It also made it more difficult for the revolutionaries to set up barricades and made it easier for the military to move quickly to crush any uprisings with the wide boulevards. However the Franco-Prussian war that brought an end to the Second Republic and the rule of Napoleon III gave an opportunity for the communists to take hold of Paris and set up a commune that survived two months from March 1871 to May 1871 before the French Army crushed the communist project and restored order.

Barricade boulevard Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir1871
Tragically the horrors of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars that followed were largely forgotten and in 1914 the forces of nationalism, the breakdown of the balance of power arrangement set up in the Concert of Europe, and rising militarism plunged the world into a great war.  This destroyed the last vestiges of the conservative transnational network that prevented the rise of Bolshevism. Communism would arrive in Russia in 1917 and over the next century claim a 100 million lives and ruin countless more.

However, thanks to conservative statesmen in Europe the 19th century offered a space of peace and prosperity for seven decades that led to a great out pouring of art, technology, and also the remaking of Paris into the remarkable city that it is today. This would not have existed if the communists had triumphed in 1848 or 1871.


There are important lessons for statesmen to learn from this period of time for the 21st century.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Yuriniesky Martínez Reina

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204)

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, shot in the back and killed by state security
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. 

The eighth entry focuses on a young men shot in the back and killed by a state security agent. His "crime"? Building a boat with other friends to flee the Castro dictatorship and live in freedom.

Previous entries in this series were about Cubans trying to change the system nonviolently. The first entry concerned Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a humble bricklayer turned courageous human rights defender who paid the ultimate price in 2010 for speaking truth to power.  The second entry focused on Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a Catholic lay activist, nonviolence icon, husband, father of three and the founder of a Cuban opposition movement that shook up the Castro regime with a petition drive demanding that human rights be respected and recognized in Cuba. This action and speaking truth to power led to his extrajudicial killing in 2012. The third entry focused on one of the great crimes of the Castro regime that has been well documented by international human rights organizations and reported on ABC News Nightline that claimed the lives of 37 men, women, and children. They were trying to flee the despotism in Cuba to live in freedom and were extrajudicially executed. In the fourth focused on an act of state terrorism when two planes were shot down on a Saturday afternoon at 3:21 and 3:27 on February 24, 1996 over international airspace while engaged in a search and rescue flight for Cuban rafters killing four humanitarians. Their planes were destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 aircraft on the orders of Raul and Fidel Castro.  

In the fifth focused on Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Wilman Villar Mendoza who died on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment on January 19, 2012 at the age of 31 left behind two little girls, a young wife and grieving mother. The sixth entry focused on one of the many non-Cuban victims of Cuban communism. Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty years ago. The identity of the soldier was never revealed to Joachim's family. No one was ever brought to justice.  The seventh entry focused on a young woman, Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez, who tried to warn a friend who was being targeted by the secret police for a violent end. They went to the authorities to make a formal complaint, but nothing happened. Four months later she was murdered in front of her two children stabbed 18 times. Eight months later her friend was the victim of a brutal machete attack and nearly killed. Yunisledy was just 23 years old.


Yuriniesky Martínez with his dad, son, and on (right) how he was found
Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a small boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security. Yuriniesky was left for two days in the lagoon, before being found by his brother. Unlike the families of many other victims who are intimidated into silence, Yuriniesky's family spoke out, identified his killer and demanded justice in a video published on April 27, 2015 by Libertad Press.

The extrajudicial killing of fleeing refugees has been an ongoing practice of the Castro dictatorship in Cuba for decades. Well documented cases, prior to this one, included a formal complaint in 1993 by the United States government when snipers, sand bags, and gaff hooks, were used by Cuban officials on fleeing Cuban refugees.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

The Castro regime and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

"When our revolution is judged in future years, one of the matters on which we will be judged is the manner in which our society and our homeland solved the problems of women." ~ Fidel Castro, November 30, 1974

The Castro regime practices institutionalized violence against women in Cuba.

November 25th has been set aside as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the Castro regime in the past attempted to use the date to white wash its dismal record and ongoing institutionalized violence against women in Cuba. Fidel Castro died last year on this day and the regime bots on social media are focused on placing the dead despot in the best light possible.

Unfortunately for them,  the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women presents an opportunity to look at how women are treated in Cuba.

Some Cuban women are saying Basta! (Enough!)

Cuban blogger and journalist Yoani Sánchez took to social media today and made some powerful observations that are reinforced by the past 58 years of the Castro regime.
"When a woman in Cuba opines against the government, they remind her that she has ovaries, accuse her of immorality, question her love life, invent a vice and reproach her for criticizing when "the Revolution gave her everything." That is also gender violence.
When the Federation of Cuban Women refuses to publish statistics of femicides in the country and is silent before the acts of repudiation against female opposition and Ladies in White, that is complicity with gender violence ...  
When a minister or a high official forces his secretary to have sex with him, protecting himself in his power and in the supposed privileges that he can give her in return ... that is also gender violence.
When State Security threatens female opposition activist with reprisals against her children and insinuates in interrogations that they will lock her in a cell with men (no one told me, I've lived it myself), that is also gender violence.
Below is a partial listing of documented instances where agents of the Cuban dictatorship have engaged in repression or violence against Cuban women arranged by the most recent dates on top with a focus on cases where they were trying to exercise their fundamental rights.

Founding member of the Center for Coexistence sentenced to three years 
Karina Gálvez Chiu has a degree in economics and was a finance professor. She was in charge of a group of economists in Civic Center and is a founding member of the Editorial Board of the dissident publication Convivencia.(Coexistence).

She lives and works in Pinar del Río, Cuba.  Karina Gálvez’s house was also the headquarters of the Center for Coexistence studies (CEC) and with its seizure the independent project lost its meeting place. The property is now at the disposition of the Municipal Housing Department, subordinate to the Council of the Administration of the Municipality of Pinar del Río.

This is the second time a property has been confiscated to end the meeting place of this organization. In 2009, the yard of the home of Galvez’s parents, where their members met, was also confiscated and closed. She was arrested on January 11, 2017 and brought to trial and sentenced on September 21, 2017 to three years house arrest with her mother. Her home has been taken by the regime. The court ruling says that the conviction seeks to “make the defendant understand” the seriousness of the crime and also “serve to educate the people in general.” 

Sirley Avila Leon was the victim of a brutal machete attack in 2015
Over a three year period (2012 - 2015) regime agents made a series of threats and took actions that culminated in the attempted murder of Sirley Avila Leon on May 24, 2015. Another round of threats and harassment when she returned to Cuba on September 7, 2016 following medical treatment in Miami  led to her decision to leave Cuba on October 28, 2016 and request asylum in the United States when death threats against her person escalated and her attacker, Osmany Carriòn, was free and bragging that he would finish the job he started.

Background information
Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. The Castro regime removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. Following the attack she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.

On May 24, 2015 Sirley Ávila León was the victim of a machete attack
On March 8, 2016 she arrived in Miami and began a course of treatments over the next six months during which she was able to walk once again although still limited due to her injuries. She returned to Cuba on September 7, 2016 only to find her home occupied by strangers and her attacker free and bragging that he would finish the job. She moved in with her mother and within a short time a camera and microphone were set up across from her mother's home on a post.

Threats against Sirley's life intensified leading her to flee Cuba to the United States and request political asylum on October 28, 2016. Below is a video in Spanish explaining the circumstances that led her to leave Cuba.

Ladies in White mistreated in Cuba for peacefully assembling
Lady in White Daisy Cuello Basulto denounced that her 21 year old daughter was arrested, violently stripped and forced to urinate in front of police officers in a police station in Cotorro. The 21 year old was arrested along with her mom and other family on September 27, 2015 while on their way to attend the Sunday march of the Ladies in White. In the police station "she was humiliated," although she refused to urinate in front of the agents, who constantly jeered at her, explained her mother in an interview with Radio República. The young woman was locked in a cell with a strong smell of hydrochloric acid and now suffers from a sore throat. "She has a fever and feels very bad," reported her mother.

Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez: Brutally murdered at age 23 in 2014
 Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez was just 23 years old, the mother of two small children and she lived in Vista Alegre, in the Municipality of Majabiquoa in Las Tunas, Cuba. She had suffered harassment, state security agents had wanted to evict her and her children from their home for her activism in the Civics and Truth movement.

Yunisledy found out that her then current boyfriend "Ruber" had been given the order to kill Cuban dissident Sirley Avila Leon by state security. Yunisledy immediately informed Sirley Avila Leon of the danger and on May 21,  2014 when Sirley's home was set on fire formally complained to the police. She reported that her partner had told her that he would murder Sirley and that through the above action had attempted to carry it out. The police never made a pronouncement on the matter and did nothing. Afterwards "Ruber" threatened Yunisledy and told her that if she did not want to be killed that she should join him in Camaguey where he had been given the possibility to work as a "cuenta propista"  as a reward for carrying out his murder attempt against Sirley Avila Leon and to give the impression that he was in a prison elsewhere. [This is an aspect of the job sector opportunities that Amnesty missed in their recent report.]

She  denounced the new threat to the police but no action was taken against him and he went away. After two months approximately September 20-21, 2014 the father of her young son appears at her home and tells her that he'll kill her. But instead rapes her in front of her children and leaves.

Immediately she went to the police and made a complaint because was supposedly a prison escapee, but the police take no action. They tell her not to worry that he is already back in prison. Yunisledy calls Sirley on September 24, 2014 and tells her that they both knew why he was being sent to kill her. Yunisledy asks Sirley to please care for her children because she had no police protection.

On September 26, 2014 while preparing food for her children the individual known as "El Tejon" entered the house and stabbed her 18 times in front of her two children. This was done to give the appearance of a crime of passion.

Cuban human rights defender, Sirley Avila Leon, was the target of a brutal machete attack on May 24, 2015 that she miraculously survived  in order to provide the information about what happened to her and to this young woman, mother of two orphans. 


Yris Pérez Aguilera shows cyst result of state security beatings. (Photo: Yoani Sanchez)
On September 20, 2013 human rights defender Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera briefly described the abuse she had been subjected to by agents of Cuban state security earlier that same year to the 24th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva:

I have been the victim of several acts of aggression on the part of the Cuban authorities, especially by the agents Yuniel Monteagudo Reina and Eric Aquino Yera. They have beaten me into unconsciousness in the pavement, as took place most recently this past March 7 in Santa Clara. The hits to the head, neck, and back have caused me serious health problems that I have not been able to recover from. In addition to beating me, they have threatened me with death on various occasions, these agents have told me that they are going to rape me, and have shown their genitals during arbitrary arrests. 
On Sunday, July 21, 2013 Sonia Álvarez Campillo was brutally beaten by agents of the Cuban government for her dissent and suffered lasting physical damage.  Over twitter the aftermath of the attack was posted by her daughter Sayli Navarro who tweeted: "My mom Sonia Álvarez Campillo, shows x-rays and arm fractured by her repressors on Sunday" and independent journalist Ivan Hernandez Carrillo tweeted: "This is the Lady in White Sonia Álvarez Campillo after today's first act of repudiation against Ladies in White."

Sonia Álvarez Campillo's arm fractured by regime repressors July 21, 2013
There for everyone to see, a woman with a her left arm in a cast holding up her x-ray showing where the breaks are following a savage attack on Sunday by regime agents. This is not an isolated case but a disturbing pattern of increasing violence against nonviolent activists that is primarily but not only targeting women.

Marina Montes Piñón age 60 beaten by regime agents. Needed 30 stitches

Marina Montes Piñón, a 60 year old woman and long time opposition activist, was beaten with a blunt object by regime agents on December 15, 2012 in Cuba. The end result, three deep wounds in the skull and a hematoma in the right eye. She needed nearly thirty stitches to patch up the wounds. 

Berenice Héctor González mutilated for verbally defending Ladies in White
Berenice Héctor González, a 15-year old young woman, suffered a knife attack on November 4, 2012 for supporting the women's human rights movement, The Ladies in White. News of the attack only emerged a month later because State Security had threatened the mother that her daughter would suffer the consequences if she made the assault public. 

Laura Pollán repeatedly beaten and died under suspicious circumstances

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, one of the founders of the Ladies in White in March of 2003 and its chief spokeswoman was widely admired inside of Cuba and internationally. She fell suddenly ill and died within a week on October 14, 2011 under suspicious circumstances that a Cuban medical doctor described as "painful, tragic and unnecessary." This took place within days of the Ladies in White declaring themselves a human rights organization dedicated to the freedom of all political prisoners, not just their loved ones. 

Maria Elena Cruz Varela in 1991
 On November 19, 1991 the Cuban poet Mariela Elena Cruz Varela, who peacefully dissented asking for nonviolent change, was assaulted by a mob organized by the dictatorship who tried to force feed the poet her own words. She wrote about the assault in her book, Dios en las cárceles cubanas (God in the Cuban jails):
"They broke my mouth trying to make me swallow the leaflets that members of my group had distributed throughout Havana. Afterwards I spent three days brutally besieged, imprisoned in my own home with my two children, with no water, no electricity, no food, no cigarettes. We heard what the huge speakers never stopped amplifying, allegorical songs to the country, the necessary punishment of traitors, and anyone who wanted to could shout at me, organized, of course, the slogans they pleased: Comrade worm, we are going to execute you by firing squad!"
 
On February 26, 1961, Cuban state security agents arrested 23-year-old medical student Ana Lazara Rodriguez she had been distributing literature and speaking out against Fidel Castro as he assumed dictatorial powers in Cuba. She spent 19 years in the women's prison at Guanajay, located in Eastern Cuba, and was exiled to the United States on February 26, 1980. She was subjected to beatings, starvation, threats, hard labor, and solitary confinement for months at a time. Ana described in a 2007 interview with the Hudson Reporter how: "The men constantly beat us with their bayonets, and they would cram the cells so that we couldn't all fit," ... We used to take turns standing and sitting. Many women became ill because the conditions were so confined and there was a lack of oxygen. We were treated like animals." 

Cuban attorneys Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent in their 2013 report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) touch on the institutional nature of the violence upon women in Cuba by the Castro regime:

"The brutality of the police and state security agents, including women members of these bodies, against women dissidents, is supported by the state, which exemplifies the institutionalized violence as a means to repress women opposition activists. Arbitrary detention is one of the methods to prevent them from exercising their rights to speak, associate and demonstrate. In detention centers agents use violence, sexual assault and insults as means of repression. The cells enclosed in unsanitary and sometimes sanitary services have no privacy or are not appropriate for women, even having them share prison cells with men. In some cases, they forced to strip naked or forcibly stripped, obliging them to squat to see if they have items in their genitals and claims that have been reported that they have introduced a pen into the vagina, under the justification of seeking recording objects."
Due to increasing repression human rights lawyer, Laritza Diversant was granted political asylum and went into exile on  May 4, 2017.

Due to increasing repression by Castro regime  Laritza Diversant went into exile
This is a partial and incomplete summary. The plight of women in Cuba over the past 58 years would fill a library, but it is important to recall that the above repression and violence is promoted, coordinated and carried out by agents of the Castro regime.