#OTD in 1993 guards on patrol boats lobbed grenades on Cuban swimmers in the waters near the Guantanamo Naval Base. Providing some context.

Murdering fleeing refugees is a recurring practice of the Castro regime. 

Cuban gunboat patrolling waters near Guantanamo, Cuba

This is the second entry within a week remembering the extrajudicial killing of fleeing refugees by the Castro regime's border guard. The world has paid little notice to this pattern of extrajudicial killings.

* On June 26, 1993 at 11 a.m., three patrol boats surrounded a group of swimmers, lobbing grenades and spraying them with automatic weapons fire. At least three corpses were lifted out of the water with gaffs.
* On June 27, 1993 at 11:30 a.m., guards aboard patrol boats lobbed two grenades into the water.
* The same day, just before 3 p.m., a patrol boat opened automatic fire on a group of swimmers, who were later seen being pulled from the water. The swimmers' status was unknown.

U.S. soldiers patrolling the Guantanamo Naval Base perimeter were horrified by what they observed. It led to a formal diplomatic note to the Castro regime by the Clinton Administration. 

Guantanamo Naval Base coastline

This in turn led to a front page story in The Miami Herald on July 7, 1993 that described what had been witnessed:

Cuban marine patrols, determined to stop refugees from reaching the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, have repeatedly tossed grenades and shot at fleeing swimmers and recovered some bodies with gaff hooks, U.S. officials charged Tuesday. At least three Cubans have been killed in the past month as Cuban patrol boats attacked swimmers within sight of U.S. Navy personnel at Guantanamo.

Human rights defenders in Cuba who attempt to quantify the numbers of dead or missing refugees are targeted by state security and made a cautionary example to others. 

Francisco Chaviano González, a former mathematics teacher, and human rights defender was the president of the National Council for Civil Rights in Cuba (Consejo Nacional por los Derechos Civiles en Cuba - CNDCC), an organization whose work included "documenting the cases of Cubans who have been lost at sea trying to leave the country."

Chaviano was trying to investigate the cases of a number of Cubans who had gone missing. He was  warned by state security to stop his human rights work or he would be arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He refused to leave and was detained on May 7, 1994, drugged and subjected to a military trial and sentenced to 15 years in prison of which he served over 13 years in terrible conditions suffering numerous beatings and the denial of healthcare which led to a wholesale decline in his health. Amnesty International recognized Chaviano as a prisoner of conscience. Chaviano was released on August 10, 2007. He was forced into exile in 2012.

On July 13, 1994 the tugboat "13 de marzo" was surrounded, attacked and sunk by regime agents in a massacre that killed 37 Cuban refugees, the majority women and children.

On December 16, 2014 the Cuban coastguard rammed and sank a boat with 32 Cuban refugees on board. On this occasion one refugee,  Liosbel Díaz Beoto (age 32), went missing and is presumed dead, while the others were repatriated to Cuba.

Liosbel Díaz Beoto (age 32)

On April 9, 2015 a group of men in their 20s and 30s were building a small boat to escape Cuba when they were shot at by the head of state security, Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez, in the municipality of Martí in the province of Matanzas in Cuba. Shot in the back and left for two days in a lagoon, before being found by his brother, was 28 year old Yuriniesky Martínez Reina. 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.

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, in orange, with dad and son. Shot in the back (R)

 This is not an  exhaustive accounting by any means, and efforts to document these incidents, as was seen in the Chaviano case, invites retaliation by Castro regime officials.

CUBA: The Lost Cause?

“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” - Mohandas Gandhi

Cubans in Havana in August of 1994 chant "Liberty" in an uprising known as the Maleconazo

Over the past six decades Cubans fought for a lost Cause. Their rewards were summary executions, decades suffering torture under inhumane prison conditions, or exile from the land of their birth. This sacrifice was made for the Cause. What is this Cause? It is the return of the republic and the rule of law to Cuba. Cubans fought and died for independence and a republican democracy throughout the second half of the 19th century. This struggle became primarily a political struggle throughout the first half of the 20th century culminating in the Constitution of 1940 and the election of the opposition figure Ramon Grau San Martin in 1944. On March 10, 1952 Fulgencio Batista plunged Cuba back into the anarchy and chaos of dictatorship and the lack of rule of law. This opened the way for violence to triumph and become institutionalized on January 1, 1959 by the Castroite terror. 

Cubans have suffered sixty seven years without democracy and sixty years under a totalitarian communist dictatorship ruled by the Castro brothers. Fidel Castro died two years ago, but his brother Raul Castro remains the head of the Cuban Communist Party, and firmly in control of the dictatorship. There is cause for despair, and the communists have also sought to educate generations of Cubans in the doctrine of despair with the knowledge that it breeds both inaction and acceptance. They have sought to rewrite Cuban history with numerous myths and lies to justify their continued rule.

Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas understood this and rejected the counsel of despair with his Christian faith. He also wrote with admiration how the Polish people, under even more dire circumstances, succeeded in not only rejecting despair, but embracing solidarity and obtaining their freedom. In this September 16, 2005 essay titled "From the battle of Poland to that of Cuba: The path of liberation in the face of totalitarianism," Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas gave a warning to those liberated from communism while at the same time calling to task the double standard of many in the world with regards to Cuba.

With Solidarity, the Polish people carried out a liberation movement because it awoke the hope that renewed the life of the peoples subjected by lies and fear.

Hopefully the youth will know how to tell the true history, hopefully they will not lose their memory, because conquered liberty is not preserved spontaneously; it can be lost if the people lose the faith and the values ​​that sustain liberty.

Cuba still suffers this regime based on fear and lies; not because our people have less value or less values, but because over Cuba has fallen, to summarize, a complete and very complex compilation of the conflicts of humanity and it has been expressed and nurtured the lie of which many of the victims, including even those who live in democracy; and many of those who suffered this same regime, but who perhaps think that our people do not deserve the solidarity that Solidarity had.

Totalitarian regimes are difficult to dislodge from power and they are brutal. The Soviet Union took 74 years to bring to an end in Russia. Communist China has remained in power since 1949 and today poises a threat to the international democratic order.

Oswaldo's warning that conquered liberty required keeping the faith and values to sustain it was proven true in Russia and Nicaragua.  The Soviet Union was peacefully dissolved on Christmas Day in 1991 and for eight years Russia had an imperfect democracy and was no longer totalitarian but wracked with many troubles. In 2000 a former KGB officer Vladimir Putin was democratically elected by a frustrated Russian populace and over the next decade and a half restored totalitarianism to Russia.  In Nicaragua, a corrupt political bargain, altered the constitution, and returned Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas to power in 2007. Over the next decade they would rig elections and dismantle democratic institutions rebuilding their dictatorship.

The Western world cheered the liberation of Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 declaring the end of history and triumph of democracy and free markets. They thought Cuba was no longer a threat and sought to legitimize and reach an accommodation with the dictatorship while loosening sanctions. This strengthened the Castro regime's ability to project power in the region to the detriment of the Venezuelan people. This triumphalism ignored the wise counsel of the past.

This caution can be summed up in the words of the great English poet T.S. Eliott: "If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph."

Over the past sixty seven years in Cuba there has been a resistance to dictatorship, with or without international backing. Cubans fought against both the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo on Batista on March 14, 1958, and the old dictator seeing that Washington was siding with the enemy  made the calculated decision to flee on December 31, 1958 and boarded a plane in the early morning hours of January 1, 1959 an fled Cuba.

Castro had to lie and tell Cubans that the 1959 revolution sought to restore the old democratic order. At the same time the Castro brothers proclaimed themselves Jeffersonian democrats, they erected, with the help of the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi, the totalitarian apparatus that would imprison the Cuban people for six decades and counting.

On December 2, 1961 after consolidating totalitarian control,  Fidel Castro explained the reason for claiming that he was not a communist: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  Communism and the communist party were deeply unpopular in Cuba because of its links to the prior dictatorship.

 

 Millions of Cubans fled the communist dictatorship over the decades that followed and live scattered around the world. An unknown number died fighting in the hills of the Escambray between 1960 and 1966. Hundreds of Soviet counter insurgency experts assisted their Cuban counterparts in wiping them out. Thousands of Cubans were executed by firing squad for resisting the regime, many shouting "Long live Christ King" before the volley of bullets took their lives. Following the collapse of the violent resistance, a non-violent opposition emerged in 1976 and proliferated across the island in the decades that followed.

Tens of thousands of political prisoners would spend decades behind bars. There are still political prisoners in Cuba today and opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas have been murdered by the secret police. Cubans are still killed for trying to leave the island. Cuban Americans were shot out of the sky by Cuban MiGs while searching for rafters in the Florida Straits.

This history demonstrates that Cubans want to be free and have not surrendered despite all the betrayals, lack of solidarity, and brutality of the communist dictatorship on the island over the past six decades.  This is why today they are saying "not one more year."  This is why earlier this year Oswaldo's book, "The night shall not be eternal" was released posthumously defying the dictatorship. This is why his successor Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, has spent over two years in prison for criticizing the legacy of Fidel Castro and the communist dictatorship.

Free Eduardo Cardet: Prisoner of conscience marks two years (731 days) unjustly imprisoned in Cuba https://t.co/6odZ47fNjB pic.twitter.com/q4WjcbTznz

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) November 30, 2018

We have entire generations of Cubans who are ignorant of their own history. This has generated apathy and a sense of hopelessness and loss. This serves the interests of the Castro regime and runs counter to the interests of the democratic opposition. Robert A. Nisbit states it succinctly that, "a sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. ... Hence the relentless effort by totalitarian governments to destroy memory. And hence the ingenious techniques for abolishing the social allegiances within which individual memory is given strength and power of resistance." If the struggle of the opposition over the past six decades is to be continued and honored, then it must be taught in context along with the rest of Cuban history (which is the collective memory of a nation).

This also includes remembering that thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana on August 5, 1994 in protests chanting "Liberty", that Castro's secret police fired on these protesting Cubans, and this led to a rafter exodus of tens of thousands of Cubans.

Christian Liberation Movement activists turn in petitions in 2002

This also includes remembering that eight years later between 2002 and 2003 over 25,000 Cubans signed the Varela Project petition giving their names, home addresses and identity numbers demanding reforms that would bring Cuba's laws into line with international human rights standards.

The Castro regime responded to this legal initiative declaring the constitution unchangeable and locking up the organizers of the initiative in a March 2003 crackdown called the Black Spring. Ten years later on July 22, 2012, the leader of the initiative, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, was killed by the secret police along with a youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Harold Cepero.

Cubans want to be free and continue to struggle for their freedom and have paid and continue to pay a high price in their pursuit of freedom. The free world should be in solidarity with them and not their oppressors.

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.

Castro clings to power and President Obama has his hand out

"We are going to have diplomatic relations with the United States without having ceded one iota." - Gerardo Hernandez, Cuban spy sentenced to life in prison for murder conspiracy freed by Obama as part of his deal with Raul Castro. (Capitol Hill Cubans)

Castro and President Obama (April 2015) Sirley Ávila machete attacked (May 2015)

Breaking Kennedy's policy
President Barack Obama in his first inaugural address on January 20, 2009 declared “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” The Obama administration’s Cuba policy was not reset on December 17, 2014 but was a continuation of what came before when it began to loosen sanctions on the Castro regime on April 13, 2009. The Washington Post in 2009 described it as “breaking from policies first imposed by the Kennedy administration and stepping into an emotional debate over the best way to bring democratic change to one of the last remaining communist regimes.” 

Snubbing dissidents
At the same time that the President extended a hand to the Castro dictatorship he withdrew it from Cuban democrats. President Obama refused to meet in June of 2009 with the winners of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award who happened to be five Cuban dissidents that year. This was the first time in five years that the president of the United States had not met with the award laureates.

The regime strikes back
The response by the Cuban government to the overtures of the Obama administration in December of 2009 was to take an American citizen, Alan Gross, hostage. The administration responded with initial silence and it took American diplomats 25 days to visit the arbitrarily detained American.
On January 14, 2011 with this American citizen still arbitrarily detained in Cuba the Obama administration loosened travel restrictions on travel to the island to an extent not seen in a decade. The concessions and the cold shoulder to Cuban dissidents sent a clear message to the dictatorship that would be devastating for the prospects of a nonviolent and democratic transition in Cuba.

Murdered activists
These signals would coincide with the start of three devastating years for the Cuban democratic opposition. Rising levels of violence against  nonviolent activists and the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders: Orlando Zapata Tamayo (February 23, 2010), Daisy Talavera de las Mercedes Lopez (January 31, 2011) , Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (May 8, 2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (October 14, 2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (January 19, 2012), Sergio Diaz Larrastegui (April 19, 2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (July 22, 2012) and  Harold Cepero Escalante (July 22, 2012). Both Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá each had the international recognition and ability to head an authentic democratic transition in Cuba. Oswaldo Payá had forced the dictatorship to change the constitution in 2002 because of Project Varela, a citizen initiative demanding legal reforms within the existing system, and Laura  Pollán through constant street demonstrations achieved the freedom of scores of Cuban prisoners of conscience. It is important to remember that the deaths of these high profile human rights defenders happened on President Obama's watch.

Skyrocketing arbitrary detentions
In 2008 according to the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) there were 640 arbitrary detentions in Cuba during the first six months. Cuban human rights defender Juan Carlos González Leiva documented 1,500 arrests for all of 2008.  The Obama administration entered office on January 20, 2009. In 2010 the number of politically motivated arbitrary detentions in Cuba increased to 2,074 arbitrary detentions and tripled in 2013 with 6,602 arbitrary detentions. In 2014 the total number of arbitrary detentions was 8,899 a new record and trends in 2015 point to that number being met or exceeded by the Castro regime's repressive apparatus.

Gerardo Hernandez was found guilty of conspiracy to murder these four men

Letting a killer go
The December 17, 2014 announcement by the President broke new ground in only one area releasing Gerardo Hernandez, a Cuban spy and terrorist, convicted of murder conspiracy of three U.S. citizens and a resident. Not only did President Obama commute the sentence but tried to rewrite history calling an act of international terrorism, the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, a tragedy. Further attempts to provide a positive image to this dismal arrangement led to the Obama administration taking credit for the release of 53 political prisoners in early January but once the names were released it was revealed that 17 of the 53 had been released prior to the agreement and had nothing to do with it. This means that a total of 38 political prisoners were freed at the time. The policy of legitimizing the dictatorship, while marginalizing the democratic opposition, that began in 2009 was continued and intensified in 2015.

Patterns of regime violence worsen
This was not the only practice intensified. The United States and Cuba held secret negotiations for 18 months. Coinciding with the start of these negotiations were a series of machete attacks against opposition activists. On June 8, 2013 in Holguin, Cuba Werlando Leiva Batista of the Christian Liberation Movement was attacked with a machete on a public street. Later that same month on June 21, 2013 in Camaguey, Orlando Lazaro Gomez Hernandez, a member of the Pro Human Rights Party of Cuba stepped out of his home with a sign supporting hunger striker Luis Enrique Santos Caballero. Seeing this protest the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR),  ran out of his home with a machete and attacked Orlando Lazaro with it, cutting part of his right hand and also striking him on the back. Others came out as the activist fell to the ground and began to kick him.

Sirley Ávila León victim of state security ordered machete attack

Cuban human rights defender, Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was gravely wounded in a machete attack in Cuba on May 24, 2015 by Osmany Carrión who had been sent by state security agents. She lost her left hand while raising it to block a machete blow to the head. She suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and the machete cut through the bone of her right humerus leaving her arm dangling. This was an escalation of previous machete attacks against opposition activists.

Looking the other way on terrorism and trafficking
Furthermore removing Cuba from the list of terror sponsors on May 29, 2015 while ignoring the Castro regime smuggling heavy weapons to North Korea (which is again in the news with a company in Singapore found guilty of transferring funds) and weapon shipments through Colombia and its links to international drug trafficking to satisfy the dictatorship’s demand in order normalize relations sends a dangerous signal. Politicizing the State Department’s human trafficking report to ignore sex trafficking in Cuba and the dictatorship sending Cuban workers overseas for profit compromised its integrity placing victims at risk. These unilateral concessions ignore realities on the ground and undermine the credibility of the United States.

Rosa Maria Payá being warned to keep quiet by State Department spokesman

Crudely snubbing dissidents and empowering dictatorship
On July 20, 2015 Cuban human rights defender Rosa Maria Payá attended a press conference at the State Department, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Castro's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. She had proper accreditation as a member of the press. Rear Admiral John Kirby,  the State Department spokesman, took Rosa Maria aside and warned her that she would be physically removed if Rosa asked any questions during the press conference.

 Apparently this was not a fluke but also a harbinger of the new status quo for Cuban democrats dealing with the new embassy. Independent journalist Iván García reported in August of 2015 that the Embassy of the United States in Cuba was no longer credentialing independent journalists but telling them to go to the International Press Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located at 23rd and O, in Havana's Vedado. This is a ministry of the Castro regime that systematically denies independent Cuban journalists accreditation and in practice since July of 2015 has barred them from events at the American embassy.

On August 14, 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry presided over the flag raising ceremony at U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba and at the same time that he said that they would not give Cuba a pass on human rights did not invite any Cuban human rights defenders to the official event.  The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents but would meet with them at an informal gathering separately. However, the State Department did accommodate a plane load of "entrepreneurs and Cuban American activists" to fly down with Secretary Kerry and his official delegation with a planeload of them. The "activists" support the Obama administration's Cuba policy and are advocates of lifting sanctions on the dictatorship. Furthermore, Secretary Kerry did have enough room for Cuban spies who had been expelled from the United States by Administrations due to their espionage activities against the country.

Hypocrisy exposed
Exposing the State Department's claim that there wasn't room, CNN anchor Jake Tapper in a tweet observed that there was plenty of space to have invited Cuban dissidents. It wasn't space considerations but accommodating the Castro dictatorship that led to the non-invite of human rights defenders.

Activist Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco jailed since October 25, 2015

Old and new political prisoners
The Castro regime still has political prisoners. Long term political prisoners include: Armando Sosa Fortuny, Ernesto Borges Pérez, Pedro de la Caridad Álvarez Pedroso, Daniel Candelario Santovenia Fernández, Elías Pérez Bocourt, Raúl Manuel Cornell de la Rosa, José David Herman Aguilera, Miguel Díaz Bouza, Humberto Eladio Real Suarez, Claro Fernando Alonso Hernández, Santiago Padrón Quintero, Ihosvani Suris de la Torre. Some of them have spent over 20 years in prison. However the number of political prisoners are growing as they jail more dissidents such as Hugo Damián Prieto,  Laudelino Rodriguez Mendoza,   Geovanys Izaguirre and Andres Fidel Alfonso Rodriguez.  On the one year anniversary of President Obama's December 17th Cuba policy announcement at least three new political prisoners are currently on hunger strike. Vladimir Morera Bacallao has been on hunger strike since October 9, 2015 and his life is in danger. He was assaulted and jailed for anti-government messages on the front of his home. Alexander Palacio Reyes and Felipe Martínez Companioni both of the Pedro Luis Boitel Pro-Democracy Movement have been on hunger strike since December 1, 2015 protesting their unjust incarceration in Cuba.

Yuriniesky Martínez with his dad, son, and on (right) how he was found

 Castro regime's violently repressive observance of Human Rights Day
International Human Rights Day on December 10 alone saw 300 politically motivated arrests. The number of politically motivated arbitrary detentions for 2015 broke a new record crossing 9,000 in the first two weeks of December. Little surprise that Cubans want to leave and in the course of 2015 alone at least 70,000 Cubans have fled the island which is in dramatic contrast to the 7,000 who migrated from Cuba in 2009 the year Obama entered the White House.  It is important to recall that on the eve of the Obama Administration's Cuba policy announcement that a boatload of 32 refugees was sunk killing one Cuban and detaining the rest and on April 9, 2015 a Cuban state security agent shot a fleeing rafter in the back killing him and leaving face down for others to find.

When an adversary is willing to unclench his fist it is not always to shake hands: sometimes its to slap down hard those who are marginalized and unable to defend themselves in an act of repudiation, to cover up the mouths of free men and women before they shout out freedom and long live human rights as they are taken away or to grip a machete before attacking a nonviolent activist. Trying to call this a positive change is a fraud.

Fake Change in Cuba
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas speaking on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement in Havana on March 30, 2012 bravely denounced the fraudulent change that was then taking shape and that is being carried out today with the Obama administration's Cuba policy:

Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba. The attempt to link the Diaspora in this fraudulent change is to make victims participate in their own oppression. The Diaspora does not have to "assume attitudes and policies in entering the social activity of the island." The Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to be inserted, that would be part of a fraudulent change. 

What real change would look like
Oswaldo Payá in the same statement outlined that authentic change was contingent upon a principled path of action not economic determinism:

The gradual approach only makes sense if there are transparent prospects of freedom and rights. We Cubans have a right to our rights. Why not rights? It is time. That is the peaceful change that we promote and claim. Changes that signifies freedom, reconciliation, political pluralism and free elections. Then the Diaspora will cease being a Diaspora, because all Cubans will have rights in their own free and sovereign country. That is why we fight.

President Obama Cuba visit the apex of fake change
The crowning moment of the fraudulent change underway would be a visit by the President of the United States to Cuba. This is something that President Obama has indicated that he would like to do in 2016 if he sees enough "progress" in Cuba. However the focus in the media, academia and in government has been on the Castro regime making economic reforms, resuming commercial flights and human rights has been relegated to the back burner. The end result of this approach contributed to the untimely death of Oswaldo Payá on July 22, 2012 and continues to be seen today in Cuba with escalating violent repression against Cuban democrats and human rights defenders. Things have gotten worse across the board in Cuba and shows no signs of improving.

Independent journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle taken away December 10, 2015

Cuba stands alone in special, but deadly, class / Sun Sentinel

Cuba stands alone in special, but deadly, class

October 29, 2015

Guillermo Martinez is on target with his Oct. 27 column, "Obama Administration Is the Problem, Not the Adjustment Act." Unfortunately, the reasons for the Cuban Adjustment Act remain unchanged.
Cuba remains a totalitarian, Communist regime that systematically denies Cubans their rights, including the right to enter and exit their own country.

On Dec. 16, 2014, the Cuban coast guard rammed and sank a boat with 32 refugees, one of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, went missing and is presumed dead. The rest were repatriated and detained. Less than four months later, 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, for peacefully trying to leave Cuba.

This sets Cuba apart from every other country in the Western Hemisphere. This is why the Cuban Adjustment Act is not "special treatment" but a recognition that the regime in Cuba is different than others in this hemisphere and justifies the current policy.

John Suarez, Miami

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/fl-letter-cuba2-1025-20151029-story.html

 A more extended analysis is available here.

Cuba 2015: State security still murders fleeing refugees

 Totalitarian terror remains unchanged in Cuba

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, in orange, with his dad and son (L). Shot in the back (R)

An extrajudicial execution 
On April 9, 2015 a group of men in their 20s and 30s were building a small boat to escape Cuba when they were shot at by the head of state security, Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez, in the municipality of Martí in the province of Matanzas in Cuba. Shot in the back and left for two days in a lagoon, before being found by his brother, was 28 year old Yuriniesky Martínez Reina. 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.


 
Not the first time
The extrajudicial killing of fleeing refugees has been an ongoing practice of the dictatorship in Cuba. Well documented cases, prior to this one, included a formal complaint in 1993 by the United States government.

Cuban gunboat patrolling waters near Guantanamo, Cuba

Long term pattern of killing and cruelty
U.S. soldiers patrolling the perimeter of the Guantanamo naval base had been surprised by the sounds of explosions then horrified by what they observed. This led to a formal diplomatic note to the Cuban government by the Clinton Administration. This in turn led to a front page story in The Miami Herald on July 7, 1993 which described what the soldiers had witnessed:

Cuban marine patrols, determined to stop refugees from reaching the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, have repeatedly tossed grenades and shot at fleeing swimmers and recovered some bodies with gaff hooks, U.S. officials charged Tuesday. At least three Cubans have been killed in the past month as Cuban patrol boats attacked swimmers within sight of U.S. Navy personnel at Guantanamo.

A year later on July 13, 1994 the tugboat "13 de marzo" was surrounded, attacked and sunk by regime agents in a massacre that killed 37 Cuban refugees, the majority women and children.

Extrajudicially executed by Cuban government agents on July 13, 1994

Incidentally on December 16, 2014 the day before President Obama announced a new policy on Cuba, and that the White House had been engaged in 18 months of secret negotiations with the Castro regime, the Cuban coastguard rammed and sank a boat with 32 Cuban refugees on board. On this occasion one refugee is missing and presumed dead, Liosbel Díaz Beoto (age 32) while the others were repatriated to Cuba.

Liosbel Díaz Beoto (age 32) Missing, presumed dead