Year one of the Trump Administration and a new Cuba policy: Trade is up and detentions are down

A look at some numbers for 2017 and U.S. - Cuba relations.

President Trump at the Manuel Artime Theater with Cuban Americans in 2017

Cuba in 2017 remained a repressive totalitarian regime with prisoners of conscience, and a one-party communist dictatorship that has used its military and intelligence apparatus to control Venezuela, turning that nation into a colony that it is plundering.Things had gotten worse for Cubans, especially following the Obama Administration's engagement with the Castro dictatorship, including a state visit in March of 2016. The current Administration has rolled back a number of Obama era Cuba policies, spoken out on the human rights situation in Cuba, and Ambassador Nikki Haley defended the morality of U.S. sanctions on the Castro regime.

Despite the claim by the architect of the previous Administration's Cuba policy, that President Trump's turn around on the Obama Administration's Cuba policy would fail, trade between the United States and Cuba was at its highest level in 2017 following its collapse between 2014 and 2016 when the previous Administration was pushing its new Cuba policy.

President Barack Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 and the following year U.S. trade in goods with Cuba dropped $118.9 million from $299.1 million in 2014 to $180.2 million in 2015. This economic relationship has improved under the Trump Administration despite news that the Cuban economy is worsening and the regime's creditors are nervous.

Trade peaked under Bush in 2008 and began a steady decline under Obama

Obama Cuba policy flawed
President Obama downplayed commuting the sentences of three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez who was serving a life sentence for his role in a murder conspiracy that claimed four innocent lives in 1996 and freed them the same day.  This was part of the price paid to free an American hostage, Alan Gross, that had been an impediment to normalized relations.

President Obama does the wave with Raul Castro at a baseball game in Cuba

The Obama Administration apparently ignored the mysterious attacks that began in November of 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Havana when 24 American diplomats and their dependents suffered severe injuries, including brain trauma.

On the human rights front the Obama Administration's new Cuba policy was also a disaster. The suspicious deaths of human rights defenders such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012), and Harold Cepero Escalante (2012) is a terrifying alternative to the long prison sentences that the Castro regime would use to take opposition leaders out of circulation, as was the case in 2003, during the Bush administration.

Some of the Cubans killed by the Castro regime during the Obama years

Over the eight years of the previous Administration (January 2009 through January 2017) high profile activists met untimely deaths that appear to have been carried by Castro's state security service. The same spy agency that President Obama's October 2016 Presidential Directive on Cuba orders the CIA to share intelligence with.

The number of politically motivated arbitrary detentions documented by the Havana based, Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation since 2008 demonstrates a dramatic rise in repression between 2008 and 2016, that spiked dramatically in the year of the Obama Administration's new Cuba policy announcement in 2014 from 6,424 arbitrary detentions in 2013 to 8,899 in 2014. This also occurred with troubling incidents of violence by regime agents.

 During President Obama's last year in office the number of arbitrary detentions reached their highest number since 2010 with 9,940 arbitrary detentions. Despite this, on his way out of office in January 2017, President Obama closed the door on Cuban refugees.

Under Trump's first year a dramatic reduction in arbitrary detentions in Cuba
During 2017 there were 5,155 Cubans arbitrarily detained, and although still far too high, it is a dramatic improvement over 2016. There are still prisoners of conscience enduring horrid and dangerous conditions in Cuban prisons and dissenters sent to psychiatric institutions for punishment.

However in the area of religious freedom. Things have gotten worse in Cuba. "From January to December 2017 Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) recorded 325 separate violations of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) in Cuba. Christians across a wide range of denominations were affected. Many of these cases involved large numbers of victims. By comparison, CSW reported 220 FoRB violations in Cuba in 2014, 180 in 2013, 120 in 2012 and 40 in 2011."

Overall the changes in tone and substance by the current Administration, so far, have been an improvement over the previous failed policy of the prior Administration that scrapped an old policy that was containing the regime, replacing it with one that legitimized the dictatorship, marginalized democrats, and negatively impacted U.S. interests.

The Trump Administration has taken positive steps, with its policy changes on Cuba, but more needs to be done.

Cuban Communist Party official admits persecution of Protestant group

Back in 2010, Christian Solidarity Worldwide released an extensive report on religious freedom in Cuba. This past Friday they released a smoking gun that demonstrates that religious liberty in Cuba is under assault on the island. Below is the video with English translation and the press release:



Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has released a video in which a Cuban Communist Party official openly confirms a government strategy to target churches affiliated with the fast growing Apostolic Movement, a protestant network.

The short film, recorded clandestinely early in 2010 and smuggled out of the country, shows Caridad Diego Bello, the head of the Religious Affairs Office of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, explaining the government’s strategy to crackdown on the Apostolic Movement.

For years, church leaders of all denominations have complained of difficulties with Diego, particularly in receiving permission to repair old church buildings or build new facilities. This is the first time, however, that video evidence has been published, showing Diego publicly admitting that the government is working to eradicate the Apostolic Movement.

In the video, Diego states “…we are taking measures and will continue to take measures, the hands of our authorities will not waver, and I don’t do this in a manner of warning but rather to inform, so that the illegalities that groups like these are committing can be countered in every province and in every territory... there are some would-be leaders of these type of organizations that have had been relocated from their homes, that have lost their temple. There are people that visit us that will no longer be able to enter the country again, there are people that have been fined for facilitating the violation of immigration status by foreigners in Cuba, we have confiscated literature because it has not entered the country via the appropriate channels, but rather under the table.”

Churches affiliated with the Apostolic Movement have documented consistent religious liberty violations over the past few years, including numerous cases of arbitrary detention of church leaders and the destruction of church buildings. CSW has also released a second video showing the site of the demolition of one of the largest churches linked to the Apostolic Movement in Santiago de Cuba.

CSW’s Director of Advocacy, Andrew Johnston said, “Religious leaders of all denominations told CSW earlier this year that the Apostolic Movement has been singled out for intense persecution. This video is confirmation, from the very mouth of the top official in charge of religious affairs in the country that the government is working to stamp out the group. Just a few months ago, leaders of the Apostolic Movement publicly asked that the government enact legislation on religious activity. We join with them in calling on the government to cease immediately its harassment of these churches and to establish a clear legal framework for all religious groups to operate in the country.”

For further information or to arrange interviews please contact Kiri Kankhwende, Press Officer at Christian Solidarity Worldwide on +44 (0)20 8329 0045 / +44 (0) 78 2332 9663, email kiri@csw.org.uk or visit http://www.csw.org.uk.

CSW is the UK’s leading human rights advocacy organization specializing in religious freedom, working on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promoting religious liberty for all.

Taken from: Cuban Communist Party official admits persecution of Protestant group 14/01/2011
http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=press&id=1083&search=

Freedom of Belief still persecuted in Cuba

Cubans are not allowed to build new churches. Many have to attend services in a "house church" or in churches established prior to 1959. Photo by Slim Ministries

The Cuban dictatorship has had a hostile relationship with religion since the beginning when it officially declared itself an atheist state and expelled scores of priests on September 17, 1961, ended Christmas in 1970, and sent mobs to intimidate Cubans attending religious services. In the first years 90% of Cuba's Jewish population fled the dictatorship shrinking from 15,000 to 1,500 persons of the Jewish faith. Anti-semitism has been a problem in 20th century Cuban history with the saga of the SS St. Louis a prominent pre-revolutionary example and the Cuban dictatorships contempt for the Jewish Cubans who fled in 1959 manifests in an engrained antisemitism. Jehovah's witnesses suffered greatly for their faith and were targeted by the dictatorship refusing to take part in political activities.

The United States Department 2003 International Religious Freedom Report described the next big action by the Castro regime against religion in the 1960s:

From 1965-67 the Government forced many priests, pastors, and others "who made religion a way of life" into forced labor camps called Military Units to Aid Production (UMAPS), alongside homosexuals, vagrants, and others considered by the regime to be "social scum." The UMAP system ended in 1967. However, over the following 30 years, the Government and the Communist Party systematically discriminated against and marginalized persons who openly professed their faith by excluding them from certain jobs (such as teaching). Although the Government abandoned its official atheism in the early 1990s, most churches had been weakened seriously, and active participation in religious services fell drastically.

Supposedly things changed for the better in 1992 with the abandonment of the goals of an atheist state for a secular one and with Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba in 1998 which led to the restoration of Christmas after a nearly 30-year absence, but despite cosmetic improvements new laws were passed that increased repression against religious practitioners and pastors are being sent to prison for their faith today. Christian Solidarity Worldwide said in a February 1, 2010 Christian Today article that:

[A]t least thirty church leaders from the Apostolic Reformation were arrested and detained across Cuba last year, with several reporting that the authorities had threatened to confiscate their homes. Pastor Mario Alvarez is one church leader who has appealed to the Supreme Tribunal to block what he believes is the illegal confiscation of his home.

Pastor Omar Gude Perez is serving an unjust six-year prison sentence and earlier this month the Supreme Tribunal in Havana denied his appeal. The pastor is a leader of the growing Apostolic Reformation, a network of independent churches that has grown considerably in Cuba. He was tried and convicted last year of what Christian Solidarity Worldwide said were “trumped up” charges. International campaigns have been launched to obtain his release.

Unjustly imprisoned: Pastor Omar Gude Pérez

Despite all the changes the regime refuses to allow new Church's to be built and Cubans have had to resort to attending services in "house churches" pictured at the top of the page. This has led to the owners of the home being evicted and some of the churches destroyed. Christian Solidarity Worldwide in their September 2009 describes the new restrictions:

An April 2005 directive issued and implemented by the dictatorship on September 2005, severely curtails religious freedom by imposing complicated and repressive restrictions on all unofficial churches in Cuba. The legislation, Directive 43 and Resolution 46, announced in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, requires that all house churches (in Cuba the term can be applied to any building not officially designated for religious worship but used for religious purposes) register with the authorities. This continues to cause concern among church leaders as house churches which have attempted to register with local authorities prior and subsequent to the enactment of the 2005 legislation have experienced prohibitive complications in the process.

The bottom line is that freedom of belief in Cuba like all other freedoms are null and void when it concerns the interests of the dictatorship maintaining power.



Former political prisoner Gregorio Asorio spent a decade in the Cuban dictatorship's prisons in the course of an interview he was asked what was the first experience he disliked about the new dictatorship and responded that "The first thing I disliked was their exclusivism, that is, if you were a revolutionary, if you submitted, then you could find a good job, you could study. If not, you were isolated for religious reasons, or because you did not accept them. That was the first thing I disliked. Then, I also disliked the repression, the trials, that is to say, there were trials that condemned people to execution."