July 13th now has a double significance for victims of communism in China and Cuba

  Free Chinese and free Cubans share a common day to mourn their victims of communism.

Over the past 32 years Cubans have mourned the 37 men, women, and children who were extrajudicially executed by Cuban government agents on July 13, 1994 when the "13 de Marzo" tugboat was attacked and sunk.

To mark 30 years of impunity on July 13, 2024 at Florida International University we held a vigil in memory of the victims, distributed information, and demanded justice for the 37 victims. 

Today, July 13 at 6:00pm at the Main Fountain at @FIU we held a 13 minute silent vigil to mark the day 30 years ago when agents of the Cuban dictatorship sank the "13 de Marzo" tugboat killing 37 men, women and children. #Truth #Memory #Cuba pic.twitter.com/5K3mFX3zgU

— Human Rights Violations in Cuba (@freecubafndtn) July 14, 2024

We have also paid homage to Chinese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo who died nine years ago on July 13, 2017 at the First Hospital of China Medical University, in Shenyang, China after being unjustly imprisoned from December 8, 2008 until his untimely death nearly 10 years later. 

It is likely that he died of a cancer made terminal by politically motivated neglect. Today marks five years since his passing. After eight years in "unofficial detention" his widow Liu Xia was finally allowed to leave China on July 10, 2018.

Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. However, he was prevented from attending the prize ceremony.

In 2017 Xiaobo passed away while held in isolation under guard. pic.twitter.com/5gXJKMcOeH

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) July 13, 2026

Liu Xiaobo  was one of the authors of Charter 08 and signed it along with more than three hundred Chinese citizens. The Charter is a manifesto that was released on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It calls for more freedom of expression, human rights, more democratic elections, the privatization of state enterprises and economic liberalization and would collect over 10,000 signatures.

 Charter 08 is reminiscent of the Varela Project that was initially signed by 11,020 Cubans in May of 2002 calling on the Cuban government to respect international human rights norms and engage in the same kind of reforms. Both were inspired by Vaclav Havel and Charter 77. Lamentably, the author of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader of the same movement, Harold Cepero Escalante were both extrajudicially executed twelve years ago on July 22, 2012 in a crash engineered by the Cuban dictatorship's agents.

The demand for justice remains unfulfilled in all these cases, but we must not despair.

We bear witness embracing truth and memory in defiance of the attempt to whitewash and forget. 

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained the importance of doing this in his 1986 Nobel Lecture on why it is important to remember:  

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." ... "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." 

In 2017, I was present at a candlelight vigil in Washington, DC on July 17th organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to pay my respects for Liu Xiaobo and demonstrate my solidarity with Chinese human rights defenders.

 On Saturday July 11, 2026 I was in front of the Cuban embassy in a vigil in solidarity with Cubans jailed for taking to the streets in over 50 towns and cities across Cuba, in remembrance of Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, and Christian Barrera Díaz during the 11J protests, for the 37 victims of the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and in remembrance of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante both killed by the secret police on July 22, 2012, and for Liu Xiaobo. Together with15 others I said prayers for these victims of communism, their loved ones, and for justice.

Today, July 13, 2026, we visited the Cuban and Chinese Embassies and briefly picketed the,, and distributed information to passersby.

We continue to remember, and demand justice. 

July 11, 2022
Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, Age: 36
Christian Barrera Díaz, Age: 24

July 13, 2017
Liu Xiaobo, Age: 61

July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Age: 60
Harold Cepero Escalante, Age: 32

July 13, 1994
Hellen Martínez Enriquez. Age: 5 Months
Xicdy Rodríguez Fernández. Age: 2
Angel René Abreu Ruíz. Age: 3
José Carlos Niclas Anaya. Age: 3
Giselle Borges Alvarez. Age: 4
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte. Age: 5
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García. Age: 10
Yousell Eugenio Pérez Tacoronte. Age: 11
Yasser Perodín Almanza. Age: 11
Eliécer Suárez Plasencia. Age: 12
Mayulis Méndez Tacoronte. Age: 17
Miladys Sanabria Leal. Age: 19
Joel García Suárez. Age: 20
Odalys Muñoz García. Age: 21
Yalta Mila Anaya Carrasco. Age: 22
Luliana Enríquez Carrazana. Age: 22
Jorge Gregorio Balmaseda Castillo. Age: 24
Lissett María Alvarez Guerra. Age: 24
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro. Age: 25
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez. Age: 27
Leonardo Notario Góngora. Age: 28
Jorge Arquímedes Levrígido Flores. Age: 28
Pilar Almanza Romero. Age: 31
Rigoberto Feu González. Age: 31
Omar Rodríguez Suárez. Age: 33
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel. Age: 34
Julia Caridad Ruíz Blanco. Age: 35
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega. Age: 35
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel. Age: 38
Martha Mirella Carrasco Sanabria. Age: 45
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez. Age: 45
Rosa María Alcalde Puig. Age: 47
Estrella Suárez Esquivel. Age: 48
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero Alamo. Age: 48
Amado González Raices. Age: 50
Fidencio Ramel Prieto Hernández. Age: 51
Manuel Cayol. Age: 56 

Dr. Ricardo Bofill, founder of the Cuban human rights movement. Requiescat in Pace

 "I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas." - Dr. Ricardo Bofill, 1987 in "Nobody Listened" documentary 

Dr. Ricardo Bofill in a PBS documentary in 2005

The founder of the human rights movement in Cuba passed away on this day seven years ago in Miami. Ricardo Bofill Pagés co-founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976, dedicated his entire life to defending human rights and suffered years in Cuban prisons for it.

This blog has celebrated the work of Dr. Bofill over the years and will do so again today. His story and legacy changed the course of a nation, and the outcome is still playing out today. The 400th blog on this site was dedicated to him.

Honrar honra.Ricardo Bofill, una referencia ineludible en la defensa de los DD.HH. de los cubanos. pic.twitter.com/IwCGlPsxtt

— Regis Iglesias (@maverick18mcl) December 10, 2014

 On December 10, 2014 Regis Iglesias, spokesperson of the Christian Liberation Movement at 1:40pm posted a picture of Ricardo Bofill over twitter with the text: "Honoring honor. Ricardo Bofill, an essential reference in the defense of Human Rights of Cubans." He was and remains correct in his assessment of this man.

Ricardo Bofill, President of the organization that initiated the civic movement during 

the first exposition of dissident art, shortly before an assault by repressive forces

 In the 1987 documentary Nobody Listened, directed by Néstor Almendros and Jorge Ulla the world was introduced to Ricardo Bofill and the nonviolent human rights movement on the big screen.  Dr. Bofill is interviewed and discusses his circumstances as a dissident in Cuba engaged in the battle of ideas:

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas. In this field I’ve had no response just prison and the police. And I don’t know why because the revolution controls all mass media. They have editorials, journalists, even many writers in the world. I don’t know why the response, time and again, has been jail. The response should come in the field I fight in, with ideas. I was arrested again in 1983. On that occasion, I was sentenced to 17 years in jail accused of activities in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the last period of prison began. For reasons of health and others I know not of in 1985 I was placed in the status I’m now in which is “conditional liberty with restriction of movement.”

Fidel Castro was asked the name of the human rights defender in another interview. The Cuban dictator dismisses his importance, but it is obvious in the context of his answer that he knows very well who this lone activist is, and views him as a threat.

Dr. Ricardo Bofill in the documentary Nobody Listened in 1987

 Why do they view Bofill's movement as an existential threat? The Castro dictatorship's ideology and revolution are based in violence and blood shed. The July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks is a failure not only in the short term defeat suffered by Castro's forces but in the long term degradation of Cuban society and the abandonment of dialogue, moral and ethical restraints in favor of a cult of violence nurtured by a dictatorship now in its 60th year in power. 

Even the men responsible for doing this now complain about the society their revolution has created.They blame Cubans for their poor behavior and customs. Of course men and women with sound moral groundings who speak clearly what they believe and defend human dignity and freedom have an unfortunate tendency to die under suspicious circumstances in Cuba.

There are two traditions battling for control in Cuba. One tradition, embodied by the Castro regime, based on violence and the destruction of the other has dominated Cuba's political discourse for over half a century. It views dissent as treason and demands unanimity; the only acceptable ideas belong to the dictatorship. 

The second, an older tradition that built the institutions of Cuban democracy in the 19th Century using nonviolent means, who founded companies with a social conscience such as Bacardi, that contributed to the common good until forced out of their homeland, and of the democrats who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 are still there in Cuba's nonviolent civic resistance movement.

This is the movement founded by Ricardo Bofill and a handful of activists on January 28, 1976 that today is  a nationwide movement of thousands who are nonviolently engaged in the battle of ideas and the defense of human rights. Today's repression across the island continues to demonstrate that the Castro regime is terrified of what Ricardo Bofill started.

In an open letter written in 1986 Dr. Bofill rejected regime slanders and staked out their position as a movment: "We have nothing to do with the CIA, we do not participate in violent acts, we have no other weapon than the word, and we are going to use it while we have a breath of life left."

In 1988 he was forced out of the country by the dictatorship, but continued his human rights work from exile in Miami, while Gustavo Arcos remained and continued to do the work in Cuba.

Dr. Bofill meets President Reagan in The White House in 1988

 It is a long and frustrating struggle to achieve the freedom of a country in the grip of totalitarian rule. One must neither over estimate or underestimate what has been achieved and what remains to be done. This is a marathon, not a sprint that requires persistence and faith, not despair. 

Dr. Bofill told me that 35 years ago and it still holds true today.

This is what he did, and Dr. Ricardo Bofill's legacy will live on in Cuba and in the end will triumph over the forces of brute force and tyranny.

Requiescat in pace Professor.

 

Bad day for the Cuban dictatorship at the United Nations (Part 1)

Ambassador Mike Waltz highlights Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara's case at the UN

Yesterday, Cuba’s communist dictatorship in New York City at the United Nations demonstrated once again that one can win a vote, and still lose.

There was a vote on whether or not to have an additional debate on the Cuban embargo, and it won with 136 votes with nine against and 30 abstentions. This was a further erosion of 29 votes when compared to the resolution from October 2025. 

However the statement made by Ambassador Mike Waltz, U.S. Representative to the United Nations exposed the kleptocratic nature of the dictatorship, and the wealth of the Cuban dictatorship amidst the squalor lived by most Cuban people.

 Even more important, Ambassador Waltz highlighted and named some of the over 1,300 Cuban political prisoners jailed today.

 He called out the Cuban delegation for trying to shut down his presentation.

"For 67 years, the Cuban regime has enriched itself, its ruling elites, while abusing its people, strangling private enterprise, criminalizing dissent, and clinging to failed communist economics.

Colleagues, communism has never worked, it doesn’t work, and it will not work.

And when the Cuban people demanded something better, something different, to have a voice, the regime could choose to listen, but it did not. Instead, it chose to imprison 800 of its own people.

And I want to take a moment to read a few of their names. You should hear their names. You should see their faces.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara. You know what his crime was? He’s in maximum security prison. His crime, and this is according to the regime is “artistic expression.” His crime is being an artist, Mr. President.

Fernando Almenares Rivera. His crime? He’s a musician, and he writes songs the regime doesn’t like, calling for freedom.

Maykel Castillo Perez. Another musician in a maximum security prison. What did he do? He also wrote rap songs the regime doesn’t like.

This young man, this amazing young man, Duannis Dabel León Taboada, is a young poet. He’s a poet. He writes poetry, colleagues. 14 years in a maximum security prison.

And these two brothers, Jorge Martín, Nadir Martín Perdomo. The UN—you all—have condemned their imprisonment and called for their release. See their faces as you make your speeches today. Remember them. Because they’re in prison for daring for freedom.

Colleagues, they’re not armed. They’re not violent. They carry flowers, and write poems, and write music. And for that, the regime beats them, detains them, and tries to break them.

These are the names the delegation here banging on the table doesn’t want you to hear. They don’t want this Assembly to hear it. They don’t like free speech. They don’t like dissent."

Yesterday, Vaclav Havel’s maxim written in his important essay, The Power of the Powerless, was seen in action. “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

Truth and facts are exposing the Cuban dictatorship before the international community, and shaking the regime's pillars to their very core.

This is the first of two blog entries on the UN vote.

Please join us on Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 7pm at the Cuban Embassy in a silent vigil for Cuba's political prisoners and the victims of Castroism. 

 

 

 

Remember Milada Horáková, who was martyred on this day in 1950, by the Communist regime for her nonviolent defense of Czechoslovak democracy.

Remember her 

Milada Horakova at her show trial in 1950.

Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. She was a  lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. 

Milada had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country.  She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

Milada was subjected to a show trial. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes.

🕯️ Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Communist Regime

Today, we honour the memory of all those who were stripped of their freedom, dignity, and lives under the communist regime. Seventy-six years ago, Milada Horáková, Záviš Kalandra, Jan Bouchal, and Oldřich Pecl were… pic.twitter.com/Pw9gAaxjAk

— Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CzechMFA) June 27, 2026

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Her life story was brought to big screen in 2017and on January 12, 2018 was available on Netflix, and is now available on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

 Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism:

The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement

According to D. E. Watkings Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial:

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. 

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes^. She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule:

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle? (Both quotes excerpts taken from here)

Ms. Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor,  was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." She tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost.

⚖On June 27, 1950, the Czechoslovak communist regime executed #FreedomFighter Milada Horáková. In Czechia, we commemorate today as the #DayOfPoliticalPrisoners. The number of #PoliticalPrisoners worldwide is unknown, though rough estimates by human rights orgs are around 1mill. pic.twitter.com/lnx1jkABpA

— People in Need (@people_in_need) June 27, 2024

Today, June 27, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as  “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.” 

El legado de Milada Horáková https://t.co/p43HYSJ6tp via @CADAL

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) June 28, 2026

Yesterday in Argentina, CADAL activists screened the film MILADA.

Biopic of the life of Milada Horáková (2017)

 

The top five crimes of Ramiro Valdés Menéndez

 

 Ramiro Valdés Menéndez (1932–2026) was a Cuban revolutionary commander, one of the survivors of the Granma expedition, a key participant in the 1953 Moncada Barracks attack and the Sierra Maestra campaign, and a close associate of Fidel and Raúl Castro.   

 

After the 1959 victory, he held senior roles including Minister of the Interior (twice: 1961–1968 and 1979–1985), founder and head of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and its G2 State Security apparatus, and later Vice President.  

en.wikipedia.org

He died on June 21, 2026, at age 94. The Cuban dictatorship portrayed him as a loyal “Commander of the Revolution” and hero who helped build and defend the socialist state.   

 

Critics, including Cuban exiles, dissidents, human rights observers, and outlets like Center for a Free Cuba and Diario Las Américas, describe him as one of the primary architects and enforcers of the regime’s repressive security apparatus, often using nicknames such as “El Carnicero de Artemisa” (Butcher of Artemisa), “Charco de sangre” (Pool/Puddle of Blood), and “El Verdugo de Cuba” (The Executioner/Hangman of Cuba).  

 

 He has been compared by some to Lavrentiy Beria.

cubacenter.org

  

 

Specific personal orders for individual crimes are difficult to document publicly because many actions were systemic under his command as head of intelligence and interior security. 

 

Ramiro Valdez, Raul Castro, Fidel Castro and Mengistu Mariam

 

The following are the main alleged crimes and repressive activities attributed to him or carried out under his direct oversight, drawn from regime critics, former prisoners, exile accounts, and documentation of the Castro era:1. Post-Revolutionary Executions and Purges (1959 onward)Valdés was involved early in the revolutionary tribunals and security structures. He served in a leadership role (sometimes described as second-in-command or involved) at La Cabaña fortress in Havana, where numerous Batista-era officials, police, and opponents were executed by firing squad, often under Che Guevara’s oversight. 

 

He assisted or was present during some of these executions in La Cabaña and Santa Clara. As head of the DIER (Department of Investigations of the Rebel Army), the precursor to G2, he directed repression against remaining opposition groups.  

diariolasamericas.com

 

 

The broader apparatus he helped build is linked to thousands of documented firing-squad executions and extrajudicial killings in the early years of the regime (part of estimates ranging from several thousand to over 10,000+ across the Castro period, per sources like Cuba Archive and the Black Book of Communism).2. Suppression of the Escambray Insurgency (“Limpia del Escambray,” 1960s–1970s)Valdés oversaw or directed counterinsurgency operations against anti-Castro guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains. This included:

• Forced displacement and relocation of thousands of peasants from their lands to “captive towns” or distant areas, separating families.
• Establishment of concentration/forced-labor-style camps in the region (e.g., La Sierrita, Arroyo Blanco, El Condado).
• Alleged involvement in specific atrocities, such as the La Ceiba massacre, where 19 men were reportedly executed by machine gun.
  diariolasamericas.com

Government forces killed thousands of guerrillas and civilians in these operations; critics describe excesses, summary executions, and collective punishment.3. UMAP Forced Labor and Re-Education Camps (1965–1968)Valdés collaborated with the armed forces in creating and operating the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (UMAP) camps. An estimated ~30,000 people were sent there without judicial process, including:

• Homosexuals and others targeted under “Operation of the Three Ps” (prostitutes, pimps, pederasts).
• Religious believers (especially Jehovah’s Witnesses), artists, intellectuals, and perceived dissidents or “counter-revolutionaries.”

Conditions involved forced agricultural labor, psychological and physical abuse, isolation, and attempts at ideological re-education. These camps are widely condemned as sites of persecution based on sexual orientation, religion, and political views.

cubacenter.org

4. Creation and Oversight of the Totalitarian Police StateAs founder of MININT and G2 (modeled on Soviet KGB and East German Stasi practices), Valdés built and directed:

• The Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR) — neighborhood watch committees for mass surveillance, informants, and denunciations.
• Widespread arbitrary arrests (hundreds of thousands at peak times, e.g., during the Bay of Pigs invasion), prolonged political imprisonment without fair trials, and harsh prison conditions.
• Interrogation and torture methods, including beatings, electroshock, prolonged isolation, temperature extremes, “truth serum” (sodium pentothal), and other psychological tactics. Critics also allege plans to plant explosives in prisons (e.g., Isla de Pinos) to suppress potential uprisings.
  diariolasamericas.com

The system he institutionalized is blamed for a large share of the regime’s political repression, contributing to estimates of tens of thousands affected by executions, imprisonment, torture, or death in custody over decades.5. Export of RepressionLater in his career (including as a consultant in Venezuela around 2010), he helped train and advise security forces in allied countries, notably Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro. This included embedding Cuban G2-style methods of infiltration, interrogation, and control. He was also linked to broader Cuban support for revolutionary movements and groups abroad. 

 

cubacenter.or

Important context: No international tribunal convicted Valdés of these acts; he died without facing formal accountability for the alleged crimes. 

 

In summary, Valdés’ “worst crimes” are his central role in institutionalizing a totalitarian security state—through early executions, the Escambray campaign, UMAP camps, and the pervasive G2/CDR apparatus—that enabled mass political repression, persecution of minorities, and thousands of deaths or ruined lives.