Castro continues to carry out repression in Cuba on Christmas

"Merry Christmas, Cubans." - Cuban Liberation Movement, Christmas Message, December 24, 2019

Eduardo Cardet Concepcion (2019)

 The Castro regime outlawed Christmas from 1969 through 1997, but the dictatorship still fears the liberating message of Christmas today. The Christian Liberation Movement, a non-violent movement founded in Cuba in 1988 by lay Catholics, issued a Christmas message on December 24, 2019 that was read over Radio Marti that states, in part:

Christmas is the memory of his arrival, of his sacrifice for us, but also the memory of his hope in us. We pray, as Cubans, as Christians, that this Christmas renew hearts, enlighten minds and sow in each of us the responsibility to present to the Father and our brothers, a nation of love, reconciliation and forgiveness, where humility flourishes above hatred, where law and freedom bury arrogance and imposition.  May the arrival of the child God inspire us to renew hope in him and in ourselves.

That same day two police officers appeared at the home of Eduardo Cardet, the national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement,and gave him a summons to appear before the Revolutionary National Police (PNR) in Holguin at 9:30am on Christmas day without further details.

Cardet went as instructed on Christmas morning and "a state security officer warned him that they would not allow any expansion of the Christian Liberation Movement and that they would have zero tolerance with the opposition."

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante killed by Castro

It is important to recall that during the Obama thaw with Raul Castro (2009 - 2017) the founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and its youth leader, Harold Cepero Escalante, were killed in an operation carried out by State Security on July 22, 2012.

Four years later, Payá Sardiñas's elected successor, Dr. Eduardo Cardet, was arrested and beaten in front of his family on November 30, 2016 for providing a critical assessment of Fidel Castro's legacy, following the tyrant's death on November 25, 2016. Cardet would suffer beatings, stabbings, and arbitrary detention over the next two years and ten months.

This is the same Eduardo Cardet that was called to a police station, where he was delivered a threat by Castro's secret police on Christmas morning, instead of spending that precious time with his wife and children.

This is Cuba at the end of 2019.