"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Husband and wife: Miguel de
Venegas, Claudia von Weiss de Venegas
On November 20, 1999 Claudia von Weiss de Venegas,
disappeared while on holiday in Cuba. She left the hotel on a bicycle
with $500 and was never heard from again. Her husband, Miguel de
Venegas, circulated fliers about his missing wife in Cuba and for his
troubles was expelled from the country. Ten years later in a Hamburg news publication, Claudia's case resurfaced and her fate remains unknown but Miguel hopes one day to find out what had happened to his wife, but he has given up on finding her alive.
Her grave was apparently discovered in Cuba in December 2023, and an undertaker who buried her 24 years ago confirmed her identity, but Cuban officials barred an exhumation to confirm dental records, and DNA according to the report below.
Earlier this year Dark Curiosities provided an overview of Claudia's case, and the mystery that still surrounds it.
Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by morality police in Iran.
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying
with Tehran's hijab regulations. Mahsa was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and she died two years ago today on September 16th.
Mass protests erupted in Iran, the Iranian regime periodically shutdown the internet and carried out massacres,
and executions against demonstrators over the past two years. The world has
not forgotten, and songs continue to be sung by artists in remembrance
of Mahsa Amini.
The last time this happened in Iran was in 2019, when the Mullahs killed 1,500 people, and I didn't know about it. Images of nonviolent marches have dwindled, but some continue to appear, as have tales of the price protestors paid for their bold resistance. Their suppression was successful at the time, but let us do our part to ensure that the repression does not happen again without worldwide condemnation.
Please share the messages, videos, and hashtags of this Iranian freedom
movement that is also calling out democracies for falling short in
their solidarity.
Congress must strengthen our ability to fight authoritarian regimes’ efforts to attack and kidnap dissidents on US soil. | @AlinejadMasih https://t.co/8hdMbNFvnI
Listening to these Iranian activists take to task the Biden
Administration for enabling the Iranian oppressors gives me a sense of deja vu.
Dear friends of freedom reading this blog entry, please amplify these Iranian voices, let your elected representatives know that you are
watching, and that this is unacceptable.
This has been going on for far too long in Iran, and the terror tactics have been copied elsewhere with Iranian help.
Neda Agha-Soltan and Génesis Carmona shot in the head.
Note to Western policy makers: the regime's in Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are not your friends.
Cuba and Iran have regime's with different ideological formations. Cuba
has a communist dictatorship run by the Castros since 1959 and Iran has a
Islamist regime run by the mullahs since 1979. However they have two things in common:
a profound anti-Americanism that portrays the U.S. as the great Satan,
and a fossilized revolutionary tradition that systematically denies
human rights to their respective peoples.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with General Raul Castro (2016)
Robin Wright referred to Cuba and Iran
as "melancholy twins" in The New Yorker in 2015. They are both state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran has been linked to a mass killing of Jewish people in Argentina.
Venezuela is an off shoot of the Cuban revolution and shares both its anti-Americanism and warm relations with Tehran.
But beyond their similarities they also have a shared strategic outlook that is hostile to Western democracies.
The lateFidel Castro visited Iran
on May 10, 2001, four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks,
where he was quoted by the Agence France Presse at the University of
Tehran stating that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with
each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is
very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
Eleven years later on January 12, 2012 in Havana, Cuba the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared "Our
positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have
been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever."
Iran sought out asymmetric means to
achieve maximum damage against Israel through their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah killing over 1,200 in Israel, sparking a war that threatens to engulf the region. Tehran's decades long alliance
with Cuba cannot and must not be ignored at such a time of peril.
Iran's Ahmadinejad with Fidel Castro and Klansman David Duke
Even closer to home, the
relationship between the Iranian regime and white supremacists such as David Duke and anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan should also be closely examined.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Therefore:
I
stand in solidarity with Iranians standing up for their freedom. They
are facing off against the terrorist regime in Tehran that is
indiscriminately murdering protesters.
I pledge to continue to amplify their voices and will use the following hashtags.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this
world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or
all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from
time to time.…"
On
this the 16th International Day of Democracy it is important to reflect
on the continuing work that needs to be done to safeguard democracy and
demonstrate to the non-democratic world that democracy delivers.
Free speech and political discourse are under siege around the world, including in democratic strongholds like the United States. A strong and independent free press, as well as the freedom to engage in open dialogue, are essential components of democracy. In a healthy democracy, disagreements are encouraged, not just tolerated. No one should be silenced for their political views, but rather encouraged to speak up and participate in civil dialogue. On March 21, 2022 the New York Times Opinion/Siena College Poll delivered worrying news on the state of free speech in America.
"Eighty-four percent of Americans say that some Americans not exercising
their freedom of speech in everyday situations due to fear of
retaliation or harsh criticism is either a very (40%) or somewhat (44%)
serious problem, according to a new national New York Times
Opinion/Siena College Poll. Over half, 55%, of Americans say that they
have held their tongue, that is, not spoken freely over the last year
because they were concerned about retaliation or harsh criticism, and
compared to 10 years ago by 46-21% Americans are less, rather than more,
free to express their viewpoint on politics, and by 35-28% less, rather
than more, free to discuss issues of race."
TheUNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON DEMOCRACYadopted without a vote*
by the Inter-Parliamentary Council at its 161st session in Cairo on September 16, 1997 found that "the state of democracy presupposes freedom of opinion and
expression; this right implies freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Democracies need civic education for its
citizens, and two aspects of it must be the principles of free
expression and developing and maintaining a culture of political
tolerance.
Worse still, in places like Cuba that routinely punish free speech, democracy has been absent for 72 years,
and political tolerance outlawed. Citizens in these countries also need
the help of democracies, and democrats to regain their rights, and
expand the number of free nations.
Sir Winston Churchill defended democracy from the twin barbarisms of Nazism and Communism. The British prime minister acknowledged the flaws and shortcomings of democracies, but added that, despite these limits, they are still preferable to the alternatives. He fought a hot war against the Third Reich, and a cold war against the Soviet Union, and helped to preserve freedom and democracy globally for two generations. The International Day of Democracy is a good day to remember his legacy, and learn from his example.
Democracy has delivered rising living standards, and greater freedom, but it depends on an engaged and well informed citizenry to function.
Below is the text of the 1997 Universal Declaration on Democracy.
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON DEMOCRACY
Declaration adopted without a vote*
by the Inter-Parliamentary Council at its 161st session
(Cairo, 16 September 1997)
The Inter-Parliamentary Council,
Reaffirming the Inter-Parliamentary Union's commitment
to peace and development and convinced that the strengthening
of the democratisation process and representative institutions
will greatly contribute to attaining this goal,
Reaffirming also the calling and commitment of the
Inter-Parliamentary Union to promoting democracy and the establishment
of pluralistic systems of representative government in the world,
and wishing to strengthen its sustained and multiform action
in this field,
Recalling that each State has the sovereign right, freely
to choose and develop, in accordance with the will of its people,
its own political, social, economic and cultural systems without
interference by other States in strict conformity with the United
Nations Charter,
Recallingalso the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights adopted on 10 December 1948, as well as the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted on 16 December
1966, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination adopted on 21 December 1965 and the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
adopted on 18 December 1979,
Recalling further the Declaration on Criteria for Free
and Fair Elections which it adopted in March 1994 and in which
it confirmed that in any State the authority of the government
can derive only from the will of the people as expressed in genuine,
free and fair elections,
Referring to the Agenda for Democratisation presented
on 20 December 1996 by the UN Secretary-General to the 51st session
of the United Nations General Assembly,
Adopts the following Universal Declaration on
Democracy and urges Governments and Parliaments throughout
the world to be guided by its content:
FIRST PART - THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY
1. Democracy is a universally recognised ideal as well as a goal,
which is based on common values shared by peoples throughout the
world community irrespective of cultural, political, social and
economic differences. It is thus a basic right of citizenship
to be exercised under conditions of freedom, equality, transparency
and responsibility, with due respect for the plurality of views,
and in the interest of the polity.
2. Democracy is both an ideal to be pursued and a mode of government
to be applied according to modalities which reflect the diversity
of experiences and cultural particularities without derogating
from internationally recognised principles, norms and standards.
It is thus a constantly perfected and always perfectible state
or condition whose progress will depend upon a variety of political,
social, economic, and cultural factors.
3. As an ideal, democracy aims essentially to preserve and promote
the dignity and fundamental rights of the individual, to achieve
social justice, foster the economic and social development of
the community, strengthen the cohesion of society and enhance
national tranquillity, as well as to create a climate that is
favourable for international peace. As a form of government, democracy
is the best way of achieving these objectives; it is also the
only political system that has the capacity for self-correction.
4. The achievement of democracy presupposes a genuine partnership
between men and women in the conduct of the affairs of society
in which they work in equality and complementarity, drawing mutual
enrichment from their differences.
5. A state of democracy ensures that the processes by which power
is acceded to, wielded and alternates allow for free political
competition and are the product of open, free and non-discriminatory
participation by the people, exercised in accordance with the
rule of law, in both letter and spirit.
6. Democracy is inseparable from the rights set forth in the international
instruments recalled in the preamble. These rights must therefore
be applied effectively and their proper exercise must be matched
with individual and collective responsibilities.
7. Democracy is founded on the primacy of the law and the exercise
of human rights. In a democratic State, no one is above the law
and all are equal before the law.
8. Peace and economic, social and cultural development are both
conditions for and fruits of democracy. There is thus interdependence
between peace, development, respect for and observance of the
rule of law and human rights.
SECOND PART - THE ELEMENTS AND EXERCISE OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT
9. Democracy is based on the existence of well-structured and
well-functioning institutions, as well as on a body of standards
and rules and on the will of society as a whole, fully conversant
with its rights and responsibilities.
10. It is for democratic institutions to mediate tensions and
maintain equilibrium between the competing claims of diversity
and uniformity, individuality and collectivity, in order to enhance
social cohesion and solidarity.
11. Democracy is founded on the right of everyone to take part
in the management of public affairs; it therefore requires the
existence of representative institutions at all levels and, in
particular, a Parliament in which all components of society are
represented and which has the requisite powers and means to express
the will of the people by legislating and overseeing government
action.
12. The key element in the exercise of democracy is the holding
of free and fair elections at regular intervals enabling the people's
will to be expressed. These elections must be held on the basis
of universal, equal and secret suffrage so that all voters can
choose their representatives in conditions of equality, openness
and transparency that stimulate political competition. To that
end, civil and political rights are essential, and more particularly
among them, the rights to vote and to be elected, the rights to
freedom of expression and assembly, access to information and
the right to organise political parties and carry out political
activities. Party organisation, activities, finances, funding
and ethics must be properly regulated in an impartial manner in
order to ensure the integrity of the democratic processes.
13. It is an essential function of the State to ensure the enjoyment
of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights to its
citizens. Democracy thus goes hand in hand with an effective,
honest and transparent government, freely chosen and accountable
for its management of public affairs.
14. Public accountability, which is essential to democracy, applies
to all those who hold public authority, whether elected or non-elected,
and to all bodies of public authority without exception. Accountability
entails a public right of access to information about the activities
of government, the right to petition government and to seek redress
through impartial administrative and judicial mechanisms.
15. Public life as a whole must be stamped by a sense of ethics
and by transparency, and appropriate norms and procedures must
be established to uphold them.
16. Individual participation in democratic processes and public
life at all levels must be regulated fairly and impartially and
must avoid any discrimination, as well as the risk of intimidation
by State and non-State actors.
17. Judicial institutions and independent, impartial and effective
oversight mechanisms are the guarantors for the rule of law on
which democracy is founded. In order for these institutions and
mechanisms fully to ensure respect for the rules, improve the
fairness of the processes and redress injustices, there must be
access by all to administrative and judicial remedies on the basis
of equality as well as respect for administrative and judicial
decisions both by the organs of the State and representatives
of public authority and by each member of society.
18. While the existence of an active civil society is an essential
element of democracy, the capacity and willingness of individuals
to participate in democratic processes and make governance choices
cannot be taken for granted. It is therefore necessary to develop
conditions conducive to the genuine exercise of participatory
rights, while also eliminating obstacles that prevent, hinder
or inhibit this exercise. It is therefore indispensable to ensure
the permanent enhancement of, inter alia, equality, transparency
and education and to remove obstacles such as ignorance, intolerance,
apathy, the lack of genuine choices and alternatives and the absence
of measures designed to redress imbalances or discrimination of
a social, cultural, religious and racial nature, or for reasons
of gender.
19. A sustained state of democracy thus requires a democratic
climate and culture constantly nurtured and reinforced by education
and other vehicles of culture and information. Hence, a democratic
society must be committed to education in the broadest sense of
the term, and more particularly civic education and the shaping
of a responsible citizenry.
20. Democratic processes are fostered by a favourable economic
environment; therefore, in its overall effort for development,
society must be committed to satisfying the basic economic needs
of the most disadvantaged, thus ensuring their full integration
in the democratic process.
21. The state of democracy presupposes freedom of opinion and
expression; this right implies freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.
22. The institutions and processes of democracy must accommodate
the participation of all people in homogeneous as well as heterogeneous
societies in order to safeguard diversity, pluralism and the right
to be different in a climate of tolerance.
23. Democratic institutions and processes must also foster decentralised
local and regional government and administration, which is a right
and a necessity, and which makes it possible to broaden the base
of public participation.
THIRD PART - THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF DEMOCRACY
24. Democracy must also be recognised as an international
principle, applicable to international organisations and to States
in their international relations. The principle of international
democracy does not only mean equal or fair representation of States;
it also extends to the economic rights and duties of States.
25. The principles of democracy must be applied to the international
management of issues of global interest and the common heritage
of humankind, in particular the human environment.
26. To preserve international democracy, States must ensure that
their conduct conforms to international law, refrain from the
use or threat of force and from any conduct that endangers or
violates the sovereignty and political or territorial integrity
of other States, and take steps to resolve their differences by
peaceful means.
27. A democracy should support democratic principles in international
relations. In that respect, democracies must refrain from undemocratic
conduct, express solidarity with democratic governments and non-State
actors like non-governmental organisations which work for democracy
and human rights, and extend solidarity to those who are victims
of human rights violations at the hands of undemocratic régimes.
In order to strengthen international criminal justice, democracies
must reject impunity for international crimes and serious violations
of fundamental human rights and support the establishment of a
permanent international criminal court.
* * *
*After the Declaration
was adopted, the delegation of China expressed reservations to
the text.
“Fidel Castro helped the M-19 in many of its interventions in Colombia.
It must even be said that M-19 troops were trained in Cuba, which
separated the Cuban government from the Colombian government. Relations
were broken,” said Gustavo Petro, a former member of the terrorist group M-19, and today president of Colombia, in 2016.
Terrorism is a fundamental aspect of Castroism. Fidel Castro, and his
fellow revolutionaries, seized power in 1959 through domestic
terrorism. Throughout the 1950s, Castro’s July 26th Movement carried out
numerous bombings that terrorized and killed Cuban citizens.
The Cuban dictatorship has a track record of sponsoring international
terrorism over its entire 65 year rule. This 2024 short documentary “Terrorism: The Cuban Connection”
offers some highlights, and this CubaBrief will highlight a few
episodes that focus on the United States, Europe and the role played by
Cuban diplomats, resulting in their expulsion from France and the United
States.
The Failed 1962 Black Friday Plot
Elsa Montero Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team,
Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, an attache at the Cuba Mission to the
United Nations in New York City, diplomats who in reality were State
Security agents, along with Antonio Sueiro and Jose Garcia Orellana,
plotted to murder large numbers of New Yorkers in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962, detonating 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.
Cuban diplomats Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband
and wife team at the Cuba Mission in NYC.
Havana would go on to redouble its efforts to improve its capacity to
promote and carry out terrorist attacks around the world. The
Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana from January 3-16, 1966,
and the establishment of the Organization for the Solidarity of the
Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America OSPAAL sought to support and
train terrorist groups worldwide, including in the United States.
Havana would go on to have “successes”.
One of them was a young Venezuelan named after the Soviet Union’s
founding leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Vladimir Lenin.
Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez (age 17) attended the 1966 Tricontinental Conference. Afterwards, Ilyich spent the summer at Camp Matanzas,
a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI. Following a string of
terrorist attacks across Europe, he picked the alias “Carlos.
Nan Robertson in a special to The New York Times on July 11, 1975 published the article “FRANCE EXPELLING 3 CUBAN OFFICIALS” that reports on the link between Cuban diplomats and Carlos the Jackal.
“France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban diplomats today
in connection with the worldwide search for a man called Carlos, who is
believed to be an important link in an international terrorist
network.” […]”The French Interior Ministry said that investigators were
convinced that the terrorist network had been helped significantly by
the intelligence services of “certain nations.”[…] French authorities
have also said that Carlos may have been directly involved with a siege
at the French Embassy in The Hague last September and a grenade attack
the same month on Le Drugstore on the Left Bank here, in which 3 persons
were killed and 22 wounded. France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban
diplomats on July 10, 1975. ”The Cubans, according to the French
Interior Ministry, were “constant visitors” to the Paris hideout of
Carlos”. The Cuban diplomats on whom expulsion orders were served today
were Raul Rodriguez Sainz, 32 years old, first secretary for cultural
affairs; Pedro Lara Zamora, 33, deputy cultural attache, and Ernesto
Reyes Herrera, 32, the chief of protocol. André Mousset, spokesman for
the Interior Ministry, added that the Carlos affair was looking more and
more like an “international terrorist plot.”
FALN Terrorists backed by Cuba, and the bombing campaign in New York City
Six months earlier on the other side of the Atlantic another group of
Puerto Rican terrorists linked to Havana carried out an act of terrorism
that claimed the lives of New Yorkers.
The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 explosion at Fraunces Tavern, which killed
Alejandro Berger ( age 28), James Gezork (age 32), Frank Connor (age
33), Harold H. Sherburne (age 66) and wounded over 60 others.
Zach Dorfman’s June 8, 2017 article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America” published in The Wall Street Journal
reveals: “the FALN was started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus of
Puerto Rican terrorists that received advanced training in Cuba. . . .
After their advanced training in Cuba they returned to Puerto Rico and a
wave of bombings and incendiary incidents struck the [latter] island.
Within the last few years they have shifted their activities to the
mainland. . . . It is believed that they have maintained close links and
may in fact work closely with Cuban intelligence operatives.”
Furthermore Mr. Dorfman reported that “[a]ccording to court
documents, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who is believed to have helped co-found
the FALN, told an undercover NYPD officer in 1983 that he had received
explosives training in Cuba. And the FBI estimated that by 1973, roughly
135 Puerto Rican militants had received “extensive instruction in
guerilla war tactics, preparation of explosive artifacts, and
sophisticated methods of sabotage” from Fidel Castro’s intelligence
services.”
Cuban backed American terrorists carried out attack on the U.S. Capitol in the 1980s.
Windows blown out by bomb placed in the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest rout of Cubans in Grenada
The Castro regime aided and abetted American
terrorists that attacked and bombed the U.S. capitol, and then doubled
down when one of those terrorists died. Radio Havana Cuba, official
media of the Castro regime, published in 2010 an article titled “Political Activist Marilyn Buck Dies at 62” in which it referred to Marilyn Buck as an “activist and former political prisoner.” In reality she was a terrorist who bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the Grenada Invasion.
“At two minutes before 11 o’clock in the evening on
this day in 1983, a thunderous explosion tore through the second floor
of the U.S. Capitol’s Senate wing. Since the area was virtually deserted
at the time, there were no casualties. Minutes before the bomb went
off, a caller claiming to represent the “Armed Resistance Unit” warned a
Capitol switchboard operator that a bomb had been placed near the
chamber — purportedly in retaliation for the recent U.S. military
actions in Grenada and Lebanon. The force of the device, hidden under a
bench outside the Senate chamber, blew the hinges off the door to the
office of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the minority leader. It also
damaged five paintings, particularly a stately portrait of Massachusetts
Sen. Daniel Webster. (The blast tore away Webster’s face and left it
scattered across the floor tiles in one-inch canvas shards. Senate
officials recovered the fragments from debris-filled trash bins. Over
the coming months, a conservator painstakingly restored the painting to a
credible, if somewhat diminished, version of the original.) The blast
also punched a hole in a partition that sent a shower of pulverized
brick, plaster and glass into the Republican cloakroom behind the
chamber. Although the explosion caused no structural damage to the
Capitol, it shattered mirrors, chandeliers and furniture. Officials
placed the damage at $250,000.”
“After a five-year investigation, in May 1988 FBI
agents arrested seven members of the ‘Resistance Conspiracy’: Marilyn
Jean Buck, Linda Sue Evans, Susan Rosenberg,
Timothy Blunk, Alan Berkman, Laura Whitehorn and Elizabeth Ann Duke.
They were charged with executing the Capitol bombing as well as
triggering similar blasts at Fort McNair and the Washington Navy Yard.”
Marilyn Buck pleaded guilty in 1988 to the 1983 bombing of the United
States Capitol. Her story is put into context in a long piece published
in Politico by William Rosenau titled “The Dark History of America’s First Female Terrorist Group,” which exposes connections to the Cuban dictatorship.
The WASP Network
In 1996 the Cuban Wasp Spy network located in South
Florida provided information to Havana that led to the shoot down of two
civilian planes in international airspace killing four engaged in the
search and rescue of rafters and boat people. This act of state
terrorism was widely condemned.
The WASP Network (La Red Avispa) was made up of over forty officers and agents,
four escaped to Cuba when the FBI began rounding them up in 1998. Ten
were captured, and five of them pleaded guilty and cooperated with the
prosecution and became unpersons in Cuba. The Wasp Network engaged in
espionage: targeted U.S. military facilities, planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the United States, infiltrated two non-violent exile groups,
and carried out numerous other activities to sow division, shape public
opinion, meddle in U.S. elections, and provided information for Operation Scorpion that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996. Operation Scorpion was a Cuban intelligence operation
of the Castro regime that sought to destroy Brothers to the Rescue
using MiG fighters to shoot down their planes in an act of state
terrorism carried out over international airspace.
This network also gathered personal information
of American military personnel “compiling the names, home addresses,
and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that
of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key
West.”
The spies had received instructions from Havana to burn down an airport hangar, sabotage planes, first terrorize with messages that he was “nearing execution,” then send a mail bomb to kill a CIA agent living in Bal Harbour identified as Jesus Cruza Flor.
On September 12, 1998, the largest Cuban spy ring ever
uncovered in the United States, was broken up by the FBI. Ten suspects
were charged as Cuban spies. The Cuban dictatorship has spent decades
trying to whitewash this history.
WASP network spies captured in 1998.
Cuba was taken off the SSOT list in 2015 for political reasons, and returned to it on 2021 for continued bad action.
Cuba was taken off the list of state terror sponsors
in 2015 when the Obama Administration, responding to demands of Raul
Castro, conducted a politicized review to remove the offending state.
Six years later in January 2021, Cuba was returned to the list.
The U.S. State Department at the time cited the
following four reasons for re-designating the Cuban dictatorship as a
sponsor of terrorism.
1. “Cuba has refused Colombia’s
requests to extradite ten ELN leaders living in Havana after the group
claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police
academy that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.”
2. “Cuba also harbors several U.S.
fugitives from justice wanted on or convicted of charges of political
violence, many of whom have resided in Cuba for decades. For example,
the Cuban regime has refused to return Joanne Chesimard, on the FBI’s
Most Wanted Terrorists List for executing New Jersey State Trooper
Werner Foerster in 1973; Ishmael LaBeet, convicted of killing eight
people in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1972; Charles Lee Hill, charged
with killing New Mexico state policeman Robert Rosenbloom in 1971; and
others.”
3. “Cuba returns to the SST list
following its broken commitment to stop supporting terrorism as a
condition of its removal by the previous administration in 2015. On May
13, 2020, the State Department notified Congress that it had certified
Cuba under Section 40A(a) of the Arms Export Control Act as “not
cooperating fully” with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in 2019.”
4. “In addition to the support for
international terrorism that is the basis for today’s action, the Cuban
regime engages in a range of malign behavior across the region. The
Cuban intelligence and security apparatus has infiltrated Venezuela’s
security and military forces, assisting Nicholas Maduro to maintain his
stranglehold over his people while allowing terrorist organizations to
operate. The Cuban government’s support for FARC dissidents and the ELN
continues beyond Cuba’s borders as well, and the regime’s support of
Maduro has created a permissive environment for international terrorists
to live and thrive within Venezuela.”
Backing Hamas supporters and their violent protests in the United States
This CubaBrief is focusing on instances of terrorism
carried out in the United States by groups supported by the Cuban
dictatorship, and has not touched on Havana’s extensive involvement in
terrorism in Latin America and in the Middle East, but their support for
Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas has had an impact in the United States.
Protests in some cases have turned into riots where, for example,
American flags were taken down from Union Station in Washington DC and
replaced with Palestinian flags, while Cuban flags were seen in the
crowd.
In a formal statement
released on October 7, 2023, the same day of the terror attacks, the
Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Israel and its “accomplice,” the United
States, for the violence. In doing so, it continued to spread a false
narrative that originates in Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda.In
this case Havana was blaming the victims of a terrorist attack that
murdered 1,200 and kidnapped hundreds of others perpetrated by their
longtime ally Hamas.
On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, militant leftists organized a protest in Times Square
to celebrate the killings as an act of resistance and waved signs with
anti-Semitic slogans and images. The Center for a Free Cuba took notice of this protest at the time, and how official Cuban media was promoting it. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.
The group’s
co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime researcher at
the Marxist Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was
“based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building
international networks of people’s movements and organizations,”
according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for
Peace. In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De
los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new
consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of
social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”
On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud
at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that
final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally
destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most
important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”
Biden State Department’s wrong steps on Cuba
Despite this, the Biden State Department removed Cuba from the list of countries not cooperating in the fight against terrorism
on May 15, 2024. On the same day Joseph Connor, whose father Frank
Connor was murdered in a 1975 terrorist attack in New York City by a
Cuban backed group, wrote to Secretary Antony Blinken
requesting that one of the terrorists involved in the bombing, who is
currently harbored by Havana, be returned to the United States to face
justice. Four months later, and Mr. Connor has not received a response.
The reason given by Vedant Patel,
the principal deputy spokesperson at the State Department on May 16,
2024 “that the circumstances for Cuba’s certifications as not fully
cooperating country have changed from 2022 to 2023” does not stand up to
scrutiny. Patel cited “Cuba’s refusal to engage with Colombia on
extradition requests for National Liberation Army members supported
Cuba’s NFCC certification for 2022.”
What change took place? Not the behavior of the Cuban dictatorship.
The Colombian terrorists harbored by Havana were not extradited. The new duly elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, a past member of the terrorist group M-19
in Colombia with close ties to the Cuban dictatorship, ordered his
attorney general to suspend the arrest warrant “against 17 ELN
commanders, including those whose extradition Colombia had previously
requested from Cuba.” There is also a bit of historical irony. Cuba was first placed on the state sponsor of terrorism list in 1982
when Havana was implicated supplying weapons to the M19 terrorist group
from profits raised from trafficking narcotics. Patel also cited that
“the U.S. and Cuba resumed law enforcement cooperation in 2023,
including on counterterrorism.” First, the phrase “law-enforcement dialogue” is inaccurate.
In Cuba, there is no rule of law. “To keep power, the dictatorship
maintains a repressive security apparatus that murders nonviolent
dissidents extrajudicially. This is not ‘law enforcement.’ The Cuban
dictatorship is a transnational threat, and legitimizing it does not
enhance U.S. advocacy for human rights.”
What has that meant in practice?
Giving legitimacy to the Cuban dictatorship through
this sham “law enforcement cooperation” led Cuban officials meeting with
their American counterparts to accuse the United States of “supporting
people in Miami plotting ‘terrorist’ actions against Cuba.” Biden administration officials rejected these claims,
but the actions of Havana could not be described as a good faith
effort, or a reason to cite the dictatorship as fully cooperating in
anti-terrorism efforts. Much less grant them access to secure facilities
that are of great importance to America’s infrastructure.
Former top Cuban Communist Party official granted parole arrives in South Florida through Miami International Airport.
On August 16, 2024, Manuel Menéndez Castellanos, a one time top official in Cuba’s communist party in Cienfuegos, who represented the Cuban dictatorship in international forums,
and was given several awards by the regime, arrived in South Florida
through Miami International Airport. The former high ranking communist
official arrived in Miami through the Cuban Reunification Parole
Program.
U.S. Senators send letter to Secretary Blinken over the high
risk to national security posed by recent expansion of nonimmigrant
visas (NIV) to Communist Cuba
Despite this lapse, the Biden Administration announced that starting on August 19, 2024 would “expand its visa services to facilitate cultural and educational exchanges between” Cuba and the United States.
On September 5, 2024, Senator Rick Scott joined Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz “in sending a letter
to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, raising concerns over the
high risk to national security posed by the Biden-Harris
administration’s recent expansion of nonimmigrant visas (NIV) to the
communist Cuban regime.” In this letter they point out concerns of this opening to Cuba,
a state sponsor of terror (SSOT). ” Given the risks associated with
allowing agents of an SSOT to enter the country, it is unclear how the
U.S. might benefit from these NIVs.” They also ask some critical questions
including, “Has the U.S. government expanded NIVs to the other
SSOTs—Iran, North Korea, and Syria? If not, does it plan to do so? Why
or why not?”
She has remained a powerful force in Cuba over the past 65 years, despite efforts to impose atheism.
Jesús Mustafá Felipe at Solemn Mass for Our Lady of Charity
36 years ago on September 8, 1988, the Feast Day for Cuba's Our Lady Charity, a handful of Cubans, lay Catholics, consisting
of Oswaldo Payá, Ramón Antúnez, Dagoberto Capote, Santiago Cárdenas and
Fernando Arvelo, inspired by their faith, the strength of their ideals
and love for their country, founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), to work for the recovery of popular sovereignty and national reconciliation in Cuba.
"Liberation
is our purpose, liberation carried out by the people, who will not be a
spectator of the moment in which their destiny is decided. We do not call all against each other, but all for a new Cuba. We reject violence, offense, lies and destruction as means of struggle. We do not believe that the end justifies the means. Our goal is to achieve freedom, justice and this is achieved only moved by love. Freedom is true only if it emanates from love. "
Since then, many Cubans joined the Christian Liberation Movement and given their best for their homeland. Some are no longer physically here, and some of them were murdered by the dictatorship.
36 Aniv MCL, momento reconfortarnos por lo logrado recordar a todos los hermanos y rendir tributo a nuestros mártires. El camino del bien es tortuoso, pero es el único posible para alcanzar libertad. ¡ Muchas felicidades al MCL y a todos nuestros hermanos! Eduardo Cardet. pic.twitter.com/t7S8Z3EhDn
“When our first child was going to be born, we have three children, we
said that our children cannot live in a country without liberty and we
are not going to another country to seek freedom. Therefore we have to
fight for our children to live free here in Cuba and everyone else's
children and their parents too.”
Oswaldo José was born on February 17, 1988 and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was founded that same year on September 8, 1988. Oswaldo Payá was killed on July 22, 2012 along with the movement's youth leader Harold Cepero.
Priests were taken at gun point and forced out of Cuba in 1961
This is not what was promised by the revolutionaries when they took power in Cuba. Fidel Castro on January 11, 1959 went on Face the Nation and promised free, multiparty elections within 18 months. Richard Bate of CBS News pressed the Cuban dictator.
Richard Bate:
Dr. Castro you said that in 18 months or so there will be free
elections in Cuba. When this time comes will all political parties be
able to run candidates in these elections?
Fidel Castro: Yes, of course
Richard Bate: All political parties including the Directorio?
Fidel Castro:
Of course, if we don't give free to all the political parties to
organize we are not a democratic country. We have fought for the
democracy here, and for the free ... for the the freedom of our people. We don't want to stop and to put any difficulties to anybody. We believe in democracy.
Richard Bate: Why would it be necessary to wait 18 months before free elections to be held?
Fidel Castro:
Well, do you think it is good for the Cubans When all the people want
peace. When all the people is that the government repair the mistakes
and the barbarity of the before government. Don't you believe that our
country at least one year to work? Do you believe that between... in the
fight of the political parties is it possible to do anything? If we
give a free election tomorrow we win because we have almost all the
people ...
In Matthew 7:15-7:16 the
Gospel states "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's
clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their
fruits." From the very beginning, truth has often been a casualty of
the communist regime in Cuba.
Father Miguel Angel Loredo (1998)
Father Miguel Angel Loredo was a prisoner of conscience of the Castro
dictatorship because he refused to go along with the lies of the
regime. Father Loredo understood that one of the most formidable weapons
against injustice is objective truth, and here he explained why.
"I believe we should denounce the evils of both the right and the left.
I find selective denunciation, that has political roots repugnant. If
you believe in the integrity of the human being you must believe deeply
in objective denunciation. Without objectivity, there is no hope."
The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the
history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in
the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the
truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its
transcendence for the future of Cuba.
If the truth shall make you free then what does the lie offer? The Ochoa
case offers a dramatic answer. In June of 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa
is arrested.
He had been declared a “Hero of the Revolution” by Fidel
Castro in 1984 but by 1989 was deemed too dangerous by Castro because
he feared that General Ochoa had been contaminated by the ideas of Glasnost and Perestroika while
visiting the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era.
He was also popular
within the ranks of the military due to his exploits in Africa. General Ochoa was accused of conspiracy and
treason. He was also tied to drug smuggling and corruption. Ochoa was approached by Fidel Castro with the offer that if he confessed to everything he had been accused of and did not mount a vigorous defense that he could go home into retirement.
Father José Conrado and Father Juan Lázaro Vélez officiate at Mass for Matanzas victims.
During a special mass for the victims of the Matanzas oil fire in Miami on September 6, 2022, Father Conrado acknowledged that "although we are far
from the Homeland, those of us who left to find freedom, also feel and
suffer for Cuba, because the Homeland belongs to everyone" paraphrasing
José Martí, the apostle of Cuban independence. Father Conrado issued a
call in the name of Jesus and the Virgin "so that we Cubans break the
spell of evil that has taken over the island" and for this he called for
the unity of all Cubans, "those of the two shores”.
Today, the Christian Liberation Movement issued a statement underscoring its continued commitment to a free Cuba.
36th Anniversary of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCl), a time to take comfort in what we have achieved, to remember all our brothers and pay tribute to our martyrs. The path of goodness is tortuous, but it is the only possible way to achieve freedom.
Congratulations to the MCL and all our brothers!
Eduardo Cardet.
Today is a also good day to rememberVáclav Havel's hopeful call: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred."
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