A look back at addressing the UN Human Rights Council

The adoption of the Universal Periodic Review outcome on Cuba by the members of the UN Human Rights Council today presents an opportunity to focus on human rights challenges in Cuba, and some of the actions taken by activists over the years. There are currently over 1,000 political prisoners in Cuba, and at least another 38 were detained following nonviolent protests on March 17, 2024.

The situation in Cuba has worsened, but the repression is familiar.

The last time I addressed the UN Human Rights Council was in 2018 during the same session Sirley Ávila León spoke about the machete attack she suffered in Cuba in 2015, and the cycle of repression by the political police that led to that act of extreme violence.

My first foray into the international human rights body was in 2003 when it was called the UN Human Rights Commission. It was a baptism by fire in the immediate aftermath of nationwide crackdown on Cuban human rights defenders, independent journalists, and Project Varela petitioners by the communist dictatorship in Cuba. On two occasions during that session addressed what was taking place. This is a summary of second statement.

... "More than 100 human rights activists had suffered searches, arrests and expedited trials in Cuba.  Many had already been condemned to sentences of up to 26 years in prison for defending civil and political rights in the country.  On 7 April 2003, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was tried without due process and today was facing up to 25 years in prison for defending human rights in Cuba.  In Cuban prisons, political prisoners were denied medical assistance as a form of punishment for upholding their ideas.  Highly dangerous criminals were used by State Security to attack imprisoned activities, as was the case of Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, a young activist whose jaw was broken in three parts, and who was severely beaten on three more occasions before being taken to the hospital."

Seven years earlier in 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, one of the deans of the Cuban human rights movement, addressed the UN Human Rights Commission shortly after his release from a Cuban prison. This is a short excerpt of that statement.

My name is Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, and I am the Vice-president of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization founded in Cuba in 1976 to observe the respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the island.

On the 15 of January 1992 I was arrested in my home by the Cuban political police; the second time in ten years. On October of that year I was sentenced to 4 years and eight months in prison for the sole crime of reporting to this Commission the violations of human rights committed by the government of my country. The labor of those volunteers of this Commission inside of Cuba are considered by the government as "enemy propaganda."

I will not enter into the details concerning the multiple irregularities of the judicial process always against me, nor about the conditions that I had to tolerate for more than three years. I will refer solely to one aspect of this my last experience in Cuban prisons.

When I was arrested in January of 1992, I enjoyed excellent general health for a man my age, 60 years then. I weighed around 170 pounds, and ran 5 to 6 kilometers every morning. Eight months later, when after a campaign of denunciations of my family I was transferred finally to a military hospital, I'd lost over 30 pounds and suffered from multiple ailments. 

He passed away on December 22, 1997 due to the lack of medical treatment, and poor prison conditions he endured in Cuba.

During my second visit in 2004 to the UN Human Rights Commission loaded down with posters, fliers, and reports entering and exiting was not a problem until a Falun Gong member handed me a flier for a parallel event they were holding in the same building in a room facing the session. A short time later I tried to go through the security screening to enter the UN Human Rights Commission session and was told I could not enter with the Falun Gong event flier. I had pounds of paper and posters criticizing a number of governments including the dictatorship in Cuba - those were "OK" but not the Falun Gong flier. I asked for the guards supervisor who repeated to tell me to choose: either leave the flier and enter or hang on to it and stay out.

The following day at the Falun Gong meeting in a room filled with human rights activists around the world to listen to the atrocities committed against this Chinese minority I learned that many others had experienced the same outrage but had remained silent not wanting to rock the boat. This led me to ask - isn't your job as a human rights activist precisely to challenge injustice?

Cuban dissidents who resisted the communist dictatorship in Cuba, and suffered greatly have traveled to Geneva over the years to denounce the crimes committed against them, and the Cuban populace more broadly. There are many more, but these are a few sampled to reflect the many.

Blanca Gonzalez, a Lady in White, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2005 on the plight of her son Normando Hernandez.

Former prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernández, with his niece, Bertha Antúnez testified in a side event at the UN Human Rights Council in 2009.

International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and Cuba: Providing context and Four cases

Today, June 26th is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and sadly there are many in Cuba who are torture victims. 

The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), defines "torture" as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

On May 13, 2022 the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) published findings on Cuba.

Cuba
With regard to reports of harassment, arbitrary arrests, intimidation, imprisonment, and reprisals against human rights defenders, the Committee urged Cuba to end these practices. The Committee also emphasized the importance of an independent and impartial judicial system.

Concerning the crackdowns on the social protests in July 2021, the Committee urged Cuba to promptly and thoroughly investigate arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and ill-treatment, and punish those responsible. The Committee also called for Cuba to establish a national human rights institution and an independent mechanism to conduct regular unannounced visits to all places where people are deprived of their liberty.

Civil society groups presented a report on torture practices of the Cuban government that is available online, and was presented to UNCAT. Below are some cases of torture in Cuba that stretch back 17 years. This is not an exhaustive list.

Prisoner of conscience forcibly injected with HIV in 2018

Sister and Brother: Omara Ruiz Urquiola and Ariel Ruiz Urquiola

In May 2018, Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was arbitrarily detained, sentenced and jailed from early May to early July 2018. He was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment during his imprisonment when Cuban officials forcibly injected him with HIV. The International Society for Human rights has provided evidence that substantiates the charge, and below is his testimony before the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2020. 

 

Lady in White mistreated by prison doctors, left near death (2018 - 2020) .

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz was arrested on April 16, 2016 for speaking out during a human rights demonstration in Havana's Central park. She was placed on parole in January of 2018. She was re-arrested in mid-September 2018 under the charge of being "threatening." On September 19, 2018 she was tried and sentenced to one year and four months in prison. She was sent to a prison 400 kilometers from her home. This was an added hardship for her family to visit her, and keep an eye on her well being.Xiomara was sent to a punishment cell for at least 10 days for speaking to her daughter over the phone.

Dr. Alfredo Melgar, a specialist in Internal Medicine and lead doctor treating Xiomara Cruz Miranda, in a May 2020 interview, believes that she was exposed while in the Cuban prison to "various chemicals." Cuban doctors in the island, at varying times, told her she was either suffering from Tuberculosis or lung cancer as her condition continued to worsen. Dr. Melgar affirms that these substances had possibly caused irreversible lung damage. 

Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz in December 2019

Over the course of one year in custody of the Cuban government her health radically declined. Rashes appeared on her body in June 2019 that Cuban medical doctors in Ciego de Ávila claimed to be unable to diagnose.  She was able to finally obtain medical care in the United States in January 2020 when she was near death, and spent seven months in intensive care in Jackson Memorial Hospital, and was finally well enough to continue her treatment as an outpatient.

 

Cuban dissident subjected to a machete attack, denied adequate medical care as punishment. (2015)

Sirley Avila Leon: Before and after the 2015 machete attack.

Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. Cuban officials removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. 

This attack, she believes, was done on the orders of the secret police. Following it she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.

 

Medical mistreatment of Cuban political prisoner left him permanently disabled (2005).

Omar Pernet Hernández August 15, 1945 - October 7, 2017

Cuban dissident and former prisoner of conscience Omar Pernet Hernández passed away in Louisville, Kentucky on October 7, 2017. Beginning in 1965 at age 18 he was imprisoned for the first time in Cuba for political reasons. 

Years later in an interview he would sum up his life in Cuba: "I was tortured in Castros' jails in four processes since 1965, when I was going to turn 19 years old." During his final imprisonment he described how doctors engaged in malpractice against him following a car accident while he was being transferred from one prison to another that left him crippled.

Omar Pernet: Look, the meaning of this, is that this type of boot that you see here....I will show it to you again. This boot was fitted for me in Cuba and it began to damage my hips because one, the left, is longer than the right. Then, one hip went like this 0:30 (shows the way hip is going up). Then, here in Spain, they said I couldn't go on wearing those boots, and they asked me to cut them down, and told me to make the ones I'm wearing. These I'm wearing now are stabilizing my hips.

INT: "How is it possible, since the Cuban doctors are so excellent normally, at least that's what the Cubans say, and promote throughout the world. That they should be so wrong? And hurt you so much? How many months did you stay that way in Cuba?"

OP: Well, in 2005, on the 5th of April, I began to wear these boots until the 17-18. I stayed like that until the 3rd of March of 2008 using those boots. These I'm wearing now are different, from Spain. " Stands up, 2:06, shows. "The only thing they did was to slap a cast on. They had me on a cast from the tips of my toes up to my neck for 18 months. The doctors here [in Spain] say they don't find any logic to it. That it was intolerable, the amount of time I spent in those conditions. The cast was removed twice, and each time it was to break my leg again." 

Omar Pernet Hernández was 72 years old when he passed away, a victim of cancer. He had spent 22 years in Castro's prisons for defying the communist regime and lived in forced exile for the final nine years of his life.

There are numerous other cases that stretch back six decades, and here are a few presented on this blog: Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros (2020), Silverio Portal Contreras (2020), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Sebastián Arcos Bergnes (1995), and Pedro Luis Boitel (1972).

International Women's Day 2022: Reflection on women leaders around the world

 "We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly". - Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale

In 2020 focused on the problematic origins of International Women's Day, but today reflect on women who have achieved power around the world by both democratic and other means. 

Capitalist Democracies have seen the rise of women leaders around the world: Golda Meir in Israel, Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, Indira Gandhi in India, Angela Merkel in Germany, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir in Iceland, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, Kim Campbell in Canada, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Erna Solberg in Norway, Simonetta Sommaruga in Switzerland, and the list goes on for a while.  

Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher

Women leaders in communist regimes are few and far between, such as Jiang Qing in China, Elena Ceaușescu in Romania, and Vilma Espín in Cuba became high profile figures because of their respective husbands and owed whatever power they had to these male leaders. 

Independent women with popular support and their own power base did not (and do not) fare well in these regimes.

In the Cuban case strong women, not related or backing the Castro brothers, were subjected to violent repression and exile or death.

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of the island for founding the Ladies in White movement after the Black Cuban Spring of 2003. She, and the group of women she led, nonviolently challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Havana initially, and eventually across the island. 

Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March of 2003 along with her husband and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after nine years obtained the freedom of their loved ones. She did not disband the Ladies in White when her husband returned home. Laura recognized that the laws had not changed, that prisoners of conscience remained behind bars and that she would continue her human rights activism. This is why the Castro regime did away with her on October 14, 2011.

Ladies in White continue in their activism in Cuba a decade after Laura's death

Lady in White Daisy Cuello Basulto denounced that her 21 year old daughter was arrested, violently stripped and forced to urinate in front of police officers in a police station in Cotorro. The 21 year old was arrested along with her mom and other family on September 27, 2015 while on their way to attend the Sunday march of the Ladies in White. In the police station "she was humiliated," although she refused to urinate in front of the agents, who constantly jeered at her, explained her mother in an interview with Radio República. The young woman was locked in a cell with a strong smell of hydrochloric acid and now suffers from a sore throat. "She has a fever and feels very bad," reported her mother.

 This has gone on for decades.

Maria Elena Cruz Varela (1991)

Thirty-one years earlier on November 19, 1991 Cuban poet Mariela Elena Cruz Varela, who peacefully dissented asking for nonviolent change, was assaulted by a mob organized by the dictatorship who tried to force feed the poet her own words. She wrote about the assault in her book, Dios en las cárceles cubanas (God in the Cuban jails):

"They broke my mouth trying to make me swallow the leaflets that members of my group had distributed throughout Havana. Afterwards I spent three days brutally besieged, imprisoned in my own home with my two children, with no water, no electricity, no food, no cigarettes. We heard what the huge speakers never stopped amplifying, allegorical songs to the country, the necessary punishment of traitors, and anyone who wanted to could shout at me, organized, of course, the slogans they pleased: Comrade worm, we are going to execute you by firing squad!"

And the violence continues today against women in Cuba, who demonstrate leadership. Cuban dissident Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was gravely wounded in a machete attack on May 24, 2015 by Osmany Carrión who had been "sent by state security thugs" and that she is sure that the aggression "was politically motivated." 

Sirley Ávila León in May 2015

The attack was severe enough that she suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and nearly lost her right arm. Sirley had been a local official who had sought the reopening of a school for Cuban children and drew the ire of the dictatorship with her persistent demands.

Laura, Maria Elena, and Sirley were leaders that in a democratic Cuba would have had leadership positions in government, and at least one could have become president, but Cuba is a communist, male dominated dictatorship.  

47 Chinese activists were arrested in January 2021 and now face life sentences for organizing an unofficial primary to choose opposition candidates for the now-postponed 2020 Legislative Council election. It attracted approximately 600,000 voters. One of the youngest defendants is a  23-year-old young woman, Wong Ji-yuet, she is a first time political hopeful. The pro-democratic primary nominee won 22,911 votes, and came in third in the NTW Constituency in Hong Kong. She is a political leader.

Wong Ji-yuet, 23-year-old young woman

In the Orwellian world that is the Peoples Republic of China in the 21st century, exercising democratic rights under the National Security Law imposed last year on Hong Kong is grounds for a maximum sentence of life in prison. 

What of women communist leaders? They appear to achieve power through their husbands, and their fortunes rise and fall with their spouse. They also have a poor track record on women's liberation. Considering that Elena Ceausescu is considered one such "leader" as the First Vice Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers. Her husband, Nicolae Ceausescu, presided over policies that were not pro-women.

Elena Ceaușescu and Nicolae Ceausescu

Shannon Quinn authored the essay "17 Moments In History that Inspired the Handmaid’s Tale" in History Collection and provides a summary of Ceauşescu's Decree 770 policy for women.

One of the specific events that Margaret Atwood found during her research process was “Decree 770” in Romania. This was a law that passed in 1967 that made abortions and all forms of contraception illegal. This had nothing to do with religious beliefs. It was an action that the government believed was necessary for the future of their country. The government already taxed married couples a 6% income tax if they did not have children between the ages of 25 and 50, but they realized that this was not enough to stop people from using contraception.

During the 1950’s, Romanian women were entering the workforce and having fewer children. By the 1960’s, abortion became a common practice, because there were very few birth control options available to women to prevent pregnancy. This began a sharp dip in the country’s birth rate. The Communist Party wanted the population to increase from 23 million to 30 million in a single year, so they enacted Decree 770. After the change of law in 1967, and women no longer had access to birth control, the number of babies born that year skyrocketed to roughly double what they had been the year before. Thousands of new preschools and nursery schools had to be built. Orphanages were overflowing with children whose parents could not afford them.  Aside from making abortions illegal and taking contraception off of store shelves, women’s bodies were literally policed. Decree 770 forced women to visit the gynecologist once a month to check for pregnancy, and police officers stood in the halls to make sure women complied. If a woman was pregnant, the doctors followed her progress very closely. Wealthy women were able to buy birth control pills and condoms on the black market, but poor women did not have that option. There were some cases where women caught the pregnancy before the doctors did, and some women died while attempting to give themselves an at-home abortion. The policy continued until the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to this in Romania, and millions of women were forced to have children.

International Women's Day should be a day to celebrate democracy and markets as instruments for the empowerment of women, and observe closely the dystopian record for women under communist regimes, and resolve to resist the system that inspired Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. 

On International Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) Day recognizing some Cuban women that risked all for human rights in Cuba.

#WHRDs #IWHRDDay

Sissi Abascal Zamora sentenced to six years in prison for 11J protest

On International Women Human Rights Defenders Day it is important to recall the role Cuban women played in the resistance to the dictatorship in Cuba, and the high price paid.

 During the 11J protests it is known that at least 195 Cuban women were arbitrarily detained, of which at least 67 remain jailed in Cuba today, according to Cubalex. Women have led during these and prior protests and paid a terrible price for their dissent.

Lady in White Sissi Abascal Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the 11J protests in the town of Carlos Rojas, in the municipality of Jovellanos, in the province of Matanzas. The 23-year-old activist and member of the Party for Democracy Pedro Luis Boitel has ten business days to appeal. Reports are that a bus full of women dressed as civilians arrived where Sissi was peacefully demonstrating with others on July 11, 2021, and proceeded to beat her and others up, and a bottle was broken over Ms. Abascal Zamora's head requiring that she receive stitches. 

 

Lady in White Sissi Abascal Zamora

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a former prisoner of conscience, nonviolence practitioner, and human rights defender, published an OpEd in The Washington Times  that is a must read. In it he also described the price that Cuban women are paying for standing up for freedom and their loved ones.

I met a woman who, after learning that her son had been jailed for participating in the protests, walked to the police station to demand his release. She was immediately interrogated and strip-searched, exposing a shirt with the pro-freedom slogan “no more hunger.” The police tore off her shirt, handcuffed and beat her, then forced her to walk almost naked in front of the other officers. “They beat me mercilessly,” she told me. “So many blows that I wet myself.”

Women have paid a high price for defending human rights in Cuba over several decades. Here is a sampling of some cases over the past 30 years.

 

Sirley Ávila León

Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. The Castro regime removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but was ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

 

Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition, and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled.

Following the attack she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country. 

 

Injuries suffered by Sirley Ávila León.

On March 8, 2016 she arrived in Miami and began a course of treatments over the next six months during which she was able to walk once again although still limited due to her injuries. She returned to Cuba on September 7, 2016 only to find her home occupied by strangers and her attacker free and bragging that he would finish the job. She moved in with her mother and within a short time a camera and microphone were set up across from her mother's home on a post. The Victims of Communism interviewed her and produced the video above.  

 

Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera

 

On September 20, 2013 human rights defender Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera briefly described the abuse she had been subjected to by agents of Cuban state security earlier that same year to the 24th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva:

I have been the victim of several acts of aggression on the part of the Cuban authorities, especially by the agents Yuniel Monteagudo Reina and Eric Aquino Yera. They have beaten me into unconsciousness on the pavement, as took place most recently this past March 7 in Santa Clara. The hits to the head, neck, and back have caused me serious health problems that I have not been able to recover from. In addition to beating me, they have threatened me with death on various occasions, these agents have told me that they are going to rape me, and have shown their genitals during arbitrary arrests.

Yris Pérez Aguilera shows cyst, result of state security beatings. (Photo: Yoani Sanchez).

 

Cuban attorneys Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent in their 2013 report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) touched on the institutional nature of the violence upon women in Cuba by the Castro regime:

"The brutality of the police and state security agents, including women members of these bodies, against women dissidents, is supported by the state, which exemplifies the institutionalized violence as a means to repress women opposition activists. Arbitrary detention is one of the methods to prevent them from exercising their rights to speak, associate and demonstrate. In detention centers agents use violence, sexual assault and insults as means of repression. The cells enclosed in unsanitary and sometimes sanitary services have no privacy or are not appropriate for women, even having them share prison cells with men. In some cases, they forced to strip naked or forcibly stripped, obliging them to squat to see if they have items in their genitals and claims that have been reported that they have introduced a pen into the vagina, under the justification of seeking recording objects."

Due to increasing repression, human rights lawyer, Laritza Diversent was granted political asylum and went into exile on  May 4, 2017. She continues to receive threats to the present day from the Cuban government.

Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent

 

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, one of the founders of the Ladies in White in March of 2003 and its chief spokesperson, was widely admired inside of Cuba and internationally. 

 

Laura Pollán, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members.

 

Laura Pollán

Following brutal repression, in an effort to prevent them from marching through the streets of Havana, Laura Pollán directly and nonviolently challenged the regime declaring, "we will never give up our protest. The authorities have three options — free our husbands, imprison us or kill us."

She fell suddenly ill and died within a week on October 14, 2011 under suspicious circumstances that a Cuban medical doctor described as "painful, tragic and unnecessary." This took place within days of the Ladies in White declaring themselves a human rights organization dedicated to the freedom of all political prisoners, not just their loved ones. 

 

Mariela Elena Cruz Varela

On November 19, 1991 the Cuban poet Mariela Elena Cruz Varela, who peacefully dissented asking for nonviolent change, was assaulted by a mob organized by the dictatorship who tried to force feed the poet her own words. She wrote about the assault in her book, Dios en las cárceles cubanas (God in the Cuban jails):

"They broke my mouth trying to make me swallow the leaflets that members of my group had distributed throughout Havana. Afterwards I spent three days brutally besieged, imprisoned in my own home with my two children, with no water, no electricity, no food, no cigarettes. We heard what the huge speakers never stopped amplifying, allegorical songs to the country, the necessary punishment of traitors, and anyone who wanted to could shout at me, organized, of course, the slogans they pleased: Comrade worm, we are going to execute you by firing squad!"

Cuban women continue to lead the struggle for human rights and freedom in Cuba and on  International Women Human Rights Defenders Day we honor them.

National Day for the Victims of Communism: Remembering those killed and the courageous Poles that twice saved the world

Today is the day that Americans set aside to remember the victims of communism around the world.

Communists manufactured famines to liquidate class enemies started in the USSR

We owe it to both the victims of communism from the past and of today to remember them and denounce what has happened and is still happening now in order to finally bring an end to the communist death toll. Below is a partial list of the dead reaches 102.566 million dead.

Communist death toll (estimate)*

Soviet Union 61 million dead

Peoples Republic of China 35 million dead

Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) 2 million dead

Communist Vietnam 1.670 million dead

North Korea 1.663 million dead

Communist Ethiopia 725,000 dead

Communist Rumania 435,000 dead

Communist Cuba 73,000 dead

In addition to remembering the over 100 million victims in the 20th century alone, also recall the 101st anniversary of "the Polish victory against Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks in the Battle of Warsaw. Known as the Miracle on the Vistula, the Polish heroes of this battle halted the spread of communism in Europe for decades."  

Today, Cubans remember the tens of thousands of victims of Cuban communism under the dictatorship of the Castros. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has highlighted three cases: Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Harold Cepero Escalante, and Sirley Ávila León.

Below is the video that highlights the killings of Oswaldo and Harold in 2012:

Below is the video that highlights the brutal assault against Sirley Avila Leon in 2015:

One week from today Cubans around the world will be engaging in solidarity protests with their brothers and sisters on the island that have announced civic marches across  the island on November 15th. 

In Washington, DC Cubans and friends of a free Cuba will gather on Sunday, November 14th at Meridian Hill Park at 2:00pm and at 3:00pm will set out in a short prayer walk to the Cuban Embassy down the street followed by an hour of prayer, poetry readings, and music that will conclude at 4:00pm.

Participants will return on Monday, November 15th at Meridian Hill Park at 2:00pm and at 3:00pm, the same time the Civic March will be underway in Cuba, will set out on a Civic walk to the Cuban Embassy, and picket their from 3pm and 6pm while following events unfolding in the island.

Today, we also join with the peoples of the many other nations that have, and continue to, suffer under the scourge of communism in prayers for the dead, and to carry on the liberation struggle for those still living under the yoke of communist oppression.

Finally, we give thanks to our Polish brethren who stopped the spread of communism in 1920 and sixty nine years later led the offensive that ended communism in Europe in 1989.