November 7th is the National Day for the Victims of Communism, and is a day ” to remember those who have suffered and died at the hands of communist regimes in the past, and to stand for those who are fighting for freedom today.” This is an initiative launched by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) in 2017, and has made an impact both nationally and at the state level over the past eight years.
This year, VOC is partnering with leading institutions to remember the victims of communism across the United States. In Washington, DC, they are hosting free tours of the Victims of Communism Museum, located just two blocks from the White House. In Atlanta, Georgia, VOC held a Roll Call of Nations ceremony alongside the Hungarian American Coalition and the National Monuments Foundation at Millennium Gate Museum. In Salt Lake City, Utah, the Utah Voices for the Voiceless met at the state capitol to honor the victims and conduct a First Amendment speech contest. In Miami, Florida, Miami Dade College hosted students for an educational event at the Freedom Tower, it featured remarks from Governor Ron DeSantis.
This is also a day for Cubans, who are still struggling to free Cuba from the Castro communist dictatorship, to remember the victims and highlight those still fighting for freedom today, and paying a high price.
Tens of thousands of Cubans have died due to the communist dictatorship in the island, but the regime has also racked up a body count in overseas revolutionary ventures.
This Cuba Brief will provide a partial accounting with some highlights for the sake of brevity.
Cuban dissidents tortured and killed by the communist dictatorship in Cuba.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante asassinated on July 22, 2012 by Cuban government agents.
On July 22, 2012 agents of the Cuban dictatorship murdered pro-democracy leaders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero.
Oswaldo Payá was one of the founders of the Christian Liberation Movement, a Sakharov Laureate who had been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He also had dual Cuban – Spanish citizenship. Harold Cepero was a youth leader in the Christian Liberation Movement.
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to examine the evidence around the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012..Video of the December 14, 2021 testimony at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) hearing available here. A hearing was held, and testimony presented.
On June 12, 2023 the IACHR published their report on the merits that found Cuban government agents responsible for the deaths of the two pro-democracy leaders and Christian Liberation Movement leaders.
Why did the Cuban dictatorship seek revenge against Oswaldo and Harold?
The Varela Project demonstrated to the international community that tens of thousands of Cubans were not satisfied with the status quo, and wanted human rights to be respected, and multiparty democracy to return to Cuba. This contradicted the official narrative.
On May 10, 2002, Oswaldo, along with Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez of the Christian Liberation Movement, turned in 11,020 Varela Project petitions, and news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.
Consequently, Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez were sentenced to long prison sentences in March 2003 following show trials, along with 73 other Cuban dissidents. Many of them had taken part in the Varela Project and, nearly eight years later, were forced into exile as an alternative to completing their prison sentences.
Subsequently, in spite of the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures with Freddy Martini on October 5, 2003. He would spend the next eight years campaigning for the release of his imprisoned compatriots and continuing campaigns to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba.
Finally, early in 2012 Oswaldo also denounced that the Cuban government was engaged in a fraudulent change in which Cuban exiles were being asked to be complicit in their own repression. Once again he was disrupting the Cuban regime narrative.
Torturing prisoners of conscience into hunger strike and death
Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros (2020, Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), and Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010) are three recent cases of Cuban prisoners of conscience who have died while on hunger strike in Cuban prisons. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born in Santiago, Cuba on May 15, 1967. He was by vocation a brick layer and also a human rights activist, a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana, Alternative Republican Movement, and of the Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Orlando gathered signatures for the Varela Project, a citizen initiative to amend the Cuban constitution using legal means with the aim of bringing Cuba in line with international human rights standards.
Amnesty International had documented how Orlando had been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November of 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were arrested and later released. He was also arrested on December 6, 2002 along with fellow prisoners of conscience Oscar Elías Biscet and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo.
On February 23, 2010, Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after years of physical and psychological torture that began in 2003 and drove him to repeatedly protest prison conditions and, beginning on December 3, 2009, to undertake a water-only hunger strike that ended in his death. Aggravating this already extreme situation was the fact that prison officials repeatedly denied him water in an effort to get him to end the strike. Amnesty International condemned the death at the time and urged Raul Castro “to immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience after a political activist died following a hunger strike.” Twelve years later, the prisoners of conscience are still there, and the International Red Cross has not had access to Cuban prisons, save for a brief period over 30 years ago in 1989.
Poor prison conditions and ill treatment driving prisoners to go on hunger strike has been taking place for decades. The case of Pedro Luis Boitel is from 1972.
Martyred student leader Pedro Luis Boitel fought by Fidel Castro’s side to bring an end to the Batista dictatorship and restore Cuban democracy. However, as Castro came to impose a communist regime, the student leader became a liability.
Pedro Luis Boitel was born in Cuba to a family of modest means of French origin. He studied at the University of Havana while working as a radio technician. He was also a poet. Opposing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, he joined the July 26 movement led by Fidel Castro. The majority of the movement’s members, like Pedro Luis, were anti-communists.
Once Batista left for exile and Fidel Castro took control, the anti-communist members of the July 26 movement became an obstacle to absolute power. Following the revolution, Boitel returned to University, where his fellow students nominated him to run for the presidency of the Federation of University Students in 1960. Fidel Castro personally intervened to remove him from the presidency. Pedro Luis Boitel refused to betray the Federation of University Students. He sought to maintain academic freedom and autonomy. This made Pedro Luis an obstacle to the emerging communist regime.
As time went on and the dictatorial nature of the Castro regime became more apparent, the student leader became an opponent of Fidel Castro. Condemned to a decade in prison in 1961, he served the cruel and unjust sentence, but as the date of his release came and went, prison officials refused to release him. While imprisoned, Boitel continued to challenge the repression and the impunity of regime prison officials. […]
In response to the years of cruelty, torture, and now denial of his freedom, he went on hunger strike on April 3, 1972. Pedro Luis Boitel died fifty years ago on May 25, 1972, after 53 days on hunger strike in Havana at the Castillo del Principe prison. Academic freedom and autonomy ended in 1960 and were replaced with fear, repression, and ideological litmus tests to attend university. It has still not been restored today. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
Massacres in Cuba: The body count continues to rise
On October 28, 2022, off the coast of Bahía Honda, Artemisa Province, Ministry of the Interior (MININT) agents of the communist dictatorship in Cuba rammed and sank a speedboat of fleeing Cuban refugees. Seven Cubans were killed in this latest attack, and their names are: Aimara Meizoso, Israel Gómez, Indira Serrano, Omar Reyes, Yerandy García, Nathali Acosta, and Elizabeth Meizoso (age two). This is not an isolated incident, but the latest in a list of vessels sunk by the regime to prevent Cubans from fleeing communism. Those who survived the attack on October 28th stated that the MININT vessels blocked their path as soon as their boat departed, and that they were deliberately attacked to break the boat in half with which they intended to flee the island. These witness reports, gathered after the event, say that one of the repressors threatened to “split them in two.”
Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a small boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security. Yuriniesky was left for two days in the lagoon, before being found by his brother..
Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed.
37 were killed in 1994 with the attack and sinking of the tugboat “13 de Marzo”, scores of Cubans were killed in the Canímar River massacre in 1980, and five killed in the massacre of Barlovento in 1962. This is a partial accounting. The Cuban Coast Guard vessels of the Cuban dictatorship in all these cases were used as weapons against Cubans who tried to flee the island, regardless of the presence of children, women, or the elderly.
One need not commandeer a boat to be targeted for death.
The United States in 1993 documented in a protest note sent to the Cuban government how MININT vessels, determined to stop Cuban refugees from reaching the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base, tossed grenades, and machine-gunned fleeing swimmers, and recovered their bodies with gaff hooks used in sport fishing.
In 1980, Fidel Castro began by insulting those seeking to leave as “scum” and “worms”, and he took children and youth out of school to take part in acts of repudiation. According to Carlos Alberto Montaner, the students killed a teacher that they had discovered running away. Forty Cubans who simply wanted to leave Cuba were lynched. This would become known as the Mariel boat lift.
Suspected Cuban migrants beaten down by club wielding regime agents.
A 1995 monograph by academics Holly Ackerman and Juan Clark, The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty reported that “as many as 100,000 Cuban rafters may have perished trying to leave Cuba.”
Castro communist forces in Africa killed many.
Ethiopia
Fidel and Raul Castro sent 17,000 Cuban forces in 1977 to Ethiopia to assist Mengistu Haile Mariam break opposition resolve. Number of Ethiopians killed by Mengistu and his Cuban allies were between 225,000 – 317,000, including at least over a thousand children between 11 and 13 years of age.
Human Rights Watch in their 2008 report on Ethiopia titled outlined “Collective Punishment War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region” some of the practices carried out by Cuban troops sent there by Fidel and Raul Castro excerpted below:
In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”
Charles Lane of The Washington Post in the December 1, 2016 article “Castro was no liberator” raises the following question that touches heavily on Ethiopia:
Mengistu participated in a successful military coup against the U.S.-backed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, eventually seizing power on Feb. 3, 1977,by massacring his rivals in the officer corps. Castro admired this bloody deed as a preemptive strike against “rightists” that showed “wisdom” and cleared the way for Cuba to support Mengistu “without any constraints,” as he explained to East German dictator Erich Honecker in an April 1977 meeting whose minutes became public after the fall of European communism. […] With the Cuban forces watching his back, Mengistu wrapped up his bloody campaign of domestic repression, known as “the Red Terror,” and sent his own Soviet-equipped, Cuban-trained troops to crush a rebellion in Eritrea. The last Cuban troops did not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture.
Angola
Cuban troops, in May 1977, took part in a massacre not long after independence in Angola following a split in the governing Communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party. Amnesty International cites reports that 30,000 Angolans “had disappeared” in the purge; others say as many as 80,000 were killed.
International terrorism
The communist dictatorship in Cuba has also sponsored terrorism, and engaged in terrorism that has killed Americans.
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 Jr, 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.
Frank Connor and the Fraunces Tavern Bombing
Frank Connor killed by Castro backed terrorists.
The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 explosion at Fraunces Tavern, which killed Alejandro Berger (28), James Gezork (32), Frank Connor (33), Harold H. Sherburne (66) and wounded 63 others; a bombing spree in New York City in August 1977 that killed Charles Steinberg, (age 26), injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; and the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers, among many other crimes. Frank Thomas Connor was having lunch with clients when the bomb exploded, his body was pulverized and his life was ended.
Aftermath of bombing in Fraunces Tavern in 1975 that killed four in New York City
“Frank was born to a humble immigrant Irish family in the Washington Heights section of New York City. His father, Thomas Connor, was an elevator operator. Frank’s Mom, Margaret Maloney Connor was a cleaning lady at Morgan Guaranty Trust. Frank pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He graduated from Bishop Dubois High School in Washington Heights. Frank went on to study at City College of New York. Frank paused in his studies for Mary Lynch, the most beautiful woman in the world. After their marriage, Frank resumed college at night. He graduated with the class of 1973 from Farleigh Dickenson College in New Jersey. Frank worked for Morgan Guaranty Trust. Together, Frank and Mary had two fine sons, Thomas and Joseph. On the day their father died Tom was 11 and Joe was 9 years of age.” [ Source: Find a grave ]
Thomas, Joseph, Frank & Mary all together. (Photo courtesy of Joseph F. Connor)
Fidel Castro aided Colombian terrorist group M-19 that assaulted the Palace of Justice in Bogota, killing nearly half the judges of the Supreme Court.
“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.
The U.S. State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list came into existence in 1979, and Cuba was added to the list in 1982 due to its links to the M-19 terrorist group in Colombia, facilitating drug smuggling to the United.States, and providing arms to M-19.
Thirty nine years ago on November 6-7, 1985 the M-19 terrorist group “seized the Palace of Justice in Bogota. They took hundreds of hostages, including 25 Supreme Court judges.” The violent siege became a bloodbath, killing scores of captives, and nearly half of the Supreme Court’s judges.
The National Museum of Colombia tweeted about this tragic anniversary last year.
This is a sample, and by no means is a complete accounting of the victims of communism in Cuba.
Trained Palestinian terrorist groups that targeted Israelis
On September 5, 1972 the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization carried out a massacre of Israeli athletes taken hostage by them in exchange for the release of terrorists held in other countries.
Fifty years later, Germany formally apologized for failing to protect the Israeli athletes, but it was not Germany who trained and assisted the terrorists who carried out the attack.
“Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks,” reported Claire Sterling in The New York Times Magazine on March 1, 1981.
The Castro regime welcomed the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and made first contacts with the Palestinian FATAH in 1965 in Algiers and Damascus.
Yasser Arafat made eight official visits to Castro’s Cuba [The Arafat Foundation]
Throughout the 1970s the Castro regime’s Dirección de Inteligencia ( Intelligence Directorate), sent their agents to PLO camps in Lebanon to train and assist Palestinian terrorists.
When will Cuba apologize for training the Palestinian terrorists who carried out the Munich massacre that killed 11 members of Israel’s Olympic team, and a West German police officer on September 5, 1972?
On February 13, 2016 Vice News reported that in 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been warned that the Iranian-linked Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah was setting up an operational base in Cuba to carry out attacks in Latin America that might also involve attacks on American diplomatic posts or banks there.
According to the Cuban Studies Institute in their May 20, 2020 report, “Hezbollah, on orders from Hasan Nasrallah, set up an operational base in Cuba” and “Havana directly and through Venezuela continues to provide intelligence to Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Spanish terrorist group trained in Havana in the early 1960s, and would carry out terror attacks against Spain for decades
The 2017 book, Historia de un desafío: Cinco décadas de lucha sin cuartel de la Guardia Civil contra ETA, authors Manuel Sánchez and Manuela Simón reveal that, “In the spring of 1964, ETA militants received training in Cuba with lessons on kidnappings, subversion and sabotage. Thus began the ideological and terrorist training that would later be a constant in the history of the terrorist band.”
Judge Jose Maria Lidón Corbi murdered by Cuba trained Spanish terrorists in 2001.
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, November 7, 2025
Victims of Communism Memorial Day 2025
Each year on November 7, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) marks National Day for the Victims of Communism to remember those who have suffered and died at the hands of communist regimes in the past, and to stand for those who are fighting for freedom today.
This year, VOC is partnering with leading institutions to remember the victims of communism across the United States. In Washington, DC, we are hosting free tours of the Victims of Communism Museum, located just two blocks from the White House. In Atlanta, Georgia, VOC is holding a Roll Call of Nations ceremony alongside the Hungarian American Coalition and the National Monuments Foundation at Millennium Gate Museum. In Salt Lake City, Utah, the Utah Voices for the Voiceless is meeting at the state capitol to honor the victims and conduct a First Amendment speech contest. In Miami, Florida, Miami Dade College is hosting students for an educational event at the Freedom Tower, featuring remarks from Governor Ron DeSantis.
Help Us Remember the Victims
VOC is proud to offer an array of resources on the fight against communism. Students in 9th-12th grade and college are invited to participate in our essay contest honoring the legacy of the Declaration of Independence and consider how it inspired anti-communist freedom movements across the globe. In the classroom, VOC has five curricula for students ages 4th grade through university that teach the truth about this brutal ideology. Online, you can watch our Witness Project documentary series, where we speak with the heroes who stood against the deadliest ideology the world has ever seen.
Want to bear witness to the victims of communism? Explore VOC’s full list of curricular resources here.
https://victimsofcommunism.org/victims-of-communism-memorial-day-2025/
NBC6, November 7, 2025
Gov. Ron DeSantis commemorates Victims of Communism Day from Miami Freedom Tower
According to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Alabama, Arizona, California, Idaho, Florida, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Georgia, and Wisconsin have passed resolutions to officially recognize the day.
Global Atlanta, November 7, 2025
Victims of Communism Memorial Day: Roll Call of Nations
November 7 at 6:30 am – 8:30 pm
On Friday, November 7 at 6:00 p.m., the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, in partnership with Hungarian American Coalition and Millennium Gate Museum will host Victims of Communism Memorial Day: Roll Call of Nations at Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta, GA.
This solemn ceremony, taking place on National Day for the Victims of Communism, will honor the memory of the more than 100 million people killed by communism and celebrate nations who overcame communist oppression in pursuit of liberty.
Each year on November 7, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation marks National Day for the Victims of Communism. This year, this commemoration will be hosted in Atlanta, Georgia to recognize the brave community members who have fought against communist regimes past and present, many of whom fled communist regimes and sought freedom in the United States.
https://www.globalatlanta.com/event/victims-of-communism-memorial-day-roll-call-of-nations/