International Human Rights Day presents an opportunity to examine both Cuba’s human rights record today, and the role played by Cuban diplomats in the drafting, and ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleven days ago on November 30, 2024 Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas was beaten to death by guards, according to the evidence found on his bruised and battered body. In a video that went viral, his mother, Dania María Esplugas, says her son was murdered by prison officials.
Manuel endured terrible prison conditions “including bedbug and rat infestations, lack of medical care for scabies, poor nutrition, and being held in close quarters with violent criminals.” The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation published an OpEd today by the Center for a Free Cuba executive director titled, “Denouncing Prison Conditions in Cuba Can Get You Killed“.
The Cuban dictatorship does not release data on Cuba’s prison population, and over the past 65 years, only allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit Cuba’s prisons in 1988 and 1989.
This is in contrast to over 100 visits of the ICRC to the prison at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo since 2002 where Al Qaeda terrorists are jailed.
Worse yet, Cuban human rights defenders who report on prison conditions are subjected to reprisals by prison guards. This has been going on for decades. Some have survived, and today they reflected on International Human Rights Day, and Cuba’s political prisoners.
Ignacio Raúl Cuesta Valle, known as El Piche, served 29 years and 10 months of political imprisonment in Cuba during the communist dictatorship. In his message, he calls on the international community to take into account the plight of Cuban political prisoners on Human Rights Day.
Angel de Fana Serrano (born January 29, 1939 in Havana), commemorating International Human Rights Day, speaks of the terrible conditions in Cuban prisons and highlights the specific cases of a political prisoner, Miguel Díaz Bauza, who spent more than 30 years incarcerated, and Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas, who was beaten to death on November 30, 2024. Angel was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1962 for his political opposition to the Cuban dictatorship, and completed the full sentence, and was released in 1983.
Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez, born on October 10, 1964 in Placetas, Cuba) talks about the importance of International Human Rights Day for Cubans. He concludes with a call for the release of all political prisoners and extends his congratulations to those who defend human rights. Antúnez was jailed in 1990 for publicly calling for an Eastern European like nonviolent transition to Democracy in Cuba, and spent the next 17 years in prison, and was released in 2007.
Regis Iglesias Ramírez, born in Havana on September 18, 1969, commemorates the 76th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations and the role played by Cuban diplomat Guy Pérez Cisneros in its ratification, and pays tribute to human rights pioneers Ricardo Bofill, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who non-violently resisted the Cuban dictatorship in defense of human rights. Regis, spokesman for the Christian Liberation Movement, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2003 for his role in the Project Varela, an initiative that sought human rights reforms through a petition drive that gathered over 25,000 verified signatures. He served over seven years, and was released into exile in 2010.
Others like Manuel de Jesús did not survive the experience.
One of these cases was that of student leader, and prisoner of conscience Pedro Luis Boitel who died on hunger strike in 1972 that inspired a work of literature based on his life. Tonight, Janisset Rivero, the Center for a Free Cuba’s program officer is discussing her book, Cartas a Pedro [Letters to Pedro] in an event promoted by the Center and hosted by the Cuban Cultural Center of New York.
Despite this, the Cuban dictatorship has a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
Havana has a double discourse, one for the Cuban populace in the island, and another for the international community to justify its presence on the UN Human Rights Council, but its long term objective is to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights irrelevant.
In Cuba, it is dangerous to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Copies of the Declaration, which regime officials have referred to as “enemy propaganda,” have resulted in the imprisonment of Cubans. Government officials have ordered Cuban children to burn copies of the UDHR as a “act of repudiation” against the Ladies in White, a nonviolent human rights group.
Fidel Castro in a 1986 interview claimed that “[y]our political concepts of liberty, equality, justice are very different from ours. You try to measure a country like Cuba with European ideas. And we do not resign ourselves to or accept being measured by those standards.” However the now dead Cuban dictator omitted that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an initiative led by Latin Americans, and Cubans in particular. Furthermore that language placed in the Declaration was taken from the 1940 Cuban Constitution, or that Cubans lobbied for its passage in 1948, and Cuban diplomat Guy Perez Cisneros advocated for it, and celebrated its passage.
Meanwhile the Cuban regime uses official media to claim to celebrate human rights. Havana organizes events with other countries seeking to suppress human rights while claiming to promote them in their communications strategy for the international community while systematically repressing Cubans, and denying them their rights.
Havana has memory holed the history of Cuba’s leading role in proposing, drafting, and lobbying for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights between 1945 and 1948. The names of Guy Perez Cisneros, and Gustavo Gutierrez Sanchez who broke new ground on the international human rights front were erased for decades in that context.
The Center for a Free Cuba has sought to recover this lost history, and on December 10, 2022 organized a virtual event.with three generations of Cuban human rights defenders to recover Cuba’s human rights legacy. Rosa Leonor Whitmarsh y Dueñas was born in the El Vedado quarter of Havana in the Republic of Cuba on May 9, 1930. She grew up in Cuba’s Republic, lived its democratic high watermark between 1940 and 1952, and remembered the role played by Cuba in the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sebastián Arcos Cazabón was born thirty one years later in 1961 in Havana, and spent the first three decades of his life growing up in the Castro regime. Carolina Borrero and Yoel Suarez were both born in Cuba, a generation later. This conversation gives insights into the human rights situation in Cuba, and the legacy of the democratic Cuba that fought for the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and achieved it 76 years ago today.
Tomorrow, December 11, 2024 at 2:00pm there is a Congressional hearing scheduled that will examine Cuba’s human rights record. it is titled “The Communist Cuban Regime’s Disregard for Human Rights” and among the witnesses to testify is Joseph Connor. He is an American, who lives today in New Jersey with his family. He has also had his human rights violated by the communist dictatorship in Cuba. Havana provided training and logistical support to a terrorist group that bombed the Fraunces Tavern where his father, Frank Connor, was eating lunch on January 24, 1975, killing him along with three others, and seriously wounding dozens more. To add insult to injury, the bomber of the group escaped U.S. custody, fled the country, and today in 2024 is harbored by the Cuban government.
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, December 10, 2024
Denouncing Prison Conditions in Cuba Can Get You Killed
By John Suarez
On November 30, 2024, Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas died in a Cuban prison, officially attributed to asphyxiation from hanging. However, Manuel’s body and his clothes bore signs of torture, including muddy footprints and urine-soaked pants. In the video that went viral, his mother, Dania María Esplugas, claims that her son was murdered by prison officials. She believes Manuel did not die by suicide, the official claim, but was beaten to death, with his hanging staged to cover up the abuse. Dania observed marks on his neck, back, and arms, which led her to conclude he was tortured with a military belt and baton before being hung.
Manuel de Jesús, 27, was arrested on July 17, 2021, for sharing videos of the July 11 protests on social media. He was charged with public disorder and vandalism and sentenced to six years in prison after being detained for a year and a half without trial. His mother’s attempts to secure his release through habeas corpus petitions were denied. He was a prisoner of conscience.
While in prison, Manuel faced harsh conditions, including bedbug and rat infestations, lack of medical care for scabies, poor nutrition, and being held in close quarters with violent criminals. His death in prison drew attention, and reports suggested he had been beaten before he died. Some inmates indicated he was hanged by authorities, not by suicide, as officially claimed.
This is not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of abuse by the Cuban dictatorship that systematically violates international norms.
[ Full article ]
https://victimsofcommunism.org/denouncing-prison-conditions-in-cuba-can-get-you-killed/
Politics and Rights Review, December 6, 2024
Cuba’s Role in Terrorism and Failed Efforts at Detente
Cuba’s ties to terrorism, anti-Israel stance, and historical hostility reveal its global threat, raising concerns over U.S. policy shifts and regional stability.
By John Suarez
The Campaign to Remove Cuba from the Terrorism Sponsor List
The Cuban dictatorship and its allies operating in communist networks in the United States have conducted a sustained campaign to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, whitewashing Havana’s record and actions that have continued to the present day. It is important to correct the record and provide some context.
In February 1969, Fidel Castro met with Swiss Ambassador Alfred Fischli and asked him to relay a message to the Nixon Administration indicating a willingness to discuss a number of contentious issues. This process led to “a bilateral anti-hijacking agreement between the United States and Cuba in January 1973.” After this “successful” agreement in 1974 the Nixon administration sent a back channel message to Fidel Castro that the United States “in principle prepared to improve relations on the basis of reciprocal measures.”
Castro responded favorably, leading Deputy Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to hold a preliminary meeting on January 11, 1975, in New York City with Ramón Sánchez Parodi, a senior official of the Cuban Communist Party, and Néstor García, first secretary of Cuba’s UN mission.
Less than two weeks later, on January 24, 1975, a bomb exploded at lunchtime in the Fraunces Tavern located in Manhattan, New York City, killing four and wounded over 50. The bomb was placed by the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), a Puerto Rican terrorist group trained and financed by Havana. William “Guillermo” Morales, a bomb maker for the terrorist group who was later captured, escaped prison and fled the United States, and is harbored today in Cuba by the dictatorship. The group was responsible for over 130 bombings.
According to the FBI, one of the authors of this attack, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos “spent several years in Cuba in the 1960s and received training from the Government of Cuba as an intelligence officer.”