To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Spanish Post Opinion Journalist threatened by secret police. Human Rights defender receives death threats. Cuban Americans back sanctions.
There are numerous important items on Cuba that are worthy of coverage in this CubaBrief and for the sake of completeness we will touch on them now, and follow up in greater detail over the next few weeks.
State Security wants to silence Cuban journalist Abraham Jimenez Enoa
On October 1, 2020 in a series of tweets, Cuban independent journalist, Abraham Jimenez Enoa, described his detention by police and state security agents:
“I just got home after being interrogated for almost five hours. Before that, when I arrived at the supposed police station where I was summoned, they stripped me nude to search me, I was handcuffed, and then they made me keep my head down as I was transported in a car with three plainclothes agents to the Villa Marista State Security office,” he said.
“There they told me that if I publish an article in The Washington Post again, I was going to be arrested for usurpation of functions because the newspaper is not accredited in Cuba, that they would start a war against my family and relatives, that all of this was because it was the U.S government that was backing me.”
“After many more threats, they took me back. They didn’t handcuff me, but they again made me hold my head down. This post is, above all, for those people who believe a dictatorial regime does not rule in Cuba,” he concludes.
On June 15, 2020 The Washington Post announced that they had "named Havana-based journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa a contributor to its Spanish-language page, Post Opinión, and the newspaper highlighted that "he is the co-founder of El Estornudo, Cuba’s first online magazine dedicated to narrative journalism."
On a regular basis Jiménez Enoa provided commentary focused on social and political issues in Cuba for Post Opinión over the past five months. Castro's repressive apparatus is seeking to sever this relationship with the above described measures. This crude censorship by the dictatorship needs to be denounced and this and other independent journalists defended.
On July 3, 2019 this independent Cuban journalist wrote an OpEd in The New York Times where he explained why he was not leaving Cuba. Abraham explained that "[t]hose of us who stay must maintain an open struggle against an authoritarian government," and he concluded, "the only way to change the future is to keep raising our voices and march against the long-lived revolutionary system."
The dictatorship's state security has a record of making and following through on these kinds of threats. It is for this reason that the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) has taken seriously the death threats made against former prisoner of conscience and human rights defender Librado Linares, and his family.
CFC filed a request for precautionary measures with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on September 30th on behalf of Librado Linares García, an engineer who heads Movimiento Cubano Reflexión in Cuba, in the wake of heightened death threats against him and his family; increased arbitrary arrests and attacks against his home; and the launching of a defamatory campaign against him. Spanish media reported on these developments, and CFC will continue to monitor this case.
Librado Linares and his wife Magaly.
“These death threats should not be taken lightly. Numerous Cuban opposition actors who have been threatened similarly have ended up dead while under custody of the regime in Havana, as was the case of Oswaldo Payá and of Laura Pollán, among many others. Librado Linares is an opposition leader who has been unjustly imprisoned and who has been the object of a relentless campaign against him this past year. We come before the IACHR seeking protection for his life as well as the lives of his wife and son,” stated John Suarez, the CFC’s executive director.
On October 2nd at 11:00am Guillermo Grenier, the principal investigator on the project and chair of the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, Florida International University presented "The Cuba Poll, which is the longest-running research project measuring Cuban American public opinion," and found increased support for a policy that puts maximum pressure on the Castro regime with the objective of achieving regime change in Cuba, and for the maintenance of economic sanctions. At the same time polls showed that Cuban Americans wanted policies that helped Cubans not the dictatorship.
Some have found the poll results to be contradictory, but CFC executive director John Suarez, who attended The Cuba Poll presentation online asked that if support for the rollback of the previous Administration's engagement policy by Cuban Americans polled was due to how it resulted in the "expansion of Castro's military in the Cuban economy pushing out private Cubans from space they had before the detente with the United States. Professor Grenier described it as a good hypothesis.
Center for a Free Cuba, September 30, 2020
CFC REQUESTS PROTECTION FROM THE OAS FOR THE LIFE OF LIBRADO LINARES GARCÍA WHOM CUBA HAS THREATENED WITH DEATH
The Center petitions the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to issue precautionary measures
Librado Linares received death threats from state security agents in Cuba
Center for a Free Cuba, September 30, 2020, Washington, DC. The Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) today filed a request for precautionary measures with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Librado Linares García, an engineer who heads Movimiento Cubano Reflexión in Cuba, in the wake of heightened death threats against him and his family; increased arbitrary arrests and attacks against his home; and the launching of a defamatory campaign against him.
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