To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Cuban dictatorship celebrates terrorist act that led to Cuba's communist captivity. United States observes Captive Nations Week.
While Havana collaborates with the Russian empire, others seek to be free of it.
This past week in Cuba was set aside by the Cuban dictatorship to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks that began a process that ended in the imposition of communist rule in Cuba. Two Op-Eds published in the Miami Herald addressed this tragic legacy.
John Suarez, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, in his July 27, 2023 Op-Ed "In the 1950s, Cubans soon learned the Moncada attack was nothing to celebrate," provided a historical overview and context of the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks.
The men and women who battled Batista’s dictatorship, many of them in Castro’s July 26th Movement, hoped for the restoration of Cuba’s 1940 Constitution and its republic. This is what Fidel promised in his “History will Absolve Me” speech at his trial for the Moncada assault. They got a totalitarian dictatorship, instead. They then fought Castro for six years in a civil war with substantially higher casualties on both sides than during the struggle against Batista. About 400 Soviet advisers assisted Castro in crushing the resistance. The opposition ended up in exile, imprisoned or executed.
Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, and author of “Cuba: the Doctrine of the Lie”, in his July 27th Op-Ed "Communist regime in Cuba is not ‘accidentally’ authoritarian; it is ‘intentionally totalitarian’" and provides an excellent analysis on the regime's nature on the international scene.
The Communist regime in Cuba is not accidentally authoritarian. In fact, it is intentionally totalitarian. It did not wander into the desert of dictatorship, seeking the oasis of social justice. From its very inception, it has relentlessly sought to overthrow the rules-based international order led by the United States and Europe. In pursuit of this, it has repeatedly rebuffed successive attempts at engagement by U.S. administrations. What’s more, these attempts have only emboldened the regime to seek more aggressively to counter American interests and values, including direct challenges to U.S. national security.
In the week prior to the Moncada celebrations by the communist regime in Havana, and their international networks a very different observance was held. President Biden on July 14th signed a proclamation declaring July 16 through July 22, 2023, Captive Nations Week, in which " support for brave people around the world who are standing up to oppressive rule and striving for greater freedom, greater dignity, and greater democracy" was reaffirmed. He also provided some background on its history, and provided context for the present day.
"When President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed the first Captive Nations Week in 1959, he appealed directly to the hundreds of millions living behind the Iron Curtain — firm in the knowledge that authoritarianism could never erase a people’s love of liberty. Over the coming decades, courageous women and men joined together to demand their fundamental freedoms and human rights. But the battle against oppression did not end with the Cold War. The forces of autocracy continue to reassert themselves. In Iran, Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and elsewhere, we are seeing an all too familiar contempt for the rule of law, for democracy, for human rights, and even for the truth itself."
On July 19th the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation held a Captive Nations Summit. CFC's executive director moderated the third panel " Global Voices of Freedom - Key to enduring resilience" with Grace Jo. Grace from North Korea, Prof. Valdas Rakutis, from Lithuania, and Sophie Luo Shengchun, from China. Introducing the panel and providing context to the subject cited a Cuban man of letters who had recently passed.
Cuban exile, writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner passed away on June 30, 2023 at age 80. He was also a victim of Communism, forced to flee his country to avoid a long and unjust prison sentence by the Castro regime. His life is an example of enduring resilience. In 2011, he said the following to the George W. Bush Presidential Center: “There is a secret family of victims of totalitarianism, which can be the families in Burma or the victims in North Korea or in Iran or in Cuba. We feel a special bond with them because we belong to the same family.” This is also true for our brothers and sisters in Lithuania, China and others who are suffering, or suffered under communism.
The last day of Captive Nations Week this year, July 22nd, coincided with the day in 2012 when Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed by agents of the Cuban government.
The full event is available below on Youtube.
The Moncada celebrations in Cuba extol an act of terrorism that resulted in the imposition of communist despotism that continues today while Captive Nations Week celebrates the liberation of countries from communist rule, and calls for solidarity with those peoples still captive under totalitarian rule. In stark contrast the Cuban dictatorship is sending “volunteers” to join the Russian army and the Wagner mercenaries in waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.
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