Free Cuba Now!

To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.

 

Cuban dictatorship’s blockade on humanitarian assistance. In Cuba, a container of humanitarian aid sent by UK religious org is taken.

 

Havana calls the United States economic embargo a “blockade.” This is not true as the State Department (and U.S. – Cuba trade statistics over the past 25 years) demonstrate. It is a lame excuse for the Cuban dictatorship’s failure. 

The current economic debacle in Cuba is primarily due to 65 years of communist central planning under a totalitarian government. There is no rule of law, and decisions are neither obvious or transparent in Cuba. This includes the arbitrary confiscation or acceptance of humanitarian assistance, as demonstrated in four cases over the last three decades.

Most chicken eaten in Cuba is imported from the United States, not grown in Cuba.

Confiscated humanitarian aid sent from the UK during the present crisis

According to a report from CubaNet, the Cuban regime confiscated a shipment of humanitarian aid sent to the Evangelical Church of Cuba “En Jesucristo Libres” by the Christian organization International Aid Trust, based in London, England, due to alleged “irregularities.” 

The confiscated container contained “a power generator, 15 Singer sewing machines, three electric lawnmowers, food, clothing, shoes, household appliances, mattresses, musical instruments (guitars, ukuleles, violins, flutes, tambourines, keyboards, electric drums, wired microphones, toys, wheelchairs, crutches, and walkers).

A proforma invoice (or proforma facture) is a document that is used to confirm the details of a transaction between two parties before the actual goods or services are provided.

 

 

The shipment was sent in February 2024 with donations from religious individuals in the United Kingdom. It arrived at the port of Mariel and is still there. According to sources from the receiving Church, it followed Cuban customs regulations. 

Reverend Bernard Cocker, founder and chief executive of International Aid Trust, wrote to the United Kingdom’s ambassador in Cuba, Mr. George Hollingberry, on June 4, 2024, requesting assistance to “establish constructive cooperation with Cuban officials and effectively implement humanitarian projects for the benefit of the Cuban people.

In a message to the religious organization’s directors, a communist bureaucrat named Ignacio Valdivia ‘Farrill claimed that “the confiscation of the container is a sovereign decision of the Cuban State,” and that “there is an approved procedure that consists of goods entering the country being accepted or not based on their origin, characteristics, and objectives. When certain of these characteristics do not match the acceptable requirements, the State has the authority to confiscate, as it did in this case.” 

 

The donation, valued at $6,552 dollars, including shipping costs, had “many inconsistencies in this import procedure by those who carried out the procedures,” but Mr. Valdivia’Farril failed to enumerate what the alleged inconsistencies were, and reiterated the firmness of the decision to confiscate, which they believed was justified “with or without documents.”

Confiscated humanitarian aid during the COVID pandemic in 2020 

In May 2020, the  Pan American Foundation for Democracy, in collaboration with the City of Miami, called on all Cuban residents of South Florida and the United States to send donations to  provide humanitarian assistance to Cubans on the island, which was experiencing a crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

 

Humanitarian supplies were collected in the Mana Wynwood Convention Center on Saturday, May 16, 2020, and delivered to the the Port of Marielin Cuba, but the Cuban dictatorship confiscated the aid, which never reached Cubans in need.

 

Two leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba, Reverend Joel Ortega Dopico, the Executive Secretary and Rev Antonio Santana Hernández, the president criticized the efforts of Rosa María Payá to get the much needed humanitarian assistance to Cubans on the island, providing cover to the actions of the Cuban dictatorship. Both are members of the Cuban Communist Party.

Drop off and collection point for humanitarian assistance for Cuba in May 2020 in Miami, FL.

Castro rejected U.S. offer of millions in humanitarian aid after two devastating hurricanes in 2008.

Fidel Castro turned down an offer of humanitarian assistance from the United States a dozen years earlier after the island was struck by two severe storms.

Cuba was devastated in 2008 by hurricanes Ike and Gustav, but has “too much dignity” to accept $5 million in aid from the United States, Fidel Castro said in a column published on September 17, 2008, reported Reuters at the time. Castro claimed that “If instead of five million they were one billion, the answer would be the same.”

“The United States first offered $100,000 to Cuba with the possibility of more if Cuba allowed a U.S. team to do its own damage assessment. The offer was eventually raised to $5 million, without the request to do an assessment” said Reuters in the same report.

Despite public rejection of U.S. assistance and misleading allegations about the U.S. embargo, Havana purchased US goods worth 711.5 million dollars in 2008.  Cash and carry trade had been initiated in 2000, but the anti-embargo rhetoric of the Cuban dictatorship remained the same.

A GOES-12 infrared satellite image provided by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, Calif., showing the status of Hurricane Gustav over Cuba at approximately 12:45pm EST on Aug. 30, 2008.

Havana held up humanitarian aid following a devastating hurricane in 1996.

In another crisis 12 years earlier, following an act of state terrorism by Havana that drew international censure, the Cuban exile community sought to assist the Cuban people. 

Eight months after the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, following Hurricane Lili’s devastating impact on Cuba the United States government in October 1996 waived a then existing ban on direct flights from Cuba for a Catholic Church charity to send a planeload of aid to help victims of the hurricane.Ulises Cabrera in an article published by Cubanet on October 23, 1996 described the grim situation on the island.

”To the hundreds of thousands of homeless Cubans now there’s a fresh crop. Hunger worsens by the day. The sugar industry and the rest of the economy will have even worse results. The government has informed us that they have used up the State’s reserves for emergencies, therefore we will be subjected to even greater misery amidst the misery, and even the faint hope that some fools cling to, will vanish.” 

30 tons of assistance arrived in Cuba, but were held by regime officials for over a week and not sent to impacted areas. On November 2, 1996 the Cuban dictatorship said that it “was not accepting part of a planeload of food aid for victims of Hurricane Lili sent by Cuban-Americans because packages had been adorned with political, ”counter-revolutionary” slogans.”

According to then Father Thomas Wenski, “some packages were adorned with messages such as ”exile” and ‘love can do everything.’ Wenski reiterated on Saturday that the donors had not meant any harm by putting such lettering on the packages.”

By User Storm05 on en.wikipedia – http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/pub/goes/961018.lili.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1056949

 

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