I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG: Free Cuba Now!

Monday, December 23, 2024

Free Cuba Now!

To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms

>>Make your Year-End contribution HERE<<

Dear Friend,

When you donate to the Center for a Free Cuba, you become a force for human rights in Cuba. Your tax-deductible contribution will assist victims of repression, engage in advancing human-rights-centered policies for democratic change, and expose the crimes of the communist dictatorship in the island.

Plus, if you contribute today, your donation’s impact will be DOUBLED thanks to the generous match provided by one of our board members.

With the help of people like you, in 2024 CFC was able to send medications to the families of imprisoned dissidents, as well as supply smartphones, laptops, and facilitate internet connectivity to enable the flow of information into and out of the island.

As a result of your support, we were also able to continue our mission to denounce the crimes of the Cuban dictatorship, its ongoing sponsorship of terrorism, and advocate for a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights and political and economic freedoms. The following are some highlights over 2024.

In January, CFC's executive director co-authored an article with Joseph Humire published by The Heritage Foundation outlining why both "Cuba and Iran are still state sponsors of terrorism."

On February 22, 2024, activists from the Patmos Institute, Cuba Decide, and the Center held a silent vigil at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC, in honor of Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales, who were murdered by agents of the Cuban dictatorship in 1996 and Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died after years of torture in 2010.

WUSA9 referenced CFC in their story about Washington Metropolitan residents' solidarity with Cubans during protests in Eastern Cuba in March 2024.

CFC’s program officer was interviewed by Scripps News on unfolding protests in Cuba, and provided context for their readership on the need for regime change in the island.

The Center held a press conference on March 26th at Florida International University, where Cuban repression victims, including Rufina Velázquez and Regis Iglesias, testified. Activists called for international boycotts against the dictatorship in solidarity with the Cuban people.

The executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba participated in a panel discussion on "Cuba: Terrorismo, narcotráfico y criminalidad" [ Cuba: Terrorism, drug trafficking and criminality] by Spain-based Instituto Juan Mariana, discussing the Cuban dictatorship's decades-long involvement in the international narcotics trade.

Cuba was removed from the list of countries not cooperating in the fight against terrorism by the Biden State Department on May 15, 2024. Havana has a history of harboring, sponsoring, and training terrorists. The case of bomber and terrorist William Morales presented an opportunity to see if Havana was cooperating. An American victim of Cuban sponsored terrorism, Joseph Connor, sent a letter to Secretary Antony Blinken requesting Morales' return to the United States for justice. CFC, with Mr. Connor’s approval, made the letter public. Morales remains in Cuba.

CFC’s president, Ambassador Otto J. Reich, on May 16, 2024 hosted the screening of two documentaries: The Havana Cartel, and Terrorism: The Cuban Connection followed by a panel discussion at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora.

In an OpEd published in the Miami Herald, CFC provided a brief historyof the Cuban dictatorship’s spying on and harm done to the United States, providing context in the aftermath of U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha’s decades long betrayal of the United States.

The Cuban Embassy planned to hold an event on June 3rd at a local bookstore in Washington DC to spread the regime’s propaganda. CFC raised questions of reciprocity, and the ability of US officials to host the same type of event in Havana. Two days prior to the proposed date of the event, the Center distributed a flyer that asked “Beautiful, but what about Cubans?” that presented facts about the dictatorship, and the suffering endured by Cubans. The event was cancelled.

In July, the Center co-hosted two demonstrations, one in front of the Cuban Embassy on July 11th, on the third anniversary of the 11J protests, and a second at Florida International University on July 13th in remembrance of the massacre of 37 men, women, and children by agents of the Cuban dictatorship on the 30th anniversary of the "13 de marzo" tugboat massacre.

The Canadian journal Politics and Rights Review published an analysis of the “13 de marzo” tugboat massacre, authored by CFCplacing it in historical context.

CFC's executive director co-authored an article in the Miami Heraldwith Regis Iglesias of the Christian Liberation movement on the nonviolent resistance in Venezuela in the aftermath of the July 28th elections in the country, and mass protests that erupted when Maduro claimed victory, after having lost in a landslide.

The Center expressed concern over Cuba's efforts to preserve Maduro's rule in Venezuela, including supporting his election theft, cracking down on the pro-democracy movement, and torturing dissidents. The executive director later wrote an OpEd in the Miami Herald, calling for an end to Cuban interference in Venezuela, and a second in The Washington Times calling for an international boycott.

On September 24, 2024, the Center monitored the trial of Yeris Curbelo Aguilera, an independent journalist in Guantánamo. The trial lasted two hours and resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Aguilera was sent to Guantánamo Combinado Prison by State Security. CFC contacted international human rights organizations to report irregularities in the trial.

CFC called out Havana’s twisted priorities, allowing the electrical grid to collapse, leaving Cubans in the dark, while building luxury high rises with generators for foreign tourists, and the regime elite, and got this message to residents in the Washington metropolitan area.

CFC set the record straight on the Obama Administration’s 2014 failed thaw with the Cuban dictatorship, and provided context on how this was not the first such effort, reviewing efforts by the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton Administrations, and a partial history of Havana’s sponsorship of terrorism in the United States, and against Israel.

The Center produced three short documentaries: Terrorism: The Cuban Connection, Cuba's Gulag: A Brief Picture of a Prison Island, and The Myth of the Cuban Embargo in 2024 on the criminal nature of the Cuban dictatorship, and its false narratives.

Help us to continue this work in 2025.

Please donate via Paypal on our website, or kindly send your check in the name of the Center for a Free Cuba to: Center for a Free Cuba at 417 West Broad St., Suite 204 Falls Church, VA 22046.

Thank you for your generosity and support.