Tag: Daniel Ferrer

Noted Critic of Cuba Lambasts EU Aid to Cuba 

The Wall Street Journal’s columnist, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, has penned a severe criticism of the European Union’s financial aid to the island. This July, for example, the EU “sent E500,000 to Cuba, ostensibly  for ‘public health’” and its “Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP) for Cuba for 2021-2024 amounts to €91 million.”[1]

“Anna Fotyga, a former Polish minister of foreign affairs and a former member of the European Parliament, wrote in the European Conservative last week that it’s ‘estimated that the EU is currently funding 80 projects in Cuba at a cost of nearly 155 million euros. Every single one of these projects is run by organizations with close ties to the Raul Castro regime.’”

In short,”there is no such thing as an independent nongovernmental organization that receives money from abroad in Cuba. . . . Sending money to Cuba is sending money to the regime.”

Moreover, “European aid  . . . also goes against European interests because Havana is helping Russia in its effort to take Ukraine.”

“[B]ankrupt Havana is desperate for hard currency. First because its economy doesn’t grow. Second because it needs to maintain its repressive police state, at home and in Venezuela where the Cuban agents have infiltrated the military.”

“J11 (the day of mass arrests of Cuban protesters) “revealed the raw brutality the regime uses to keep the lid on popular discontent. Condemnation came from all quarters. Hollywood apologists went silent.”

“Dissident leader Daniel Ferrer is in a prison on the other end of the island. The website Ciber Cuba reported on Aug. 22 that the 56-year-old ‘is in a sealed cell, where hardly any air circulates’ and there is no daylight. He ‘perceives a constant noise within the cell’ and suffers “severe headaches, ringing in the ears, bleeding in the mouth, loss of vision, cramps, and momentary paralysis in his hands.”

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[1] O’Grady, The EU Funds Havana—and Helps Moscow, W.S.J. (Sept. 1, 2024); O’Grady’s bio.

 

Additional Cuban Political Prisoners Named by Amnesty International 

On August 26, Amnesty International five additional Cubans as political prisoners.[1]

All of them, said Amnesty, had been detained since 2015 and sentenced to one to five years for “public disorder,” “contempt” or “disorder” while two of them, according to relatives, had been badly beaten. Amnesty’s Americas Director, Erika Guevara-Rosas, said “For decades, Cuba has stifled freedom of expression and assembly by locking up people for their beliefs and opposition to the government. Over the years, the names of Cuba’s prisoners of conscience have changed, but the state’s tactics have stayed almost exactly the same.”

Amnesty added, “Sadly, we know that the five prisoners of conscience we have named today likely represent a tiny fraction of those behind bars for peacefully expressing their views. As the Cuban authorities continue to deny independent human rights monitors access to the country and its prisons, and because the state’s machinery of control maintains a profound climate of fear, there are serious barriers for Amnesty International to document such cases.”

Also on August 26, “the head of Cuba’s largest opposition group, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Jose Daniel Ferrer, said on Twitter that security forces had detained 15 activists and prevented dozens of others from reaching their local headquarters in order to prevent activities to celebrate the group’s eighth anniversary.”

Cuban Prisoners Defenders, which is based in Madrid and which has links to UNPACU, estimates there are at least 70 political prisoners on the island.

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[1] Amnesty Int’l, Cuba:  Amnesty International  names five new prisoners of conscience (Aug. 26, 2019); Reuters, Amnesty International Names Five New Political Prisoners in Cuba, N.Y. Times (Aug. 26, 2019).