On January 15, 2024, the Cuban NGO Prisoners Defenders announced that the Cuban Government had failed to respond to requests for information from five U.N. rapporteurs on the following subjects: (1) freedom of religion or belief, Nazila Ghanea; (2) promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan; (3) rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule; (4) minority issues, Nicolas Levrat, and (5) arbitrary detention. [1]
The requests focused on the regime’s alleged repression and harassment against 13 Cuban religious associations and leaders. Here is information on some of these subjects:
- Ifá priest Loreto Hernandez Garcia, who has been “systematically detained and interrogated from 2011 to the present” and who in 2022 was sentenced to seven years in prison for the crimes of public disorder and contempt, due to his participation in the anti-government protests known as 11J. In prison he has suffered several health problems.
- Imam Abu Duyanah (Niovel Alexander Tamayo Formén) has been “subjected to house arrest, as well as monitoring, harassment, summonses, threats and arbitrary arrests due to his activity as a religious leader… detained… when he participated in a role of spiritual accompaniment in a peaceful demonstration,”
- Other religious people persecuted, threatened and prevented from propagating their beliefs are the Catholic priest José Castor Álvarez Devesa and evangelical pastors Elier Muir Ávila and Minerva Burgos López.
The subjects of the requested information were (a) the specific cases mentioned in the report; (b) “the measures adopted to guarantee freedom of religion or belief in Cuba, as well as its exercise in conditions of full freedom and security for all religious communities and confessions, without facing harassment, threats or reprisals for exercising such right;” (c) “the measures adopted to guarantee the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in Cuba, especially with regard to the existence and registration of groups of a religious nature, the establishment of their centers of worship and the celebration of their rites and ceremonies;” (d) an explanation “how the action procedures of the Office of Attention to Religious Affairs guarantee the creation and registration of religious associations under objective parameters provided for in the legislation; and (e) measures to create favorable conditions for people belonging to religious minorities in the country.”
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[1] The regime ignores a UN request for information on violations of religious freedom in Cuba, Diario de Cuba (Jan. 15, 2023); Prisoners Defenders, The UN accuses the Cuban regime of the government’s pattern of institutional religious control and repression against Islam and the Catholic, Protestant and Yoruba religions (Jan. 15, 2024).