Cuba Goes on Repression Spree to Keep Residents from July 4 Celebration

Cuba’s communist regime launched an intense repressive campaign against several journalists, activists, and dissidents to prevent them from attending the Fourth of July celebrations hosted by the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba-focused outlets reported on Thursday.

Some of the targeted individuals were reportedly either arrested or placed under surveillance by the Cuban police in “house arrest” conditions, preventing them from participating in the event.

The U.S. embassy in Havana reportedly held its annual 4th of July reception on Wednesday evening. The diplomatic event was hosted by chargé d’affaires Mike Hammer, the embassy’s top diplomat. The communist regime has repeatedly accused Hammer of being a “subversive agent” for traveling around Cuba and speaking with local residents and communities. The reception, a diplomatic event, is normally attended not just by activists and journalists, but also diplomatic representatives from other countries, members of local religious groups, and other guests.

Martí Noticias reported that officials besieged the homes of several Cuban activists and journalists invited to the event, deploying both the National Revolutionary Police Force (PNR) and state security on Wednesday to prevent them from attending.

The Cuban officials also unjustly arrested some of the invitees, including the leader of the Ladies in White dissident group, Berta Soler. Her husband, Angel Moya Acosta, a former political prisoner, shared on Facebook that Cuban police took Soler away while she was leaving the Ladies in White offices in Lawton, Havana.

Martí Noticias also confirmed that the Castro regime arrested activist Marthadela Tamayo and her partner, dissident rapper Osvaldo Navarro. Tamayo’s mother Adela González told the outlet that the couple was arrested as they left their apartment in Havana’s Cerro municipality. Also among those arbitrarily placed under house arrest were Cuban human rights activist Oscar Elias Biscet and his wife, anti-communist activist Elsa Morejón.

“Since the early hours there has been a political police operation on my block. In Lawton, Havana, Cuba. There is a plainclothes policeman and two with uniforms and a police car,” Morejón denounced on social media. “I’ve been able to find out from other journalists and dissidents that this is related to preventing attendance today at the reception for the 4th of July. Me and my husband Oscar Biscet are invited.”

Camila Acosta, a Havana-based journalist at the Spanish newspaper ABC, told Martí Noticias that she and her husband Ángel Santiesteban were also placed under house arrest and prevented from attending the 4th of July reception.

“In the years that I have been doing independent journalism for more than six years, I have been invited on several occasions to this activity. When there is an administration or representatives of the embassy who are not so confrontational, who are more dialogue-oriented, let’s put it this way, with the Cuban regime, they don’t put surveillance on us,” Acosta said.

“Now we have a new U.S. administration that has increased pressure on the Cuban regime, we have an ambassador who has met with almost the entire representation of civil society, not only opponents, but also with representatives of the Catholic Church, organizations of various kinds of Cuban society, who has been quite confrontational with the regime,” she continued. “So now they really want to prevent us from attending a commemoration like this. I think the ultimate goal is to isolate us, to also increase the pressure on them in some way.”

Similarly, Cuban journalist Reinaldo Escobar spoke with the independent outlet 14 y Medio and denounced that Cuban state security prevented him from leaving his house to attend a family lunch and the Fourth of July reception.

“I tried to leave, I was going to a lunch, but a State Security agent intercepted me and told me I couldn’t leave,” Escobar said, and stressed that the repression against the invitees constitutes a “lack of respect towards the American nation.”

“How would the ‘friends of Cuba in Washington’ react if the FBI prevented them from attending the July 26 festivities at the Cuban embassy?” he added.

July 26 is the anniversary of a terrorist attack conducted on the Moncada military barracks by Fidel Castro and his gang in 1953. The Communist Party celebrated July 26 as a substitute for May 20, the true Cuban Independence Day.

Hammer has been in charge of the U.S. embassy in Havana since November, which has not had an ambassador in over six decades after the Castro regime forcefully took control of the country. In recent weeks, the U.S. diplomat, who speaks Spanish fluently, has travelled around Cuba, visiting its towns and meeting with local communities, religious groups, dissidents, and families of the regime’s political prisoners.

The Castro regime formally condemned Hammer’s actions in a protest note filed in late May accusing Hammer of allegedly engaging in “interventionist” behavior and claiming — without evidence — that the U.S. diplomat is “inciting” Cubans to act against the communist regime. Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in June that the Castro regime does not rule out expelling Hammer from Cuba.

“With regards to the diplomat [Hammer], we are not going to rule out any action insofar as we think that what he is doing is dangerous, if we come to that conclusion — which we have not — and insofar as we pay close attention to what he is doing,” Fernández de Cossío told the Spanish news agency EFE.

14 y Medioreported last week that according to testimonies from members of the independent Cuban think-tank Coexistence Study Center (CEC), Cuban provincial residents were barred from attending the Fourth of July reception in Havana even if they were invited by the U.S. embassy due to the recent “counter-revolutionary” actions of Hammer.

Independent union leader Juan Alberto de la Nuez Ramírez and his brother Bárbaro, who reside in the town of Aguada de Pasajeros in the province of Cienfuegos, denounced to Martí Noticias on Thursday that Cuban law enforcement officials prevented them from traveling to Havana to participate in the reception. The Cuban officials told the siblings that Hammer is conducting “subversive activities” across Cuba, with the Fourth of July reception being one such activity.

“Two officers of the political police appeared, who threatened the driver [of the car they were going to board] and told him to get lost. He [the official] told us that we had been under surveillance for 24 hours and that, if we tried to leave the municipality, we would be in contempt of court for violating the police cordon,” de la Nuez Ramírez said.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.