Christian Human Rights Activist exposed to constant state of terror.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva

Cuban human rights activist, Juan Carlos González Leiva, is suffering constant and systematic acts of provocation and threats to his person and his home by Cuban State Security.

On May 24, 2006, the activist and his father were awakened suddenly when a huge stone was violently thrown against the gate of the house on Honorato del Castillo #154 between República and Cuba in the city of Ciego de Avila. Cuba.

According to testimony by Juan Carlos, a post of military personnel that constantly keeps a vigil on him has been established facing his house. When he walks through the streets of Ciego de Avila, State Security agents threaten to beat him up, they shout insults at him, and they chant pro-governmental slogans at him, humiliating him publicly.

Juan Carlos González Leiva was incarcerated without a trial and suffered physical and psychological tortures for 26 months for having peacefully demonstrated along with other members of the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights at a hospital in Ciego de Avila where an independent journalist who had been brutally beaten by forces of State Security was taken. He was accused before a tribunal of committing common crimes in a trial on April 26, 2004, and had to serve the rest of a four-year sentence under house arrest.

The Cuban Foundation of Human Rights is a peaceful, pro-democracy organization that struggles for the development of a civil society and the defense of human rights in Cuba. It has delegates all across Cuba and has created agencies of independent press and has established more than 40 independent libraries.

May 29, 2006

Cuban government accuses the Cuban Christian Movement.

Report on Human Rights violations in Cuba (2005-2006) .Cuban Foundation of Human Rights. Ciego de Ávila, Cuba.

The members of the Cuban Christian Movement suffer similar acts. The government accuses them as being counterrevolutionaries and threatens them with prison, telling them that they will all pay, along with the pastor and president of the Cuban Christian Movement, Delmídet Hidalgo López. This institution has its national headquarters in Batey Ognara in the municipality of Primero de Enero in Ciego de Avila.

Pastor Luis Enrique Cervantes Leiva was evicted from his home by the Department of Housing. This eviction took place in neighborhood of Vicente in Ciego de Avila, and when Pastor Cervantes Leiva protested at the provincial Popular Poder, staying there with his family, he was physically beaten and arrested by officials of State Security and the government. He remained there for several days in the Police Station of State Security in Ciego de Avila, threatened with incarceration and open cause.

Pastor Adventist Arnaldo Expósito Zaldívar from Holguín in Banes was beaten by groups of governmental paramilitaries in plain view in public during the first days of March. The attackers ran over him with a motorcycle and then grabbed him by the neck and punched him several times. This happened on March 2, 2006.

Pastor Jesús Manuel Rosabal Arencibia was jailed at the Police Station in Matanzas around the middle of 2005 for holding a Christ-centered convention of his religious denomination that took place against the will of the government in San José de Las Lajas in Havana Province. Pastor Rosabal Arencibia is currently in a delicate state of health, suffering from peripheral neuritis.

The Cuban authorities place all sorts of obstacles on the preaching of the gospel, restricting preaching exclusively to religious temples and maintaining closed access to radio, television, and other media. They repress all preaching in parks, streets, and public plazas, as well as restricting the distribution of tracts and religious material from house to house. The opening of houses of worship and new churches is extremely limited and selective, and a policy of seizing houses of worship and religious temples is maintained, even when they have been built in accordance to the law. Agents of State Security keep watch on religious groups, and if the pastors or priests express criticism of the government, they are visited by an official on the provincial level of the Communist Party of Cuba who threatens them severely.

Prisoners have been denied religious assistance on numerous occasions, and they are prohibited in many cases from even reading the Bible.

May 2, 2006