CUBA: USCIRF Condemns the Expulsion of Félix Yuniel Llerena López from the University of Cuba

USCIRF Calls on the University to Reinstate Félix as a Student and for the Castro Government to Cease Its Harassment of Him

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemns the latest harassment of Félix Yuniel Llerena López by the government of Cuba.  He traveled to the United States last month – his first trip ever outside of Cuba -- to discuss the restrictive and repressive religious climate in Cuba. Félix was immediately detained and questioned on his return and forced to sign a pre-arrest warrant for public disorder.  Now the University of Cuba – an arm of the Castro regime -- has expelled this promising young religious freedom leader.

Félix visited USCIRF as part of a delegation including Reverend Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, Raudel García Bringas, and Rev. Yiorvis Bravo Denis.  They discussed Cuban religious freedom conditions with USCIRF’s Chair, Father Thomas J. Reese, S.J., Vice Chairman Daniel Mark and Commissioners Kristina Arriaga, Jackie Wolcott, Tenzin Dorjee, and Sandra Jolley.

“I call on the Cuban government to immediately cease its harassment of Félix Llerena and his fellow religious freedom advocates,” stated USCIRF Chair Thomas J. Reese, S.J. “We find it most disconcerting that the Cuban government took these actions immediately after Félix visited USCIRF. They must stop these repressive actions and instruct the university to admit him immediately.”

In USCIRF’s 2017 Annual Report released last month, the Commission stated that the “Cuban government actively limits, controls, and monitors religious practice through a restrictive system of laws and policies, surveillance, and harassment.” The report also highlights that Cuba uses policies of “short-term detentions of religious leaders, demolition of churches, and threats to confiscate churches.”  The Commission again placed Cuba on its Tier 2 list of countries that have serious religious freedom violations characterized by at least one of the elements of “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations perpetrated or tolerated by the government.

“USCIRF has been in touch with the U.S. State Department, NGOs active in Cuba, as well as other individuals inside and outside of Cuba to monitor the situation for young Félix,” said Chair Reese. “When he met with us, he described a ‘recent wave of religious-related university expulsions’ and said he feared that this fate awaited him upon his return.  Félix added, however, that he intended to stay true to his faith and continue to push for religious freedom in his homeland.  He now suffers the fate of many others in his country.”

To view the full USCIRF 2017 Annual Report visit www.USCIRF.gov. The Cuba chapter may be found here and the Spanish translation here.

To interview a Commissioner please contact [email protected] or John D. Lawrence, Director of Communications ([email protected]/+1-202-786-0611).

By former USCIRF Commissioners Thomas J. Reese and Daniel Mark

On April 26, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report on conditions for religious liberty abroad.

Among the countries we reported on is Russia, where just this month, the nation’s highest court issued a chilling decision allowing the government to ban all operations of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This ruling, horrifying on its own, was the latest dramatic example of how violations of religious freedom have worsened in recent years. From administrative harassment to arbitrary imprisonment to extrajudicial killings, Russia’s government continues to perpetrate violations in a systematic, ongoing, and egregious way.

The United States needs to send an unmistakable message. We urge the U.S. State Department to do so by designating Russia a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.  We should recognize President Vladimir Putin’s government for what it is — one of the most serious violators of religious freedom in the world.

For years, Russia has vigorously applied its anti-extremism law, with Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses often targeted. The law, which does not require the use or threat of violence for prosecution, is so vague as to permit the persecution of virtually any kind of expression — religious, political, or otherwise — that the government opposes. The law has enabled authorities to ban thousands of items from both of these groups, including a Jehovah’s Witnesses children’s book, My Book of Bible Stories.

A year ago, the Kremlin began deploying that law against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in an appalling new way. In March 2016, the Ministry of Justice warned the Jehovah’s Witnesses that the organization was in danger of losing its legal right to exist in Russia due to questions of “extremism.” Subsequently, authorities were captured on videotape planting banned “extremist” material in prayer halls belonging to the Witnesses. Based on this so-called evidence, the Ministry of Justice suspended all activity of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

And now, with Russia’s Supreme Court having recently ruled for the Justice Ministry, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are legally abolished in Russia. It is the first time that Russia has legally banned a centrally administered religious organization.

This is but one example — though a stark one, to be sure — of how Russia’s religious freedom conditions have gone from bad to worse. Other examples range from an anti-blasphemy statute enacted in 2013 to the Yarovaya amendments enacted last July. including a measure targeting groups that place a premium on sharing their faith with others. The measure makes it illegal to preach, teach, and publish religious content anywhere other than government-approved sites. More brutally, in the North Caucasus, Russian security forces regularly carry out arrests, kidnappings, disappearances, and killings of people suspected of links to “nontraditional” Islam.

Moreover, Russia has spent the last three years imposing its homegrown religious repression on Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

It has used its anti-extremism laws as a pretext for persecuting Crimean religious minorities, and authorities have conducted repeated raids on Muslim homes and mosques. In September, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the banning of the Mejlis, the representative body of the Muslim Crimean Tatars, as extremist.

Pro-Russian authorities also have harassed Crimean churches that operate independently of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, which the Kremlin has made into a de facto state church, forcing some leaders to leave the peninsula. In January 2016, authorities ordered the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Kyiv Patriarchate to vacate its last prayer space in Crimea’s capital of Simferopol, and in December they shuttered a Pentecostal church in Bakhchisaray.

Similar abuses have been visited on parts of eastern Ukraine since Russian-backed groups conquered some territory and created separatist enclaves. These forces have seized Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Jehovah’s Witness houses of worship and schools, and perpetrated church attacks, abductions, and assaults on Kiev Patriarchate and Protestant representatives.

Clearly, Russia has vastly escalated and expanded its practice of religious repression. The United States government should respond, shining a spotlight on Moscow’s behavior. A “country of particular concern” designation would be a good place to begin.

The state of affairs for international religious freedom is worsening in both the depth and breadth of violations. The blatant assaults have become so frightening—attempted genocide, the slaughter of innocents, and wholesale destruction of places of worship—that less egregious abuses go unnoticed or at least unappreciated. Many observers have become numb to violations of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines this right to include freedom to change one’s religion or belief, and freedom—either alone or in community with others and in public or private—to manifest one’s religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.

A year ago, then Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was committing genocide. This declaration marked the first time since Darfur in 2004 when a U.S. administration proclaimed an ongoing campaign as genocide. ISIS seeks to bring its barbaric worldview to reality through violence and genocide cloaked in a distortion of Islam. While the world has come to know ISIS and expects no better, there are members of the United Nations Security Council whose assaults on religious freedom are less violent, but no less insidious. On April 20, the Russian Supreme Court issued a ruling banning the existence of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in that country. Their right to religious freedom is being eliminated thoroughly—and yet “legally” under Russian law. Russia’s continued use of its “anti-extremism” law as a tool to curtail religious freedoms is one of the reasons USCIRF has recommended for the first time that Russia be designated as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act for particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

The right to the freedom of religion or belief is an encompassing right that can be taken away directly or indirectly, and thus: You cannot have religious freedom without:
. . . the freedom of worship;
. . . the freedom of association;
. . . the freedom of expression and opinion;
. . . the freedom of assembly;
. . . protection from arbitrary arrest and detention;
. . . protection from interference in home and family; and
. . . You cannot have religious freedom without equal protection under the law.

And on it goes.

Many violations of religious freedom do not appear to be aimed at religion. Violations can seem mundane, such as requirements for building permits (to establish/repair places of worship) or less mundane, such as restrictions on association (constraining the right to worship). Nonetheless, they are violations of international religious freedoms and they are increasing in numbers and frequency.

USCIRF also finds that many restrictions on religious freedoms are done under the guise of protecting national security. However, this “securitization” of religion is a double-edged sword.

The challenge of supporting religious freedom and enhancing security can be seen in both Bahrain and Egypt. During the year, the Bahraini government has increasingly cracked down on the religious freedom of its majority-Shi’a Muslim population, yet the U.S. Administration is lifting human rights conditions on the sale of weapons to Bahrain. Egypt, on the other hand, is working toward positive progress on certain aspects of religious freedom, yet the overall state of human rights remains dismal. Outreach by the government to religious minority groups, such as the Copts, is needed and positive, but has drawn the attention of extremists, such as ISIS, that are committing violence against such groups. Efforts by the government that erode the public’s ability to associate freely and express themselves inevitably curtail broader religious freedoms and send mixed, if not contradictory, messages.

Blasphemy laws are yet another example of governments using laws as a tool for restricting religious freedom under the purported need to protect religions from defamation. In more than 70 countries worldwide, from Canada to Pakistan, governments employ these laws, which lead to grave human rights violations, embolden extremists, and are, in the long run, counterproductive to national security.

State-sponsored or condoned oppression of the freedom of religion or belief is only part of the challenge. Non-state actors represent a less official yet no less virulent threat to such freedoms. The 2016 Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act requires the president to identify non-state entities engaged in severe religious freedom abuses and deem them “entities of particular concern,” or EPCs. This directive was both appropriate and overdue. Entities that control territory and have significant political control within countries can be even more oppressive than governments in their attacks on religious freedom. In this report, USCIRF recommends that ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al-Shabaab in Somalia all be designated EPCs.

USCIRF advocates for religious freedom through its policy recommendations to the president, the secretary of state, and Congress. USCIRF also strengthens religious freedom advocacy networks abroad through education and outreach, including:

1.     Collaborating with the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief;

2.     Highlighting the complexities and synergies between the rights of women and girls and freedom of religion or belief; and

3.     Advocating on behalf of religious prisoners of conscience by raising awareness of the violations of their freedom of religion or belief.

Religious freedom, at its core, is the right of individuals and communities to manifest their religion or belief, and is a basic human right. Protecting that right falls to each and every one of us, requiring people from all countries, political views, and faiths to come together to fight religious persecution and work to protect religious freedom for all.

This article was taken from the introduction to USCIRF’s 2017 Annual Report, released on April 26, 2017.