Havana, Cuba, Mar 5, 2007 / 10:30 am
An independent journalist has published a bold article on the role that Communist Cuba’s Office of Religious Affairs has played in obstructing the faith.
According to Juan Gonzalez Febles of the popular blog on Cuban issues, “Religion in Revolution,” Cuba’s Office of Religious Affairs, under the leadership of Caridad Diego, carries out “activities against the natural rights of people and against the human, civil and political rights of the people of Cuba.”
Febles denounced the office for its policing and scrutinizing of the faith of Cubans, noting that it spies for the government on the activities of all religions confessions. “Members of the governing Communist Party and of the Union of Young Communists infiltrate religious organizations in order to learn of their activities and of their internal workings,” he wrote. Depending on the evaluation of Office, such organizations will either be “strangulated or tolerated.”
Febles said that Commissar Diego “is responsible for some confessions not finding a place or permission to build churches, houses of prayer or merely the space to carry out their activities. The police-like nature of the regime of Fidel and Raul Castro is most evident in the anti-social activities of the Office run by Diego,” he underscored.
“The scrutinizing eye of the dictatorship is never closed,” Febles warned. “The battle against the faith of the people continues. This is a very important part of the repressive determination of a military dictatorship,” he added.
“When Fidel Castro arrogantly declared in the 1970s that Cuba no longer had a relationship with the Queen of Heaven, he affirmed the totalitarian purpose of his regimen to intervene and condition the religious faith of the people,” Febles recalled.
Today, the Office of Religious Affairs “carries out this dirty work.” It also maintains contact with “pseudo religious organizations throughout the world that support the dictatorship,” he explained. “Some of these organizations are financed directly or indirectly by his office.”
When “Cuba is free and some of the archives are opened,” Febles emphasized, “all of these activities that are shrouded in secret today will undoubtedly come to light.”