Oh my, what a momentous occasion. Marking the end of 54 years of diplomatic hostilities, the Cuban flag was raised this morning at the new embassy (previously the Cuban consulate building) in Washington D.C. – Woo-hoo!
 
 

Wait – what? Has Cuba finally been liberated from its communist dictatorship?! Are the Castro brothers dead and buried? Have all political prisoners been freed?
 

Well, no. In fact, according to most unbiased accounts, liberation is the last thing that’s taking place in República de Cuba…

In Cuba, leading dissidents say the regime has sharply increased its repression and detained a growing number of its opponents since the December announcement that the two countries would work to re-establish diplomatic relations.

Source: Wall Street Journal via Marketwatch

 
Must be Obama’s magic touch. (Everything he touches turns to crap!)
 
Earlier this month (in an article that unfortunately has since been “archived” and is no longer available) Tom Shattuck at the Boston Herald asked the question all freedom-loving Americans want to know ~ Why are we rewarding murderous dictators? ~

For decades the American left has done its best to convince us that Cuba is a benign, progressive paradise that just needs to be unshackled from our tyranny. But the record is clear: The Castros are running a murderous dictatorship 90 miles south of Key West that has exported violence around the world […]
 
Raul Castro has made no meaningful concessions. In fact, the Castro regime wants the U.S. to “return to Cuba the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base” and “compensate the Cuban people for all the human and economic damages caused by the United States policies.”
 
And what do we, and more importantly the Cuban people, get? Zilch.

 
On the contrary, as this Washington Post editorial related ~

(I)n the first six months of Mr. Obama’s normalization of relations with the Communist regime, most indicators of human rights on the island have moved in the wrong direction.
 
Since December, there have been more than 3,000 political detentions in Cuba, including 641 in May and 220 on Sunday alone, according to dissident sources.
 
Most were accompanied by beatings; at least 20 detainees required medical treatment in May. After Cuba was invited for the first time to the Summit of the Americas in Panama, regime thugs attacked the civil society activists who also showed up.

 
As recently as last Thursday the PanAm Post reported ~

Just days away from the historic reopening of the US embassy in Havana, the Cuban regime shows no sign of slowing down on the number of human-rights activists they arrest. On Sunday, July 12, Cuban police detained at least 120 dissidents, including 40 members of the Ladies in White, while a protest in solidarity took place in Miami.

 
For 13 consecutive Sundays, Cuban authorities have arrested members of the Ladies in White dissident group either before or after traditional mass at the Santa Rita church in Havana.

The Ladies in White are a group of wives and relatives of human rights defenders, librarians, independent journalists and others who have been imprisoned for political dissent. The women regularly hold peaceful protests. And, as the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba explains ~

They have sent letters to foreign governments as well as Cuban officials, appealing on behalf of their loved ones unfairly sentenced to prison. The Cuban Ladies in White ask for the release of all political prisoners. Though threatened daily, these women have stood strong against the Cuban government and opposition. They remain committed to peaceful advocacy but refuse to back down or give in.

Tragically, in this island “paradise,” even the Catholic Church is communist. This story from Breitbart reports that one church in the central Cuban city of Cienfuegos has actually banned the Ladies in White from attending mass! ~

Despite overt targeting on the part of Cuban authorities, Catholic officials have insisted on defending the Cuban government against their congregants. In an interview on Spanish radio this month, Archbishop of Havana Jaime Ortega made the perplexing claim that Cuba no longer houses political prisoners. 😯 “When Pope Benedict came [to Cuba], there was a pardon of the common prisoners, because there are no political prisoners left in Cuba anymore,” he alleged.
 
Cuban activists have reacted with horror to Ortega’s remarks, particularly in light of a scheduled visit to the island by Pope Francis himself in September. The visit, said 17-year political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez, will be “a very dangerous visit, because it will serve to legitimize the regime like never before.”
 
 
Berta Soler, head of the Ladies in White group, responded with similar outrage, given that Ortega’s remarks render the families of the women in her group nonexistent. “We find it deplorable that Cardinal [Ortega] uses the same rhetoric as the Cuban government. The Catholic Church should not be biased; it should protect and shelter every suffering, defenseless person,” she said in a statement.

Not that Obama or his merry band of leftists – including the mainstream media – will notice or care, but there are a couple voices of strong dissent speaking out against our government’s reckless encouragement of dictators. Cuban-American lawmakers denounced the embassy reopening ~

“Allowing the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington is nothing but another indefensible capitulation by the Obama administration to an avowed enemy of the U.S.,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), with Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) and Carlos Curbelo (R., Fla.).

 
And, from the son of a Cuban refugee, and the guy who should be our next president…

“President Obama announced today he is continuing his policy of unconditional surrender to Fidel and Raul Castro by rewarding one of the most violently anti-American regimes on the planet with an embassy and an official representative of our government. I, for one, want the Cuban people to know that there are still those who stand with them, and who know the Castros for what they are.
 
I will hold any nominee President Obama sends to the Senate to be ambassador to Cuba, and I will work to disapprove any new funds for embassy construction in Havana, unless and until the President can demonstrate that he has made some progress in alleviating the misery of our friends, the people of Cuba.”
~ Senator Ted Cruz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Related:

‘A Victory for Our People’: Communist Icons Take over D.C. for Cuban Flag Raising ~

Granma, the official propaganda outlet for the Cuban government, is treating the ceremony as a victory for the communist revolution. In an article quoting the various members of the delegation to D.C., a number of them described the flag-raising ceremony as analogous to a military victory against America […]
 
(Raúl) Castro has vowed to offer the United States “nothing in return” for diplomacy, least of all the release of prisoners of conscience or an end to the oppressive policies that ban any political activity not controlled by the Communist Party.

Cuba: Catholic Church Bans Relatives of Political Prisoners from Mass
Dictators of a feather – Obama cozies up to Communist Cuba