14ymedio, Madrid, 29 December 2023 — The Cuban regime is a “threat” to security not only for citizens within the Island but for all democracies. This warning comes from six former dissident officers of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior in a letter that they made public this Friday through the organization Cuba Archive on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Revolution.
Signed by Orlando Brito, José Cohen, Rafael del Pino, Enrique García, Alcibíades Hidalgo and Máximo Omar Ruiz, former senior commanders of the Security Forces, who defected and went into exile between 1987 and 2011, the missive warns that the Cuban intelligence services have a large number of agents spread all over the planet “whose alleged loyalties do not arouse suspicion” and that they aim to “serve the interests of the Cuban dictatorship.”
“They operate within their governments, parliaments, media, universities, churches, cultural institutions, companies and other sectors of society, even at the highest levels,” they say, based on the fact that, as former officers of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior, the Government and the Communist Party of Cuba, they know “from the inside their objectives and methodologies.”
Thus, they point out that what happened in recent years with the spies Víctor Manuel Rocha – arrested just this December; Ana Belén Montes – just released after serving two decades in prison; and Kendall Myers – who was an official of the State Department, is only the “tip of the iceberg.” “They are not isolated cases or relics of the Cold War, as some have declared; on the contrary, they are the result of a work of decades whose exponential returns are difficult to imagine,” they say.
For these former soldiers, that of the Cuban regime is an “aggressive job” whose main task is to go against the United States and “defeat democracies and their values
For these former soldiers, that of the Cuban regime is an “aggressive job” whose main task is to go against the United States and “defeat democracies and their values.” To do this, “it has a gigantic state apparatus dedicated to disinformation, propaganda and influence supported by virtually all government officials, including diplomats, journalists, academics and artists” that “receives a priority allocation of resources regardless of the great needs suffered by the people.”
The signatories ask the United States to examine “carefully” the impact caused by Rocha “in his long career as an agent of Cuba,” in addition to urging educational institutions to “objectively teach the history of communism and the Cuban Revolution, the impact of Cuban internationalism and the advance of Marxism.”
Among the measures they urge all democratic governments in the world to take to counteract the actions of Cuban Intelligence are “controlling the number of Cuban diplomats accredited in their national territory, as well as their access and geographical projection” and “establishing appropriate controls to deny visas and entries through border points to senior Cuban officials and repressors.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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