Frankfurt/Rome/Havana (October 26, 2007) - On Sunday, the 28th of October 2007, cardinal Martins will beatify 498 Christian martyrs of the Spain persecution of faith of the 1930s on the place of Peter in Rome. The so called republican 'red' troops under the communist leadership killed the young catholic deacon Fray Jose Lopez Piteira on November 30, 1936 in Spain. The ISHR takes the beatification as an occasion to point at the continuing violation of the freedom of religion in Cuba and to remind the end of the persecution.

Jose Lopez Piteira was one of some hundred bishops, male and female priests who were killed between 1934 and 1937 in Spain by the so called republican red troop. Lopez Piteira was only 24 years old and working as a deacon when he was executed on 30th of November 1936. He wouldn't have been killed when he had made use of his Cuban origin and his citizenship. But he had decided to share the same destiny as the other imprisoned priests.

The deacon was born in Cuba and was a Cuban citizen. He is the first official catholic beatified person of Cuba. With the beatification the ISHR connects a memory of the current victims of the socialist dictatorship on Cuba and the suppression of the freedom of religion. People who advocates openly for freedom of opinion and human rights or against the Cuban abortion policy due to their Christian belief, are discriminated, prosecuted and imprisoned. This is the same for Catholics and people of other religious denominations.

The most famous examples are the human rights defender Dr. Oscar Elias Bisect and the independent journalist Normando Hernandes Gonzales who have been condemned to 25 years in prison in the year 2003. The ISHR points also at the journalist Alfredo Dominguez Batista who is a member of the nonviolent Christian liberation movement and who has been arrested with 74 other civil rights activists in spring 2003 and condemned to 14 years in jail because of the supposedly violation of the article 88 (crime against the national security).

The animosity against the Catholic Church in Cuba is especially shown in the suppression of freedom of opinion and the limited access to the mass media and in the missing possibility to teach religion in schools or to lead schools on their own. The access to internet, for example the Cuban conference of the bishops, and visa licenses for foreign priests are handled restrictive.

Small gestures, like the current license for the repairs of churchy buildings, are pleasing, but don't match with the freedom of religion which is guaranteed in the Cuban constitution since 1992, declares the ISHR. Since 1959 for renovation of churches a permission of the government is required. The Protestant 'house church movement' is suppressed through two government orders from the September 2005 and affected by closing of the churches. The churchly life and the social statements of the church are intentionally ignored or misrepresented by Cuban media. Due to the monopoly of the Communist Party of Cuba the churches have no other possibility to run own radio or TV programs or to publish daily newspapers, declares the ISHR.

On the occasion of the beatification the human rights organization which is located in Frankfurt also points at the brutal methods of the Cuban penal system, the refusal of medical treatment for political prisoners and of the lack of supply of the prisoners of conscience in the jails. It calls for the release of all political prisoners on Cuba.