Senior Cuban Government Officials Forcibly Close Evangelical Church in Holguín
September 2020
September 2020
For several months, officials from the Ministry of Justice, Physical Planning, the provincial Communist Party, and State Security agents have been harassing Jehovah Shalom Church, a duly established and documented evangelical church in Holguín, Cuba. Between June and July 2020, Pastors Uberney Aguiar and Yalina Proenza received visits and were summoned on at least six occasions, with the aim of threatening them and to force them to permanently suspend their religious services. The church has been meeting since February, 2017 and its members assure that they have excellent relations with the community, however they suspect that the authorities want to close the church and impede its growth because Ernesto Santiesteban Velázquez, the recently appointed secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in the province lives very close, in the neighborhood of Nuevo Holguín.
Inspectors from the Ministry of Physical Planning, officials of the provincial party and authorities of the Ministry of Justice had already been harassing this congregation to prevent it from meeting since 2019, giving them no options, alternatives, or a chance to negotiate. “It was a complete and arbitrary closure, and with no solution,” say the pastors. In 2019, they applied for the permit to gather for religious services, but they received no response from the Ministry of Justice in the designated period to do so. On July 9, 2020, the provincial director of Justice of Holguín, Nelson Flavio Plutín Santos, and the head of the Department of Associations, Ormani Rodríguez Tamayo, finally denied this congregation the right to meet on the property to practice their faith. This constitutes another violation of religious freedom that the Constitution claims to respect.
Jehovah Shalom Church s members, prevented by government officials from
meeting in the ir usua l building gather at a park for service.
Inspectors from the Ministry of Physical Planning, officials of the provincial party and authorities of the Ministry of Justice had already been harassing this congregation to prevent it from meeting since 2019, giving them no options, alternatives, or a chance to negotiate. “It was a complete and arbitrary closure, and with no solution,” say the pastors. In 2019, they applied for the permit to gather for religious services, but they received no response from the Ministry of Justice in the designated period to do so. On July 9, 2020, the provincial director of Justice of Holguín, Nelson Flavio Plutín Santos, and the head of the Department of Associations, Ormani Rodríguez Tamayo, finally denied this congregation the right to meet on the property to practice their faith. This constitutes another violation of religious freedom that the Constitution claims to respect.
Two state security agents threatening pastor Uberney Aguiar and his wife.
In January 2020, the Justice Ministry also decided to deny the request for the constitution of the Alliance of Cuban Evangelical Churches. The authorities, through the Office of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party and its agents of State Security, have been at odds with the leaders of this group, which represents an evangelical majority on the Island. There is evidence of a campaign to discourage the formation of the alliance. The government does not recognize the purposes set out in their founding act, have defamed it by claiming they receive funding from the CIA, and they have also prohibited their representatives from traveling abroad. The attack on the Jehovah Shalom Church, which now holds its services outdoors, shows the mechanisms and intentions of the authorities in Cuba: to freeze the legal status of historic religious organizations to limit their social influence, to hinder the opening of places of worship and to close the doors to the legalization of new alliances, associations or groups.
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