MADRID, Spain.- The event “Breaking the chains”, of the International Apostolic and Prophetic Ministry Wind Recio and planned for next weekend, was postponed until further notice due to the repression of the Cuban State Security. The meeting, based in Las Tunas, aims to pray for the political prisoners of 11J and their families.
In order to prohibit this initiative, in which many mothers had already confirmed their participation, the regime’s police increased their harassment in recent weeks. In addition, he arrested and questioned pastor Mario Jorge Travieso, president of the Ministerio Viento Recio, and pastors Adriana Medina Meriño and Vivian Barredo Toledo.
According to what Mario Jorge Travieso declared to Radio Television Marti“the situation was complicated because they (State Security) are behind everything they are doing.”
“The interrogators told me, when they kidnapped me along with my wife, that I spoke on the phone every day. Radio Martiand I replied that I was speaking for Radio Marti when they call me, and if they call me Radio Victory which is the Las Tunas radio station, I also give the interview, but they have never had the decorum to call me. Then they told me that if I continued speaking they could take me to jail”, he explained.
Travieso also denounced that the authorities threatened to arrest the 11J mothers who participate in the meeting.
“We are being harassed because they are afraid of the event of the mothers of the 11 J prisoners. So because of his reprimands, because of his repression, because of his threats, we understood that the event could not be made public. Obviously we want to give it, because there is an extraordinary need for these mothers, because it is a purely religious event, not a political one, and our church has the right to give it, “he added.
For her part, Vivian Barredo Toledo reaffirmed that “Breaking the Chains” was not being cancelled, but that for the next one they will implement the strategy of not publicizing it, in order to achieve it and “be able to do something very beautiful, which is to pray for them and for their children, which is to be able to help these mothers who are hurt, and are angry with the system because it made their children criminals, but for them they are their children.”
“We do not conceive that a work as wonderful as the love of God can cause so much political damage, according to them,” said the pastor.
This week the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) He suggested that Cuba should remain on the State Department’s Special Watch List, due to the increased repression against religious leaders during the last year.
In January 2022, the evangelical NGO Open Doors, based in the Netherlands, included to Cuba in its annual ranking of the 50 nations with the greatest persecution and discrimination against Christians.
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