MIAMI, Nov. 19.– DEFENSA CD, a new independent organization dedicated to monitoring repression in Cuba, celebrated its official launch last night at the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) – Building II at Florida International University (FIU). Before an audience composed of academics, journalists, community leaders, activists, and members of the Cuban diaspora, the institution presented its governing structure, its new lines of work, and unpublished data on repression patterns, the situation inside prisons on the island, and attacks on religious freedom.

As part of this new phase, DEFENSA CD announced the consolidation of its institutional independence, separating from the Pan-American Foundation for Democracy, and the creation of a Religious Freedom Observatory, which will expand its capacity for documentation and analysis on one of the most persecuted sectors in Cuba.

The event featured the participation of the Rapporteur for Cuba of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Commissioner Stuardo Ralón; the former political prisoner and coordinator of UNPACU, José Daniel Ferrer; and the founder of Cuba Decide and IACHR elected commissioner, Rosa María Payá.

During his intervention, Juan Carlos Vargas, Director of DEFENSA CD, outlined the strategic priorities of the organization:

• This is a civilian target far away from the front lines.

Dnipro, Nov.18.— A city of 1.1 million, Dnipro (also known as Dnipropetrovs'k) sits on the banks of the Dnieper River in Eastern Ukraine. It’s 650 miles from the Polish border at Chelm. On the northwest approaches to this city, which is the country’s fourth largest and a six-hour drive from the capital, Kyiv, a car can speed down a road which in many ways is more pleasant than I-95 between Washington and New York. From this modern, divided highway, huge fields of plowed black earth alternate with even more massive fields of wheat alongside tidy farmhouses. Until you reach the little town of Tsybulivka in Poltava Oblast, it all looks remarkably like the flat steppes of eastern Kansas.

At that point, however, you turn right and south off the main road and into a landscape every bit as agriculturally rich but more visibly post-Soviet. The road becomes potholed and rough (though perhaps not as rough as some of the country roads back home in Oklahoma), and the developed highway and periodic truck stops that could pass for a Wawa give way to little towns and villages of houses built of painted cinderblock and tin roofs and workshops made of corrugated iron.