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Miami, 10 Dec (EFE).
The mayor of Miami, Francis Suárez, declared December 10th “Anti-Communism Day” in support of exiles and those who fight for freedom and democracy.
“Today we commemorate not only God-given human rights but the universal call to freedom. We are firmly against the Communist enemies of freedom,” Suárez said Thursday at a ceremony in which he signed the declaration.
Anti-Communism Day will be commemorated to coincide with International Human Rights Day.
The ceremony was attended by activist Rosa Maria Payá, exile leaders Orlando Gutiérrez, Ramón Saúl Sánchez and Silvia Iriondo, the president of Brigade 2506 that invaded Cuba at Bahia de Cochinos in 1961, Johnny de la Cruz, and journalist and influencer Alex Otaola, all from Cuba.
“The City of Miami is the Magic City because it is a city of liberty, a city defined by its opposition to Communism and its love of freedom, from political to economic freedoms,” the statement said.
The Miami community “is largely made up of exiles, people who lived through the abuses of dictatorial regimes. That is why it is an honor to declare the day of anti-Communism surrounded by tireless fighters for democracy,” Suárez told the Miami Herald.
In the same ceremony, Suárez declared the Cuban singers Haila María Mompié and Paulo FG persona non grata in Miami, considered by exiles to be close to the island’s dictatorship.
In addition, about 50 people, most of them young and some identified as members of the San Isidro Movement wearing T-shirts that read “Culture and Freedom,” gathered at Miami’s Freedom Tower, an emblematic building that served as the Cuban Refugee Center for the first exiles after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, on the occasion of Human Rights Day.
“San Isidro is all of us” and “The tyranny is in checkmate” were the most chanted slogans in an act in support of the movement of Cuban opposition artists who “have lit the flame of freedom” in Cuba celebrated this Thursday in Miami on the occasion of the International Day of Human Rights.
From there, some went in procession to a Catholic church in downtown Miami.
Rosa María Payá, of the Cuba Decide movement; Ramón Saúl Sánchez, of the Democracy Movement; and artists such as Luis Eligio D Omni, Ras Sandino, Yerendi and Yesler Cruz addressed the crowd who carried Cuban flags and posters that read “Free and equal” and “Respect for everyone’s rights”.
Payá said that on this day of human rights it is a “shame” that Cuba is a member of the UN Council that watches over those rights and asked the international community to “be coherent and to be in solidarity with the Cuban people.”
