It is believed that more than 300,000 people have fled Cuba since nationwide protests swept the country on 11 July 2021. Many of them are religious leaders, journalists, human rights defenders and others who were given no choice but to leave the island under intense pressure from the government. CSW’s Into Exile series tells some of their stories.
In 2017, 26-year-old Pastor Enrique de Jesús Fundora and his wife established a ministry they named God Shakes Cuba and the Nations a part of the Apostolic and Prophetic Movement. This immediately made them a target of the government and cost Pastor Fundora his job as a chef in a private restaurant.
In July 2021 Pastor Fundora began to open ‘houses of prayer’ where he met with the relatives of people imprisoned because of their involvement in the 11 July protests, to pray for them and comfort them. In January 2022 Fundora was summoned by State Security, Cuba’s intelligence agency. He was interrogated and accused of holding conspiratorial meetings and of buying water and distributing it to those who had participated in the protests.
From that point on, he was subjected to constant threats, harassment and surveillance, often being forced to evade the police by climbing over walls and roofs, or being hidden by the members of the houses of prayer. The police, unable to arrest him, turned their attacks on the owners of said houses, but that did not stop the growth of the groups, nor the multiplication of more houses of prayer.
Unable to catch Pastor Fundora, the police focused on harassing his wife Maidelis Mesa. On 25 January 2022 they raided her house and threatened to prosecute her as an accomplice of her husband, whom they called a counterrevolutionary. They told her that they would both be prosecuted for allowing money from abroad, meant to be used for social work, to be sent to their bank accounts, that they would prosecute her for being the pastor of an illegal church, and that when she went to prison, the couple would lose custody of their young daughter.
In an ambush on 1 March 2022, Pastor Fundora was captured by State Security agents. After a prolonged interrogation, he was given eight days to leave the island or face a 30-year prison sentence for the crimes of rebellion, public disorder, and for being a counterrevolutionary and terrorist.
Within a matter of days, friends and family managed to buy a flight to Serbia with a stopover in Switzerland, for him. Pastor Fundora fled Cuba on his own in March 2022 and received asylum in Switzerland, where a local Latino Christian community welcomed him and provided support to purchase plane tickets for his wife and daughter, who joined him in Switzerland a few weeks later.
Switzerland is now the new home of this young couple, who continue to work for freedom of religion or belief in Cuba even from beyond its borders. They have taken advantage of their proximity to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, to share, on repeated occasions, the reality of the lack of human rights in Cuba including FoRB.
This week CSW will be telling the stories of some of those who have fled Cuba since the 11 July protests in our new ‘Into Exile’ series. Subscribe below so you receive them all.