ENES KANTER FREEDOM SENDS A MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF CUBA ON 11J

"Cuba will be free," says activist and NBA star

July 09, 2022 - 20:07 - By GRETHEL DELGADO

See article in Spanish titled: “Cuba será libre", dice activista y estrella de la NBA” in Diario de las Americas

Enes Kanter Freedom, born in Switzerland on May 20, 1992, is a human rights activist and did not miss the date to send his message to Cuba.

MIAMI- Activist Michael Lima Cuadra shared this Saturday a message to Cuba from basketball star and human rights advocate Enes Kanter Freedom. Through a video posted on his Twitter account, Lima Cuadra told that he was in Toronto, Canada, where he had talked with the athlete about the situation in Cuba almost a year after the historic protests of July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets to confront the dictatorship.

Enes Kanter Freedom, NBA star and human rights activist and Michael Lima Cuadra, human rights activist and director of Democratic Spaces.

Likewise, Lima Cuadra, creator of Democratic Spaces, took the opportunity to mention the more than 1,000 political prisoners who suffer the abuses of the regime's prison system.

"I met with Enes Kanter Freedom, NBA star and Human Rights activist, and told him about the repression in Cuba. He sends this message of solidarity with the cause of democracy in Cuba on Monday's first anniversary of the pro-democracy protests of 11J," he told DIARIO LAS AMERICAS.

As he wrote on Twitter, Enes Kanter Freedom, "a larger-than-life human rights activist and NBA star in an INSPIRING message to the people of CUBA on the 1st anniversary of #11J. 'STAND UP for what is right/Cuba will be FREE.' To the regime: 'Enough is enough. YOU WILL FALL like every dictatorship'."

"First I want to say that 63 years have passed and enough is enough. People have to do something about it. There have been many human rights violations. There are political prisoners, innocent people are losing their loved ones, losing their lives and losing their homes," the NBA star denounced.

Enes Kanter Freedom in a meeting with human rights activists in Toronto, Canada gave his support to make the suffering of the people in the Tigray region of Ethiopia visible and to expose human rights abuses and oppression in Cuba.

As Lima Cuadra explained to this newspaper, "it was a meeting with several human rights activists from different areas as Enes Kanter Freedom supports global causes. A key objective of the meeting was to look for ways to make visible the cause of democracy in Cuba and other nations. We talked about how important it is for human rights advocates to come together as we live in a world where authoritarian regimes form alliances that legitimize each other's injustice, repression and genocide.

The greatest achievement of the meeting, he emphasized, "is that he committed himself to support the cause of democracy in Cuba in the future, which we are already working on. I showed Enes the song Patria y Vida and told him about its meaning of living in a nation of options, of the search for individual and collective freedom where the people choose and not the official slogan of "Homeland or Death" that imposes the vision of a power elite and a communist party".

The 11J, a call for Cuba's freedom

He added that "as a defender of human rights, 11J is always a reason for hope because it is a reflection of the popular will of the Cuban people for democratic change. The pro-democracy protests of July 11 represented the moment when the Cuban people in 24 hours dismantled 62 years of myths and propaganda of a supposed popular support that for decades promulgated the Cuban dictatorship around the world. The 11J is the reference I always use in Canada to remind the government of this country to listen to the voice of the people and their demands and not to the regime".

The 11J, he noted, "shows us how freedom is the natural state that Cubans and all human beings wish to live in. That is why the Cuban dictatorship repressed this clamor for freedom so brutally. Otherwise, the protest of hundreds of thousands could have become the protest of millions if it had gone on for weeks. I also think that 11J demonstrated that in Cuba the culture of rebellion has been reborn in the people and when the heart of resistance beats, dictatorships are in danger."

"In Cuba for a long time people did not express themselves publicly in their criticism of the regime for fear of reprisals of imprisonment and marginalization, but the 11J showed that in Cuba a rebellious spirit has been reborn in the citizenry, which knows no leadership and is spontaneous. The 11J made public the brutal nature of the Cuban dictatorship, which was visible to all of us who follow the Cuba issue but not to many others", he denounced.

Therefore, "since then thousands of Cuban families live with the suffering of seeing their children and relatives sentenced to prison terms of up to 30 years for exercising fundamental human rights such as the right to free expression and association and Cuba has become as it was in the Spanish colony on the island prison. There are more political prisoners in Cuba today than in Nicaragua and Venezuela combined after the arbitrary arrests and mass incarcerations following 9/11."

More about Enes Kanter Freedom

Enes Kanter Freedom was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 20, 1992. He is an American naturalized Turkish basketball player who is currently without a team. His height is 2.08 meters and he plays at the center position. His younger brother Kerem Kanter is also a basketball player. Kanter became a U.S. citizen on November 29, 2021, where he also decided to change his name to Enes Kanter Freedom.

In October 2021, he condemned the practices of Xi Jinping, the Chinese supreme leader, as a "brutal dictator" and expressed his support for the Tibet Independence Movement on his Twitter account. In retaliation, China banned the broadcast of all Boston Celtics games.

The athlete often shares his views on human rights and freedoms. Last July 7, he shared with Carlos Vecchio, head of the Venezuelan Embassy in the US, and activist Leopoldo Lopez.

More about Democratic Spaces

Democratic Spaces is a Canadian NGO and civil initiative founded and directed by Michael Lima Cuadra, a human rights advocate and researcher with an M.A. degree and a Ph.D. Candidacy from he University of Toronto. His areas of specialization are Cuba and Latin America, with an emphasis on revolutions and dictatorships.

After 63 years of what is considered the longest dictatorship in Latin American history with a toll of at least half a million people arbitrarily imprisoned/arrested for political reasons, hundreds of thousands forced to flee in numerous exoduses and countless killed and exposed to atrocious human conditions. rights violations by the regime, it is time for the people of Cuba to live in freedom, democracy and inclusion.