The U.S. Department of State recently published the 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report and urged governments worldwide to join the United States in improving our collective efforts to comprehensively address human trafficking. The Global Liberty Alliance (GLA) applauds this message and has joined in these efforts in its recent work in Latin America.

Today, the Global Liberty Alliance submitted an update to the United Nations Working Group in Arbitrary Detention (“WGAD”) regarding the case of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German national and U.S. legal resident who has been held hostage in Iran for nearly one year. The documents were also sent to the U.S. Department of State and the German Foreign Ministry via Germany's Ambassador to Washington, D.C., Emily Haber.

GLA has published its first Law Note, "​The Abraham Accords and Western Sahara: The Legal Status of the Deal," prepared by GLA legal intern Dara Finley, third-year law student at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. In it, Ms. Finley asserts that the United States' acceptance of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara runs contrary to both historical U.S. policy and international law.

You can read the law note below. 

On March 9, the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued Precautionary Measures to protect Cuban journalist and lawyer Roberto Quiñones Haces. The Global Liberty Alliance (GLA) applied for precautionary measures in April 2020, when Mr. Quiñones was in prison for journalism, and has been updating the Commission since that time. Even after his September 2020 release, Mr. Quiñones continued to suffer intimidation and harassment from Cuban officials. 

Read the GLA press release and Precautionary Measure itself below.

On Friday, March 5, the youth organizer of the Association of Free Yorubas of Cuba, Dairon Hernández Pérez, was detained, beaten, and robbed by Cuban State Security and Rapid Response Brigades outside his home. He was returning from a religious event. GLA is investigating the matter. More details, including photos and video, are included at the end of this post.

In a video statement, Mr. Hernández and his mother Free Yorubas Executive Secretary Donaida Pérez Paseiro assert that he was beaten on the head, stomach, back, and legs, his religious articles were broken, and money he carried on his person was taken. State Security also threatened to run him over with a car, and to jail him for "precriminal dangerousness." In other words, repression. 

The brutal attack occurred  less than 2 weeks after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published an important Fact Sheet outlining how the Free Yorubas were victims of religious persecution. The Global Liberty Alliance has been providing information to USCIRF about this matter, and others and has urged the U.S. government to impose economic sanctions on Cuba's Religion Police, a Stasi-like entity that is part of the Communist Party and called the Office of Religious Affairs. 

In this GLA podcast, Jason Poblete speaks with international lawyer Ms. Emma Reilly, a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Human Rights Officer and whistleblower. Since 2013, Emma has been calling attention to a troubling practice at the UNHRC that has endangered the lives of dissidents and other human rights abuse victims who visit or testify at the UN. Despite well-documented evidence of wrongdoing by U.N. personnel, it took seven years for Ms. Reilly to secure whistleblower status. When she did, she was exiled to the U.N. bureaucracy's bowels to work on matters that appear designed to silence her and as retribution for standing up to Communist China and China’s supporters working in the UN system.  You can listen to the podcast here.

The Global Liberty Alliance has learned that earlier today, Association of Free Yorubas and San Isidro Movement member, the young Jovián Díaz Batista, suffered from an "act of repudiation" at his home.  This time, the "repudiation" included people throwing stones at the home where he lives with his wife; the couple sheltered in place for fear of further violence.
"Acts of repudiation," a common occurrence in Cuba, are acts of intimidation, concocted by authorities and made to look like spontaneous protests against dissidents, 
For more information, listen to the below testimony by the Association of Free Yorubas leader Loreto Hernández García, and see the below footage of the repression filmed by Mr. Díaz Batista himself, courtesy of ADN Cuba News. 

On Tuesday, November 3, the Global Liberty Alliance (GLA) applied for Precautionary Measures to protect a Cuban journalist, who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons. Read the GLA press release below.

On Wednesday, September 2, the Global Liberty Alliance (GLA) sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging the U.S. Government to issue sanctions for the Cuban Communist Party officials and others who are complicit in blocking humanitarian aid from U.S.-based charitable and civil society organizations.