Less than twenty years ago there were political prisoners on the EU’s borders who were denied the basic rights of freedom of speech and expression, lived in constant fear of being denounced and dreamed about enjoying what Europeans in the ‘West’ took for granted. Cuba’s regime has remained in power, the same ways that communist governments did in the former Yugoslavia, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – the last three as part of the Soviet Union - by using propaganda, censorship and violence to create a climate of fear.