Thursday, June 12, 2014

Opposition leaders remain jailed and independent journalist beaten up

Antúnez and Yris still detained
Taken at 6am from their home yesterday morning.
Tonight  Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, and Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" continue in regime custody. The Miami Herald's Juan Tamayo reports:
Cuban police and State Security agents were still holding dissidents Jorge Luis García Pérez and his wife Thursday, one day after they raided their home to roust them out of bed and paint over anti-Castro graffiti scrawled on the front walls.
García, known as Antúnez, and his wife, Yris Pérez Aguilera, “were taken from their beds yesterday, without a chance to put on any decent clothes or comb their hair or anything,” said Donaida Pérez, the sister of Yris.
The raiders broke down the door, searched the house and for about the 10th time in the last few years painted over the anti-government graffiti that the couple paint on the front of their home in the town of Placetas, east of Havana, Pérez added.
Among the more outspoken of Cuba’s dissidents and leaders of the National Civic Resistance Front Orlando Zapata Tamayo, García and Pérez have been detained by police dozens of times, although usually for only a few hours.
The pattern of repression yesterday in Cuba led to the question "Is there a nationwide crackdown underway?" The answer a day later is yes. According to UPI "over 40 pro-democracy activists, including four leaders of the movement, were detained by police in Cuba in a crackdown on dissidents." Ed Adamczyk's report was published by UPI on  June 12, 2014 at 2:31 PM and also noted that:
"Although most detainees were released later in the day, the scope of the police action suggested the Cuban government is turning to tougher and more violent means of repression. A journalist, Roberto de Jesus Guerra, claimed a Cuban State Security plainclothes agent attacked him as he walked to the Czech embassy in Havana to use its Internet connection. He later said in an interview, "I am going to the doctor now and later to the police to file a complaint, although they never do anything because they are the ones beating us." Prominent dissidents Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez, and his wife, Yris Pérez Aguilera, were taken from their home in Placetas. Also among those detained were Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White protest movement, and her husband, Angel Moya, a dissident who previously served eight years in prison."
 Juan Tamayo, in The Miami Herald article offers additional information on the detention of Berta Soler and Angel Moya: 
Berta Soler, leader of the dissident Ladies in White, meanwhile, said she and her husband, former political prisoner Angel Moya, were detained for 15 hours Wednesday in a police station to keep them away from a planned dissident gathering.
She was kept in an office, forced to sit in uncomfortable chairs, while Moya was held in a cell where he could rest in a bunk bed, Soler added. Police detained them as they left their Havana home at 7 a.m. and freed them at around 10 p.m.
Soler said they were detained on their way to a gathering of the Ladies in White and other dissidents who wanted to attend the trial of Fernando Ortiz, the husband of Yanelis Cutiño, a member of the women’s group who has accused him of domestic abuse.
At least 30 other Ladies in White and 15 to 20 male dissidents were detained by police and State Security agents at they approached the courthouse, Soler said.
 Please keep you eye on the fate of these activists.

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