The Fruits of CELAC: Cuba's Comfortable Dictatorship and Suffering Dissidents

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” and Yris Perez Aguilera

 Both opposition activists Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” and Yris Perez Aguilera were detained today and badly beaten up. The odyssey began at 9:00am with their home invaded and ransacked by State Security Agents and members of the political police. 

Yris had already left home at 6:00am to take part in a vigil elsewhere and was not present for the raid. She learned about it through a phone call with her sister-in-law in Miami. At the time she made the following statement:

"I'm denouncing that today, February 5, 2014, I went out in the early morning hours from my home on Calle Séptima del Sur #5, between Paseo Martí and Primera del Este, and at the outskirts of Placetas I saw patrol cars , command cars , special brigades , patrol cars, police motor cycles , and I told Xiomara Martín Jiménez who was with me , I have a feeling they are going towards my house . I directed myself to the house of Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya to participate today in the vigil and at this very moment I learn from my sister in law, Bertha Antunez Pernet, that my husband was arrested, my home had been robbed by State Security. I am at this moment in Aguada de Pasajeros. I 'm heading to State Security to find out the status of my husband. I'm holding responsible the Castro regime for whatever may happen to my husband, or to any of the activists and even the activist Xiomara Martín Jiménez and to me as of this moment."  

Antúnez, his brother (Loreto Hernández García), and Donaida Pérez Paseiro were arrested. His brother was released soon after and Loreto said that a high ranking state security official told him that it was possible that Antúnez would not be returning. 

Antúnez over twitter: "Traces of mistreatment against my wife"

 Yris was arrested in the early afternoon while on her way to State Security headquarters to find out the status of her husband. She was beaten up and arrested by government agents. Both Antúnez and Yris have been badly beaten up, and in Yris's case she was not only beaten up but also subjected to sexual threats and harassment by regime officials. When she got home in the evening Yris made the following statement:

"I was arrested with violence. I was beaten, I have my mouth busted. They put a rag bathed in gasoline, with grease in my mouth. They squeezed it into my face. The officer wearing the badge 115025 touched my face, breasts, would get on top of me. They had me handcuffed with my arms behind my back. [...] They were beating on me from near the badly named Ernesto Che Guevara Square all the way to Police Instruction. There I continued demanding my rights. I have cramped hands, I have a lot of pain in the lower abdomen, swollen hands and face because they hit me a lot."

Jorge Luis explained what took place on Tuesday morning when he got back home later that same evening:

"I have just been released after being arrested when my home was vandalized, robbed and plundered by the high command of the political police who presented himself in the morning hours with a search warrant. And they told me 'Antúnez we have come to erase all the posters you have on the front of your house and to take everything you have that is of a counter-revolutionary character.' [...] when I open the gate they enter violently and they handcuff me with my hands behind my back and introduced me violently in a patrol car [.. .] they took me quickly to the headquarters of Santa Clara Police Instruction of State Security."

This is Cuba under the Castro brothers in 2014. 

One can't help but think that the silence of José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, who said that he did not want to "create problems or inconveniences"for the Cuban government, and of Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who praised the regime's treatment of women while ignoring how they beat them down regularly, while attending the CELAC Summit contributed to this. Additionally, the fact that both remained silent regarding the nation wide crackdown on dissidents during the Summit they were attending is also contributing to this repression today in Cuba. 

When you worry about making dictators uncomfortable the ones who suffer are the innocent.

Thankfully, victims of repression do not have to only rely on these organizations, but also a vibrant civil society that is able to "create problems and inconveniences" for dictators thus contributing to save lives and may well have done so with these activists.

Thanks to friends at UN Watch getting the news out quickly to the media about one of their speakers being arrested today probably contributed to both human rights defenders being released later that same night. 

Another opportunity for the power of international solidarity to demonstrate itself arrives on Tuesday, February 11, 2014 when the dictatorship plans to hold a summary trial and send Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco to prison for ten years on trumped up charges. There is a petition circulating demanding his release. Please let others know about it.

Cuban opposition leader Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera denounces mistreatment in Cuba

Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera addresses Resistance Assembly

"I come in the name of all those women who inside of this country struggle for democracy in our country. I have been a victim on countless occasions of beatings, arrests and including victim of attempts to abuse me sexually. But I come to give hope to all the women struggling for freedom in Cuba that we will continue to struggle for that freedom that belongs to us, and that those dictatorial men will have to leave our country."  - Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, August 10, 2013


On Saturday, August 10, 2013 at a Forum organized by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance held at the Florida International University Law School, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera made a powerful presentation on the threats, harassment and violence that she and other female activists suffered for defending human rights in Cuba. She spoke of women such as Damaris Moya Portieles who was beaten and mistreated but was also threatened by state security agents with the rape of her five year old daughter.

Cuban Human Rights Defender Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera Missing Since September 26, 2011

Arrested, Beaten and Disappeared by Cuban state security agents on September 26, 2011

Yris Pérez Aguilera
Missing Since 9/26

Update Sunday 10/2/11: Finally, after 6 days since they went missing Yris Pérez Aguilera Donaida Pérez Paseiro, and Yaimara Reyes Mesa were finally released in Placetas today. Badly beaten up and emaciated from a hunger strike carried out while under detention. News of the release was tweeted at 1:00pm by Antúnez and confirmed later by his sister in exile Bertha. There whereabouts had been unknown since Monday, September 26.


The last time her husband heard from Yris Pérez Aguilera was Monday morning. Over the next five days Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” has demanded to see his wife. Yesterday, on Friday September 30, 2011 he formally declared her disappeared after not having received a satisfactory reply from the authorities.

An obvious question presents itself. What was Yris Pérez Aguilera doing that Cuban state security officials would arrest, beat and disappear her? Antúnez reveals the answer when he describes the last time he spoke with his wife was on the morning of September 26, 2011:

"when from the neighborhood Río Verde, in Havana, she communicated to me that at that movement she was going outside with other activists in a march to demand the freedom of Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo and the rest of the activists who had been arrested."

Reports from others who participated in the march, and saw what transpired, such as Julio León Fonseca, the son of imprisoned activist Sara Marta, reported that state security agents unleashed their fury against Yris, Donaida Pérez Paseiro, and Yaimara Reyes Mesa brutally beating and kicking the three women.

Yaimara Reyes Mesa, also brutalized and arrested on September 26

Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” reported on the evening of September 30, 2011 that "until this moment we have had no news about them. We have observed something very worrying and that is, since the arrest, my home has been under a permanent siege. Numerous political police are nearby within twenty or thirty meters of my home. Telephones continue to be blocked, that is to say with the typical dial tone when they are deactivated."

He also makes the following chilling observation:

"My wife, therefore, in the place that they might have her, if she is alive, must be in an extremely critical health situation. She suffers from diabetes, asthma and epilepsy, and she has become accustomed, on principle, during each of these arrests to maintain a hunger and thirst strike against the arbitrariness of this arrest."

In the early morning hours of Saturday, October 1, 2011 two questions arise: What have agents of the Castro dictatorship done with Yris Pérez Aguilera? Considering under the conditions they were last seen; why are so many so silent to the disappearance of this human rights defender and her two colleagues Donaida Pérez Paseiro and Yaimara Reyes Mesa?

Unfortunately, a third unspoken question was already answered by her sister in law, Bertha Antunez, who on September 22, 2011 at the We Have a Dream Human Rights Summit in New York City said, “If the world remains silent, there will be more deaths and the regime will continue to repress and humiliate our people.”

Governments, press and international organizations are failing to speak out in sufficient numbers it is up to citizen activists to make the difference. In other words it is up to you to speak out for those who no longer can because they have been silenced and disappeared.

What are you waiting for? Spread the word. Take a few minutes and denounce this injustice. Call your elected representative. Call in to a radio talk show. Write a blog entry. Tweet about it. Post it on facebook. Do something! Their lives depend on it.