"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Hansel E. Hernández. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hansel E. Hernández. Show all posts
Hansel E. Hernández Galiano shot in the back by PNR police.
On June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed black Cuban, Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano was shot in the back and killed by the police.
The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories
from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National
Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the
officers pursued him
nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw
rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in
his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated.
This prevented
an independent autopsy to verify official claims, or a proper funeral.
Photo posted by Hansel's aunt on Facebook demanding justice.
On June 25, 2020 a woman, identifying as the young man's aunt, posted on Facebook a photo of the dead youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.
"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice."
On June 28, 2020 independent journalist Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and charged with "Fake news" for reporting on this police killing. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.
Independent journalist Jorge Enrique Rodríguez arrested for reporting on the killing
Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests were detained or their homes laid siege to in order to stop them reporting on Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano's killing and reactions to his extrajudicial execution.
Secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and arbitrarily detaining those they suspected would take part in peaceful protests. Activists recorded or expressed on social media their intention to take part in protest actions. Some were able to message out when they were grabbed by the police, or their homes surrounded and laid siege by state security and placed under house arrest. Over seventy Cubans were successfully targeted "preventing" the non-violent action.
Heroes of the Blue campaign organized by Cuban government
Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it called Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this was a systematic campaign of the dictatorship at the national level in Cuba.
The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong. - Marcus Tullius Cicero
Then: Juan Wilfredo SotoGarcia and Now: Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara
Revolutionary police and state security in Cuba operate with impunity, and victims of repression have no recourse to independent over sight or an independent judiciary in the island. This raises concerns now for the life of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. It is also the reason why people of conscience will be protesting at the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC on May 6, 2021 starting at 4:00pm.
Ten years ago the headlines circled the world in English and in Spanish covered by Reuters, the BBC, CNN, AP, EFE that a Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (age 46)
had been beaten and arrested by Cuban regime police on Thursday, May 5,
2011 while protesting the dictatorship and died early on Sunday May 8,
2011. The beating had been so bad that he required hospitalization. He was buried Sunday, on Mother's Day.
There are others but the regime has been often successful in
intimidating family members and destroying the evidence of their crimes.
"This act of police violence is not an isolated case. Each day in Cuba
those in uniform respect less the citizens," said Yoani Sanchez over Twitter on the day of Juan Wilfredo's burial in 2011.
Hansel E. Hernández shot in the back by police on June 24, 2020
For example, nearly nine years later on June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed black Cuban, Hansel E. Hernández was shot in the back and killed by the police.
The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories
from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National
Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the
officers pursued him
nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw
rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in
his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated. This prevented
an independent autopsy to verify official claims, or a proper funeral. State Security learned their lesson from an earlier funeral following a controversial death involving the police.
Hansel E. Hernández
According to dissidents who attended the 2011 funeral and media accounts more than 80 attended Juan Wilfredo Soto's funeral
despite a heavy police presence and state security operation that
blocked some activists from attending. The government agents responsible
for this man's extra-judicial death must be held accountable if not by
national laws then by international law. At the funeral Cuban pastor Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso
spoke about the life of the Cuban activist and the circumstances
surrounding his death.
Ten years have passed and justice has not been done in this case.
There have been new victims of police violence in Cuba since then, like Hansel. Nevertheless we must remember, and with this exercise of memory continue
to demand justice for Juan Wilfredo, Hansel, and their loved ones. We must also speak out for those who can still be saved such as Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
This is why Patmos, Center for a Free Cuba, and others are organizing a nonviolent protest at the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC located on 2630 16th St NW, Washington, DC 20009 on May 6, 2021 at 4:00pm to observe the tenth anniversary of the beating death of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, and demand justice for him, Hansel and others like them, while calling on the Cuban government to free Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, and meet his three demands.
In a police state who provides oversight of police abuse?
An international conference looking at police oversight in
Latin America and the Caribbean between January
18-22, 2021 organized by Amnesty International Américas, Independent
Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), and the Human Rights Centre
University of Essex. It is called Police in the Spotlight. Hopefully, the conference took a look at the lack of police oversight in Cuba.
@ErikaGuevaraR Please check out this thread highlighting some recent cases of police abuse in Cuba. With the current dictatorship there is a lack of police oversight, & need for international oversight. https://t.co/7hsmEk5i8f
Cubalex, a human rights NGO founded in Cuba now in the diaspora, reported that "Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés (alias Lilipi) died on the night of January 2, 2021 at the Abel Santamaría Cuadrado clinical teaching hospital, in the province of Pinar del Río, after an "exchange" with police officers. Various versions circulated about the cause of his death. An official version claims it was an accident and another claims it was due to the use of force and police violence. On January 5, 2021, the weekly El Guerrillero de Pinar del Río published an official note from the Ministry of the Interior on its website stating that Luis Alberto suddenly fell off his feet and hit his head on the pavement."
Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés (alias Lilipi)
Cubalex shared information in the official note with Yasser Rojas who collaborates with an organization specialized in medical research. Regarding the injuries, he affirmed that a fall by Luis Alberto's own feet is not enough to cause the injuries that are described in the government's version of events.
Rojas "assures that from a kinematic or biomechanical point of view it is unlikely that a hemorrhage at the subarachnoid level of such severity would occur due to a fall of his own feet, taking into account the height of the deceased (approximately two meters) and the impact speed." The fluid-filled space around the brain between the arachnoid membrane and the pia mater, through which major blood vessels pass is called the subarachnoid.
Dr. Alexander Raúl Pupo Casas also commented on the injuries at the request of Cubalex. "He assures that the MININT version is not credible. He agrees that it is possible to kill a person in a few seconds from a fall, if he receives a blow to the head or the upper vertebrae of the spine (cervical). He adds that an injury to the skull of the middle meningeal artery could still cause death within minutes from an epidural hematoma. However, he considers that it is not common for the injuries detailed in the official note to be the result of a fall to the floor."
A pro-regime Youtube channel presented testimonies backing up the official version alleging that Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés had fallen due to an epileptic seizure on the morning of December 8, 2020, and that the questions raised about his death were a smear job against the dictatorship.
However there have been other deaths that the regime has found more challenging to obfuscate.
Hansel E. Hernández
For example, on June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed Black Cuban, Hansel E. Hernández was shot in the back and killed by the police. The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the officers pursued him nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated. This prevented an independent autopsy to verify official claims.
Hansel E. Hernández
On June 25, 2020 a woman, identifying as the young man's aunt, posted on Facebook a photo of the dead youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.
"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice."
On June 28, 2020 independent journalist Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and charged with "Fake news" for reporting on this police killing. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.
Jorge Enrique Rodríguez
Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests were detained or their homes laid siege to in order to stop them reporting on Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano's killing and reactions to his extrajudicial execution.
Secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and arbitrarily detaining those they suspected would take part in peaceful protests. Activists recorded or expressed on social media their intention to take part in protest actions. Some were able to message out when they were grabbed by the police, or their homes surrounded and laid siege by state security and placed under house arrest. Over seventy Cubans were successfully targeted "preventing" the non-violent action.
Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it called Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this was a systematic campaign of the dictatorship at the national level in Cuba.
"Heroes of the Blue"
Human Rights Watch nearly a month later on July 28th reported that "Cuban authorities committed numerous rights violations in June 2020 against people organizing a protest over police violence, effectively suppressing the demonstration."
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship.
Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros
Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:
It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.
Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:
I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.
On Friday, August 7, State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days.
Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom.
“Ten days before he died, they called my brother Yaudel Arostegui Armenteros, at the hospital to appear there, when he arrived at Amalia Simoni they told him that my brother was very ill. My brother couldn't see him. A doctor who was there told my brother that the next call they were going to make would not be good, it was because he was going to die. And so it was,” Raidel Aróstegui Armenteros, who lives in exile in the state of Washington, United States, told the Center for a Free Cuba.
According to Raidel, his brother always said he was innocent of the crimes he was accused of. The family hired an attorney who conducted investigations into the case, but a week before the trial, the attorney mysteriously died in a traffic accident.
His brother thought he would be released, but upon receiving the 15-year prison sentence he began a series of hunger strikes."My brother Yosvany Arostegui was a human rights activist. He was always confronting the political police. In Camagüey his actions bothered the political police. He always told me that the day something happened to him that he was going to plant himself in protest. That the day they did something to him, he was going to be planted and that the second Zapata in Camagüey was going to be him. And so it happened. Look how his death was,” he added.
Below is the interview with the Yaudel's brother.
Hopefully, the international conference on police oversight in Latin America and the Caribbean sought creative ways to report on policing in Cuba and the deaths of young black men in their custody. Leaving Cubans to the mercy of a police state now in its seventh decade in power is a human rights failure of the first order.
"We're taking a step forward on America's rocky but righteous journey towards justice." - Martin Luther King III, August 28, 2020
Fifty years ago on August 28, 1963 much of the United States was in the midst of a struggle to do away with segregation
and civil rights activists were struggling to pass voting rights
legislation. The march on Washington D.C. that culminated in Martin
Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech sought to pressure legislators into voting for the legislation, and they succeeded.
This was a nonviolent revolution that sought justice, and changed the United States of America and in 2009 an African American president sat in the White House evidence that part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream had been achieved.
Today at a moment of national crisis Martin
Luther King III, son of the martyred civil rights leader, together with his daughter returned to the Lincoln Memorial to address questions of racism and injustice in the United States in 2020 and share their message of love and the legacy of their dad and grandad respectively. This event began last night and will continue into this evening and is live streaming.
“We stand and march for love, and we will fulfill my grandfather's dream,” Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., says during the March on Washington. https://t.co/S58qRg2xjvpic.twitter.com/9HKWOrmKk8
This is part of a national conversation on racism and violence in the United States, and there were calls to refund and dismantle the police, but there were other views included in the conversation. It has the potential to be another nonviolent moment.
Sadly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States by 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. found his nonviolent posture challenged
by a black power movement that instead of accelerating change in areas
of social and economic justice brought it to a halt. Reverend King warned black activists not to take the way of the Castros and Che Guevara:
“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective
failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability
to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it
is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how
loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted
the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the
style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could
succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a
handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled
the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a
right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff
must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic
problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a
roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the
hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic
plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at
nonviolence now.”
Critics of nonviolence like to point out that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, but fail to mention that he succeeded in transforming the United States into a better country by successfully and nonviolently addressing historic injustices.
What did Reverend King accomplish? He led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He led the Birmingham campaign in 1963 that faced off with the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used high-pressure water jets and police attack dogs on children. The campaign ended with Connor losing his job and the city’s discriminatory laws were changed.
Martin Luther King Jr on August 28, 1963
Reverend King played an instrumental role in the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, D.C. with over 250,000 participants. It was done to pressure for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 in Alabama demonstrated African Americans desire to vote. The violence by local authorities, racists, and the Klu Klux Klan and the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights activists were key to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. These laws gave African Americans political power that had been denied them.
Contrast this with the fires and riots across the country over the past several weeks. Smaller in number than non-violent protests they have too often drowned out those advocating reform and a revolution in values to a person centered society. Today there was light and a conversation while in places like Portland and Seattle, where revolutionaries gunned down young black men, and the police were absent, having been driven out, painfully demonstrated that violence begets violence and does not bring our country closer to the Beloved Community and black lives continue to be unjustly killed. The way of Stokely Carmichael leads to a sterile dead end of bloodshed and violence with the seductive call of revolutionary violence that he embraced in Havana in the 1960s ended with end of this period of civil rights reforms.
Let us also not forget that many who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s took up arms again against him in the 1960s in an armed struggle that failed wiping out all opposition: violent and nonviolent for years.
A nonviolent movement began to emerge out of Cuba's prisons in the mid 1970s and onto the streets in the mid 1980s yet there are voices that claim that nonviolence hasn't worked and counsel either collaboration with the dictatorship or violent resistance.
Let us compare Reverend King's nonviolent legacy with the violent revolution
that sought to end a dictatorship ninety miles away from U.S. shores in
Cuba that in 1963 was just four years old. Sixty years later and the
Castro dictatorship that replaced the Batista dictatorship is still in
power killing and repressing. Despite fraudulent statistics in areas of health care and education the reality of an ongoing cholera epidemic and the mass exodus of millions of Cubans demonstrates the nightmare
that exists in Cuba today. Today, Cubans are unjustly imprisoned for exercising their human rights and are prisoners of conscience.
Prisoner of Conscience Silverio Portal Contreras beaten and going blind
Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana.
Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.” We fear for Silverio and his life today imprisoned for speaking what he thought.
Hatred and the appeal of revolutionary violence leads to strange bedfellows. The Progressive, a publication founded in 1909 in Madison, Wisconsin on June 18, 2020 published an article titled "Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims "Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States."
If the United States adopted the Cuban approach recommended by Mr. Erlich any person recording a police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to prison.
A
law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on
or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before
sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First
Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also
runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory,
even though the document is censored in the island.
Six days after The Progressive published its essay celebrating Cuban policing in Castro's Cuba, a 27 year old Cuban was shot in the back by a Cuban police man.
Hansel E. Hernández (age 27) killed on June 24, 2020.
On June 24, 2020 in Havana, Cuba Hansel E. Hernández (age 27)was shot in the back and killed by the police while allegedly trying to flee. It took three days for the authorities to report the killing, despite repeated requests for clarity on what had happened.
This would normally have ended silently with no one being the wiser, but Facebook and the courage of a traumatized family member prevented that outcome. On June 25, a woman posted on Facebook a photo of the dead Black youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.
"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice.
Facebook post by Hansel's aunt calling for justice.
Hours later, the authorities of the Castro regime released an official statement claiming that the 27-year-old had been caught by a National Revolutionary Police patrol
when, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), "he was
stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop", then fleeing. During
the chase "on the run for almost two kilometers, over uneven terrain",
the young man, to avoid being arrested, "attacked one of the policemen
throwing several stones, one of which hit the policeman in the crotch,
another in the side of the torso and a third dislocated his shoulder and
threw him to the floor," indicates the statement posted on social
networks on June 27th. In response to Hansel Hernández's throwing stones, “the soldier fired two warning shots.Immediately
afterwards and due to the danger to his life due to the magnitude of
the aggression, the policeman riposted from the ground, firing a shot
with his regulation weapon that impacts the individual and causes him to
die," continues the official version.
"Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. The secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and started arbitrarily detaining those who they suspected would take part in the non-violent protests. A number of activists recorded or expressed over social media their intention to take part in the protest action and some were able to message out when they were taken, or had their homes surrounded and laid siege to by state security and were placed under house arrest. This crackdown in which seventy Cubans were targeted successfully "prevented" the non-violent action.
On June 28, 2020 independent Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and is now being charged with "Fake news" for his reporting on this police killing of a black youth. Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests have been detained or laid siege to their homes in order to stop them reporting on the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano and reactions to his death. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.
Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it calls Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this is a systematic campaign of the dictatorship. While at the same time shutting down independent actions as previously mentioned. The tweet above is an example from this campaign.
No video to contradict the version of the dictatorship. Peaceful protests preempted. This is the reality of life under a dictatorship where freedom of speech and assembly do not exist. Is this what progressives want for the United States?
Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros: Died on hungerstrike
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship without his families consent. Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:
It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.
Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:
I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.
On Friday, August 7, State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days.
Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom. He is not the first, and I fear while people of good will celebrate a white minority dictatorship in Havana while ignoring its black victims, there will be others. Black Lives Matter and that should include Black Cuban Lives too.
Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros died on hunger strike on August 7, 2020
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said Martin Luther King Jr., and he was right.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.,
like Gandhi before him, was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Another courageous man of Christian faith, inspired by Reverend King's nonviolent legacy, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement who had been a seminarian were martyred on
July 22, 2012 for advocating nonviolent change in Cuba. Oswaldo had
managed to obtain more than 25,000 signatures in a Stalinist
dictatorship demanding a vote to change the system and recognize the
rights and dignity of Cubans. Like Martin Luther King Jr. he was killed but his ideas and example live on to inspire others.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
Meanwhile, Raul Castro survived to the present day hanging on to power and
prepares to turn it over to a new generation of Castros, as his brother had passed it on to him before, as the island of Cuba sinks into misery
and despair, and humanitarian aid gathered in Miami and delivered to Havana by Oswaldo's daughter, Rosa María Payá Acevedo is blocked from being delivered to Cubans in need by the Castro dictatorship.
Rosa María Payá Acevedo carries on her dad's legacy
A dictatorship that claims to advocate for social justice
but silences those who wished to nonviolently protest the shooting in the back of a young unarmed black man by the Revolutionary National Police. A regime that in the midst of hunger rejects aid sitting at a port in Havana.
Official version: Shot in the back while running away from the police and throwing rocks.
Hansel E. Hernández shot in the back by police in Cuba on June 24, 2020
This Tuesday non-violent demonstrations in Cuba have been called for through social networks to ask for justice and to protest the death of the young black Cuban Hansel E. Hernández. On June 24, 2020 in Havana, Cuba Hansel was shot in the back and killed by the police while allegedly trying to flee. One protest gathering site has been identified as the movie theater Yara in Havana, Cuba.
It took three days for the authorities to report the killing, despite repeated requests for clarity on what had happened. Hours later, the authorities released a statement indicating that the 27-year-old had been caught by a National Revolutionary Police patrol when, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), "he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop", then fleeing.
During the chase "on the run for almost two kilometers, over uneven terrain", the young man, to avoid being arrested, "attacked one of the policemen throwing several stones, one of which hit the policeman in the crotch, another in the side of the torso and a third dislocated his shoulder and threw him to the floor," indicates the statement posted on social networks on June 27th.
In response to Hansel Hernández's throwing stones, “the soldier fired two warning shots.Immediately afterwards and due to the danger to his life due to the magnitude of the aggression, the policeman riposted from the ground, firing a shot with his regulation weapon that impacts the individual and causes him to die," continues the official version.
Family held open casket service for Hansel.
Hernández's case has caused controversy in the interior of Cuba, where it has been compared with the death of George Floyd, the Black American who died last May in Minneapolis (United States) during his arrest for a suffocation maneuvermade by a white police officer.
His death sparked protests and riots across the United States, protests that spread to other major cities around the world.He also encouraged in other countries (France, Mexico) to unearth similar cases of suspected deaths at the hands of the police.
On June 18, 2020 The Progressive published an article titled "Foreign
Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims
"Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in
Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States." If
the United States adopted the Cuban approach recommended by Mr. Erlich any person recording a
police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be
violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police
officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they
would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to
prison.
A
law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on
or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before
sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First
Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also
runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory,
even though the document is censored in the island.
El Kende de Cayo Hueso
Now we have learned that 17 year old social influencer El Kende de Cayo Hueso was first fined then jailed for recording video from the rooftop of his home of a long line in the street. He is being held with adult criminals. Four days have passed since his arrest.
Es El Kende de Cayo Hueso y sus amigos, niños presos en #Cuba por grabar un vídeo en la azotea de su casa, los llevan a una cárcel con delincuentes comunes. Cayo Hueso Mañana todos a la calle a las 11 de la mañana en el Yara y en toda Cuba. Basta de abuso policial. #freekendepic.twitter.com/XyGGTCCACC
According to a January 13, 2020 report in The New York Times
a former high-ranking judge in Cuba
provided
documents which "showed that approximately 92
percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial
in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are
accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government
uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having
committed a crime." Furthermore, the article says that "records show
that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. The Cuban
government has only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed."
Hansel E. Hernández was just 27 years old when he was killed.
Hansel was shot and killed for throwing rocks. On Friday, June 5, 2020 news broke
that a police station had been assaulted and two policemen killed
and a third seriously injured allegedly by Yusniel Tirado Aldama an assailant that had a grievance with the
police over poor treatment when making a complaint and harassment. The shooter was caught alive, unlike Hansel, the suspect was white.
Yusniel Tirado Aldama (Photo: Courtesy)
Today at 11:00am on June 30, 2020 protests have been called in a country where the freedom to assembly and to speak is outlawed. Please monitor along with us what is happening via the hashtag: #JusticiaParaHanselErnesto and #FreeKende. Media sources for report below: ABC, MartiNoticias, 14ymedio and Diario de Cuba
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