Candidate Clinton's silence on Castro regime's beating of Cuban women answered with more violence a day later

"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future." -  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956  

Cuban women targeted by the Castro regime's repressive forces this past Sunday

On July 23, 2016 a plane flew over the Florida International University Arena asking Hillary Clinton to help stop the beatings of Cuban women by the Castro regime and its agents. Over two thousand fliers were distributed on that day that called on Hillary Clinton to help put an end to the physical assaults on the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of Cuban political prisoners by calling on General Raul Castro to stop the systematic beatings against these women.

Unfortunately one day later, with the non-response of Secretary Clinton to this request, in Cuba once again the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of Cuban political prisoners were beaten, kicked and had stones thrown at them when they tried to peacefully assemble in Havana, Cuba on July 24, 2016.

Candidate Clinton's silence on the Castro regime's continued systematic beating of Cuban women was answered loudly with more violence. This silence brings to mind the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu,  "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." Hopefully Hillary Clinton will speak out on behalf of Cuban women before the next attack.

The video below was from July 18th and reflects what happened yesterday.

How the UN Secretary General's trip to Cuba exposed his failings on human rights

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Pollan, human rights defender who died under suspicious circumstances on October 14, 2011

Ban Ki-moon visited Castro regime, praised it's treatment of women

 On March 15, 2016 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the United Nations Human Rights Council to increase its impact on the ground over its second decade. However the actions of the Secretary General during his visit to Cuba in January of 2014 demonstrates the challenges faced by the United Nations.  Ban Ki-moon whitewashed the Castro regime's human rights atrocities, met with Castro regime oppressors including Fidel and Raul Castro and praised them for their work on violence against women:

Cuba is a leader on many development issues, including expanding opportunity for women and girls.  It has battled stereotypes and worked through its institutions to advance equality and prevent and end all forms of violence. [...] Since this threat is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior – and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

The Secretary General ignored the well documented beatings and extreme acts of violence visited on Cuban women who dissent from the official government line by Castro regime agents. Sadly, eight months after Secretary Ki-moon legitimized the dictatorship in Cuba and praised its treatment of women Yudisledy López, age 23 with two young children, was stabbed 18 times and murdered on September 26, 2014. She was killed after having warned months earlier Cuban human rights defender Sirley Avila Leon that an ex-convict had told the young mother of two that he was promised benefits for harming or killing Sirley. The warning took place after human rights defender's bed was set on fire and home vandalized.

23 year old murdered in 2014 after warning human rights defender

Another attempt on the life of Cuban human rights defender, Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was carried out in Cuba on May 24, 2015 during which she was gravely wounded in a machete attack. Osmany Carrión and his wife, both of whom had been sent by state security agents to kill her, carried out the brutal attack. Sirley lost her left hand while raising it to block a machete blow to the head. She suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and the machete cut through the bone of her right humerus that left her arm dangling. This was an escalation of previous machete attacks against other opposition activists.

Cuban state security engineered machete attack against Sirley Ávila León

On September 27, 2015 Lady in White Daisy Cuello Basulto reported that her 21 year old daughter was arrested, violently stripped and forced to urinate in front of police officers in a police station in Cotorro in Cuba. The 21 year old was arrested along with her mom and other family while on their way to attend the Sunday march of the Ladies in White. In the police station "she was humiliated," although she refused to urinate in front of the agents, who constantly jeered at her, explained her mother in an interview with Radio República. The young woman was locked in a cell with a strong smell of hydrochloric acid and afterwards suffered from a sore throat, according to her mother who added: "She has a fever and feels very bad."

Marina Montes Piñón age 60 beaten by regime agents. UNSG meets their bosses

If this is the leadership that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon celebrated in Cuba when he met with the men who give the orders to humiliate, brutalize and murder Cuban women then maybe he shouldn't be the one measuring the impact of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council already has enough problems.

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.

End the Silence: Stand with Women in Cuba for Their Rights

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) examined Cuba today during its 55th session at the Palais des Nations in Conference Room XVI in Geneva, Switzerland. There was no mention, not even a question raised, of the Cuban government's agents engaging and organizing others in a systematic pattern of death threats, assaults, and rape threats against Cuban women in order to silence their dissent. Women in Cuba have been and continue to be imprisoned, badly beaten, mutilated, threatened with rape and extra-judicially executed by a government that some claim is pro-women in order to deny them their fundamental human rights. How can this be going on and CEDAW not mention it?

Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent presented report to CEDAW

 There was one ray of light amidst the depressing news and that was that two dissident Cuban attorneys Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent presented their report to CEDAW that touches on the institutional violence against women, and this is now part of the official record:

The brutality of the police and state security agents, including women members of these bodies, against women dissidents, is supported by the state, which exemplifies the institutionalized violence as a means to repress women opposition activists. Arbitrary detention is one of the methods to prevent them from exercising their rights to speak, associate and demonstrate. In detention centers agents use violence, sexual assault and insults as means of repression. The cells enclosed in unsanitary and sometimes sanitary services have no privacy or are not appropriate for women, even having them share prison cells with men. In some cases, they forced to strip naked or forcibly stripped, obliging them to squat to see if they have items in their genitals and claims that have been reported that they have introduced a pen into the vagina, under the justification of seeking recording objects.

The government organizes in workplaces the so called Rapid Response Brigades (BRR) to suppress even with the use of violence women dissidents. It is the absolute government inaction regarding those involved in rallies of repudiation against the Ladies in White and other women opposition activists, acts against the public order, groups that gather to promote hatred against opponents of the government and advocate for socialist revolution, to which are added the media with smear campaigns against these women, who have no opportunity to exercise their right to reply.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are eight cases that deserve CEDAW's attention:

Rosa María Rodríguez Gil

One day a secret policemen approached Rosa María Rodríguez Gil and demanded that she become an informant spying on other members of the human rights group of which she is  a member. She rejected their offer saying that she would not be subjected to blackmail. They warned her that her learning disabled son, Josvany Melchor Rodríguez, would pay. Three days later he was arrested on March 19, 2010 and held in custody for nine months then subjected to a show trial and given a 12 year prison sentence. Rosa responded by denouncing the blackmail and demanding the immediate release of her innocent son. Two years pass and her son is still unjustly imprisoned and international attention draws some attention to his plight. Early one morning her sister, Dalia Margarita Rodríguez, who is a cancer survivor, gets a phone call they ask her if she is related to  Rosa and they ask Dalia her son's name. She answered all their questions truthfully and then they tell her to talk to Rosa and to take care of her son or that he would end up the same way.  

Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo and Ofelia Acevedo

 Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo: "There, as in Madrid, we have been reminded that the death threats received by my father were made concrete on July 22, 2012 and requested support to investigate his death and the death of my friend Harold Cepero. We left behind a statement being signed by those attending the summit explicitly requesting support for an investigation to clarify what happened. The truth is essential, for justice, as a way for true reconciliation, but also as a warning, because death threats have now extended to all my family and the repression increases against members of the MCL and the entire opposition." Both women are currently in exile as political refugees due to the death threats and harassment from the government.

Sonia Garro

More than a year after her detention the Lady in White, Sonia Garro, is being held at "El Guatao" prison and is regularly receiving death threats. Amnesty International reported that "Lady in White Sonia Garro Alfonso, and her husband, Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González, were arrested at their home in Havana [on March 18, 2012]: around 50 police forced their way into the house and fired rubber bullets at them. According to her sister, Sonia Garro Alfonso was wounded in the foot by one of these bullets." In the same document it is revealed that "Sonia Garro Alfonso was suffering a kidney problem before her arrest that may require surgery. " Because she took part in a march on Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 23rd Avenue in Havana with a makeshift banner that read: "Down With Racism & Long Live Human Rights" she was detained by police for seven hours and badly beaten. Sonia Garro Alfonso suffered a fracture of the nasal septum and other injuries reported by the EFE newswire.

 

Yris Perez Aguilera

 Yris Perez , Damarys Moya ,Yanisbel Valido, Natividad Blanco and Ramona Garcia were beaten and arrested in Santa Clara for marching on March 7, 2013.  Yris Perez Aguilera had been beaten so badly that she lost consciousness and had to be admitted to a hospital. When she regained consciousness despite still being in a bad state she was discharged on orders of State Security. Due to the multiple beatings she has received from government agents Yris Perez Aguilera has developed a cyst on the top of the spine where it meets her head.  She frequently suffers migraines, dizziness spells and other sharp pains due to the repeated attacks which she has not been able to tend to medically. The man who assaulted Yris on March 7, 2013 is Eric Francis Aquino Yera, the same official who, in 2012, threatened to rape the 5 year old daughter of Damaris Moya- Lazara Contreras.

Marina Montes Piñón

 Marina Montes Piñón, a 60 year old woman and long time opposition activist, was beaten with a blunt object by regime agents on December 15, 2012 in Cuba. The end result was three deep wounds in the skull and a hematoma in the right eye. She needed nearly thirty stitches to patch up the wounds.

Berenice Héctor González

 Berenice Héctor González, a 15-year old young woman, suffered a knife attack on November 4, 2012 for supporting the women's human rights movement, The Ladies in White. News of the attack only emerged a month later because State Security had threatened the mother that her daughter would suffer the consequences if she made the assault public.

Damaris Moya Portieles and her daughter

Human rights activist and member of the Rosa Parks Movement for Civil Rights, Damaris Moya Portieles, denounced on  May 3rd 2012 that in addition to having been the victim of a violent arrest along with other dissidents the previous night, State Security and political police agents threatened to rape her 5 year old daughter. According to Portieles, the main culprit of this threat was the State Security agent Eric Francis Aquino Yera.

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo

 Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, one of the founders of the Ladies in White in March of 2003 and its chief spokeswoman was widely admired inside of Cuba and internationally. She fell suddenly ill and died within a week on October 14, 2011 in a manner that a Cuban medical doctor described as "painful, tragic and unnecessary." This was just days after the Ladies in White declared themselves a human rights organization dedicated to the freedom of all political prisoners, not just their loved ones.

Women are dying in Cuba for defending their fundamental human rights using nonviolent means. Will the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) speak for them? Will you?

International Human Rights Day in Cuba 2012: A look back

 The past year has continued to see a deterioration of human rights in Cuba. It began in January with the terrible news that Wilman Villar Mendoza, another prisoner of conscience, had died while on hunger strike in a Cuban prison demanding that his rights be respected. Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's visit to the island in March coincided with a nationwide crackdown on Cuban dissidents while His Holiness was in Cuba. The aftermath has been even worse. Sergio Díaz Larrastegui, died this past April 19, 2012 at the Julio Trigo Hospital in Arroyo Naranjo in Havana, Cuba. He died in the shadows, under the control of Cuban State Security. Less than three months later, Cuban opposition leader and Catholic Layman Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas along with Harold Cepero from the same movement died under suspicious circumstances that appear to have been provoked by State Security on July 22, 2012. Family and friends are demanding an international investigation into their deaths.

The United Nations conducted a review of torture in Cuba and found much to criticize.

The number of arbitrary detentions in 2012 have skyrocketed compared to previous years. At the beginning of December the number was already at 6,035 detentions.  In November and December of 2012 there were also large scale crackdowns on human rights defenders.

Violence and threats of violence against nonviolent activists and their families continues in Cuba to the present day. An extreme but not atypical example is that of Damaris Moya Portieles who initiated a hunger strike on June 3, 2012 demanding that her 5-year old daughter, Lazara Contreras Moya, be kept safe. This was because state security agents made graphic rape threats to the mother concerning her five year old daughter. The worse of the perpetrators was Eric Francis Aquino Yera. Berenice Héctor González, a 15-year old young woman, suffered a knife attack on November 4, 2012 for supporting the women's human rights movement, The Ladies in White. News of the attack only emerged a month later because State Security had threatened the mother that her daughter would suffer the consequences if she made the assault public. Lady in White Sonia Garro who has on more than one occasion been badly beaten by State Security and her husband have been locked up since March 2012. Unfortunately, when a UN goodwill ambassador visits Cuba to discuss violence against women the above practices by the dictatorship go unaddressed. Dissidents have been beaten up and arrested for addressing national and international bodies.

Conditions in the prisons continue to be dire and nonviolent human rights defenders are housed with murderers. There are new prisoners of conscience in Cuba. For example on November 28, 2012 Cuban labor union activist Ulises González Moreno was sentenced to two years in prison for a "predilection to social dangerousness."

Unfortunately international media on the island has been slow to report on crackdowns taking place and are frequently scooped by independent Cuban journalists on twitter because the news media know, from past experience, that if they report on the opposition and the repression of the dictatorship they their bureaus will be shut down and their journalists expelled. Even the case of a British citizen held in Cuba because he only had a British passport but because he was born in Cuba, the regime refuses to recognize it made the news in The Daily Telegraph because the man's family spoke out. Not a word of this when reporting on migration reforms in the island.

It is feared that the year in Human Rights in Cuba will end as it began with a human rights defender dying on hunger strike due to the cruelty and mistreatment amounting to torture by Cuban officials in the prison. Calixto Ramon Martinez who reported on the cholera outbreak and was detained on September 16, 2012 after exposing Cuban government culpability in the deterioration of medicines sent to the island by the World Health Organization (WHO) has now been on hunger strike for 30 days protesting his unjust imprisonment. According to Roberto de Jesus Guerra Perez, the independent journalist is being denied water in order to pressure him into ending his hunger strike. This type of practice is believed to have contributed to the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza earlier this year and to the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010.

The arrests with violence of over a 100 activists on the eve of International Human Rights day under the pretext that human rights defenders is a somber harbinger of what will be witnessed on December 10, 2012.

The evidence is self-evident these are not isolated human rights violations but a systematic pattern of repression to violate the human rights of all Cubans and human rights defenders in particular.

Hypocrisy and the UN Campaign to End Violence Against Women

The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Julieta Venegas in Havana, Cuba

The Cuban government is one of the most anti-woman regimes on the planet. Women who speak out and exercise their fundamental rights are regularly physically assaulted and sometimes die under
suspicious circumstances.

Laura Pollan (left) and Yris Perez Aguilera (right) both repeatedly badly beaten by State Security

 Cuban human rights defender Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera has been the victim of numerous brutal beatings by the Cuban dictatorship's state security agents and the pictures above demonstrates a consequence of the attacks. On at least four occasions on this blog the attacks have been reported on: November 4, 2011, September 18, 2011, September 28, 2011, June 20, 2011 and May 26, 2011. In addition the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights issued a precautionary measure.

Lump on back Yris Perez Aguilera's head is produce of repeated beatings

 This violence has gone on for decades and those who are sensitive to repression against women should be outraged by what takes place in Cuba. Instead they are silent and the violence continues.  Laura Pollan died following years of physical assaults at the hands of state security that included fractures which led her to wearing a cast.

Photo of Maria Elena around time of attack

 On November 19, 1991 the Cuban poet Mariela Elena Cruz Varela, who peacefully dissented asking for nonviolent change, was assaulted by a mob organized by the dictatorship who tried to force feed the poet her own words. She wrote about the assault in her book, Dios en las cárceles cubanas
(God in the Cuban jails):

They broke my mouth trying to make me swallow the leaflets that members of my group had distributed throughout Havana. Afterwards I spent three days brutally besieged, imprisoned in my own home with my two children, with no water, no electricity, no food, no cigarettes. We heard what the huge speakers never stopped amplifying, allegorical songs to the country, the necessary punishment of traitors, and anyone who wanted to could shout at me, organized, of course, the slogans they pleased: Comrade worm, we are going to execute you by firing squad!.

 The previous outrage came to mind when I read that a Cuban state security official had shoved sheets of petition signature "For Another Cuba" into the mouth of pro-democracy activist, Yuri Martinez. The failure of the United Nations and popular figures such as Julieta Venegas to denounce these outrages only encourages their repetition with impunity.

A culture of impunity involves self-censorship and submitting to intimidation and this is precisely what the dictatorship in Cuba has achieved through a sophisticated apparatus of repression that projects beyond Cuba into the international community.


Nevertheless, when the subject is violence against women, the plight of Cuban women is ignored. The latest to engage in this shameful practice is Julieta Venegas and worse yet it was backed by the United Nations and their campaign to End Violence Against Women, UNiTE. 

The day before the concert in Cuba the following women were beaten and arrested for trying to attend Mass.

1. Maria Cristina Labrada Barona
2. Anisley Pavón Goberna
3. Aimé Moya Montes de Oca
4. Lisandra Farray Rodríguez
5. Sandra Rodríguez Gatorno
6. Marbelis González Reyes
7. Lis Eladia Quiñones González
8. Raquel Rodríguez Morejón
9. Dianelis Rodríguez Morejón
10. Olga Lidia Torres Iglesias
11. Noralis Martín Hernández
12. Romelia Piña González
13. Danay  Mendiola Duquesne
14. Liliana Campo Bruzon
15.Bertha Guerrero Segura
16. Rosa María Naranjo Nieves

Not a word of this act of violence against women was mentioned at a concert that was supposedly aimed to campaign for the end of violence against women. There is a word for this type of behavior and it is hypocrisy.  Unfortunately it is both a word and practice that the United Nations is all too familiar with.  Hopefully Julieta Venegas is not joining the crowd of artists that legitimize despots. That would be a pity because I do like her music. Besides that, she is playing to a regime that systematically censors music.

Mothers Day in Cuba: Cuban Women Defy Government Repression

"We are not going to stop. If they have imprisoned our sisters thinking that we would give up, they are mistaken." - Laura Pollán

Ladies in White march on Mother's Day despite repression in honor of Laura Pollán, along with Laura's widower, former prisoner of conscience Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

On Mothers Day in Cuba the Ladies in White,  paid tribute to Laura Pollán, one of the founders of the organization who died under mysterious circumstances on October 14, 2011. Despite threats, harassment, and scores of women detained by State Security 68 Ladies in White following mass walked through Fifth Avenue in the west of Havana. They marched and chanted Viva Laura Pollán!" and "Freedom for the political prisoners!"

Literary Tea on Saturday in Havana

Berta Soler, the current leader of the Ladies in White, described how the homage for Laura Pollán began the day before on Saturday with a literary tea at the home of the deceased founding leader. The home located in central Havana, thanks to Laura's widower, has now been turned into the organization's  headquarters. She also described how the regime had organized a "party" for Mothers Day on Saturday just outside of the home to disrupt their activity describing it as a provocation.


Video from Pedazos de la Isla

More sinisterly scores of members of the Ladies in White were taken by State Security into detention their whereabouts unknown over the past week and including today. Sara Marta Fonseca managed to tweet at 8:48am on Mothers Day: "They take me away detained." This latest wave of detentions started days ago, in anticipation of Mothers Day.

 Ladies in White marching on Sunday

Jose Daniel Ferrer tweeted on Friday, May 11 that  Ladies in White, Alina Fonseca and Milagros Leyva were still jailed in Santiago de Cuba for attempting to travel to Havana. Alina had been detained since May 7, 2012. On May 8, 2012 Jose Daniel reported that a Major in State Security (G2) going by the name "Dorky" told various Ladies in White that they would only allow five of them to arrive in Havana for the Mothers Day activities. State Security mounted an operation to harass, block and detain women trying to leave to Havana to join up with the Ladies in White. Nevertheless 23 women arrived in Havana from Santiago to take part in the activities.

Later today, tweets appeared concerning some of the women who had been detained and were left by State Security up to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from their homes to find their way back in a country in which it is notoriously difficult to get around.  The names of two subjected to this mistreatment were tweeted by Hablemos Press: Sandra Guerra and Claribel Rodriguez.

The treatment of Cuban women under the Castro regime has been and continues to be shameful. On May 3rd a Cuban mother was threatened over several hours by thugs, instigated by State Security, that her 5 year old daughter would be raped.

It is also important to remember that Cuban mothers are spending Mothers Day in prison for defending the human rights of the Cuban people. Two of them: Sonia Garro and Niurka Luque have been in prison since March 2012.  Cuban mothers are forging the path to a free Cuba one step at a time walking for their children's freedom.

Remembering Cuban women and their ongoing struggle for freedom

The Cuban transition wears a skirt, its rhythm is marked by so many women who will achieve a more inclusive, maternal, free country :-) - Yoani Sanchez, on twitter March 8, 2012

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, Ladies in White founder (February 13, 1948 – October 14, 2011)

Laura Pollán addressing other Cuban Ladies in White

Today the world seeks to celebrate women's accomplishments around the world on International Women's Day and in the case of Cuba that requires that the Cuban Ladies in White and the Rosa Parks Women's Civil Rights Movement be recognized. Over the past half century of totalitarian rule in Cuba there has been a systematic and brutal denial of all human rights and Cuban women have suffered doubly because the regime claims to have brought equality to women in Cuba. Much like its claims on race relations what that means is that women who speak out about injustices they have suffered are silenced.

These women have confronted it head on and suffered harassment, beatings, threats of sexual violence and in at least the case of Laura Inés Pollán Toledo a mysterious illness and unnecessary death. At the same time these women have achieved notable achievements. They managed to get their loved ones out of prison, because despite all the repression the Ladies in White suffered, they continued to march in the streets of Havana demanding that human rights be respected and their loved ones freed on a regular basis.

Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera

In the interior of Cuba, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera of the Rosa Parks Women's Civil Rights Movement has been "disappeared" and badly beaten up by State Security agents on more than one occasion. On March 3, 2012 in Placetas, Cuba she was held down by police men and assaulted by one of them, Yunier Monteagudo Reina who pulled down her pants saying that he would “get on top of this black.” Her "crime" is defending human rights.

On November 30, 2011 in Havana, Cuba three women engaged in a public demonstration with a banner that read: "Enough of the lies and deceit of the Cuban people. End hunger, misery and poverty in Cuba." Ivón Mayesa, Blanca Hernández y Mayra Morejón demonstrated in front of the store “La Isla de Cuba”, before crossing the street and continuing their protest at Havana’s Fraternity Park. The Coalition of Cuban American Women described what happened next:

On Wednesday, November the 30th, three female human rights defenders, members of the group “Ladies in White’ were dragged, beaten and violently arrested in a crowded public park in Havana for displaying a white sheet that read: “Down with Hunger, Misery, and Poverty”, “Stop lying and deceiving the Cuban people”. Ivón Mayesa, Blanca Hernández (77 years old), and Mayra Morejón cried out Freedom! at the Fraternidad Park, before dozens of citizens. Some of the onlookers who tried to prevent the arrest of the three women were pepper-sprayed by the policemen. Mayesa’s husband, Ignacio Martínez Montejo, was also beaten and arrested and is detained at the Acosta Police Station in Havana. Hernandez and Morejon were released but the whereabouts of Ivon Mayesa are unknown to her family since her arrest.

Standing up and demanding human rights and economic justice in Cuba led to beatings and imprisonment and in at least one case the untimely death of a beloved activist. Let us remember their courage and support their demands for freedom and justice.

Ivon Mayesa