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Wave of Arrests against Cuba's Internal Resistance Confirm Raul Castro's Will to Repress

10.08.2010

A crackdown launched on Sunday, August 1, 2010 against the civic resistance movement in Eastern Cuba is continuing with new arrests, beatings, and threats against human rights defenders in Havana. The attacks began on August 1 in the city of Banes against the family and friends of murdered opposition activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Spanish daily ABC published an interview with indepenent journalist Caridad Caballero Batista in which she stated that “repression has intensified against opposition activists, especially in the country's eastern region. They do not attempt to hide it. Representatives from the Catholic Church and western journalists have to come to see what is happening here.”

Arbitrary arrests were documented in the cities of Banes, Holguín, Antilla, Santiago de Cuba, Las Tunas, Bayamo, Baracoa and Guantánamo.

Activists from several Havana-based organizations sounded the alarm over the disappearance of human rights defenders beginning early in the morning of August 5^th. According to Sarah Martha Fonseca Quevedo, leader of the Pro-Human Rights Party affiliated to the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, some 16 activistas were being held at National Revolutionary Police stations.

This repression has been unleashed while Raul Castro addressed the National Assembly of People's Power, stating that “There will be no impunity for enemies of the fatherland” and that “the defense of our sacred conquests, of our streets and squares, will continue to be the first duty of revolutionaries.” This same message was sent by SMS text message to the mobile telephones of several leaders of the internal resistance movement in Eastern Cuba as a veiled threat by the regime's repressive apparatus.

http://www.directorio.org/pressreleases/note.php?note_id=2799

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