Category: Antonio Rodiles
Another Sunday of Beatings for the Ladies in White /14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, 6 July 2015 — The project director of the independent Estado of Sats project, Antonio Rodiles, underwent emergency surgery Sunday for a nasal bone fracture after being detained and beaten by security forces in Havana while participating in the weekly march of the Ladies in White. Opposition sources reported that about 80 members of that organization and human rights activists were arrested, sometimes violently.
The regime opponent Martha Beatriz Roque reported through her Twitter account of the arrest of Rodiles on 42nd street and 3rd Avenue in Miramar, adding that he was, “Beaten until his nasal septum, forehead, finger and foot were all broken,” and taken to the hospital Calixto García for emergency surgery. He was then transferred to the prison known as Vivac, where he remained until 6.30 pm. continue reading
At least 20 people were arrested before reaching Santa Rita Church, including Rodiles, photographer Claudio Fuentes and dissident Jose Diaz Silva.
About 60 Ladies in White managed to reach the church and march down Fifth Avenue, before being arrested with their leader, Berta Soler. A reporter for this paper, Boris Gonzalez Arenas, was also arrested later, as were former political prisoners Egberto Escobedo and Angel Moya, according to activist Ailer González’s Twitter account.
Security agents also conducted operations in Aguada de Pasajeros in Cienfuegos, where the pastor restricted the Ladies in White from attending Sunday Mass.
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Antonio Rodiles: The Brutality Will Never Conquer Us
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Don’t Look Away / 14ymedio, Regina Coyula
14ymedio, Regina Coyula, Havana, 6 July 2015 — Ailer González, artistic director of the Estado de SATS project, called me on Sunday afternoon. Knowing it was her, I opened the communication with the festive and very pertinent question of whether she was a grandmother. Sounding crushed and full of indignation she let me know that Antonio Rodiles, her partner and director general of Estado de Sats had just arrived home. He had been savagely beaten in the morning by several individuals dressed in plainclothes while trying to get to the Sunday March of the Ladies in White; he was then arrested, and because of his injuries, taken to the hospital. continue reading
According to Ailer, the doctors were shocked by his condition when he arrived at the emergency room. I do not believe that the doctors’ outrage goes far beyond the horror on display yesterday; there is an invisible but powerful barrier that many Cubans don’t dare to cross.
These kinds of incidents are neither spontaneous nor improvised; they are the result of operational plans and decisions by the political police. Antonio Gonzalez may be a figure who is detested by the Cuban government; but he was not armed, he was not heading out to assault a barracks, or to commit an attack.
Twelve weeks of sustained repression have been directed against the peaceful Sunday marches of the Ladies in White, and the dissidents and journalists who accompany them. Is this brutality and escalation? Are they using the dissidents that have come out against the normalization of relations with the United States to poison the normalization of those same relations? Or are they sending a message to the population? Or both combined?
The government should be more decent. The world is carefully watching Cuba at this time, and actions by their own henchmen only confirm the lack of freedoms. Once again I recall the words of Rosa Luxembourg – an uncomfortable Communist – “Freedom always has been and is the freedom of those who think differently.”
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Antonio Rodiles Severely Beaten / Ailer Gonzalez
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State Security Agents Leave Their Uniforms at Home / Rebeca Monzo
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Sunday Beatings in Havana Continue / Ailer Gonzalez
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Cuban Police Arrest More Than 220 Dissidents, According To Activists / Hablemos Press, Roberto de Jesús Guerra
Hablemos Press, Roberto de Jesús Guerra Peréz, Havana, 29 June 2015 — Offices of the National Police, the Department of State Security, and other members of the Interior Ministry arrested at least 226 Cuban activists and dissidents this past Sunday, 28 June, 2015.
Police operations were carried out in various provinces of the country to keep activists and opposition members from attending Mass.
Among those arrested in Havana were Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White Movement, Antonio G. Rodiles, director of Estado de SATS; José Díaz, of Opponents for a New Republic Movement; photographer Claudio Fuentes; and several of the former political prisoners who were released in January 2015. continue reading
In Havana, the arrests of various members of the Ladies in White and others of the opposition took place as these individuals were departing their residences early in the morning, and they remained surrounded by police officers throughout the day.
Besides Soler, Ladies in White executive committee members María Cristina Labrada Barona and Lismeri Quintana Ávila were among these detainees, along with eight other women.
Another 39 arrests of women activists took place in the area around Santa Rita Church, after the women completed their customary march along 5th Avenue in the Miramar district of Playa municipality, and gathered in Gandhi Park (adjacent to the church) to review the week’s activities. In addition, approximately another 41 activists and opponents–men who accompany the Ladies on their march–were arrested in the capital.
Dozens of Interior Ministry agents blocked the streets around St. Rita Church to arrest the Ladies and other dissidents, according to the activists.
The Lady in White Aidé Gallardo Salazar was struck and dragged by female officers. “They hit me on the head and face, and they tried to asphyxiate me,” Gallardo averred.
Other arrests of Ladies in White occurred in these provinces: Holguín (4); Bayamo-Granma (2); and Aguada de Pasajero in Cienfuegos (9). In the last province, additionally, “17 men who accompanied the Ladies were arrested,” according to activist and former political prisoner Iván Hernández Carrillo.
The independent reporter Agustín López Canino also was arrested upon exiting his home in the El Globo district, located on the outskirts of Havana.
“I will continue going there to St. Rita for as long as they’ll let me,” said López Canino when interviewed. “What I do is take down the facts and forward them to various media.”
He adds that, “The repression against the opposition movement has increased extraordinarily within the last six months and cannot be allowed to go on without attention focused on it.”
The former political prisoners Ramón Alejandro Muñoz, Eugenio Hernández Hernández, Ángel Figueredo Castellón, Mario Alberto Hernández, and Rolando Reyes Rabanal were also arrested in Havana.
The Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), headquartered in Santiago de Cuba, reported the arrests of 103 of its members when they attempted to travel to the village of El Cobre to attend Mass.
The agents used violence to detain the opponents, who were transported to police stations and military bases, according to activist sources.
Ladies in White affirm that, “The regime wants to destroy the opposition, but we are prepared to give our lives for the freedom of the political prisoners,” stated Ibón Lemos y Mayelín Peña.
Soler attests that the repression increased 11 Sundays ago, ever since the Ladies in White initiated a new campaign to demand the release of political prisoners, among them: the writer Ángel Santiesteban Prats, the artist Danilo Maldonado Machado (“El Sexto”); and the dissidents Santiago Roberto Montes de Oca, René Rouco Machín, Osvaldo Rodríguez Acosta, Yosvani Melchor Rodríguez, Rolando Joaquín Guerra Pérez, Eugenio Ariel Arzuaga Peña, Yoelkis Rosabal–in total, more than 50 individuals.
The reports received at Hablemos Press included figures totaling 226 opponents arrested across the Island on Sunday, although the actual number may be greater.
Translated By: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
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More than 70 Ladies in White and Activists Arrested / Diario de Cuba
Diario de Cuba, Havana, 7 June 2015 – Over 40 Ladies in White and some 27 activists were arrested this Sunday, the ninth of repressive operations in Havana, according to dissidents.
Among those arrested were the musician Gorki Aguila, the director of Estado de Sats, Antonio Rodiles, photographer Claudio Fuentes and artist Tania Bruguera, who has already been released, according to the activist Ailer Gonzalez.
Other Ladies in White and opponents were arrested on leaving their homes, or forced to remain in them, according to the dissident Martha Beatriz Roque. continue reading
Gonzalez, artistic director of State of Sats, said she was able to talk with Antonio Rodiles when he was led into a State Security “paddy wagon,”, along with nine other men, and taken to the criminal prosecution center known as “Vivac.”
“He told me that his arrest had been violent and that they had put him in a chokehold,” she told Diario de Cuba.
Given the continued repression against the Ladies in White and the activists who support them when they attend Sunday Mass at Havana’s Santa Rita Church and undertake their walks down Quinta Avenue, supporters inside and outside the island carried out a campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #TodosMarchamos (We All March).
The initiative seeks to break the silence on the current repression in Cuba despite the regime’s negotiations with the United States and the European Union.
“This is a resistance,” said Ailer Gonzalez about the activities of the Ladies in White and dissidents every Sunday. “Many believe it is exhausting, but it seems to me that it is about the right to demonstrate, not only for the release of political prisoners,” she added.
“With this resistance every Sunday we are demanding the right to peaceful demonstration in Cuba, which is something that they (the government) are terrified of. Therefore they are engaged in this sustained repression, because the day they let us walk more than 10 blocks, they know how many people are going to join in,” she said.
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#TodosMarchamos, We All March, or Fear of Freedom / Cubanet, Antonio Rodiles
Cubanet, Antonio Rodiles, Havana, 3 June 2015 – Right from the year 1959, Fidel Castro made it very clear that public spaces were only for “Revolutionaries.” To achieve this objective he converted every public act in a harangue to intimidate the citizenry. Very quickly Cubans saw that the saber-rattling was converted into actions and mobs that could demolish them and their loved ones. Terror was implanted, the “Revolution” imposed.
Fifty-six years later, totalitarianism seeks to maintain its power with the tool it knows best, violence. Reactivating the panic genes that put you in a straightjacket is the regime’s priority.
Can Cuba change if we continue to sustain the memory of fear? Can Cuba change if we accept the terms of some decrepit old men and their followers?
It is not about a dilemma between a supposedly peaceful change and a violent one, as some want to show. Cuba will change if we feel the determination to make it so, if we push a genuine desire to end the nonsense and the stupidity. continue reading
For eight Sundays, the regime has brutally repressed a group of opponents who, together with the Ladies in White, demand the release of the political prisoners. Two points are intolerable for the dictatorship: that we demand the inmates be released, and that we exercise our right to demonstrate publicly and peacefully.
However, what has been unexpected is the ability to resist that we have demonstrated in the face of the abuses and the impunity of the repressive forces. Nearly a hundred activists, we continue to attend despite the violence they impose on us. It is hard, but our rights are worth it. We don’t know how many more Sundays of abuse and outrages await us, but we are confident that we will win freedom.
Last week we asked some friends to support us, because we need help to sustain this demand in the face of the silence of the international community. Quickly they promoted the Twitter hashtag #Todoas Marchamos (We All March). A “twittazo” – Twitter protest – against repression was organized, in support of the Sunday marches. And the result could not be better. Thousands of Tweets flooded the Internet. Seeing them was a balm after so much abuse.
Next Sunday we will be back on the street along with the Ladies in White, those humble women, laden with virtues and defects, but who have persevered like few others, and to whom we will be grateful for the Cuba of the future.
Hopefully many will join. Off the Island, let all those Cubans who yearn for a change send their Tweets, or gather in public spaces to show that Cuba is hurting. Within Cuba, let the rest of the opposition understand that the street is a space belonging to everyone, and that the blows hurt, but more painful for us is the indifference.
If #TodosMarchamas – If we all march – on Sunday, the fear and the disctatorship are finished. Let’s do it.
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53 Ladies in White Arrested in Havana /14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, 31 May 2015 – This Sunday the Ladies in White Movement experienced its eighth consecutive Sunday of repression in Havana, resulting in the rest of 53 of them. Some of the 25 activists who participated with the women in their traditional Sunday pilgrimage were arrested near the Church of Santa Rita in the capital municipality of Playa.
According to several witnesses, 53 Ladies in White and 25 activists were arrested at the exit of the parish and taken to a destination still unknown. At least seven women had been prevented from arriving to the place and several dissidents reported threats by State Security since Saturday, warning them not to attend the pilgrimage.
Among the activists arrested was Juan Angel Moya, a former prisoner of the Black Spring of 2003, and Antonio Gonzalez Rodiles, leader of the opposition group Estado de Sats.
Iriades Hernández Aguilera of the Patriotic Union of Cuba informed 14ymedio that no arrests of activists of the organization were reported in the province of Santiago de Cuba, although a heavy guard was seen around the headquarters of the organization. Our correspondent in Pinar del Río, Juan Carlos Fernandez, reported that three Ladies in White were able to attend Sunday mass.
In the province of Matanzas, the activist Sayli Navarro confirmed that at least 38 Ladies in White across the province made it to their respective parishes without difficulties.
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Antonio Rodiles Arrested on Leaving His House in Havana / Ailer Gonzalez
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The Harvest of the Sowing of Violence / Cubanet, Rafael Alcides
Cubanet, Rafael Alcides, Havana, 13 May 2015 – Extremely worried, doctoral candidate in physics Antonio Rodiles and his wife the actress and political activist Ailer Gonzalez, in their home, related to me two events that I have prayed over, that those events that started with the blood of Moncada wouldn’t end up being a circular story. Ailer and Antonio spoke of the increased police repression after December 17, most particularly of the brutality with which the oppressors are being dispatched.
On Sunday the 26th of last month, with their trucks crammed with martial arts experts at the end of the usual parade of the Ladies in White, Carlitos, the son of Jesus Menendez, an elderly diabetic with heart problems, was grabbed, dragged and thrown in the back of the truck like a sack of potatoes. Yury, Blas Roca’s grandson, was put in plastic handcuffs so tightly that his hands turned black and they didn’t cut them off. Up Calabazar, the truck with the prisoners inside was left in the sun to bake them a little. They grabbed Antonio among the many present and pushed him with blows to the back before throwing him headfirst into the truck. An endless number of books could be written about the mistreatment and repression of the Ladies in White, apparently excluded from government’s media campaign to end violence against women. continue reading
There has been no lack of repression since 1959. Nor cruelty. In the Canary Islands, during a tribute to the poet Manuel Díaz Martínez, Raúl Rivero talked to me about a blind dissident attorney on the outskirts of Ciego Avila who for a time took lottery bets from the area’s cops. They detained him and when night came they left him in the boondocks. The cop won a bet on what time the blind guy would be seen groping his way into the village using a stalk of sugar cane or a bare branch.
Amazed at not having seen him for a long time, at the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC) I met the Galician Regueral, now in his 60s, a Spanish journalist who has lived in Cuba since the 40s. “I was imprisoned for a year in Villa Marista,” he told me. “Why?” “I asked them that when they let me go. ‘Get out of here you Galician, go! Go!’ was the response. They never interrogated me.”
But it couldn’t be pinned on the political police. Kidnapped, homes invaded at midnight and turned upside down, and struggling, taking down the opponent by force, but it can’t be pinned on them. Or not exposed. For this they use the supposed “outraged people,” a mob disguised by its sheer numbers.
On the other hand, this is the least likely moment to make a show of brutality. They’re expecting investors in the Port of Mariel project (although those in the know say with so little bait they’re not going to catch big fish) There are also the American government authorities frequently visiting the Island, and behind them, or in front or them, are those who come to check out the part where they would like to stay, the government and entrepreneurs are expecting four million American tourists who speak of the myth. And in September Pope Francis will come. It is, I insist, the least likely moment to step up the heat.
After the first years of the Revolution, there were no more firecrackers going off, no place for sabotage, or attacks or an uprising to happen. Those methods of fighting, traditional on the Island in and those that in the 26th of July Movement were considered excellent, disappeared. The dissidence, in that regard, has been more peaceful than plaster saints. But violence often engenders violence.
I remember a boy from those times of Aguirre Park who didn’t want to get involved in anything. Seeing him appear, the group changed the subject. “Hush,” they said. It scared him. “I’m getting cold,” he complained. One night he came close to tears, but was determined. “Gentlemen, count me in on whatever,” he said. A cop whose girlfriend he’d offended had punched him. Then, from what I learned after 1959, he became the best at planting bombs.
A man without a job in dangerous, but a man with a policeman’s hand over him could be the beginning of civil war. I understand Army General Raul Castro. If he allows the demonstrations of the Ladies in White, he would have to allow others and all the rest, but if he doesn’t allow them, he will have to continue to use brutality and then he has crossed the line than can’t be crossed. He’s caught in a lose-lose situation. All that’s left is to open the game. Inaugurate democracy. His time has run out.
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Mass in Cuba for Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero / Cubanet, Ignacio Gonzalez and Osmel Almaguer
Cubanet, Ignacio Gonzalez and Osmel Almaguer, Havana, 13 May 2015 – A Mass for the deceased Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, opposition leader, and Harold Cepero, activist, was held this afternoon at the Church of Los Pasionistas in Havana, with Rosa María Payá in attendance. Rosa María, daughter of the Cuban human rights activist and recipient of the European Union’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, arrived from the Miami Airport to Cuba on the morning of May 11, to reunite with her family and friends and to honor the memory of her father.
The Mass was attended by activists of the Estado de Sats project, Antonio Rodiles and Ailer González, and by Manuel Cuesta Morua, leader of Progressive Arc, among others.
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Alarming Repression Against the Ladies in White in Cuba / Forum for Rights and Freedoms
The repression against the Ladies in White, opposition activists and human rights defenders in Cuba, that we have seen during the last couple of weeks is alarming. The increase of violence from the authorities has come as a result from the exercise of the right to public protests and from the public exposure of the faces of political prisoners. Beatings, physical abuse and various types of torture have become routine. In only a few weeks, the numbers of arrests have skyrocketed and they now exceed several hundred.
The Forum for Rights and Freedoms and Civil Rights Defenders raise a warning regarding the deteriorating situation for human rights defenders in Cuba, and we note with great concern the indifference of the international community, especially from the US government, the EU and the Vatican, of which the latter played an active role in the talks between the Cuban government and the US administration.
The current actions by the Cuban government are a response to the silence of the international community. continue reading
In accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – of which Cuba is a signatory – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – which the government of Raul Castro has signed but not ratified – and, as the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai has recently explained clearly in his final report; states shall ensure the full exercise of freedom of assembly, association and peaceful demonstration.
The Forum for Rights and Freedoms and Civil Rights Defenders call on the international community to act against the dangers that Cuban human rights defenders are facing. It is time for the American and European governments, usually eager to improve their relations with the Cuban government, to use their influence and speak out against the worsening violations of human rights in Cuba.
Antonio G. Rodiles, Coordinating Committee, Forum for Rights and Freedoms
Erik Jennische, Programme Director for Latin America, Civil Rigths Defenders
For more information on the repression against Damas de Blanco/Ladies in White on April 26 2015, follow the link
