Impunity, an Order from the General / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photos:  Luis Felipe Rojas

Before General Raul Castro had even finished giving his discourse before Cuban legislators on August 1st, his armies had already rushed on more than twenty human rights activists in the Eastern region of the country.  The indiscriminate hunt had arrived.  The purpose was so that these activists would not reach Holguin, get close to Banes to the house of Reina Tamayo, and to prevent them from leaving their homes.

The phone did not stop ringing with people calling us to inform us about the detentions.  Some even thought of it as a Black Summer.

There were some house arrests.  Anni Sarrion, Aurelio Morales Ayala, Martha Diaz Rondon, and Gertrudis Ojeda Suarez were all beaten when they tried to get to the house of the independent journalist Caridad Caballero Batista in Holguin.  Caridad, her husband, and her son were all dragged on the floor and the officials tried snatching their photo camera.

Omar Wilson, from Moa, was trying to get to the house of a friend in Holguin when he came under attack from the military operation.  He felt it so intensely that he experienced tremors from a disease he suffers from.  He went from the street to detainment in a hospital and he spent more than 48 hours there in a very delicate state of health.  Francisco Luis Manzanet and Carlos Manuel Hernandez, both of whom were trying to help, ended up spending two nights in the cold jails cells of the G2 (Secret Police) of Holguin.

In some of these cases, the arrests lasted until the afternoon of August 5th.  And, on that same day, 5 activists were detained in Santiago de Cuba after they commemorated the tragic events of the Maleconazo in 1994.

The Cuban president has incited a tainted war among Cubans.  He has returned to the rhetoric of not allowing impunity.  The ones who act unjustly are the political police and their civilian helpers, those dressed in olive-green, or that very police unit which claims to call itself National and Revolutionary.  It is to the point that all streets are just being watched.  They are just waiting for a protest or any display of nonconformity, waiting for the whistle that will go off in the headquarters of the G2.

Translated by Raul G.

August 10, 2010