Police Surround and Raid Homes of Several Unpacu Activists in Santiago de Cuba

The homes of activist Yadira Serrano and her father, Dr. Roberto Serrano, were raided by police on Monday in Santiago de Cuba. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 3 June 2019 — On Monday morning, Cuban police and State Security forces raided the homes of Dr. Roberto Serrano and his daughter, activist Yadira Serrano, in the municipality of Songo la Maya, in Santiago de Cuba, according to information received by 14ymedio from the opponent Carlos Amel Oliva, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu).

The homes of the father and daughter are located one on top of the other and during the police search a laptop, two mobile phones, two USB memories and numerous documents were seized.

Along with the police searches, the main headquarters of Unpacu and another house, where the Freedom and Democracy Academy was planning an activity, are surrounded and access to their interiors is not allowed.

Dr. Serano, who works as a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor at a medical center of Songo La Maya, recently made public his support for a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which accuses the Government of Cuba of using practices akin to slavery with regards to physicians who carry out missions abroad.

“This action is nothing other than government revenge against a doctor who expressed his opinion in favor of the complaint,” Oliva explains. The lawsuit included the testimony of 110 doctors on the island who abandoned so-called “internationalist missions” and whose identity, in many cases, was protected to prevent reprisals against them.

For her part, the daughter of the doctor, Yadira Serrano, has been prominent in recent months in preparing several documents that a group of civil society organizations intend to present to the next General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), to be held in Colombia.

Also on Monday, Yadira Serrano was in charge of a workshop as part of the activities of the Freedom and Democracy Academy planned take place in a house in the Mariana de la Torre neighborhood in the capital of Santiago. But from the early hours of the morning a police siege has prevented the entry of participants, detailed Carlos Amel Oliva.

The workshop, in which some 15 people were planning to participate, was scheduled for 8:00 am and was dedicated to instructions on international entities where complaints can be filed for human rights violations.

The headquarters of Unpacu, in the Altamira district, is also under police siege. Oliva noted that the raids perpetrated today by the police in Songo la Maya are the 22nd and 23rd carried out so far this year against that opposition organization.

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