“The Student Body Will Never Accept The Counterrevolution”

The 18-year-old journalism student, Karla Pérez González, was expelled from Marta Abreu University of Santa Clara for “political reasons”. (Courtesy)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 15 April 2017 — A statement signed by the Council of the University Student Federation (FEU) of ‘Marta Abreu’ Central University of Las Villas ratified the expulsion of student Karla Pérez González from the journalism department. “The university students will never accept the counterrevolution within our universities,” says the text published Friday.

The statement came to light in the midst of a flood of criticism over the expulsion of an 18-year-old student who is accused of having contacts with the Somos+ (We Are More) Movement and publishing on digital sites critical of the government. “In our universities professionals must be trained who are ever more competent and committed to the Revolution,” argues the FEU.

The statement dusted off the “Words to the Intellectuals” – delivered by Fidel Castro in June of 1961 in the National Library and which have served as the basis for the government’s cultural policy – and said that the student “acknowledges being a member of an illegal and counterrevolutionary organization, contrary the principles, objectives and values of the Cuban Revolution.”

“Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing. Because the Revolution also has its rights; and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist. And no one can stand against the right of the Revolution to be and to exist,” writes the FEU, quoting Fidel’s speech.

The statement ends with a “Revolutionarily” and does not include the names of the members of the FEU Council that initial it

Perez Gonzalez told this newspaper about the sequence of meetings that led to her expulsion. “I was also accused of manipulating my friends and having a strategy from the beginning of the course to subvert the young.”

The statement from the Federation lists two main points of the organization’s actions, controlled for decades by the ruling party. “The defense of our José Marti inspired, Marxist-Leninist, socialist and anti-imperialist process will always be the first task of university students,” and “every brigade will be an impregnable stronghold against any enemy of the work that we Cubans raise our flag for.”

The statement ends with a “Revolutionarily” and does not include the names of the members of the FEU Council that drew it up.

Pérez González plans to “write a letter to the Minister of Education and to denounce what happened to organizations that watch over Human Rights,” to denounce her expulsion.