Today, February 13, is Laura Pollan’s 64th Birthday / Mario Lleonart

Laura Pollán being assaulted by a government organized mob. Source: http://paraclito.net
Laura Pollán being assaulted by a government organized mob. Source: http://paraclito.net

In Cuba celebrating the birthday of someone as special as Laura Pollan has become a sin that the Castro brother’s regime won’t tolerate. Right now, at her home on Neptune Street in Central Havana there is a full manhunt. The women who managed to get there, some fifty, and those who for several days have been heading there from the East, some twenty-eight, are right now surrounded by the hordes that State Security manipulates to assault them and shout every kind of impropriety. Others who tried to get there were caught and beaten, right now I have dozens of witnesses to this.

The state that was established by God to watch over and care for its citizens subverts what should be its purpose and encourages violence. For two years, on the first anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo I tried to give shelter to the Ladies in White Juana Oquendo and Lilian Castañer so they could go to their “literary tea” and I myself was hunted by hordes and taken to the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station in Santiago de las Vegas, along with to Hector Julio Cedeño, freelance journalist, who right now has spent over a week under arrest for taking a photo.

Today I couldn’t even reach the headquarters of the Ladies in White to celebrate the birthday of Laura Pollan, who remains among us. They wouldn’t let me go there by any means and, indeed, my name is in the blacklist of people they are sent to kill, seizing the opportune moment to give me one of those beatings that over time prove to be fatal, as happened to Laura herself, bitten and scratched just days before her untimely death.

But yesterday afternoon I could meet with their leader Berta Soler and besides my prayers Yoaxis Marcheco, my wife, and I delivered about 50 copies of the “Every Day” devotions published by the Reform Ministry dedicated to the sensitive topic of “Women and Violence” to accompany us throughout the month of March.

Hopefully they have been able to receive this latest version and are already reading some of the prayers while the wolf pack assaults their headquarters. I now pray for them and pray God to hasten the day when this despotic regime which, for some reason, has taken especially against women disappears altogether.

13 February 2013