State Security summoned priest Kenny Fernández for his call for peace in Venezuela
14ymedio, Havana, 12 August 2024 — The call to pray for peace in Venezuela made by Cuban priest Kenny Fernández Delgado on August 2nd set State Security in motion within a few hours. This weekend, seven days after an official summoned him to the office of the Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Foreigners at 17 and K, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución (Havana), the priest revealed that it was a maneuver by State Security to intimidate him.
As reported by Fernández in a Facebook post, the official summons for 10 a.m. – “at the same time as the prayer meeting, to avoid my participation,” he says – was followed by a call from a lieutenant colonel who insisted that there would be “consequences” if he did not appear at the office.
According to Fernández – the parish priest of the church of San Antonio de Padua, in Arroyo Naranjo – he has owned a house for years that he rents to Cubans and, although he does not manage it, he is listed as the owner, which served as a pretext for State Security to question him. “According to the two lieutenant colonels who spoke with me, it is only because of the remote possibility that I might ever decide to rent the apartment to a foreigner that the Immigration and Foreigners Department has the power to summon me as many times as it wants, even with less than 24 hours notice and at least once every six months, and without the need to present an official summons document,” he explains.
Fernandez insisted that he was not planning to rent to any tourists and from there the conversation took another direction
Fernández said that he was not planning to rent to any tourists, and from there the conversation took a different direction. “The ‘friendly policeman’ began to ask me many questions in the style of the State Security colleagues about my publications on social networks, as if someone with the possibility of renting to foreigners was prohibited from using their freedom of expression on social networks,” he summarizes.
The real reason behind the meeting, Fernández emphasizes, was to investigate the call that the priest had launched for that same day for any park on the Island in order to ask for peace for Venezuela and Cuba. “Then I discovered that Immigration and Foreigners has, among other functions, to do the same thing that State Security does in general with all citizens, but focused on tenants: repress anyone who expresses a different opinion to what they call the Revolution, and harass them over and over again until they shut up (…). I suppose to prevent them from being a ’bad ideological influence’ for foreigners,” he said.
The priest adds that the agents also warned him that “calling people to pray in parks is a pre-criminal activity” and is considered “incitement to commit crimes.” According to them, this type of meeting cannot be held without express permission from the Communist Party, since these are ideal times to “commit crimes against the Revolution.” Something that does not happen in official gatherings, since operations are carried out to guarantee security, the officers argued.
The warning went even further, with the authorities stating that, in addition to the fact that the call was prohibited, it had been politically motivated. “The intention was only to pray for a solution to the conflicts where peace and justice reign in Venezuela and Cuba, and I believe that this should be in the interest of all parties,” the priest reflected.
Another point of their conversation caught Fernández’s attention, and that is that the agents assert that all Cuban workers – including private ones – are state workers. “All self-employed workers are state workers. And therefore they must abide by all state laws like any state worker, which means that they cannot carry out acts that could be considered contrary to the Revolution, such as publishing messages on social networks that are critical of the revolutionary process or its allies,” was stressed.
According to the priest, “this is a great revelation because it means that in Cuba, regardless of whether you work in non-state forms of management, you are (…) a subject, vassal and servant of the PCC,” he said.
Kenny Fernández has been one of the priests who, due to his critical position against the regime, has suffered harassment and repression
Kenny Fernández has been one of the priests who, due to his critical position against the regime, has suffered harassment and repression. According to what he told the Catholic news channel EWTN, “every month, at least one stone, two stones, five stones are thrown at the windows of the church (San Antonio de Padua, in Arroyo Naranjo) at a time when the perpetrators cannot be seen.”
This method, along with the theft of articles from churches and parish houses, or attacks on the property of priests, have been denounced on various occasions as repressive tactics used by the political police to intimidate dissident religious people. Arrests, fines or arbitrary summons, strict surveillance in their daily lives and, in some cases, exile, are also part of the list of actions to silence them.
The Cuban regime has a long history of repression of priests and members of the Catholic Church – lay or religious – which intensified after the protests of 11 July 2021 (11J). Following the mass arrests, and even during the demonstrations, priests such as Lester Zayas, Alberto Reyes and José Castor Devesa, who spoke out in favor of citizens or marched alongside them, have frequently been called to account by State Security, harassed or reprimanded by their superiors due to government pressure.
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