Category: Veizant Boloy

HAVANA, Cuba, November 12, 2013, Veizant Boloy / www.cubanet.org.- On November 4, at 10:30 PM, at the University of Information Sciences (UCI), located in the capital municipality of La Lisa, a group of more than several people, armed with a knife, threatened and beat a student, determined to take his laptop, according to information from workers there.

“A friend who was with the student at the time, had to give his cell phone to the criminals, in the face of their threats,” they said.

“They threw one of the guards on shift to the ground and were arguing with each other whether or not to kill him threatening him with a gun,” said a nurse who asked not to be identified. “Eventually they let him live,” she added.

Also, in UCI complex 1, a robber threatened a 4th year student of the faculty, named Manuel Ruiz Aguilera, a native of Marianao. He sustained injuries for not giving up his laptop and is recovering favorably.

There was a police operation, involving senior managers of the UCI and the Chief of the guards.

They managed to catch 8 suspects, in El Cano, a nearby neighborhood, which were located through a telephone call to the phone they had stolen. These citizens were armed and two of them wore shirts that said “UCI.” They had taken some laptops but the exact number could not be specified by any source.

According to some statements made by workers and neighbors of the place, the UCI is the target of numerous and constant thefts because of security weaknesses.

As a result, they’ve gone back to posting policemen to guard the surrounding area and promised that they will fence the perimeter.

In June last year, a theft of equipment theft occurred in the same place .

Veizant Boloy, veizant@gmail.com
Cubanet, 12 November 2013

Havana, Cuba, 11 October 2103, Veizant Boloy / www.cubanet.org.- Today, Friday, 11 October at 6:45 AM, Andres Perez Suarez, president of the opposition  group Commission for Assistance to Political Prisoners and Their Families (CAPPF, was arbitrarily arrested.  The arrest was carried out by the Department of State Security agent known as Camilo, supported by the police of patrol car no. 131.

“Now, Andres, things are complicated for you!” Camilo shouted, as he tried to enter the house by force, according to information received in a phone call by Regla Rios Casado, a Lady in White and Andres’ wife.

“He climbed over the fence, which is more than six feet high, and climbed on the roof looking for a way to get into the house,” said Rios Casado. “He told us he had a search warrant but what he showed was a an arrest order and they took him away.”

Also near Pérez Suárez’s house they arrested Mario Moraga Ramos and Roberto Ávalos Padrón, both CAPPF activists. In this operation the participating State Security agents were Leodan, Frank, and Captain Alejandro. According to agent Camilo, who hours later returned to threaten Rios Casado, Perez Suarex was taken to the police station at Infanta and Manglar in the capital municipality of Cerro.

From September to now, the government’s represssive forces have deployed operation and arrested Perez Suarez nd his wife to keep them from going to the Ladies in White march at Santa Rita Church, where they go every Sunday.

“Every time, after enduring harassment and beatings, we are abandoned to our fate,” commented Rios Casado. “The last time agent Camilo arrested me they took me without my shoes and without any money to a complicated place* called La Lechuga, in Melena del Sur. On that occasion a man and a woman, both police officers, dragged me out of the patrol car by my feet,” she concluded.

Regla Rios Casado and her family have suffered more than three acts of repudiation from last month to today.

Opponents have, on several occasions, denounced this practice through legal means. Based on the exercise of complaint and petition, provided for in Article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic, and Article 26 of the rules themselves that recognize that “every person who suffers injury or damages unjustly caused by the officials and agents of the State exercising the functions of their job, have the right to demand and obtain corresponding reparations or indemnification in the manner established by law.”

The Attorney General of the Republic neither responds to complaints nor protects against them. Even though it is required to do so within 60 days of the violation.

More arrests today

We also learned that agent Camilo visited the Route 12 settlement of San Miguel del Padrón. Arrested there today were Yoeldy Boza Garrido, 24, and his father, Juan Bautista Boza, migrants to the capital from the province of Guantanamo. They live in appalling conditions, in a shack. Presumably, the reason for the detention was Yoeldy’s statements to Cubanet, in a video that shows the precariousness of their environment.

Veizant Boloy  — veizant@gmail.com

*Translator’s note: It is now a common practice to arrest opponents, drive them to far off places, and simply abandon them there. This is part of the strategy of repression the opponents call “catch and release.”

From Cubanet, 11 October 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, October 12, 2013, Veizant Boloy / www.cubanet.org.- In the early morning hours of today at 5:00 am, the agents of the State Security forcibly entered the house of Regla Ríos Casado, Lady in White, to conduct a search. They simply mentioned that they had a search warrant but they did not show it to her.

They handcuffed Regla Ríos Casado, who was forcibly removed, along with Rolando Blanco Casado, Regla’s son, and Andrés Pérez Suárez, who are still being detained.

The whereabouts of Ríos Casado are still unknown.

In the kidnapping, they seized a still camera, a video camera, documents and El Nuevo Herald newspapers.

Raicel Rodríguez, Juan Bautista, Mario Moraga, all members of the Commission for Assistance to Political Prisoners (CAPPF), remain detained and unaccounted for. Their arrests were reported yesterday in this media release.

The most visible head of these arbitrary operations of the Cuban political police is called Officer Camilo. This Camilo is chief of the teams of repressors who act every Sunday against the Ladies in White.

What is becoming most common now is the kidnapping of peaceful opponents — especially women — and taking them to areas far from the provincial capitals, where they are dropped off abused and without shoes.

Veizant Boloy

From Cubanet 12 October 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, September 2013 , www.cubanet.org.- Yudelsy García O’Connor was officially the first child born HIV-positive in the island. Today, and now a grown woman, she blames the Cuban government for the situation in which she lives. “They always showed me off to the world as an achievement of socialist health care,” she told this reporter.

According to the carrier of the virus, not having a legal address where she lives, they will not give her the special diet required for her health, because she has no ration card. She has tried in vain to persuade the [governmental] institutions to give her the adequate monitoring her condition warrants. “Stress is terrible for HIV patients, according to the doctors we quite often get depressed,” she said.

“On several occasions I have complained to all the state institutions in Mayabeque province, I have sent letters to the Council of State, directly to President Raul Castro and the Ministry of Public Health. The answer is always the same: We cannot help you,” said Garcia O`Connor.

Yudelsy was born in the province of Guantanamo in eastern Cuba. At age 5 she was transferred to the [HIV/AIDS] sanatorium in Santiago de las Vegas, in the municipality of Boyeros in the capital. Her father, Salvador García López, who was sent to war Angola where he contracted the dreaded disease died when his daughter was just seven years old.

In 2002, former Unites States president James Carter visited the sanatorium, and met her in person. She was 15 years old. She later told the official Juventud Rebelde newspaper how grateful she was to the Cuban doctors and the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro.

“I decided to leave the sanatorium, at age 19, when my mother, Adoracelis O’Connor Figueredo, lost her battle with AIDS. I married another HIV patient. I wanted to start a normal life. Then the authorities abandoned me,” she added.

Today she is 27 and lives in Mayabeque province with her husband, in a house with wooden walls, damp with termites and a dirt floor, located in a rural area. “We eat what we can find in the day.”

By Veizant Boloy — veizant@gmail.com

From Cubanet

9 September 2013

LA HABANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org — With the 2013-2014 school year beginning, Havana’s public transport crisis is hard to overlook. Bus stops are already crowded with waiting passengers and the situation could become even worse in the coming weeks as students begin making increasing use of public transportation.

“After 2007, when the articulated buses came into service, the situation got a little better. Waiting time between buses was reduced to less than twenty minutes,” says Teresa, a route inspector in the Havana neighborhood Tenth of October. “But stops were still crowded and delays were longer than scheduled.”

On the Roundtable television show last July experts claimed the problem stemmed from the critical economic situation, which has led to almost half the buses serving the Cuban capital being idled.

Granma, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, reported that at the last meeting of the Council of Ministers it was acknowledged that among the reasons fewer buses are in service are antiquated technology a shortage of spare parts, acts of vandalism and poor conditions in maintenance facilities and roadways.

The Havana Provincial Transport Agency announced that it will take steps to alleviate the situation. It has promised to reinforce inner-city public transportation along some routes in the capital. It is now providing the public with the well-known Russian-made “Giron” buses, which have survived three decades of marked decline in this sector. They will take the place of articulated and single-carriage buses made by the Chinese manufacturer Yutong.

Opinions indicate that transport workers and the average Cuban believe the island’s transportation system would benefit from a continued expansion of cooperatives beyond agricultural and into the urban transport sector. This includes cooperatives which would lease vehicles from the state as well as those that would offer technical assistance and vehicle repair services.

Guaguas* for five pesos

Examples of similar cooperatives are the so-called taxis ruteros. They offer more comfortable travel — some are even air-conditioned — for five pesos a ride.

Carlos, a laborer who works far from home, confesses, “I can’t afford this luxury. I have to make do with the one peso guagua. I make 315 pesos a month and, since I have to catch three guaguas to get to work, I have to watch what I spend.”

People like Carlos, who make barely ten pesos a day, cannot rely on the public transport system. If they want to avoid having what little they earn docked, they must get to work on time, which means leaving home up to three hours in advance.

In Cuba, public transport is a vital component in gauging the success of the “updating of the economic model” called for in the economic policy guidelines. This sector is almost completely funded through the state budget. This is the reason so many people blame the Cuban state for not meeting demand.

veizant@gmail.com

From Cubanet

September 3, 2013

Translator’s note: Pronounced wah-wah; Cuban slang for bus.