14ymedio, Havana, 19 January 2022 — The family of Andy García Lorenzo, one of the prisoners for the July 11 (11J) demonstrations in Santa Clara, delivered this Wednesday a letter addressed to the governor of Villa Clara, Alberto López Díaz, to denounce the “damages” that he is causing them. the “systematic harassment” to which he is being subjected.
Signed by Roxana García Lorenzo, Andy’s sister, her partner, Jonatán López Alonso, and her parents, Pedro Osvaldo López Mesa and Yenia Alonso Melgarejo, the letter, to which 14ymedio had access, says it is based on the “right to complain ” enshrined in Article 61 of the Constitution “and as a preliminary step in the face of a possible lawsuit and subsequent access to competent human rights organizations.”
The family members insisted that Andy García is “a peaceful protester” of the 11J protests and that he is deprived of liberty due to the “combat order” issued by Miguel Díaz-Canel. “It is in our ethical principles as well as in the exercise of freedom of expression, a human, universal and inalienable right, to defend it and denounce violations against it,” they say in the text.
In their letter, they complain to Governor López Díaz that they are being victims of “harassment by the operational officers of Section 21 of the General Directorate of Counter-Intelligence.” As an example, they cite the most recent altercation: being arrested on January 14 by an agent when they were going “peacefully” to the headquarters of the People’s Provincial Court of Villa Clara, where Andy García and other defendants were being tried.
“It happens that we were intercepted on public roads by an operational officer, dressed in civilian clothes and without identifying himself, on his motorcycle license plate B58394,” they detail, “who without an arrest warrant and without informing the reasons for the arrest made us get off the means of transport and led us to a patrol car of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), which took us to the Provincial Criminal Processing Unit.”
There, they continue, they were held for about ten hours and were “interrogated in a coercive manner, without recording equipment and without legal representation.” Roxana García, Jonatán López and Pedro López were fined 3,000 pesos under Decree Law 370 of 2018, known as the “scourge law.” The first two, in addition, and by the same rule, had their mobile phones confiscated.
With regards to this they will present “the claims before the competent authority,” says the family of Andy García, who asserts that the harassment by the State Security “is causing us serious damage, harm and affecting our mental health.”
As reported by Roxana García on her Facebook wall , the authorities received the letter assuring that they would give a response.
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