Cuban Human Rights Group Denounces "Wave of Seizures" of Activists’ Property

During their searches, State Security seizes telephones, computers, hard disks or any material that many opponents need for their work. Above: Officers during a search of Cubalex headquarters. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 2 February 2018 — Last January, State Security carried out “a real wave of systematic and illegal dispossession” of the means of work of the opponents in the Island, according to the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), which denouced the practice in its report on Friday.

The organization also reports that last month there were 330 arbitrary arrests against opponents, a figure higher than the previous two months, but lower compared to January 2017, when 478 people were arrested for political reasons.

The independent organization based in Havana has been able to “document 14 cases of harassment and at least one physical attack” against peaceful dissidents, actions that the report claims were “executed or instigated by the powerful and ubiquitous secret political police (the main instrument of the dictatorial power) or its agents.”

Among the most important events of the last month detailed by the CCDHRN is the hunger strike began by brothers Anairis and Adairis Miranda Leyva, and Fidel Batista Leyva in the province of Holguín. The activists stopped eating “in protest against the arrests and other abuses of those who have been victims, as well as the threats of taking away their children,” says the report.

The report describes as a “farce” the trial in Camajuaní, Villa Clara, against the activist of the Cuban Reflection Movement, Orlando Triana González, who was sentenced to three years in prison for “pre-criminal dangerousness.”

The objects seized range “from computers to cell phones” and these acts also included “large fines that further weakened” the independent organizations.

During 2017, the Government of Raúl Castro carried out at least 5,155 “politically motivated arrests,” according to the year-end report drafted by the CCDHRN.

The figure was the lowest since 2011, when the organization reported 4,123 arrests for political reasons, and also falls far short of the reports of 2016, the year in which 9,940 arrests were registered.

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