EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 6 August 2022 — Cuban opponent Guillermo Fariñas remained under arrest this Friday for several hours, according information from his family speaking to EFE.
Fariñas’s mother, Alicia Hernández, confirmed by phone that her son was released, after he was stopped by the police who were waiting for him nearby when he left his house. “They handcuffed him and took him away in a patrol car,” she explained.
Hernández attributed the arrest to the anniversary of the 1994 protest known as the Maleconazo.
That day, hundreds of dissatisfied people took to the streets of Havana to protest and then President Fidel Castro, now deceased, appeared to speak with some of them in front of the well-known Deauville hotel.
These were the largest protests that the country had experienced in decades, and since then were only surpassed by the protests Cuba registered on July 11, 2021.
Fariñas, 60, who has suffered multiple short duration arrests in recent decades — was awarded the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament.
The leader of the United Anti-Totalitarian Front, Fariñas is one of the best-known Cuban opponents at the international level, particularly for his numerous hunger strikes against the Cuban system, since the first one he carried out in 1995.
The longest strike dates back to 2003, when he fasted for 14 months, and the 25th took place in 2016 and lasted 54 days to ask the government to end the repression against dissidents.
The Government of Cuba considers dissidents “counterrevolutionaries” and “mercenaries” at the service of the interests of the United States and denies that it has political prisoners in its jails.
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