Political police officers detain an elderly man, steal food from activists, and prevent messenger service.
14ymedio, Madrid, 1 April 2025 — State Security continues its ongoing harassment of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and its leader, José Daniel Ferrer. The organization’s headquarters in the Altamira neighborhood of Santiago de Cuba was surrounded Tuesday by an operation of plainclothes officers.
“They are arresting collaborators and stealing money and food,” Ferrer warned on social media. “They want to prevent us from feeding the people who the regime is starving. We expect further repressive actions.”
In a first video posted on his Facebook wall, the opposition leader denounced the arrest by the political police of a “social case who went out to buy chili peppers” and the attempted arrest of activist and former political prisoner Fernando González Vaillant.
The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC) confirmed in a statement that the detainee, who “was put in a police patrol car,” is a vulnerable 60-year-old man named Jorge Luis Colá Montané. However, they were unable to take González Vaillant “due to the swift protest and intervention of the president of the CTDC and general coordinator of UNPACU, José Daniel Ferrer.”
“They want to prevent us from feeding the people who the regime is starving. We expect more repressive actions.”
In the middle of the broadcast, the opposition leader shouted at the officers: “Down with Canel, down with tyranny, down with the thieves of the political police,” echoed by other voices present. He also accused the officers of stealing the food they use at the soup kitchen located at the UNPACU headquarters, the home of Ferrer, his wife, Nelva Ortega, and their youngest son.
“Tell him to take a look at that henchman, a thief and a wretch, stealing food meant for the elderly who are starving to death,” he continues shouting. He also points to a group of plainclothes officers on the corner of his house: “This is the head of the provincial political police hiding from the camera.”
In another video, Ferrer shows a traffic officer, who the opposition leader claims was “sent” by State Security to “clean up the Altamira motorcycle parking lot, to scare away the motorcyclists who provide the fastest transportation service in this area of the city.”
The activist explains that that UNPACU often uses the motorcycle service to go buy products in other neighborhoods when they can’t find them in their own.
In its statement, the CTDC explains that the “ostentatious police deployment” was led by “the top leaders of the political police”: “the lieutenant colonels who call themselves Lázaro and Bruno, and Major Julio Fonseca.” “Surrounding the [UNPACU] headquarters, they are attempting to prevent access to both the house and the surrounding area. Arrests, intimidation, and threats are part of the process,” the organization continues.
The text defends the work of UNPACU, led by Ferrer and Ortega, who “assumed with determination, sensitivity, and competence a self-imposed mission that the Cuban state, now in a terminal and failed phase, cannot fulfill.” Each day, the CTDC reports, the headquarters receives more than a thousand people and provides medical care to around twenty.
“Surrounding the headquarters, they are trying to prevent access to both the house and the surrounding area.”
They also hold the authorities responsible “for any harm to the safety of those who receive or voluntarily support this immense work of solidarity,” and ask the international community to provide “all possible support for the humanitarian work” of the organization.
The situation Ferrer and his family are experiencing is nothing new. In fact, since his release in early January as part of the negotiations between the US Biden administration and the Cuban regime, mediated by the Vatican, the opposition leader—sentenced to 25 years in prison during the Black Spring of 2003, released in 2011 after negotiations with the Catholic Church, and arrested again on 11 July 2021—has been harassed by State Security.
On February 7, another massive police operation surrounded his home after the UNPACU leader refused to appear before a judge. Harassment of anyone approaching the UNPACU headquarters has included arrests, summons, and threats, both in public and at the police station, and even robberies and sexual harassment.
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