14ymedio, Havana, 17 June 2021 — The independent journalist Yoe Suárez was detained this Thursday by the political police for three hours, during which he was being interrogated, the reporter denounced in conversation with 14ymedio.
The State Security agents tried to intimidate Suárez by threatening him with jail: “They told me that I could end up as a political prisoner and that nobody here cares about them, that I should think of my family.” “I felt them more aggressive than others. times, “says the contributor to Diario de Cuba.
The officers also told him that they will increase the pressure against him and his family. Suarez explained that he was interrogated by a lieutenant colonel “who calls himself José,” whom he had never seen before, who was accompanied by “Officer Jonathan,” one of the repressors who detained him at his home.
After the journalist’s arrest, his family and the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press (Iclep) denounced that he was missing. Once released, Suárez said on his social networks that he was transferred to the police station at 7th and 62nd in Havana’s Playa municipality.
The journalist’s family told 14ymedio that they were looking for him at the police stations closest to his home, in the Siboney district, and did not get information on his whereabouts. Iclep recalled that Suárez “has been besieged lately for his work” and for denouncing “the repressive forces for their methods of torturing independent activists and journalists.”
On the other hand, Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, director of the Delibera digital platform, remains under arrest since June 15, first at the Zapata y C station, in El Vedado, and later in Villa Marista, according to family members and activists.
Valle Roca, a day before his arrest, published on the Delibera YouTube channel, a video of the tossing out of leaflets at the central corner of Zanja and Galiano, in Centro Habana, on the occasion of the celebration of Antonio Maceo’s birthday.
This Thursday, Eralidis Frometa, a human rights activist and wife of the independent journalist, denounced that several agents searched the house they share.
Also still remaining in pridon is the independent reporter Esteban Rodríguez, who was transferred from the Guanajay maximum security prison to a hospital in Havana on Tuesday, where he was admitted after testing positive for Covid-19.
Rodríguez, a journalist for ADN Cuba, was one of those arrested on April 30 in the peaceful demonstration on Obispo Street, in which Mary Karla Ares, a contributor to the community media outlet Amanecer Habanero, was also arrested. The reporter was able to return home under “home confinement” and denounced that, during the 27 days she spent in prison, she was the victim of “long hours of interrogation” and “psychological torture.”
Likewise, the CiberCuba activist and reporter Iliana Hernández has been besieged at her house by the police and State Security agents for about 70 days. In addition to being forbidden to go out, they have also cut off her mobile data internet service.
In the month of May alone, the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights documented more than 900 violent actions, something that, they denounce, confirms a “broader and more personalized repression” against civil society with the aim of “silencing all dissent.”
After the increase in repression by the regime in the first five months of the year, some activists and organizations consider that the country is experiencing “a new version of the Black Spring” of 2003.
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