His admission to La Pendiente prison “represents a serious risk to his life,” warns an NGO
14ymedio, Havana, 20 November 2024 — Independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea was transferred on Monday to La Pendiente prison, in Santa Clara. The 14ymedio collaborator had been arrested on November 8 for his alleged participation in the popular protests that took place a day earlier, in the municipality of Encrucijada, Villa Clara, after more than 48 hours without electricity.
The penitentiary center where Barrenechea is currently located is “known for its conditions of extreme overcrowding and for housing prisoners of all kinds,” warns the Denunciation Center of the Foundation for Pan American Democracy (FDP). His stay in La Pendiente “represents a serious risk to his life,” the entity emphasizes in a statement.
Barrenechea was transferred from the Santa Clara Police Instruction Unit where he was being interrogated for allegedly having joined the demonstrations of November 7 in Encrucijada, the Villa Clara community where he lives. According to the legal organization Cubalex, three days after his arrest his family had no news about his situation.
While in the Unit, the reporter remained incommunicado. “Now, in La Pendiente, he is surrounded by common prisoners, some of whom are used by the regime to carry out dirty work in exchange for benefits such as passes, visits or changes in their sentences,” FDP emphasizes. “In this hostile environment, the physical integrity and life of Barrenechea are in imminent danger.”
This week a letter signed by more than 200 journalists, activists, intellectuals and academics was released demanding his immediate release. The letter emphasized that the reporter was “arrested for political reasons,” which constitutes a “frank violation of his rights.”
The text, which was signed by journalists Boris González Arenas, Camila Acosta Rodríguez and Yoe Suárez; playwright Luis Enrique Valdés Duarte; the coordinator of the Patmos Institute, Mario Félix Lleonart; analyst Juan Antonio Blanco; political scientist Armando Chaguaceda and academic Alina Bárbara López, among others, exposes the “concern for the news related” to Barrenechea’s lack of legal defense.
The signatories of the document join in a unanimous statement: “We demand the immediate release of the writer and activist and, by extension, of all political prisoners in Cuba.”
Barrenechea has been in the crosshairs of the Cuban political police for years for his collaborations with several independent media such as Árbol Invertido, Cuba Encuentro and 14ymedio. Since 2019 he has been subject to harassment and persecution by the regime, which has “regulated” him, preventing him from leaving the country.
His arrest is part of a series of arrests linked to the protests that took place after the passage of Hurricane Rafael and the consequent new collapse of the national electricity system. The organization Justicia 11J recorded the arrest of at least 23 people in Cuba since last October 18, when the national electricity system collapsed for the first time this year. Since that day, there have been 68 protests.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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