Recently, I published a post in which Jacquelin details the physical blows she received at the hands of combined forces from the political police and the trained mobs who broke into her house to take Ariel Arzuaga, her husband, to prison and leave her full of bruises and with a fractured arm.
During the time I completed that post Ariel was imprisoned and was being accused of unimaginable charges. After beating all those present in that humble home, the police cynically accused the man of attempting to hurt the soldiers. In addition, they accused him of a list of other absurd things which, out of respect for the family, I will not even mention because I don’t think that repeating them will help in any way to remove the 8 years of prison they are supposed to sentence him on this June 24 in Bayamo during what, in Cuba, they call “municipal tribunals”.
At four in the afternoon I tried to reach them via telephone to find out how the false “trial” went but I could not get in touch with anyone in the family. After countless attempts I was finally able to get in touch with Yoandri Montoya who told me, “Yes, today was the trial but we were not able to get to the tribunal because the police surrounded the place and anyone who tried to get through was detained. The trial is over and we still do not know how much time Ariel was sentenced to because the entire family was arrested. So you can imagine how far the injustice went that the entire family carried out a protest and the repressive forces were used on them as well”.
Everyone in the family has been arrested.
“Well, at least his wife…,” I told him.
“No, the wife has been detained since Monday in Santiago de Cuba. It happened while she was on her way to show support and solidarity with the family of Jorge Cervantes. She was captured together with other women and up to now she has not yet been freed. They told me that it seems that she was beaten so bad that they still have not released her because they are waiting for the bruises and scars to go away”.
When I am finally able to talk to Jacquelin I will let you all know more, but I could not let another day pass without reporting that this week the injustice and cowardliness of the dictatorship’s soldiers has been once again practiced in this region.
Translated by Raul G.
25 June 2011
