14ymedio, Havana, 2 November 2021 — Professor David Martínez Espinosa, a member of the Archipiélago platform, was threatened on Monday night through an anonymous phone call. According to the 31-year-old from Cienfuegos on his social networks , he received insults and was warned that if he continued with his activism they would prepare an act of repudiation against him.
Martínez Espinosa, who was expelled from his job last month for expressing his desire to take to the streets on November 15, made the audio of the conversation public and attributed the call to “a henchman of State Security.”
Faced with the threat, the professor filed a complaint with the Cienfuegos Provincial Court on Tuesday in which he denounces that he has been a victim of “harassment, intimidation, threat and humiliation.” In addition, he requested that “criminal action” be taken against the owner of the telephone from which he received the call.
“Immediately after all the slanders against Yunior [García], Saily [González], and against Archipiélago came out in [the official site] Razones de Cuba, I began to report on social networks,” he tells 14ymedio. In response, he received threatening messages from a fake Facebook profile.
“Ten minutes later they start calling me from a number that I have not registered. I hang up once, twice but the third time I answer and well, what I posted on my networks, pure rude insults and threats,” he explained.
Martínez Espinosa said that after receiving the call he felt fear but “when he saw how pedestrian and low” what they were saying was, it made him laugh and almost instantly he had a feeling of victory because “when they resort to this type of intimidation it is because they have no other remedy.”
“If they had something solid against me, they would not make calls of this type and they would simply accuse me of the crime I was committing,” reflects Martínez Espinosa. For him it is very important to make legal complaints so that the authorities and State Security understand that he is not afraid of them.
“Anything that they do to me above or below the law I will denounce publicly,” he warned. “Enough of keeping silent about arbitrariness, enough of lowering our heads when we are objects of this type of vandalism, typical of paramilitary dictatorships.”
The professor added that although his family is “a little scared” and fears that “in the next few days some act of repudiation will be carried out” against him, he maintains his will to “continue supporting the march.”
Martínez Espinosa also delivered a lawsuit before the Provincial Court last Friday in which he accused the mayor of Cienfuegos for declaring the Civic March for Change illegal. In the text, he denounces acts of “defamation, threats and rights violations” suffered by several of the 15N (15 November) organizers.
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