Reporters Iliana Hernandez and Boris Gonzalez Detained in Havana

Photo of an earlier event where the Cuban police detained Iliana Hernández and Boris González Arenas during the independent LGBTI march on May 11 in Havana. (14ymedio / File)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 9 October 2019 — The independent journalist, Boris González Arenas, a contributor to Diario de Cuba, was arrested this Wednesday at noon by State Security when he entered the building where he lives.

Arenas González’s wife, Juliette Isabel Fernandez, told 14ymedio she learned what happened because a neighbor who was present during the arrest told her about it.

According to the testimony gathered by González Arenas’ family, it was “two civilian-dressed agents” who forced him into a police car, and did not allow him to call to notify his wife.

“We learned of the arrest by chance, if the neighbor hadn’t told me I wouldn’t know and as always happens when the hours pass and he does not come home I start to be alarmed. Right now I do not know anything else, his phone is off, he had gone out on a personal errand,” she explained to this newspaper and added that his whereabouts are unknown as are the authorities’ reasons for the arrest.

“I have had to go through this experience too many times already, like so many relatives of independent journalists, activists and members of civil society. It seems that the repressive forces want October 10 and tomorrow’s elections to be almost invisible,” Fernandez wrote on her Facebook account. “Stop kidnappings and arbitrary detentions of independent journalists and activists,” she added.

Minutes later the independent journalist Iliana Hernández was live online denouncing the arrest of her colleague when she was also intercepted by two police officers.

Hernandez managed to keep her phone on while two police officers took her to the police car. You can see her already sitting in the vehicle, when a State Security agent dressed in civilian clothes and with dark glasses snatches her cell phone from her hands.

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