‘The Armed Wing of Cuban State Security Acts in Bolivia’

Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro, on his departure from the immigration offices where he was informed of his expulsion from Bolivia. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 19 December 2022 — Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro, who disseminates information and opinions through social networks, received an expulsion order from Bolivia, where he resides, on Monday. He has 15 days to leave the country, as he said  through a direct broadcast on Twitter.

“The justification they use are my publications on social networks, publications that are basically against the Cuban government, against the dictatorship, and denunciations of human rights violations,” Castro told 14ymedio by phone.

The young man says that when he arrived at Migration, “there was a whole folder with my tweets, as State Security tends to do in Cuba.” He asked which of his publications violated the law, he says, “and they didn’t know how to tell me.”

The immigration resolution, which this newspaper accessed, indicated that Castro “infringed on Bolivian regulations, altering public order through social networks.” “Therefore,” the text, dated December 16, 2022, continues, “the temporary mandatory exit resolution is granted.”

By “acts that alter public order,” the document indicates “participation and/or incitement to riots, confrontation between citizens and acts against morality and/or dignity.”

Before the summons received last Friday, Castro says, he had not been contacted or warned.

“I want to make it very clear that my publications, which can be accessed because my public profile is there, have never alluded to Bolivian national policy and exclusively mention my country,” defends Castro, who does not yet know if he is going to appeal the ruling, for which he has three days.

What he does plan to continue doing is to report it. “It seems a hugely arbitrary, but I find it even more scandalous that Bolivia lends its public institutions to the armed wing of Cuban State Security to come here and manage at will the rule of law of a sovereign country such as the Plurinational State of Bolivia.”

There is no record of a similar case that has occurred for any other Cuban.

After the suspension of diplomatic relations with Cuba by the then-interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, who today is in prison, still without trial, for, according to her persecutors, having organized a “coup d’état,” both countries approached the government of Luis Arce again.

The Bolivian president was received a few days ago by his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in Havana, where he also attended the extraordinary session of the National Assembly in commemoration of the eighteenth anniversary of the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (Alba-TCP).

Translated by Regina Anavy

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