Havana/The Cubalex organization reported this Friday on its social networks that about 15 people who participated last Wednesday in a Neighborhood protest against blackouts in MarianaoHavana, have been detained by the political police. So far there are no details of their identities, but the NGO assured that they have been transferred to the detention center of the Ministry of the Interior known as El Vivac, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo.
According to Cubalex, the regime has repressed protest participants and has “criminalized” a legitimate act of dissent “as a mechanism to silence citizen discontent in Cuba.”
An attempt was also made to link activist Liván Gómez to the protest, arbitrarily detained last Thursday for his alleged leadership of the Marianao demonstration in which he was not even present. “They accused him without evidence of organizing a protest over the lack of water and blackouts,” Cubalex said.
The coordinator of the Union for Free Cuba Party in Havana was released this Friday afternoon after the authorities reviewed the recordings and verified that “he did not participate.” However, during his arrest he was also accused of being involved in the appearance of anti-government graffiti in the municipality and, after being released, “he was threatened with being imprisoned and prosecuted if they managed to associate him with the posters placed in the area.”
On Wednesday night dozens of people took to the streets in Marianao to demand that the electrical service be restored
On Wednesday night, dozens of people took to the streets in Marianao to demand that they restore the electrical service that they had had unstablely and for a few minutes for four days. Neighbors touched cauldrons and shouted in the middle of a street where they had blocked traffic and set objects on fire.
A few minutes after the protest began, the Police charged with the first protesters, although the residents at least managed to get the power to return.
In recent weeks, several neighborhood protests have broken out on the island, especially in the capital, denouncing the same problems: long blackouts and shortages of water and basic services. Last week, 14ymedio recorded a pot crash in the middle of an electrical outage in the Sports Casinoan area once classified as where “there is no light”.
Also on those days a group of women closed the Mount Street loaded with their children and empty buckets, expressing their discomfort at the lack of water. Although several police officers confronted them, moments later, a pipe arrived at the scene to calm things down. At least one of them subsequently received a police summons.
