MIAMI, United States. – Organizations, activists and independent media are reporting a new day of repression in Cuba this Tuesday, with police surveillance of reporters and activists in Havana and the fourth arrest so far this year of journalist Henry Constantín, in Camagüey.
This Tuesday, around 10:00 in the morning, CubaNet reported that a State Security agent followed reporter Camila Acosta near her home in Havana. The operation included a patrol from the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) and three officers.
Later, Acosta herself informed this media that she had managed to reach her house, but that she remained under surveillance by four State Security agents (two men and two women) and the same PNR patrol.
Also in Havana, the leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, reported on Facebook that the national headquarters of the opposition organization woke up “besieged by State Security repressors dressed in civilian clothes and the National Police.” Soler added that both passersby and she were able to observe the operation, although she said she was unable to document it with her camera.
In parallel, the medium Cuba Time reported on Facebook that its director, Henry Constantín, had been detained “this Tuesday morning for the fourth time in the last 20 days” by State Security and PNR agents, “due to his journalistic work and activism within civil society on the Island.”
Sources close to the media confirmed that Constantín was taken “handcuffed in a police patrol,” along with fellow journalist Alejandra García, and that the incident occurred on Príncipe Street, near Ignacio Agramonte Park, “mid-morning.”
Cuba Time He linked this episode with a sequence of measures against Constantine during the last weeks. He indicated that he was under house arrest Friday, Saturday and Sunday before and during the visit to the city of Camagüey by Mike Hammer, head of the United States mission in Cuba.
He also recalled that the journalist and Alejandra García were arrested on January 26 in Havana to prevent them from attending an event at Hammer’s residence and that on January 20 he was arrested in Camagüey “on a public street in front of his minor daughter” and threatened for his publications. Constantín’s first arrest this year occurred on January 14, when State Security agents “kidnapped” him in his apartment in Havana and kept him detained for 44 hours, according to the aforementioned media.
Cuba Time He also demanded information about the whereabouts and situation of both journalists and held the regime responsible for “the physical and psychological damage they may suffer.”
Besides, CubaNet He also confirmed that other journalists, activists and relatives of political prisoners remained under surveillance in their homes, among them Liset Fonseca, mother of political prisoner Roberto Pérez Fonseca; Marta Perdomo, mother of the political prisoners of 11J Jorge and Nadir Martín Perdomo; and Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar, director and editor of the newspaper 14ymediorespectively.
