The threats and harassment against doctor Alexander Jesús Figueredo Izaguirre have not stopped since, last year, the Ministry of Public Health expelled him of his work and invalidated his college degree. This Sunday, State Security went looking for him at his home in Bayamo (Granma) and gave him two warning letters before releasing him several hours later, he told 14ymedio.
The Comprehensive General Medicine specialist and then Urology resident made several complaints about the health system and was accused of causing “moral damage to the sector”, before being fired from his job at the March 13 Polyclinic in Bayamo in April 2021.
Now the doctor denounces that they gave him a first letter “for expressing harmful words on social networks” and the second, for meeting “with subversive people”, by a friend who visited him at home and that the agents assure that “he is an opponent “, something that Figueredo Izaguirre said he did not know.
“I am making videos in Bayamo, denouncing, some criticism about all the things that are happening to edit them and then upload them to the networks,” he explains. On Sundays, he usually makes direct broadcasts about what has happened in recent days and this week, he was doing one about the “payer of promises”, a man who is on a pilgrimage from Havana to, in principle, the Sanctuary of the Virgen de la Caridad, in Santiago de Cuba, something that, according to Figueredo, is “a complete circus”.
“Almost when I finished, they knocked on my door and when I peeked out it was the head of State Security here in Bayamo, the one who always interrogates me every time they take me into custody,” he says.
In his testimony, he specifies that he was taken to the headquarters of Criminal Instruction in the province of Granma and that there the police confiscated his sweater.
In his testimony, he specifies that he was taken to the headquarters of Criminal Instruction in the province of Granma and that there the police seized the sweater he was wearing, with the image of the Free Cuban Medical Guild, an organization that defends the rights of medical professionals. this sector inside and outside the country.
“I was in a pullover, shorts and flip-flops and the officer told me not to get dressed that I was going to be detained just like that, without a warrant or anything,” he protests. “Outside
there was a patrol with three policemen, a red beret and he was on a motorcycle, they put me on the patrol and took me to criminal investigation, they put me in jail and took my sweater off because they considered it subversive and an offense against national symbols “.
The doctor recounts that he spent almost an hour without a shirt in the dungeon until they took him out and gave him clothes that his brother-in-law brought him. Then they took him to an office with an instructor, where he was questioned and they gave him warning letters.
Figueredo assures that he told them that as long as “the people did not have dignity and shame” and “the dictatorship continued to do things wrong”, he was going to continue denouncing and making his criticisms, that no one was going to shut him up.
“It is my right, besides, I am doing it behind a telephone, I am not even exercising it in the streets. I signed the letter about my publications on the networks but the other one was for accepting an opponent of Contramaestre who was in my house and that they told me that I was an opponent, I did not sign it,” he points out. “If you continue, I’m going to put you in jail,” the officer told him as a threat before releasing him.
“He also threatened me that if I continued with the publications on social networks they would apply Decree Law 370 to me with a fine of 5,000 pesos,” he says. This is the fourth warning letter from him and the seventh citation he has received.
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