Lázara Karenia González, arrested for participating in the peaceful protests on July 11 in Cárdenas, Matanzas, was released this Friday after receiving her sentence of three years of “correctional work without internment.”
In the trial against the protesters of that city, held on March 15, the Prosecutor’s Office even asked for the 28-year-old girl, the only woman among the detainees, eight years in prison.
As the activist recalls Salome Garcia Bacallaofrom the Justicia 11J platform, which collects all the information from the prisoners of those days and accompanies their families, González’s sisters, Kenia Chirino and Kirenia Wilhelm Benítez, “have not stopped denouncing, despite the fear of reprisals” .
García Bacallao expressed his desire to “have contributed to his release” from his work, which included editing a text by Orelvys Cabrera about González’s detention “for a series published in Hypermedia Magazine which includes videos collected by Inventario”.
Kenya Chirino has explained that on July 11, her sister Lázara Karenia was insulted by a woman from across the street: “You are a worm, you are a worm, because look with those clothes!”
The journalist, who was later detained for 37 days, fled to Russia and has just arrived in the United States, has asserted that he was “at the side of Lázara Karenia all the time without knowing it” and that he saw “how they detained her”: “I recorded the detention, all the shots where she was in the demonstration. She was always peacefully shouting the slogans that we all shout: ‘Díaz-Canel singao’, ‘homeland and life’, ‘freedom’, ‘we are not afraid’, ‘get out of power ‘”.
Those videos are proof of the violent detention he suffered. Kenya Chirino has explained that on July 11, her sister Lázara Karenia was insulted by a woman from across the street: “You are a worm, you are a worm, because she looks with those clothes!”.
In several publications on his networks, Chirino has reported that his sister is innocent and only defended himself – “But why do you talk to me like that, if I don’t know you, I haven’t done anything to you?” he yelled at her–, and that at no time was there physical aggression between the two.
Activists and friends of González assert, on the other hand, that the young woman was beaten by the Police and by a young woman named Nayelis Corrio, who used “a prohibited martial art technique.”
Thus, García Bacallao states that “Lázara Karenia is innocent and deserved acquittal” and recalls that “the Cuban dictatorship has not offered any compensation for the damage they have caused her, nor the mistreatment she has suffered. None of the state agents who participated in his detention he has been held accountable for the serious abuses committed, despite being identified”. Quite the contrary, he denounces, “they are presented as victims.”
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