Sulmira Martínez Pérez, arrested on January 10 for announcing their intention to hold a protest on the streets, was transferred on March 17 to the Guatao prison in Havana, according to reported Monica Baró with a source in the mother of the 21-year-old, Norma Pérez.
“Norma tells me that her daughter was traumatized, that in Villa Marista, during the visits of ten minutes or a little more that they had, always in front of an officer, she could not tell her anything, but that she did suffer in there,” the woman said this Friday. Cuban journalist, now resident in New York.
Baró assures that Martínez Pérez “began to shout in Villa Marista that they release her and after this they transferred her to El Guatao.” She was transferred, she continues in her publication, “in a little cage, one of those State Security vehicles that are airtight and barred,” and she was mistreated on the way.
“She was handcuffed and she asked that the handcuffs be loosened, because they were tight, and what they did was make her stand up and handcuff her to a tube of the vehicle, with her arms separated, as if it were a trap,” the independent journalist details.
“She was handcuffed and she asked that the handcuffs be loosened, because they were tight, and what they did was make her stand up and handcuff her to a tube of the vehicle, with her arms apart, as if it were a trap”
Similarly, Norma Pérez told Baró that the accusation against her daughter has changed, from “propaganda against the constitutional order” to “incitement to commit a crime”, one of the crimes applied to many of the protesters on July 11, 2021. He does not have, at the moment, a date for a trial.
The woman was able to visit her daughter this Wednesday, but told the journalist that she cannot go see her every Thursday, which are visiting days: “Transportation to the jail, round trip, from Las Guásimas to El Guatao, including the wait, it costs 3,000 pesos, and Norma earns 2,000 pesos as a retiree. In addition, she cannot gather enough food every week to take her daughter and pay for transportation.”
In prison, Baró continues, “the prisoners are sleeping on mattresses full of bedbugs, receiving a poor diet and suffering cruel and degrading treatment by the guards.”
The legal organization cubalexwhich monitors the cases of political prisoners on the island, also demanded this Friday: “The Cuban regime must release Sulmira without delay and stop imprisoning Cubans for expressing themselves freely.”
Known online as Salem Cuba, Pseudonym with which she manages a Facebook page where criticism and memes about the Cuban authorities are frequently published, she published before being arrested: “For those who say that the one who pushes does not hit himself: I am planning a demonstration that is for the street, not behind a screen” and “We need organization…spread the word!!! We plan another July 11.”
“The prisoners are sleeping on mattresses full of bedbugs, receiving a poor diet and suffering cruel and degrading treatment from the guards”
Almost nothing was known about the arrest at first, but a few weeks later the desperation of his mother began to echo, who in a direct transmission he was expressing how he was “holding on inside”.
“First I was at 100 and Aldabó [centro de detención en la Habana] and then they transferred it to Villa Marista [cuartel de la Seguridad del Estado]”, detailed the woman, who denounced that during the arrest her home was the subject of a police search: “They seized our computer, the telephone and they took away our internet connection by Nauta.”
The lawyer, hired through the “revolutionary state” cost 5,400 pesos, denounces the woman and clarifies that her daughter is accused of “propaganda against the constitutional order.”
The new Penal Code, which entered into force last December, increased the penalties against human rights defenders, activism, and protest criticism on social networks. In its article 143, the regulations indicate that those who support, promote or receive resources “with the purpose of paying for activities against the State and its constitutional order” incur a penalty of deprivation of liberty from four to ten years.
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