GUANTANAMO, Cuba. – The independent media reporter Cuban DNA Yoel Acosta Gámez was arrested this Friday, June 24, in the municipality of Baracoa by State Security troops.
After being released, the reporter informed CubaNet who had been detained by several unidentified officers of the Department of State Security (DSE). The arrest took place in the middle of the street, when Acosta Gámez was returning to Baracoa from Guantánamo.
The officers searched him and seized a Canon brand video camera with its accessories. Although the reporter said that it was a camera for personal use, that he had nothing to do with his work, the military seized it.
Acosta Gámez was able to call his wife and three activists from the municipality, who appeared outside the police station to inquire about his legal situation.
During his detention, two officials from the high command of the DSE in Guantánamo province spoke to the reporter on the phone. They tried to dissuade him from leaving his work as an independent journalist.
Before being released, he was warned that he could not leave the municipality without first notifying the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior.
Acosta Gámez has been repeatedly repressed for his work as an activist and independent reporter. This year alone he has been summoned several times to be threatened for his denunciations of human rights violations and for exposing the cases of families living in poor living conditions. He has also been arrested on at least two occasions.
In the month of March, he was presented before a preventive commission of the MININT, which threatened to prosecute him and take him to prison for the alleged crime of “usurpation of legal functions.”
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