MIAMI, United States.- Carlos Alberto Pérez García is a young Cuban, economist and self-employed person, who had to go into exile in the United States just a few months ago due to pressure from State Security, according to what he told yucabyte in an interview in which he talked about his beginnings in social networks.
Pérez García, known by most Cuban Internet users as El Ruso (@ElRuso4K), has more than 21,000 followers on Twitter alone, and because of his incisive memes about the reality of Cuba, he was the constant victim of constant harassment and threats.
He began sharing memes on Facebook a few years ago “to make black humor and, above all, social criticism of things that were happening in the country, but with a very low limit, that is, with a lot of self-censorship of ourselves,” he told Yucabyte.
However, the pressure led him to take his eyes off his person a little and it was then that he created “El Ruso 4K”, an initially anonymous profile that he has used since then to “make a more direct mockery.”
Pérez García, who already had visibility, gained much more when he debuted on Twitter, where, he assures, he tried to make a “simpler” satire, which was not to the liking of the regime either, accustomed to silencing all criticism, no matter how small.
As he explained to Yucabyte, State Security warned him on several occasions, and on each of them the tone was rising. Until January 26, 2022 he shared the photo of a poster of “Down with Canel Singao” painted on a wall on Calle Serrano, in the Havana neighborhood of Santos Suárez.
“That photo of the poster, which was in my neighborhood, was the trigger,” he revealed. “It was a coincidence, I wasn’t really going to take the photo, but it wasn’t that far from my house, and by chance I had to go to a place nearby, and we managed to get in and under a pullover we took the photo. When I uploaded it to my networks, it went viral”, recalled a video also published by Yuvabyte.
The Russian said that the problems began a week and a half later. On Friday, February 4, he received a summons to the San Miguel del Padrón police station for the alleged theft of a cell phone, but in reality he was under investigation for publishing the photo.
He was first at the San Miguel del Padrón station, shortly after several agents transferred him to another in the municipality of Regla. They took his belongings and locked him in a dungeon for interrogation for the next 24 hours.
The State Security inquired about the photo, they even asked him if he had received money for it. That was the first part of the interrogation. In the second, they explained to him the crimes incurred by his publications, for which he could be brought to trial.
According to his statement, the Security agents asked him to post a video where he regretted posting the photo, but he refused. They also asked him to delete the photo, to which he agreed. “I regretted it later, but I think at the time it was a good decision. He had already been detained for almost 22 hours, many interrogations, and he was quite overwhelmed”.
Since then, and after receiving a fine of 3,000 pesos for violating Decree Law 370, the threats and harassment against Carlos Alberto Pérez García have only intensified. That is why he made the decision to leave the country last May.
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