MIAMI, United States. – Norma Pérez, the mother of Zulmira Martínez Pérez, the young influencers Cuban imprisoned for demonstrating on social networks against the island’s regime, denounced in Statements offered to the Cuban Institute for Press Freedom (ICLEP) that State Security had manipulated and released a video of his daughter to discredit her.
On April 12, the National Television Newscast broadcast an interrogation of Zulmira Martínez Pérez in Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters, where the young woman remained for more than 40 days. In the materialthe influencers he blames himself and assures that he received money to make his publications on Facebook.
However, her mother assured that this Thursday, during the most recent visit to Zulmira in the Guatao prison, the young man told her how the authorities had deceived her: “They gave her a sheet, a piece of paper so that she could read everything, everything that I had to say. They even deceived her because they told her that if she said all that they were going to release her and in the end they didn’t release anyone”.
According to her mother, Zulmira conducted two interviews. The first was the one that appeared published on the Television News, while in the second, unpublished, the young woman offered her true statements.
Norma Pérez also refuted the accusations that her daughter received money from the opposition: “I live like a poor person, I don’t have a kilo, I don’t have a means, I live like a poor person (…), I’m practically starving, I don’t I have luxuries, I have nothing, because if they were paying my daughter as they said, I would have that house above [del nivel]and I live very normal and very ordinary ”.
The young woman’s mother also stated that the authorities did not respect Zulmira’s right to defense: “She has a lawyer and they did not call the lawyer to be with her there, they did not ask for my consent. (…) They did not ask for her consent, [sabía que] They were recording it but she didn’t think they were going to put it the way they put it [en televisión nacional]”.
Pérez also denounced that State Security threatened to imprison her if she spoke: “They even said that if I started talking they were going to put me in jail along with her. Look how far they go.”
Likewise, Zulmira’s mother criticized the manipulation of the video and the linking of her daughter to acts of sabotage and terrorism: “What they did was all a lie, they even involved her in sabotage because behind that video because after Zulmira speaks they say that sabotage, terrorism, weapons, as if she were a terrorist, a terrorist counterrevolutionary. They are involving her in another case that has nothing to do with her because my daughter is [detenida] by [el supuesto delito de] propaganda and look at all that they have formed”.
Finally, Pérez acknowledged that his daughter spoke up, but insisted on her right to have different opinions and defended her innocence: “It is true that she spoke up, she does not agree, she does not have to think like other people. But from manifesting to doing it goes a long way. My daughter has never done anything.”
