MIAMI, United States. – Independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea Chávez was arrested last Friday, November 8 after protests in Encrucijada, Villa Clara, where he resides, according to reported the Cubalex Legal Information Center.
“A local source confirmed to Cubalex that José Gabriel Barrenechea was detained on Friday, November 8 and, since then, his family has had no news about his situation,” the NGO indicated. According to the information available, the journalist is being held in an instruction center in the city of Santa Clara.
Barrenechea is the author of several books and has collaborated with independent media such as Inverted Tree, 14ymedio and Cuba Encounterin addition to international platforms such as Latin America 21. Due to his critical stance towards the regime, he has been a victim of censorship and persecution by State Security.
“Since 2019, it has been regulated to prevent him from leaving the country, he is denied the right to work, and his books are prohibited in Cuba,” Cubalex noted in its report.
So far, this would be the ninth confirmed arrest in the context of the demonstrations in Encrucijada.
This Sunday, the working group on politically motivated arrests in Cuba Justice 11J denounced the arrests in several provinces of Cuba related to expressions of social discontent due to the worsening of living conditions and the management of the authorities in the face of the current crisis.
“At Justicia 11J we are deeply concerned about all the detained people about whom we have no information, whose cases we will not be able to make visible to promote their immediate release,” the organization said in a statement. post from Facebook.
The Attorney General’s Office of the Republic of Cuba reported this Saturday that criminal proceedings are being processed for crimes of “attack”, “public disorder” and “damage” in Havana, Mayabeque and Ciego de Ávila, and that a precautionary measure of provisional detention was imposed on the accused.
The organization highlighted that, until the publication of the prosecutor’s notehad verified 66 protests that had occurred on the Island since the almost total collapse of the national electrical system on October 18. “Last night [sábado 9 de noviembre]we documented two new protests, for a new total of 68, since last October 18,” reported Justicia 11J.
In addition, the organization has collected information on 23 people who are still detained in Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, in relation to their alleged participation in protests. “We know that at least three of them are being accused of committing public disorder,” the NGO added.
The entity expressed concern because the Prosecutor’s Office did not mention the people detained in the province of Villa Clara. “According to our registry, there are 18 of them, from the Manicaragua, Encrucijada and Camajuaní municipalities,” Justicia 11J specified.
He also warned about the course of the criminal proceedings initiated and recalled that “the sentences of people detained in previous protest scenarios since 2021, in some cases have been extended to more than 20 years of deprivation of liberty.”
