Due to the “episode of repression” that activist Saily González Velázquez suffered last Thursday, she decided to leave Cuba and this Sunday she arrived in Miami (United States). According to her made known through her social networks, her determination was made “very hastily and I have told very few people.”
Before leaving the island, González told people close to her about the harassment she suffered from State Security, which threatened to imprison her for “instigation to commit a crime.” The new penal codewhich will enter into force in a few months, will further toughen the penalties for any kind of demonstration against the “irrevocability of the socialist system.”
The new Code will punish with sentences of up to ten years the citizen “who arbitrarily exercises any right or freedom recognized in the Constitution of the Republic” if that exercise has as its purpose “to change, totally or partially, the Constitution of the Republic or the form of Government by her established”.
In its facebook wallGonzalez explained that he understands it “as just one more trip” and will continue “fighting to achieve a country where we can all participate, a country without repression or political prisoners.”
González commented with people close to her about the harassment she suffered from State Security, which threatened to put her in jail for “instigation to commit a crime.”
He made it known in that same post that his “heart goes out to every political prisoner whose rights are violated and to their families, to every activist who, like me, puts his body, his peace and that of his family at risk, so that we all have rights in this Cuba of everybody”.
He advanced that his “speech and activism will also continue to go in that direction” that in a few days he will give more details. “For now I need to rest.”
There were immediate reactions. From Madrid, the Hispano-Cuban art curator and activist Carolina Barrero expressed her “respect and solidarity.” In the same comment she expressed: “Exile has a determining role to play in the end of the dictatorship and in the democratic transition that we all have the responsibility to precipitate.” Leaving open an upcoming meeting.
“It squeezed my soul but it made my heart happy, one of my friends has just left the country,” wrote Orlando Ramírez Cutiño, stepfather of Jonathan Torres Farrat, imprisoned for protesting 11J. “Saily Gonzalez Velazquez, the one in yellow as she is affectionately known, left for lands of freedom, I know that from there she will continue fighting for a free Cuba.”
Blogger Boris Sancho posted: “With a mixture of joy and sadness I say welcome to the land of freedom.”
On May 31, Saily Gonzalez was released after spending several hours held by State Security.
Last May 31, Saily Gonzalez was released after spending several hours detained by State Security, which violently intercepted her when she was marching on a street in Santa Clara for the freedom of the artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo osorb.
To free her, the political police demanded that she be given another sweater, since the one she was wearing had the slogans “free Maykel” and “free Luisma” written by hand. Several activists confirmed that the activist’s mother had also been questioned. This harassment has been denounced by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights before the UN.
To the businesswoman from Villa Clara prevented from attending the Ninth Summit of the Americas to which she was invited as a representative of Cuban civil society. State Security summoned her to remind her, moreover, that they had an open criminal investigation against her. A process, which “arbitrarily opened to him for calling the civic march for change on November 15 and which they insist on using at convenience,” González explained.
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