Madrid/The independent journalist Sol García Basulto and the playwright Mario Junquera were detained this Sunday by State Security in Camagüey, after the visit to that city of the head of the United States mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, who in turn suffered on Saturday an act of repudiation. Several other activists reported harassment by the Political Police in different places.
Former collaborator of 14ymedio and current member of the Editorial Board of Cuba TimeGarcía Basulto he explained on his networks that she was arrested while walking on the street, around noon, by a traffic officer who demanded her documents. She then called a patrol car, which took her to a police unit. Two State Security agents dressed in civilian clothes appeared there, Albert and Kevinwho subjected her to a three-hour interrogation, with “questions, silences, warnings and very cold.”
An instructor from the Ministry of the Interior, says García Basulto, finally gave the young woman a “warning report” of which she says she does not remember “what it warned about.” The journalist goes on to detail that the instructor told her that “she had violated a perimeter that was in custody” – at that moment she was leaving the home of Henry Constantín, director of Cuba Time– and that he made “counterrevolutionary publications on social networks.”
“Right now, the dictatorship’s actors are unpredictable and dangerous”
García Basulto estimates in his post that “they are really very nervous” and that “they don’t know what they are doing.” Thus, he continues, “they have demonstrated it with their actions against the diplomat in question.” It was the first arrest “in more than five years” what the journalist sufferswho concludes: “Right now, the actors of the dictatorship are unpredictable and dangerous. But as I always tell them, we are not afraid of them.”
Of the arrest of Mario Junquergave details Cuba Time: It also occurred around noon yesterday and also when leaving the house of the director of that medium, Henry Constantín. The playwright was detained for two hours, although he has not offered details. In a reel on Facebook, he published an image of himself with the words: “I’m already free. Well, free, there’s still a little bit left. I’m at home. Thank you all. The story will absorb them.”
Constantín’s home, reported the publication of the newspaper he directs, has been surrounded since the early hours of Friday by patrols and motor vehicles of the National Revolutionary Police and plainclothes agents of State Security, “apparently to avoid any encounter between the journalist and his friends from Cuban civil society, and the head of the United States diplomatic mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer.”
Other activists from Camagüey were also harassed, such as the actress Iris Mariño, vice director of Cuba Time. The media also reports the arrest of a young man, whose name is not given, “who apparently argued with Yoel Santiesteban, a government official participating in the two acts of repudiation against Mike Hammer in front of the Santa María hotel.”
The act of repudiation that the diplomat suffered, right in front of the place where he was staying, was revealed by a video posted on the Facebook profile of a government supporter which only publishes official events and commemorations on its wall.
“These threats were not long in coming and I have been under surveillance and under siege since early hours”
Those involved were men and women who shouted “down with the blockade”, “Donald Trump puppets”, “murderer”, “genocidaires” or “bootlickers”, identical slogans to those used by the Cuban propaganda apparatus in acts of repudiation against opponents and dissidents.
Hammer, for his part, reported the event on the US Embassy’s social networks with a smile, as usual, explaining that they had “shouted some insults” at him, but expressing that they were people who “belong to a certain party” and who “do not represent the Cuban people.”
At the time of that recording, Hammer was in the city of Trinidad, Sancti Spíritus, which is also part of the tour he is taking these days around the Island, to “meet more ordinary Cubans.” In the central city he met with the priest José Conrado Rodríguez Alegreone of the critical voices against the regime within the Church.
From Las Tunas, the former political prisoner Taimir García Meriño She also reported this Sunday the harassment of the political police, who previously threatened her with facing “serious problems” if she received a visit from Hammer. “These threats were not long in coming and I have been under surveillance and under siege since early hours,” the opponent denounced.
Likewise, State Security interrogated the former political prisoner for several minutes. Ezequiel Morales Carmenatein the Las Tunas city of Puerto Padre, who had extended an invitation to his home to the American head of mission. In a video broadcast on social networks, the activist reiterated the “open doors” to Hammer, announcing to the regime: “I receive whoever I want in my house.”
The North American Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs warned yesterday in
