MIAMI, United States. – Cuban independent journalist José Luis Tan Estrada, regular collaborator of CubaNetleft the Island in the last week of December after two years of harassment, surveillance and threats by State Security.
“I left Cuba under very extreme conditions, I left (…) with my eyes closed and focusing on a future… to a land very different from mine (…). State Security forced me to leave Cuba; “I came out under tremendous pressure,” Tan Estrada stressed in an interview with Martí News.
“For more than two years I have been receiving constant pressure from State Security, since my expulsion from the University of Camagüey,” added the young man.
The 26-year-old activist is currently in Guyana, according to the aforementioned media.
Tan Estrada also said that his departure occurred after a frustrated attempt to travel to Nicaragua on December 25. Despite having all the legal requirements to travel to the Central American country, the immigration authorities of the Daniel Ortega regime prohibited him from entering. “I lost $5,000 of the ticket because the airline did not return the money,” the journalist lamented.
Among the acts of harassment suffered in the last month, Tan Estrada alluded to the moment of his departure, when he was forced to undress to inspect his belongings while waiting at the airport. The reporter also assured that an Immigration officer warned him that, if he returned to the Island, “it would have big consequences” and called him a “little worm.”
In a Facebook postregretted having to spend this December 31st away from his family and his land, and stressed that the Cuban regime had exiled him. “My journalism, my social media posts and my complaints have hit his Achilles heel. State Security, with its repressive, low and dirty methods, has forced me to leave Cuba in extreme situations and under threats,” he lamented.
Likewise, he assured that he will continue doing journalism and “advocating” for the freedom of political prisoners “without ceasing.”
The journalist, who was systematically harassed on the Island during the last two years, had one of his worst arrests on April 26, when he spent several days held in the State Security headquarters, Villa Marista, in Havana.
On that occasion, he was held in an isolation cell and was released with a fine of 4,000 pesos, after threats.
State Security agents encouraged him to leave the country and accused him of interfering with the Cuban legal order.
