Pastor Yordanys Díaz Arteaga, president of the Christian Reformed Church of Cuba, was detained this Tuesday for more than six hours. According to members of this congregation denounced on social networks, Díaz’s house was raided and his mobile phone seized.
On the afternoon of February 1, several soldiers arrived at the home of Díaz Arteaga, in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre. “After four hours of exhaustive searching, they took the pastor, some technological devices and several white sweaters that were in the place,” said a close source who prefers anonymity.
Several members of the congregation launched an urgent prayer request during the time that Díaz Arteaga was detained. Shortly after, a follower of the Church confirmed that “the pastor is already in his home, under house arrest and an investigation process is weighing on him.”
“At 2:30 am the pastor was released but the police kept his mobile phone, they also took his computer and a printer,” he added. All attempts to communicate with Díaz Arteaga’s cell phone number throw the message “power off or out of coverage area”.
“After four hours of exhaustive searching, they took the pastor, some technological devices and several white sweaters that were in the place”
“It is also necessary that the companions who attend him review how much humanitarian social work this church does. Shame on the regime,” journalist Yaiset Rodríguez Fernández had written on Facebook about it.
“A reception complaint weighs on him because he sent a donation of several white sweaters for the inmates and a calendar with verses to a prison,” the source of this newspaper commented. “The pullovers did not have any logo or image with a political connotation, but the person carrying the donation was intercepted and the authorities took what she was wearing.”
The British organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide assured in a text that the Cuban authorities were “using a false pretext to harass the religious leader, who has become a target of the Government since his denomination chose to withdraw from the Council of Churches of Cuba,” an organism aligned with the official discourse.
Díaz Arteaga studied at the Baptist Seminary of Santa Clara specializing in Pastoral Master’s Degree and had previously obtained his degree at the Seminary of Theology in the city of Matanzas. The Cuban Christian Reformed Church has harshly criticized the Family Code that is being prepared, especially that related to same-sex marriage.
The congregation has also denounced the government’s excessive repression against the demonstrators of last July 11 and the high prison sentences against many of them.
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