Havana/The protesters arrested for the protest on October 16 in Baire, Contramaestre, Santiago de Cuba, were released this Monday. According to a text published by Martí NewsAmong those released are the pediatrician Erlis Sierra Gomeznurse Humberto Nieto Sierra and Osmani Heredia Delfín.
It was Moranne Martínez López, wife of Nieto Sierra, who confirmed the news to the Cuban-American media. “My husband says that they did not threaten him. They made the video, yes. There is another boy called Osmani, but I don’t know who he is. I have seen him on the networks, but I don’t know him. They told me yesterday that they had released him,” she added. In the case of Yanelis Sierra, sister of the pediatrician, reported as detained by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, her current status has not been mentioned in any report.
All of them – plus Alexander Acosta and Ania Gómez Leiva, arrested for only a few hours – were arbitrarily detained for participating in the massive protest last Thursday, complaining about a blackout that lasted more than 30 hours, the shortage of drinking water and food, and an arbovirus outbreak that has worsened the local health crisis that has been going on for weeks in the area.
One day after the peaceful mobilization, Contramaestre woke up with police patrols and vehicles from the Ministry of the Interior
One day after the peaceful mobilization, Contramaestre woke up with police patrols and Ministry of the Interior vehicles surrounding the main streets and parks. That Friday, Erlis Sierra and Humberto Nieto attended a meeting with the authorities in which they explained the problems facing the population.
At the meeting, Yoendri Oconor Reyessecretary of the Communist Party in Baire, promised both that no retaliation would be taken against him or any of the protesters; However, that same night they visited the young pediatrician at the Orlando Pantoja Municipal Hospital to inform him that he had to appear last Saturday at a Contramaestre police station, “under the threat that, if he did not attend, he could be detained by the Special Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior and accused,” the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba detailed this Monday.
After attending the appointment, Sierra was taken out of the police station through the back door and taken to the Versalles criminal operations unit, in Santiago de Cuba, where the provincial headquarters of State Security is located. There, he and Humberto Nieto were interrogated for hours and forced to record a retraction video.
Erlis Sierra and Humberto Nieto were interrogated for hours and forced to record a retraction video
In the film, before Sierra Gómez begins to speak, the voice of an agent is heard giving the indication that the recording has begun. “I hereby inform that I have not been mistreated,” said the doctor in the video, in which he stares at a point as if reading a script and where he indicated that he was at that moment in a “dialogue with the relevant institutions.”
The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba said that “the supposed dialogue between officials and the population is just a trick by the Government to distort the rebellious nature of the protests” and included in its list of repressors to the secretary of the PCC in Baire for having led the arbitrary arrests in the city.
Popular unrest has been increasing and has become visible in different provinces of the country, driven by prolonged blackouts, food shortages and deterioration of basic services.
According to the Cubalex organization, last September 41 citizen protests were registered, including banging pots and demonstrations in different provinces. “The state response was more repression, arbitrary arrests and exemplary trials,” he noted in his monthly report, where he documented 185 violating acts and 349 repressive incidents in 14 provinces and 45 municipalities. The main victims were people deprived of liberty, activists, human rights defenders and people of African descent.
