The independent reporter Orelvys Cabrera Sotolongo had to leave Cuba “due to pressure from State Security.” The journalist, a resident of Matanzas and one of the detainees in the protests of July 11 (11J), confirmed this Monday to 14ymedio who traveled to Russia with his partner on December 19.
“I was the last journalist released after July 11. With me they went to extremes, they held me in prison for 37 days,” says Cabrera, who insists that the regime’s repression increased after it launched the podcast The Worm, a project developed together with the independent media CubaNet, where he is a reporter.
Regarding his arrest on 11J, he said that he was reporting the events of the social outbreak when State Security “kidnapped him.” The political police “had been following me for a long time, they knew who I was.”
As soon as they saw him at the demonstration, he says, “they sent him a patrol car” and mounted him on it. “I say it is a kidnapping because I was in a forced disappearance for about ten days, until on one occasion they gave me a phone call because my partner reported on Mega TV that he was missing and missing,” says Cabrera, who does independent journalism since 2018.
After more than a month in jail, a change in the precautionary measure of home confinement was approved and within weeks he was only sanctioned with fines for the spread of epidemic and public disorder.
“I was the last journalist released after July 11. With me they went to extremes, they kept me in prison for 37 days”
Since then, the political police warned him that he had opened a judicial file to imprison him and they would add several crimes to him. He also received death threats from people on the street that seemed “common,” he says. “The last one was a black-skinned man with a knife between his pants. He lifted his sweater and told me: ‘This revolution was made with the edge of the machete and we will preserve it if necessary with the edge of the machete.’ He did that, I told myself that they could kill me. “
State Security informed him that he would be prosecuted for “ideological corruption of minors”, due to a video he made “talking about the railroad in Cuba” where “a minor gave her testimony.” “The truth is, I didn’t even know that this cause existed, but it is included in a file that they had created for me.” In reality, this crime does not appear in the Cuban Penal Code, which only defines “corruption of minors.”
In addition, he was warned that he would be accused of “usurpation of functions” for not having a journalist’s credential, and that he would become part of the list of regulated persons who cannot leave the country, in addition to invalidating his Social Communication degree.
In one of the interrogations they spoke openly: “You are becoming a very potential opponent and we have to stop you by hook or by crook.”
Regarding his departure from the country, Cabrera maintains: “This step we took is very difficult, it is difficult to leave your land knowing that you will not see it again nor will you be able to return to your family. I do not see it as cowardice.”
“The repression in Cuba has increased a lot and there are many independent journalists who are almost at the gates of the prisons, there are many activists who are imprisoning and I think I feel more useful outside than inside because I realized that my voice it bothers them, my speech bothers them, “he explains.
“This revolution was made with the edge of the machete and we will preserve it if necessary with the edge of the machete.”
Cabrera appeals to the support of some international organization or American politician to help him get out of Russia, “a very homophobic society,” he says. “A homosexual couple in this country can be in danger and more because the tentacles of the Cuban dictatorship can reach here and can even kill us and the crime would go unpunished.”
“We need to leave as soon as possible, before losing the tourist status that we have now,” he explains. “When we lose this condition it will be very difficult to get out legally, it would have to be by border and right now the closest we have left is Serbia,” where the journey, he acknowledges, “will be very difficult.”
In the last year and more frequently after July 11, the Cuban regime has resorted to one of its historic tactics: forcing everyone to leave the island with every voice that is raised against them. Several protesters, opponents and artists have had to leave the country for fear of being imprisoned as has happened in other decades.
Among the most recent names, those of the artist Hamlet Lavastida and poet Katherine Bisquet, after negotiations with State Security, which is trying to get some political prisoners out of the country, such as the activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, the rapper Maykel Castillo Osorbo and the freelance reporter Esteban Rodriguez.
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