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New Arrests in Continuing Repression against Young Cubans
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

Student Activists Detained in Eastern Cuba

Members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy in November 2007 after presenting a 5,000 signature petition for academic freedom, university autonomy, and the reopening of Santo Tomás de Villanueva Catholic University. (File)

Members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy in November 2007 after presenting a 5,000 signature petition for academic freedom, university autonomy, and the reopening of Santo Tomás de Villanueva Catholic University. (File)

Eastern Cuba. July 17, 2008. Cuban Democratic Directorate.  Eleven members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy (CYMD) were arbitrarily arrested by Castro regime authorities in Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo provinces on Tuesday morning.

 

The activists were preparing to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the founding of the CYMD, as well as the 1932 birth of Cuban student icon José Antonio Echeverría, an anti-communist leader of the struggle to overthrow Batista. The young Cubans were wearing t-shirts with Echeverría’s picture.

 

According to statements by Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina, Director of the CYMD’s Center for Alternative Studies, the authorities also searched the homes of several young activists in order to seize the t-shirts. The CYMD has adopted the wearing of the Echeverría t-shirts to rescue the fallen pro-democracy leader’s image from being co-opted by the Communist regime.

 

According to additional statements, eight of the detained youth activists were released that night, while three were forced to remain overnight in the State Security Operations Center in Guantánamo for refusing to remove their t-shirts. These three, Yordis García Fournier, Isael Poveda Silva and Jorge Corrales Ceballo, were released Wednesday morning, July, 17, 2008.

 

“We were threatened with having the gag law [Law 88] applied against us. State Security officer Luis Guerrero Gainza said, in these words, that the streets were for revolutionaries, not for us, that we did not have the right to walk in the streets, that they were going to avoid every kind of demonstration because they were the ones in charge in this country, they are the ones who have the power… and a series of tretas of all kinds, of sticking us in prison for 20 years,” stated Enyor Díaz Allen by telephone to the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

 

 

Activists arrested at the Calle 4 terminal in the municipality of Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba:

 

Yuniesky Domínguez González

Raudel Ávila Lozada

Alexis Kuan Jeréz

Raumel Guinajera

Yorledis Duvalón Guivert Ortiz

 

Activistas detained in Guantánamo province:

 

Yordis García Fournier

Niober García Fournier

Jorge Corrales Ceballo

Rogelio Tabío Ramírez

Enyor Díaz Allen

Isael Poveda Silva

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