Wave of Arrests against Cuba's Internal Resistance Confirm Raul Castro's Will to Repress
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

Opposition activists receive SMS text message with a Raul Castro quote: “There will be no impunity. The streets and squares belong and will continue to belong to revolutionaries.”

Cuba. August 5, 2010. Cuban Democratic Directorate. A crackdown launched on Sunday, August 1, 2010 against the civic resistance movement in Eastern Cuba is continuing with new arrests, beatings, and threats against human rights defenders in Havana. The attacks began on August 1 in the city of Banes against the family and friends of murdered opposition activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

“We, the Ladies in White engaged in a peaceful march, were besieged by a mob of 700 people, absolutely aggressive, like never before. One of them came up to me and began to shove me violently. If not for my daughter, Reina Maria, they would have thrown me off my feet, because they gave orders to advance on us with tremendous violence to knock us down and trample over us,” stated Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger.

Spanish daily ABC published an interview with independent journalist Caridad Caballero Batista in which she stated that “repression has intensified against opposition activists, especially in the country's eastern region. They do not attempt to hide it. Representatives from the Catholic Church and western journalists have to come to see what is happening here.”

Arbitrary arrests were documented in the cities of Banes, Holguín, Antilla, Santiago de Cuba, Las Tunas, Bayamo, Baracoa and Guantánamo. According to reports from Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, coordinator of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, who also suffered an arbitrary arrest this week, the following activists from that organization have been detained:

Idalmis Núñez Reinosa, Daniel Mesa Cantillo, Ramón Reyes Oramas, Maritza Cardoso Sariol, Jaime Sariol Romero, Carlos Manuel Hernández Reyes, Angela Delgado Pérez, Maiky Martorell Mayans, Yoandri Aviles Montoya, Gertrudis Ojeda Suarez, Martha Diaz Rondon, Aurelio Antonio Morales Ayala, Angel Batista Vega, Mildred Noemi Sanchez Infante, Angel Frómeta Lobaina, José Cano Fuentes, Isael Poveda Silva, Yobel Sevila Martínez, Roberto Gonzalez Pelegrín, Francisco Luis Manzanet Ortiz, Rodny Leiva Salas.

Meanwhile instances of repression and arbitrary arrests were also reported in Havana during opposition events held to mark the 16^th anniversary of the “Maleconazo” Freedom Uprising in that city.

Activists from several Havana-based organizations sounded the alarm over the disappearance of human rights defenders beginning early in the morning of August 5^th. According to Sarah Martha Fonseca Quevedo, leader of the Pro-Human Rights Party affiliated to the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, some 16 activistas were being held at National Revolutionary Police stations. As of this writing, Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco, Ricardo Salabarría of the Hard Line and Boycott Front; Dagoberto Vergel Souto, Ramón González Bonelles, Josué Siret Miranda, of the Mario Chanes de Armas Movement; Néstor Rodríguez López, Heriberto Pong Ruiz, of the Marti Civic League, under suspicion of writing anti-regime graffiti; Eriberto Liranza Romero, of the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement who was arrested and beaten; Ernesto Díaz Esquivel and an unknown number of activists from the Movement of Opposition Activists for a New Republic, had been detained.

This repression has been unleashed while Raul Castro addressed the National Assembly of People's Power, stating that “There will be no impunity for enemies of the fatherland” and that “the defense of our sacred conquests, of our streets and squares, will continue to be the first duty of revolutionaries.” This same message was sent by SMS text message to the mobile telephones of several leaders of the internal resistance movement in Eastern Cuba as a veiled threat by the regime's repressive apparatus.

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Directorio Democrático Cubano
P.O. Box 110235
Hialeah, Florida 33011
Tel. 305-220-2713
info@directorio.org

In Memory of Mario Manuel de la Peña