14ymedio, Havana, Miguel García, 23 March 2024 — At least six people were arrested in the town of San Andrés, in Holguín, after demonstrating on March 8. They are charged with the crimes of contempt and public disorder, according to sources close to the accused.
According to Martí Noticias, four of the detainees spent several days “incommunicado” in the State Security barracks in the people’s council of Pedernales, in the provincial capital. Since last Thursday, they have been waiting in another prison for the results of the police investigation into the protest.
Among the detainees are two women – both imprisoned in the provincial prison – who have been identified as Elsa Elisa Solís Barrera and Lea Velázquez Ochoa. Of the rest, two are imprisoned in the CubaSí prison – Yunior Barrera and Yulier Ramírez – and two others, Reinier Reimón Peña and Warnel Ricardo, are still in the State Security prison.
Elsa Solís’ mother and Yunior Barrera’s sister, Blanca María Barrera, told Martí Noticias that the authorities “have not explained anything” about the situation of the detainees. The woman, sick with worry, regretted not only the arrest of her daughter, but the fact that her 48-year-old brother is far from his children, “two minor children with intellectual disabilities.”
The authorities “have not explained anything” about the situation of the detainees
The Holguin activist Dámaso Fernández offered details about another prisoner, Lea Velázquez, who was fined 5,000 pesos. “On Monday, March 11, they confiscated her cell phone and told her that she would be notified. When she went to get the phone, they detained her,” Fernández explained.
The activist said that on the day of the protest, a group of residents in San Andrés took to the streets “asking for freedom, banging on pots and pans and forming a crowd in the park.” Other relatives spoke to Martí Noticias but, according to the media, they asked that their statements not be published for fear of State Security reprisals.
The long blackouts and shortages that the Island is suffering sent Cubans into the street to protest in Santiago de Cuba on March 17. Since then, according to the count of the NGO Prisoners Defenders (PD), a total of 32 Cubans in nine provinces have been “detained, fined and prosecuted.” Only six of them have regained their freedom. The list of prisoners “increases eve
