The professor apologizes to other victims for not having believed until today that the regime was capable of such violence
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 June 2024 — Almost 24 hours after arriving at her home following her arrest on Tuesday, professor and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández has released a video on the YouTube channel of the Cuba X Cuba Civic Thinking laboratory that she co-directs, in which she denounces the violence of her arrest and the escalation in the persecution she suffers by the Cuban regime, which now accuses her of a crime of assault, the most serious one attributed to her.
The intellectual has explained in detail how an arrest took place in which she defended herself from the violent methods the agents used against her to accuse her of an ordinary offense. “The evident intention with this case is to involve me in a new ordinary process because all this comes out as an ordinary criminal offense, not a political crime. At no time do they charge me for trying to express myself, not at all. Now it turns out I assaulted an agent, “she says.
López Hernández was heading to Havana on Tuesday, accompanied by anthropologist Jenny Pantoja Torres, to demonstrate, as she has been doing since March 2023 on the 18th of each month. This date refers to the centenary of the Protest by the Thirteen Intellectuals against the corruption of the then Alfredo Zayas’s Government. Both were intercepted at a checkpoint by an agent who, with “very rude” manners according to the professor, told her to get in the patrol car.
“The evident intention with this case is to involve me in a new ordinary process because all this comes out as an ordinary criminal offence, not a political crime. “
The events were precipitated when López requested the arrest warrant or, at least, the reason for an arrest, and the agent refused. Thus, the situation ended when the official executed “a martial arts technique” by pushing her legs. This destabilized the 59-year-old professor, who fell on her back and hit her head. “I did not lose consciousness, but I was very disoriented because it was a strong blow,” she recalls. The teacher recalls a distortion in her senses that made her fear brain damage, so she refused to get up when the officer ordered her to.
At that moment two officers appeared in another patrol car and dragged her to a car while her friend took off her glasses to avoid further damage. However, that caused her, coupled with the confusion of the moment, not to see well and instinctively to cling to something that turned out to be an epaulet from the police uniform. “It looks like I ripp