The Cuban regime harshly represses opponents campaigning against its Constitution

The Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) denounced yesterday the assault with violence of several headquarters of the organization on the island by the political police of the Cuban regime. «More than 200 military forces (assault troops) and Cuban police, with the presence of the high command of the Ministry of the Interior, assaulted at dawn today [Monday night to Tuesday] 8 houses-Unpacu headquarters with extreme violence. Without registration orders and simultaneously, using grinders broke the gates of the houses, besieged for nights, and entered hitting all the people who were in these venues, “explains the statement issued by the organization.

Among the detainees were elderly people, pregnant women and minors, as explained yesterday to ABC José Daniel Ferrer, an express of conscience and coordinator of Unpacu, who was also arrested and beaten “on the head and abdomen”. “They also assaulted my partner, who is five months pregnant, and her 78-year-old grandmother, because she could not get out of bed. They stole everything, without showing a search warrant. They took mobile phones, computers, household goods and even the food that was in the fridge, the medicines and the medical records of the patients that my partner attends, who is a doctor “.

Reform to the world
The police action should, according to the agents explained Ferrer himself, “because they will not allow us to continue campaigning against the Constitution, whose reform will be voted in a referendum on February 24. Under repression, intimidation and state terrorism they sell the world a reform in which the people think and decide ».

Ferrer denounces that they live completely “surrounded by troops of special troops, the PNR (National Revolutionary Police), civilian agents of State security.” Of the 25 arrests made yesterday against dissidents, three remain in detention. “They say that the response will be more repression to any action against the Constitution,” he explains.

The dissident also denounces that the members of the political police seized a list that contains the names of 600 observers that Unpacu was going to deploy to monitor the day of the referendum and be able to denounce the irregularities. These observers, denounces José Daniel Ferrer, will now be harassed to avoid their surveillance of the electoral process. The presence of international observers is not foreseen to monitor the voting day – the regime does not allow its entry – despite the fact that several organizations have asked observers of the OAS and the EU to travel to the island.

Hunger strike
Faced with the increase in repression and intimidation, which may worsen as day 24 approaches, members of Unpacu, a platform that brings together more than 3,000 dissidents inside the island, have decided as a protest and to attract attention of Human Rights organizations a hunger strike. “In addition to the civic protests in the streets, which we will continue to star in, we have organized a massive hunger strike throughout Cuba,” says Ferrer, who points out that the number of prisoners continues to rise at a time when the regime presumes to reform the Constitution, a constitution that qualifies as “Stalinist”, in which the single party is maintained as a form of government. «That Constitution does not represent us all». He adds: “There is no legitimacy in a referendum held between measures of repression against those who promote voting” No “. They want to show that the people can give their opinion, but it’s not like that. “

In this regard, the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) yesterday considered the referendum “illegitimate” and assured that it only serves to “mask” the “dictatorship” before the international community. The Cuban Executive accused the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, of formulating “slander and lies”, following “the script dictated by the United States Government.”

SANTIAGO DE CUBA. – The representative abroad of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Luis Enrique Ferrer García, denounced through a Facebook Live, the deportation to Guyana of the activist Eliecer Góngora Izaguirre, coordinator of the UNPACU in Jobabo, Las Tunas, part of State Security.

Góngora Izaguirre, who was part of the more than 120 hunger strikers in the opposition organization, had spent several days without food and with a delicate state of health, was removed from his house on February 19, after a violent assault on his housing by the political police.

Via telephone, Eliecer Góngora Izaguirre tells CubaNet the whole process he has experienced since his arrest by State Security and exile to Guyana.

On the afternoon of the 19th, officers from the State Security and the police appeared in his room, removing him from the bed where he was lying at that moment for the hunger strike. “They loaded me and dragged me violently by the arms and feet, throwing me against a patrol and hitting me in the same hand that they fractured me on February 4 in Camagüey, where I was playing the campaign for #YoVotoNo,” he described. opponent.

“I managed to see before leaving, that they were raiding my house, then they took me to the Municipal PNR and they took me out several times to torture me psychologically as they usually do. The next day they took me out of the dungeon and took me to my parents and my wife, they began to threaten me with death and imprisonment, telling me that they had all the papers to begin to fulfill four years due to Pre-Licensed Social Danger, that they they raised the same day they broke my arm. “

“They told me in front of my parents that I was not going to suffer the same fate as last time, after the political prison that I suffered after promoting the Cuba Decide campaign that I completed on September 5, 2018. They told me that I was not going to get out of this life, after the alleged crime they were going to apply to me of social dangerousness “.

Then he was taken to the Operations and Criminal Instruction Center of Las Tunas, where they continued torturing him.

On the morning of the 21st they took him out of there, and moved him to the vicinity of the Plaza de la Revolución. “They sent me to walk to a bench where my 86-year-old father was sitting, telling me that I could not go anywhere because I was surrounded, that he did not send me to run or do anything, that I had to go straight to my father, “he argued.

“When I did that, I saw several plainclothes agents and the national police surrounding and surrounding the place. They said that when they gave me a signal, I would direct myself to whoever made me, in this case it was Miguel, the chief of confrontation in the province. Then my father and I had to walk towards him. Then they took us to the Hotel Tunas and I was locked in an office for about two hours, “he said.

After that time of confinement in the hotel, they lowered it and entered a white car where two agents were already inside. “Then I realize we’re going out on the highway and I start asking where we’re going. I asked and nobody said anything to me, I asked Daddy if he knew anything and he said no “.

He says that at dawn hours they arrived at the José Martí International Airport, where there were other people waiting for his arrival, including many airport workers. “It seems that they asked my father for a passport and he facilitated it. It did not take long and they arrived with the air ticket for Guyana. “

Before boarding the plane he says that he was given 200 dollars, “so that with that he would look for my life and that I would never dare to return to Cuba”.

Details that he was entrusted with the crew of the airline Aruba Airlines. “The whole crew was watching me, until we took off for the island of Aruba”, the only stopover that this airline makes on its trip to Georgetown.

He then explained that, after the plane took off from Reina Beatrix Airport in Aruba, he fainted, the product of so many days without eating. “When I was about to go to the bathroom, I fainted and they had to help me, and take me back to the couch, because of the weakness of so many days of the strike and the mistreatment I suffered during the days I was detained.”

When he arrived at the Cheddi Jagan Airport in Guyana, he says, “I ask for a telephone and I get in touch with our leader José Daniel Ferrer and his brother Luis Enrique Ferrer, respectively.”

He narrates that his relatives in Cuba have remained totally unprotected, his four children, his wife, his 86-year-old father and his 68-year-old mother, elderly people who do not work and, as he says, totally depended on him. Account also, that has a brother who is serving political prison, being the right arm and the sole breadwinner of the family.

To this day, Eliecer has been on an uninterrupted hunger strike for 11 days. “My position before the strike is that I will finish it on the same day, 24 that, the distance will not stop me, I will continue to film more than ever, and I will close with the resounding no, which our courageous brothers of the UNPACU have other courageous activists who have joined this fight. “

Will Eliecer return to Cuba, after the threat of death and imprisonment that he has received from the political police, or will he remain exiled in Guyana?

“I would like to return to Cuba, and if they have to kill me, but really by the decision of many brothers, because they want me to be here, they have convinced me that yes, I have to stay in Guyana banished, because the dictatorship is not playing when it does this, it took it to these extremes, and the best thing is that I stay here. “

The activist sends a strong message to all the courageous brothers of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and other opposition organizations. “Keep going, do not let yourself be intimidated, the dictatorship is very desperate and the more desperate, the more violent. Stand firm because every day we are more, and soon we will all celebrate in democracy. “

Source: ABC, CUBANET