- More than 100 people were arrested for protesting in Cuba.
- The demonstrators opposed the government.
- The police dispersed the protesters who had gathered in Havana.
According to various sources, more than 100 people, including independent journalists and opposition activists, were arrested in Cuba after the unprecedented anti-government protests. Some of them were still detained on Tuesday.
The Cuban San Isidro Freedom of Speech protest movement published a list on Twitter on Monday evening. Among them, 144 were detained or reported missing after the Sunday uprising. Thousands of Cubans in dozens of towns and cities walked up. street.
During the protests dispersed by the police, groups of demonstrators chanted “Down with the dictatorship.” On Monday night, about 100 protesters gathered in Havana again, chanting “Down with Communism.”
As the country experienced the worst economic crisis in 30 years, chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine, and the recent deterioration of the coronavirus epidemic, these gatherings broke out spontaneously.
The Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Zhong wrote on Twitter: “The violence and detention of Cuban protesters and the disappearance of independent activists… remind us that Cubans have paid a heavy price for freedom and dignity.
“We call for their immediate release.”
The detainees include dissident Guillermo Farinas, former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara.
According to the San Isidro Movement, Alcantara has been held for more than 32 hours.
He was released in May after staying in the hospital for nearly a month. He said that he was forcibly taken away after a hunger strike and isolated from the outside world to protest the authorities’ confiscation of several of his works when he was arrested during the demonstration.
Also arrested was the theater director Uniol Garcia, who is the leader of the 27N movement. On November 27 last year, members of the art world launched a much smaller protest, demanding freedom of speech.
He was released on Monday afternoon.
Garcia said on Facebook that he went to the office of the ICRT government broadcaster with a group of friends on Sunday to request a 15-minute broadcast and was arrested.
He said they were arrested and beaten, “and were forcibly dragged into a truck.”
“We were treated as rubbish,” he said, adding that they were taken to a detention center in Havana, where they saw “dozens of young people” arrive.
Camila Acosta, a Cuban journalist for the Spanish newspaper ABC, was also arrested on Monday, the newspaper’s foreign editor said.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday urged the Cuban authorities to respect the right to protest and demanded that Cuba “immediately” release Acosta.
