Hundreds of dissidents, students, artists, journalists, priests and even children have been arrested in Cuba following islandwide anti-government protests that erupted Sunday and their violent aftermath.
Many remain incommunicado, according to family members and international organizations denouncing the arrests.
“My mother just called me crying,” said Arnaldo Falcon, whose brother, Ariel Gonzalez Falcon, 21, has been detained since Sunday and is currently being held in a prison in El Cotorro, on the outskirts of Havana.
“My parents have been in that disgusting prison since first thing in the morning, and now they have been told that they will hold him for four more days. They don’t want to tell them why or give them his case number,” he said.
Ariel Falcon, who is going to medical school, first posted a video of a Sunday demonstration in the iconic Malecón in Havana that went viral.
A Spanish-language list that has been shared on social media by the Cuban independent journalism outlet El Toque and other organizations includes details of 383 people arrested during the protests and the following days. Some have already been released.
“Faced with the most massive demonstrations in the country in decades, the Cuban government has deployed its repressive machinery at full speed,” said Juan Pappier, a senior investigator with Human Rights Watch, the non-governmental organization that monitors human rights violations. “Almost 400 people have been reported as detained or missing, and many of them are being held incommunicado. Police and intelligence officers have also appeared at the homes of journalists and activists, ordering them to stay there under the threat of being detained.”
Pappier said Human Rights Watch investigators are interviewing dozens of detainees and family members to confirm the information as well as the authenticity of videos on social media coming out of the island.
He believes the number of arrests could be higher because there are obstacles to the verification work, including internet shutdowns and the fact that the Cuban government does not facilitate information-gathering related to human-rights violations.
“There is a less visible factor, which is fear,” he added. “Many people don’t want to denounce the detentions of their family members because they fear they can lose their jobs or be arrested themselves if they speak out.”
Pappier said that there are two distinct groups among the detainees.
“On the one hand, (there are) the most recognized activists or journalists who were detained earlier so they could not join the demonstrations,” he said. The other, he said are “regular Cubans, even those who said they were just watching the events. The vast majority are incommunicado, so many families are going through the ordeal of going to every police station and prison to look for their loved ones.”
That was the case of Leonardo Romero, a 21-year-old university student majoring in physics who was detained on Sunday near the Capitol in Havana, which now houses the Cuban National Assembly.
“It was a very irregular process. We had a lot of trouble tracking his whereabouts,” Cuban independent journalist Maykel Gonzalez said in a phone interview from Havana. “He is incommunicado, his mother hasn’t been able to talk to him and it seems he is going to be tried.”
Romero, who is currently held at the same prison facility in El Cotorro, was detained in May this year for joining a demonstration in Obispo, a popular street in Old Havana, in support of the San Isidro Movement’s leader, the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, on a hunger strike at the time. Romero was seen holding a sign that read: “Yes to socialism, no to repression.”
The San Isidro Movement is an activist group of dissidents artists, journalists and academics. Otero Alcántara is among those who were arrested Sunday.
Gonzalez, who runs the LGBTI news website Tremenda Nota, was himself detained Sunday and was able to sneak a phone into the police station and tweet what he saw.
“I saw a lot of minors, among them, one named Amado, 17, who had a previous record for confronting the police,” he said. “He is still there.”
Another seven journalists were detained, according to Human Rights Watch and Cubalex, an organization providing legal aid to activists on the island. Four — Henry Constantin, Neife Rigau, Iris Mariño and Orelvis Cabrera — are still under arrest, according to Human Rights Watch. Camila Acosta, who writes for Cubanet and the Spanish daily ABC, was released this Friday under house arrest.
Gonzalez said he shared a cell with several other people, including two trans women who were immediately informed that they would be tried on Wednesday.
Officials from the Interior Ministry who appeared on Cuban TV Wednesday night refused to say how many demonstrators had been arrested but said most were young and could be subjected to summary trials. They repeated the government version that most of the protesters were not peaceful and had committed several crimes.
On Friday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, called for dialogue and the release of the detainees.
“I am very concerned at the alleged use of excessive force against demonstrators in Cuba and the arrest of a large number of people, including several journalists,” Bachelet said. “It is particularly worrying that these include individuals allegedly held incommunicado and people whose whereabouts are unknown. All those detained for exercising their rights must be promptly released.”
Gonzalez said what might happen in the next few days is uncertain but something profound had changed in the country.
“The government had lost the little legitimacy it had,” he said. “Although the streets are empty, something symbolic was broken. Any demands will be expressed in a different way, in the public space. Right now, we are in a different country.”
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