More than 100 activists are being held by the authorities are missing in Cuba, after the biggest anti-government protest in three decades, say campaigners.
Cuban authorities deployed riot police after the weekend saw some of the biggest protests to rock the island in decades.
The protests appear to have been triggered by a combination of mounting economic hardship, and the government’s faltering response to a new spike in Covid infections. The fact that millions of people now have access to social media helped the protests spread.
On Tuesday it was reported that more than 100 activists had been arrested or else were missing. Reuters said the exiled rights group Cubalex, had said some of those detained were arrested at the protests on Sunday, while others were detained as they sought to leave their homes.
“It’s becoming impossible to live here,” one Havana resident Maykel, 21, who declined to give his surname for fear of retaliation, told the news agency. “I don’t know if this can happen again, because at the moment, Havana is militarised.”
He added: “Still, Cubans are losing their fear.”
Among those detained by the authorities was a journalist Camila Acosta, who was working for Spain’s ABC newspaper.
Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares on Tuesday called on Cuba to immediately release Ms Acosta, who had been detained the day before.
“Spain defends the right to demonstrate freely and peacefully and asks the Cuban authorities to respect it...We demand the immediate release of Camila Acosta,” tweeted Mr Albares,
On Sunday, Ms Acosta had posted a series of images and reports from the protests, that took place in several of the nation’s largest cities.
“Today I witnessed the violence and repression against peaceful protesters in #LaHabana, of the hatred of the Cuban regime and its crude manipulations,” she wrote in one post.
“Those of us who take to the streets are motivated by the love of freedom and #Cuba, because we want to live in a better country, without hate.”
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