Cuba's economy is running on empty, but repression is at full throttle.
Political police detained and interrogated leading dissidents Berta Soler and Ángel Moya for more over 24 hours last week. The couple is under investigation and house arrest for the next 48 days.
17—23 abril
Hola y welcome to CubaCurious.
Cuba watchers have been tracking a sharp increase in repression on the island since the beginning of the new year. This week’s story shows how the regime makes activists’ lives a nightmare even when they remain “free.”
The arrests you’ll read about took place close to my old barrio of Juanelo, on the outskirts of Havana. As I followed the story, I remembered running through those streets as a kid, free of worries and fears—other than getting in trouble for, well, running around on the street.
How much longer will Cubans have to wait to live without fear of their government?
¿Hasta cuando? I hear and read that question each time I go into these stories, either explicitly or in spirit. May it be soon.
Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll consider commenting below.
Hasta la semana que viene,
Ana
U.S. diplomat escorts Ladies in White Leader to church services after weeks of political police barring her attendance.
Translated and condensed from a 20 April 14ymedio article.
Since the beginning of the year, the Cuban government has intensified its persecution of activists and relatives of detainees. The escalating repression is sending a persistent and clear message to the citizenry: stay silent, keep still.
Leading opposition members Berta Soler and her husband, Ángel Moya, are refusing to do both. The couple was arrested on 17 April, four days after Soler attended Palm Sunday Mass accompanied by U.S. diplomat Mike Hammer. Soler and Moya were taken to different prisons and interrogated for over 24 hours.
Soler is the leader of the Ladies in White. Moya is a former political prisoner from Cuba’s Black Spring (2003 crackdown). The home they share is also the headquarters of the Ladies in White.
Political police agents routinely hold the couple’s home under siege to keep the women activists from walking to Sunday mass wearing white and carrying flowers in support of Cuba’s political prisoners. Authorities station agents around the neighborhood to keep activists from leaving or entering.
Now the siege has been extended and strengthened. "They [State Security agents] are on both corners with tremendous impunity, because we cannot directly publish any of what they are doing to us because [they confiscated our cell phones]," Moya told 14ymedio.
"Several neighbors told us there is a large operation on Porvenir Avenue as well," Moya said. He told the online media outlet the couple is "under a precautionary measure of house arrest for the alleged crime of attacking the established constitutional order."
The 48-day house arrest will continue until authorities complete their investigation the couple for, among other accusations, "acting against the independence and sovereignty of the country." Moya cited the couple’s recent meeting with the head of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Mike Hammer, as the reason for their arrest.
Hammer accompanied Soler on April 13, Palm Sunday, to the church of Santa Rita, in Miramar. The diplomat escorted Soler to the church after several Sundays in which police prevented her from leaving her home.
Four days later, the couple was arrested near la Virgen del Camino, in Havana, according to Cubalex, a legal rights NGO whose members were forced into exile by the regime. Interrogators confiscated the activists’ cell phones during the arrest. They did not return the phones to Soler and Moya when they were released in the late evening of 18 April.
Soler and Moya fear State Security will use their phones to implicate them and advance the regime’s political agenda. Moya told 14ymedio the couple uses the phones to connect to social networks. The activists had turned off their cell phones before authorities confiscated them.
Police wanted the phones’ passwords but Soler and Moya both refused. Despite their refusal, interrogators warned both activists that they "were going to open and technically check" the devices.
Moya asked 14ymedio to send out a public alert on the couple’s behalf: "if confused and tendentious messages appear on our social networks, or on our private channels, then it is State Security that is writing them."
The activists have tried to publicize their situation through various channels while under house arrest. "The house is not a dungeon," Soler said in one message. Moya reported that when the couple returned home after being interrogated for more than 24 hours, their internet access had been cutoff.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana issued a statement expressing “outrage” over Soler’s arrest. "This further demonstrates the regime's ruthless disregard for religious freedom and . . . exposes the brutish mistreatment by the regime of its own people.”
The embassy said its diplomats “will continue to meet with Cubans in all walks of life, particularly those standing up for human rights, basic freedoms, and human dignity.”
Berta Soler has been arrested many times in recent years, as have Ladies in White members, often as they attempt to go to church. The women have been violently arrested numerous times of the years. They’ve been beaten in public by men and women the regime says are acting independently. The women say they are plainclothes State Security agents or thugs the regime pays to control opponents.
Several Ladies in White members remain jailed for protesting in 2021. One of the members, Saily Navarro Álavarez , was arrested when she went to a local prison after the protests to check on detainees.
The Ladies in White began when female relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists were arrested in March 2003, also known as Cuba’s Black Spring. In 2005, the group received the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Many activists are reporting increasing numbers of harassment, detentions, arrests, and beatings by plainclothes and uniformed State Security agents. Some of the victims include writer Jorge Fernández Era, and professor Alina Bárbara López and fellow academic Jenny Pantoja. Reporters Yadiel Hernández Hernández and José Gabriel Barrenechea remain imprisoned while awaiting trial for four and five months respectively.
If you’d like to assist the families of Cuban political prisoners, I hope you’ll consider donating to Cuban Spanish marathoner Eugenia Gutierrez’s who has dedicated her race next Sunday to raising funds for Cuba’s more than 1000 known political prisoners and their families. Eugenia was grateful for a recent CubaCurious report on her campaign and made this subtitled film clip for us. The campaign ends in mid May. She is working directly with the respected ex political prisoner and human rights activist José Daniel Ferrer.
Cuban Treat of the Week
I’m offering an essay I wrote for LitHub that came out this week. It’s about the power of storytelling in our Cuban American family. I hope you enjoy it.