However Cuban officers are more and more taking purpose at Yunior Garcia Aguilera and his proposal to carry a peaceable political march later this month — for which the state has already denied permission.
“Cubans have spent an excessive amount of time in silence,” Garcia Aguilera mentioned throughout an interview in his cramped residence within the downtrodden San Agustín neighborhood of Havana. “It is time to open our mouths with liberty and say what we predict.”
Garcia Aguilera just isn’t the standard anti-government Cuban dissident. He has labored for years in state-run theater and tv productions, is vital of the US embargo on the island and says he’s extra liberal than Cuba’s “conservative” management. Cuban state-run media this week in contrast him to famend Czech playwright and human rights advocate Vaclav Havel, though the outline was not meant as a praise.
Cuban state TV has broadcast recording of Garcia Aguilera’s private telephone calls, and aired packages alleging murky ties between the playwright and darkish forces allegedly bent on toppling Cuba’s greater than six-decade-old revolution.
In a single telephone name, Garcia Aguilera could be heard having a perfunctory dialog with a widely known anti-Castro Cuban exile Ramon Saul Sanchez, who presents Garcia Aguilera his assist. Cuban authorities officers handled the decision as damning proof that the playwright has been in contact with Cuban exiles in Florida, whom the federal government accuses of plotting terrorist assaults on the island.
And in a video that aired Monday on the Cuba’s Causes tv program, a neighborhood physician named Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González confirmed photographs of a convention that he mentioned he attended with Garcia Aguilera and different Cuban authorities critics in Madrid in 2019.
Vázquez González additionally mentioned in this system that he was truly a double agent, reporting again to Cuban state safety on Garcia Aguilera.
“What we’re seeing in Yunior is the creation and efficiency of a counterrevolutionary,” Vázquez González mentioned.
Garcia Aguilera confirmed the authenticity of the telephone name and the convention however mentioned they have been misrepresented on TV. He denies receiving any funding from overseas governments or exile teams, and insists that he’s pushing for democratic change from inside Cuba utilizing authorized avenues.
In assist of his plan to protest, Garcia Aguilera shaped a bunch referred to as Archipelago, which has over 31,000 followers on Fb. Group members say they too are harassed for his or her activism, and complain of being adopted by plainclothes state safety brokers and receiving threats by authorities officers.
Members additionally accuse Cuba’s state telecom supplier of stopping Cubans from texting the phrase archipelago in Spanish or the date of their deliberate protest — a long-established censorship tactic on the island. CNN has independently confirmed the messaging block.
In October, Garcia Aguilera posted photos on social media of the carcass and blood and feathers of a useless chicken that have been unfold throughout the doorway to his residence in the course of the night time — a gory scene that he understood as a warning to halt his activism.
He blamed the federal government for the vandalism, saying that police monitoring his home would have been conscious of who was accountable. Cuban officers haven’t responded to his allegations of harassment.
On Monday, Garcia Aguilera’s spouse additionally filmed neighbors finishing up a nighttime “acto de repudio” or “act of repudiation” — chanting authorities slogans on the couple’s doorstep and “warning” him to cease his activism.
However, Garcia Aguilera and a handful of different protest organizers say they’re intent on shifting ahead with their deliberate march. They are saying they need peaceable protesters arrested after demonstrations on July 11 to be launched, extra ensures for particular person freedoms and a lifting of official censorship.
A harmful time to protest
In line with the Cubalex group that screens authorized points on the island, a minimum of 1,175 Cubans have been arrested following the July 11 protests when scores of individuals took to the streets to demand better freedoms and financial circumstances — the biggest demonstration to happen in Cuba for the reason that 1959 revolution.
Whereas authorities officers mentioned they focused protestors who attacked police and looted shops, dozens of individuals mentioned they have been violently arrested for marching peacefully or merely filming the protests.
Authorities officers insist that the island’s structure grants Cubans the suitable to protest, however in apply, demonstrations are shortly damaged up by police and authorities critics are accused of being “mercenaries” within the make use of of Cuba’s Chilly Conflict nemesis, america.
“Having completely different opinions, together with political ones, does not represent a criminal offense,” mentioned Rubén Remigio Ferro, the president of the Supreme Individuals’s Court docket of Cuba, at a press convention in July shortly after the protests. “Considering in a different way, questioning what is going on on, to display just isn’t a criminal offense.”
These feedback indicating a gap for some dissent are what impressed Garcia Aguilera and different members of the Archipelago group to use to carry peaceable marches in numerous cities throughout the island, the playwright informed CNN.
The Cuban authorities nevertheless has described the deliberate marches as a pretext invented by Cuban exiles and the US authorities that may result in an invasion of Cuba “by the enemy.” It has introduced island-wide navy workouts for a similar day.
“[The protest] promoters, their public projections and ties with subversive organizations or businesses financed by the US authorities have the open intention of adjusting the political system in our nation,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel mentioned at a speech earlier than the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Occasion in October.
Already Cuba’s state-run run media has broadcast pictures of militias coaching with AK-47’s and members of “Committee’s for the Protection of the Revolution” patrolling streets with steel batons.
Garcia Aguilera has since moved the proposed march from November 20 to November 15, though the Cuban authorities is unlikely to permit protestors to participate whatever the date. He mentioned the federal government’s overreaction to his proposed march has solely confirmed his level.
“They’ve proven there is not any rule of legislation,” he mentioned. “There is no chance for residents to legally, peacefully and orderly present their dissent to these energy.”
With a lot stress within the air, it is unclear what number of Cubans will be part of Garcia Aguilera’s name to protest however already the initiative threatens to additional deteriorate frayed US and Cuban relations.
“The Cuban regime is failing to fulfill the individuals’s most elementary wants. That features meals. That features medication. Now’s an opportunity to hearken to the Cuban individuals and to make a optimistic change,” State Division spokesman Ned Worth mentioned In October.
