Washington.- Today protests were confirmed in at least five cities in Cuba in response to the precarious situation that exists on the Island and the increase in repressive measures against the population.
“The successive protests that are happening right now in Cuba are confirmed. Initiated in Santiago de Cuba. Also confirmed in the Bayamo city, Ciego de Avila, Guantanamoin the Niceto Pérez municipality, and in Havana. For now at this moment. I want to denounce the serious situation that the Cuban people are experiencing right now. Since July 11, 2021, the situation has worsened. There are many places where electricity is absent for almost 18 hours, only in two-hour intervals, three times a day they have been providing it (…) Added to this is the scarcity of water, not being able to preserve food, etc. It is important to note that this is something very similar to what happened on July 11, 2021. Last night the dictatorship announced that the energy crisis would continue until the beginning of April. (…) This is Resistance. The people have suffered a lot, too much, and it is a fundamental moment. My call is a call to Resistance, and my role and my position will always be on the side of the persecuted and the people, for whom more than twenty years ago I joined this fight for the freedom and democracy of my country. . Homeland and life, and forward,” he said. Rolando Rodríguez Lobainadirector of Palenque Vision from the Island.
The blind lawyer Juan Carlos González Leiva, human rights activist and who heads the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs, sent a statement from the city of Ciego de Ávila: “What everyone expected has arrived, what had to come. Santiago de Cuba is full in the street shouting Homeland and Life (…) this is no more. There are blackouts of up to 20 hours, there is no food, there is no water, repression, prisons, misery, everything horrible that can be done to a people is what communism is doing to the people of Cuba and the time has come for the bill. (…) the problem of the people of Cuba is a problem of survival, it is a problem of life or death. It is a problem that the people come out to demand food for their children, their elderly, their wives and husbands, the food for the more than 150 thousand inmates who are being annihilated by famine in Cuban prisons. Right now the Cuban regime, the Castro family, has pushed the people of Cuba against the wall to defend themselves and fight for their freedom and progress, for democracy, or for them to simply die and become extinct from hunger and out of misery and ended in total ruin. (…) The Cuban people urgently need their freedom, which has been stolen from them for more than sixty years.”
Sources from the Center for a Free Cuba in the city of Camagüey reported that the city center has been militarized since the afternoon, and there is a strong police presence in the streets.
From Bayamo, the independent journalist Javier Rojas, reported that at this time the police are making cordons to prevent the people from passing through to the offices of the government and the Communist Party of the Granma Province. The journalist had received a call from the political police warning him not to leave his house, but he is currently at the protests.
In the afternoon of Friday, March 15, protests were reported in the Boyeros municipality of the Cuban capital. At this time it is known that the people of Marianao, another capital municipality, are protesting in the streets. Videos also circulated on March 16 on the night of protests in the city of Cacocún, Holguín.
The regime has cut off the internet in numerous points where the people are in the streets and the repressive climate is growing.
Source: Center for a Free Cuba
