The Cuban guyLeonardo Yosmel Pérez Arias He was released this Monday and is under house arrest for protesting against the blackouts along with other residents of Central Australia.in Jagüey Grande, province of Matanzas.
Pérez had beenarrested on sunday, accused of being the "ringleader" of the demonstration and summoned to the local police station under the pretext of doing an "interview." He is currently under investigation for the crime of “incitement to commit a crime,” relatives toldCyberCuba.
“As one does not know about laws, one is adrift, without knowing anything. "I want to go to the police here, in Jagüey Grande, so they can explain to me why, without probable cause for his arrest or for doing what they did, they now have him under house arrest.", said toCyberCuba his mother, Danni Maria Arias Guevara.
According to the woman, at four in the afternoon on Sunday, July 31, after two hours of waiting in front of the police station, “the unit delegate” informed the protester's parents that he would be transferred to the Technical Department of Investigations, known as “the Technician”, in Matanzas.
“I confronted him, I told him why they were going to take him, that he was not the only one who had demonstrated. And they [the police] told me that they did take him and that the next day they would return him home, that this was to ask him some questions,” the mother added.
Videos broadcast On social networks they show a group of people in front of the police and also at the local government headquarters demanding explanations about the arrest of the young protester.
“When the neighborhood finds out that they want to take him to the Technician and that it wasn't to talk to him, the entire neighborhood goes to the police. And when the police see that the neighborhood stops there, they take him from behind.”says Alexis Ayala Arias, the young man's first cousin and who notified of the release on social networks.
Pérez was not the only one prosecuted. A woman of unknown identity is awaiting trial for participating in the same protest. To her“They gave him bail for disturbing the peace or incitement”, while Pérez “was the only one they detained for the Matanzas Technician because supposedly for them [the police] he was the one who started it all,” Ayala said and denied that his relative was a leader of the protest.
According to Ayala, his cousin was transferred to Matanzas without his medicines. “And that was when we started saying things to the police, they didn't listen to us and my aunt and everyone who was there went to the government.”, he recalled.
One of the reasons Australia's neighbors freed Pérez is his delicate state of health. The Cuban is under medical study for lymphomas of which it is unknown how invasive they are.
Also a few months ago he suffered a cardiovascular episode, the treatment of which includes pending surgery and diuretic and antihypertensive medications such as Spironolactone and Atenolol, his mother explained.
“He takes that medication at 9:00 in the morning and 9:00 at night, and they came to give it to him at 5:00 in the afternoon because he stood up and said that he didn't want to talk to anyone, that they shouldn't take him out.” more [from the cell] that he had nothing to declare”, the lady specified.
“They interrogated him three times, and what they asked him during the interrogations was why he had gone out to demonstrate”, he added and stressed that the police insisted on wrongly classifying his son as“the main leader of the demonstration”.
Pérez was transferred from the Jagüey Grande police unit to the Matanzas Técnico between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. Sunday. There he remained detained throughout the night and part of the next day.
He was released around 6:00 in the afternoon, although his family did not see him until late that Monday night because he did not have the means to travel from the detention center to his town, given the officials' refusal to return him to their house, as they had promised their mother.
“He cannot be altered and they are provoking him,” said the mother, referring to the repressive forces.“We are not demonstrating to do vandalism or any of those things. “We are demanding our rights, and that is what they do not understand.”, he sentenced.
Dozens of residents of the town of Australia have staged two peaceful protests over the prolonged blackouts, the most recent of them last Saturday. Shouts of “freedom!” and “don't take our current away anymore!” They were heard in the videos shared on social networks.
The Matanzas town joins a growing wave of peaceful demonstrations in the face of the energy crisis in the country that, together with inflation and the shortage of food and medicine, multiplies the popular clamor in the streets and puts the authorities in check.
Since the social outbreak of 11J, theCuban Conflict Observatory (OCC) has registered 3,266 protests in Cuba, of which 1,713 occurred in the first half of 2022. In the last week alone, the occurrence of at least 15 protests in 13 provinces of the country has emerged.
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