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The Cuban regime once again detained the professor and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández on Thursday while she was trying to reach the Parque de la Libertad in Matanzas to carry out a peaceful protest, as she has systematically done every 18th since March 2023.
The detention was publicly reported by her daughter, who wrote from her mother's profile on Facebook that Alina was intercepted and taken to the station of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Playa.
"She has just been detained and taken to the PNR station in Playa while attempting to reach the park. Immediate release," he warned, calling for support and dissemination.
Public ultimatum and threat of repression
Shortly after, the intellectual's daughter posted a new message in which she warned that, despite being in recovery from a viral illness, she would make a public appearance if her mother was not released within an hour and a half.
"If my mom is not home in an hour and a half, I will be here in my white coat and with the sign in white. Let's see how the government officials respond to that. And if they try to stop it, they will have to kill me," she wrote, setting the deadline at 10:30 a.m. and demanding the immediate release of Alina Bárbara López.
The message raised alarm among activists and social media users, who reported the physical and psychological risk faced by the professor's family.
A protest announced and supported by the Constitution
Hours before her arrest, Alina Bárbara López had publicly announced her intention to demonstrate, invoking the constitutional right to peaceful protest.
"Like every 18th since March 2023, I will be tomorrow, Thursday, between 9 and 10 in the morning, at the Parque de la Libertad in the city of Matanzas exercising the constitutionally established right to peaceful demonstration," he wrote.
In his message, López denounced the system of political exclusion established by the ruling elite in Cuba and asserted that Cuban civil society, both inside and outside the island, has decided to stand up to despotic power and demand rights and freedoms.
Migration, repression, and political prisoners
The professor also connected her protest to International Migrants Day, reminding that Cuba is experiencing a mass exodus that is ongoing and caused by a lack of hope and freedoms.
"We are a nation drained by constant exodus. We are divided families, pained by nostalgia," he wrote, urging a transformation to prevent new generations from seeing migration as the only way out.
His message concluded with a clear demand: "Freedom for our compatriots imprisoned for political reasons!"
Reiteration of the repressive pattern
The detention of Alina Bárbara López adds to a recurring pattern of arbitrary arrests, harassment, and surveillance against activists, intellectuals, and citizens attempting to exercise fundamental rights in Cuba.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly reported that the regime criminalizes peaceful protest, disregards constitutional guarantees, and uses preventive repression as a tool for social control.
So far, the regime has not issued any official information regarding the situation of the professor.
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