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Independent journalist Henry Constantin recounted on Facebook the details of the most recent episode of police harassment he experienced in Camagüey, when he was arrested by State Security agents.
In a text titled "Yesterday Cuba Was a Crying Child", published on his Facebook account, the director of La Hora de Cuba wrote: “Yesterday I was arrested -for no reason and for the second time in less than six days. Yesterday I did not sign a warning notice for ‘inciting a foreign power to intervene in Cuba,’ nor did I sign it for ‘offending the memory of the Cuban fighters who fell in Venezuela,’ which is what they read to me that paper said.”
Constantin noted that the document was drafted "on the fly" by a criminal instructor and lieutenant colonel while he was being interrogated. "I would have signed it for demanding a free Cuba, which is my dream and my calling," he added.
The journalist described the scene at the police unit, mentioning several officers involved in his arrest and the officer who interrogated him. “While Captain Nayibis from the Processing Office was asking me if I finally have a home in Havana, while a thin, worn man was filming me with a camera from the '90s, while the same officer who had ordered Sub-officer 67499 to put me in a patrol car when I was about to take my daughter to her painting class was staring at me,” he recounted.
According to his testimony, in the room where he was interrogated, portraits of Raúl Castro and Ignacio Agramonte hung on the walls, figures that represented for him two opposing forces. “Lieutenant Colonel Kevin -head of Confrontation- was threatening me once again from the table opposite mine (…) from his chair in the midst of the two opposing portraits of Raúl Castro and Ignacio Agramonte —the two forces clashing in that meeting room of the UPO— and I responded to Castro's agents with the words inspired by Agramonte,” he wrote.
The arrest took place on Tuesday around 4:30 p.m., and the journalist was released approximately one hour later without being informed of the reasons for the detention. The agents intercepted him without a judicial order, an episode that added to the previous detention he had experienced in Havana under an accusation of "public disorder."
Constantin also mentioned the presence of a female officer who asked him if he had a home in Havana and another agent who filmed him “with a camera from the 90s,” a scene he described as absurd and degrading. After his release, he recounted the moment he was reunited with his daughter, who embraced him in silence. “Rosslyn jumped on me and gave me a tight, silent, eternal hug. She has never hugged me like that before. The hug of love cannot be compared to anything,” he said.
In his post, the journalist reflected on the meaning of that gesture and the situation in the country: “It is the embrace that this destroyed, divided, mistreated, hungry, aging, battered, impoverished, and hopeless Cuba needs. I want to see the people of Cuba give each other that embrace of love and freedom right here in Cuba, and I want to continue helping them achieve it.”
Henry Constantin, regional vice president for Cuba of the Press Freedom Commission of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), has repeatedly denounced the harassment, internet outages, and arbitrary summonses he faces due to his journalistic work. His recent words reflect the ongoing pressure on independent journalists and the human dimension of that persecution.
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