A Cuban mother who was going to inform that her son would voluntarily turn himself in to the authorities was beaten, subjected to a restraint hold, and thrown to the ground by police officers during the arrests that followed the protests on March 25 in the Las Minas neighborhood, Guanabacoa municipality, in Havana.
The woman's testimony was shared on Facebook by activist Ray Figueredo, who reported that the repressive operations had a clear objective: to instill fear.
"What happened to the protesters at Las Minas was not just arrests; it was intimidation. The officers showed up with long guns against unarmed civilians. They did not find an organized criminal group; they did not encounter violent resistance; they found a sick mother living in terrible conditions," he wrote.
In her own account, the woman detailed the brutality she endured: "They put me in a hold, it’s a chubby one, it’s the guy in yellow, I don’t know if he’s from Villa Marista or the police station in Guanabacoa."
"He gave me a couple of good punches and took me down to the floor with a hold."
The aggression didn't end there. While he was on the ground, the officer kicked him in the thigh.
"I was already lying on the floor, (...) he kicked me in the thigh," she emphasized.
A cousin of the assaulted woman presented clumps of hair as evidence that were torn out during the incident.
Additionally, police officers mistakenly stormed into their home—a different address than the one they were searching for—carrying submachine guns in front of their ten-year-old son.
"They entered my house with a machine gun in front of my son, who is 10 years old," said the other woman, who emphasized that her house had no connection to the events being investigated.
The regime unleashed a wave of arrests against residents of Las Minas who went out to protest during the blackouts over the misery, hunger, and crisis that is afflicting the country.
Among the identified detainees are the young individuals named Daniel, Alejandro, and Lázaro, all taken to Villa Marista, the main detention center for State Security in Havana, historically used for the processing of political prisoners.
Most of the arrested individuals were set bail at 20,000 Cuban pesos until the day of the trial, as Figueredo revealed in another post. The exception was a young woman, Melissa Martínez, who was assigned a bail of 50,000 pesos. "We still do not have clear information on what charges will be brought against them," the activist clarified.
The relatives of several detainees preferred not to speak publicly for fear of worsening the situation of their loved ones, given the recent and sensitive nature of the case.
The protests in Las Minas on March 25 are part of the largest wave of popular demonstrations in Cuba since July 11, 2021.
Since March 6, Cubans from multiple provinces have taken to the streets in response to the collapse of the national electrical system. On March 16, the sixth total blackout of the National Electric System in a year and a half was recorded.
The use of long weapons against protesters is not an isolated incident in this wave of repression: during the protests in the Micro 9 neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba, journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada reported that long weapons have been brought down from police stations in Santiago de Cuba, including the one very close to Micro 9.
Since the beginning of the protests in March, approximately 20 people have been arrested and at least one has been injured by a bullet, as repression intensifies in the face of ongoing public discontent.
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