Cuban surgeon was detained to sign a warning letter after reporting humiliating treatment at his hospital

The Cuban surgeon Yonardo Fonseca Mesa was detained this Friday and pressured to sign a warning letter, according to his statement after being released hours later following the arrest, which he connected to a critical post about a humiliation he experienced at his hospital.

"I am already home, the goal was to have a 'conversation' and to have him sign a warning letter," wrote the doctor on his Facebook profile.

The post arrived hours after it briefly warned: They are taking me into custody.

The arrest occurred as a direct retaliation to a public complaint that Fonseca made days earlier regarding an humiliation he experienced in his own hospital.

According to his testimony, that day he arrived at work after a night of blackouts and a morning without breakfast due to the lack of gas and electricity.

In her own words, "after a rough night of blackouts and a morning without breakfast (because I have no gas, no electricity, and no solar panels), after creatively struggling with how the hell to get to the place where they say I still work; I enter the elevator to try to reach the 5th floor and the room, where two cancer patients were waiting for me to operate on them."

Upon entering the elevator, an official ordered him to get off and take the stairs. Fonseca described the man as a "chief of trivial matters" whom he had never seen in his life, claiming that the elevator was "only for patients" and that he was acting under "orders from the hospital director."

The doctor refused to comply. "Although the situation became a bit tense, of course I didn't back down; I got to my office and did my best for those two people who were not to blame for anything."

This type of retaliation against healthcare professionals who report irregularities is not new in Cuba. Other colleagues have been fired from their jobs in Bayamo after reporting similar conditions.

Cuban doctors survive on salaries equivalent to about 16 dollars, an insufficient amount to meet their basic needs, in a context where Cuba had over 1,214 political prisoners in February, according to human rights organizations.