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The Cuban regime has reportedly launched in Havana a new method of police coercion deployed in the streets called "Operation Rastrillo" or "containment operation," under which members of the National Special Brigade (BEN) -known as Black Berets- and the Revolutionary National Police (PNR) patrol strategic points in the capital to identify, detain, and intimidate citizens with outstanding state fines.
According to a report by Martí Noticias, officers are intercepting pedestrians in parks and public squares, checking their identities against the Police Operational Registry, and if they detect outstanding payments, they are taken to police units where they are subjected to psychological pressure to force immediate payment.
The most documented case is that of independent journalist Pablo Morales Marchant, intercepted last Wednesday in the Parque de la Fraternidad, in Old Havana.
The agents checked the police record and detected a debt of 32,000 Cuban pesos in their name, a figure that had doubled after months of non-payment of an original fine imposed by State Security on the charge of "illicit economic activity."
"They told me: 'wait, we are going to check your record to see what comes up for you,'" Morales Marchant reported to Martí Noticias.
After being identified as a debtor, he was taken on foot to the police unit on Dragones Street, where he remained detained for 17 hours under psychological pressure to pay the fine.
Before being released, he was forced to sign a "warning notice" committing to payment.
"They say that this is, first of all, like a preventative measure where they tell you that you owe this fine, and if you don't pay it, they then consider it an act of disobedience," the journalist stated.
Morales Marchant described to the mentioned outlet what he observed inside the police unit.
"In the unit, there were many young boys, around 20, of African descent, most of them under 30 years old, and there were even two teenagers. A third of them were debtors, 118,000, 32,000, 8000. They are conditioning that if you don't pay, you will go to prison.", he indicated.
The authorities also urge citizens to sell their personal belongings to pay off the fines.
"It is abusive what these henchmen are doing; they are releasing people from prison and putting others in, advising them to sell their belongings to pay arbitrary and abusive fines," emphasized Morales Marchant.
The Rastrillo Operation unfolds in the context of a deep economic crisis and a wave of protests that since early March has sparked at least 156 demonstrations across multiple Cuban provinces due to power outages of up to 15 hours and shortages of basic products.
For human rights observers, the use of elite forces from the Ministry of the Interior - such as the Black Berets, sanctioned by the United States under the Magnitsky Act in July 2021 for their role in the repression of July 11th - to collect administrative fines underscores the militarization of daily surveillance and represents a strategy of economic and legal suffocation over the Cuban population.
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