The rapper and activist El Funky posted an alert on Facebook this Tuesday denouncing the systematic harassment by agents of the Cuban regime against Yoel Cruz, who participated in the protests against the blackouts.
According to the report released by El Funky, last Sunday an officer dressed in olive green showed up at Yoel Cruz's house to pressure him to stop playing drums and shouting slogans during the protests.
The officer even went so far as to offer him a water pipe as a way to dissuade him, which El Funky harshly criticized: "as if the hunger, thirst, and indignation of a people could be bought like that."
This Tuesday, two officers —one in police uniform and the other in olive green— returned to the home of Yoel Cruz. He was working and was not found.
Yoel Cruz himself recorded a video from Lawton, in the 10th of October municipality, describing the situation: "I'm saying this so you know that I am currently being besieged, so you understand that if anything happens to me, it is the state security, because it seems that someone reported that I was the promoter of the protest."
The authorities would also have pressured him to provide information about other participants in the protests, something that Cruz outright rejected: "One thing I hold in my values and beliefs is that I am a tomb, I tell all of you, my friends."
El Funky was blunt in his assessment of what happened: "This is harassment. It is persecution against good citizens who only want to express themselves. They don't just want to kill people slowly: they want them to die in silence."
The protests in Lawton are part of a wave of saucepan demonstrations that have shaken Havana since March.
The area lacks street gas and relies on liquefied gas in small canisters, which worsens the food crisis during the new protests with pots and pans in several municipalities of Havana that were reported this Tuesday.
The most intense wave of protests occurred on May 13 and 14, when Havana was ablaze with simultaneous demonstrations in at least 12 municipalities, amid blackouts lasting 20 to 22 hours daily acknowledged by the regime's own Minister of Energy.
The case of Yoel Cruz has an especially painful dimension: this Wednesday marks exactly one year since the disappearance of his brother, Joan Cruz Traba, who, according to the report, died while in the custody of the Cuban state without Yoel being notified, despite having reported his disappearance and searched for him tirelessly.
Yoel himself expressed it in the video with a single question directed at the authorities: "Joan Cruz Traba. I have nothing more to say."
El Funky closed his alert with a direct call to the regime: "Leave Yoel alone. Let people have their pains. You have already crossed the threshold of madness. Don't go crazy: the oven is not for cookies."
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