Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera and Jorge Garcia Pérez "Antúnez"
Former Cuban political prisoner Jorge Luís García Pérez, aka "Antúnez," one of the giants of the Cuban opposition was arrested Monday, and his family has been unable to obtain information about his whereabouts or condition, according to the Cuban Democratic Directorate.
No one should be surprised that Antúnez is again in jail.
For some two decades, including the more than 17 years he was a prisoner in the Castro gulag, Antúnez has been locked in a battle of wills with the dictatorship that enslaves his country. For their efforts on behalf of their fellow Cubans and on the behalf of liberty everywhere, Antúnez and his wife, along with three current political prisoners, earlier this year were honored by the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C.
Antúnez does not live as a slave, but as a free man, acting daily on his commitment to human rights and to his faith in freedom. In the Castro brothers' Cuba, that sort of intransigence is intolerable so it keeps trying — and trying, and trying — to stop him.
Their latest effort came Monday afternoon. when Antúnez and another activist, Frank Reyes López, were picked up by police while traveling from Santa Clara to Havana for a meeting of a regional opposition group. Police in Placetas, Antúnez's hometown, told his brother and other activists that the pair were being held in Santa Clara, but as of Tuesday, Antúnez's wife said she had no word on his whereabouts or condition.
"I fear that something awful has happened to my husband, because he has been threatened with death by the forces of repression," said Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, herself another leading figure in the Cuban opposition. "I am holding the Cuban government responsible for what might happen to my husband."
And so must the rest of the world.
For more on Antúnez's arrest, read this.
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