Pedazos de la Isla has a fantastic post about one of the front-line warriors in the struggle for Cuban freedom. With leaders like this, the cause will certainly prevail.
Nearly every time I have heard the voice of Caridad Caballero Batista she is telling me about a beating, an arrest, or some other sort of attack against her. This time, she spent 4 days in the dungeons of the Cuban regime for the same reason as always: protesting, along with other dissidents, in a completely peaceful manner along the streets which belong to an entire country, but which only a few olive green rulers selfishly proclaim as their own. I have lost count how many times this brave dissident has been detained only in 2011. I ask her. To my surprise, her response is decorated with laughter. “I have also lost count. Imagine, during this month of May alone it has been three times“.
And that third time, which has just occurred, really alarmed all Cuban dissidents in the island and all other companions-in-solidarity around the world. And this was because Caridad Caballero Batista was missing for 4 days, as was her husband Esteban Sander, as of Thursday May 26th. But her situation had begun before that Thursday.
“On the morning of the 24th I awoke to see that my house was surrounded by the police. We went out to the street and a State Security official told Esteban and I that we were not allowed to step outside our house“, recalls Caballero. That was the day before the culmination of the Boitel-Zapata Live On Protests and a repressive wave was spreading itself throughout the entire island. Upon receiving the absurd (and common) warning, the dissident replied to the official, “show us an arrest warrant or a house arrest warrant because we are not prisoners and we are also not going to allow our house to become a prison or a police barracks to hold people hostage“. When she confirmed that there was no justifiable response to her demand, Caridad decided to continue and take to the street. Quickly, the violence began. “A woman (agent) grabbed by the arm and twisted it. I told them to let me go, and they did only because one of the officials said that there was police car on its way. And when that car arrived it violently parked itself, passing over one of my husbands feet with its tire”. And it was like this that they shoved the couple into the police car which took them to the police unit of Pedernales, where they were kept until the following day, May 25th, until afternoon hours. “While there we kept the same posture as usual- protesting all the violations and also demanding respect for the rights of those who were already imprisoned“, tells Caballero.
Read the whole thing here.
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