Jorge Olivera CastilloKeep in your thoughts and prayers today, Jorge Olivera Castillo.
An independent journalist well familiar with the dictatorship's oppressive ways, Olivera has been summoned for a 10 a.m. appointment today at a police station in Havana, according to a story by journalist José Ramón Pupo Nieves, posted at Payo Libre. It is a common tactic the police use to harass and threaten government opponents, but Olivera cannot be faulted if he is scared of what might happen when he arrives, considering his history with the Castro regime.
Olivera, 45, was arrested during the "black spring" of 2003 and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In December 2004, he was granted a medical parole because of poor health.
His good fortune, however, was not the end of his activism, of his journalism, nor of his persecution by the authorities.
Olivera told Pupo he does not know why the police want to meet with him, but said he wants the world to know that he has been constantly harrassed by the authorities since his release more than two years ago. During that time, Olivera said he has felt like a hostage, since the government has denied him permission to go into exile overseas.
There have been other recent reports of anti-government activists being summoned to police stations for questioning. At least one, Fortunato Domínguez García, was still in custody, according to a story by journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira, posted at Cuba Libre Digital.
Domínguez's wife told Serpa that her husband, a human rights activist and member of the Popular Republican Party, was detained last Thursday at a police station in Havana, but as of Sunday, she had not heard whether he had been released.
The trouble for government opponents can be found not just in Havana.
Journalist Tania Maceda Guerra reports that Maura Iset González Jurquet, presidental of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women, and her husband, Waldimar Parra Santana, were spent more than 5 hours May 1-2 in custody after they were summoned to a State Security "political instruction center" in Santiago de Cuba.
While there, they were interrogated and threatened with prison if they continued to campaign for Cuba to adopt a single national currency, according to Maceda's story, which is posted at Cuba-Miami Information Bridge.
Currently, three currencies circulate in Cuba — American dollars, the convertible peso and the peso, which the government uses to pay workers since it has the least value. However, many items sold by the government in its stores require convertible pesos, putting those things out of the reach of most Cubans.
It is just another way the dictatorship imposes an apartheid on the Cuban people.
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