If there is any logical explanation for why Raúl Castro received more "votes," than his big brother in the recent elections, maybe it's because of his unique style of repression that Gusano, my colleague at Babalú, dubbed "catch, threaten and release."
Instead of locking up dissidents for long prison terms, like Fidel Castro did during the "black spring" of 2003, Raúl has perfected a more subtle, but no less dictatorial, method. Under Raúl, the police are more likely to take you off the street or from your home, drive you to a police station, warn you to abandon your opposition to the regime, threaten you with a long prison term, take your picture and fingerprints and then let you go.
This brand of Raúl-style repression this week was experienced by dozens of Cuban dissidents, including former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez," who was arrested not once, but twice on the same day.
This morning, news reports detail three other similar incidents:
— Former political prisoner René Montes de Oca Martija and his wife Ester Germán Valdez, were "caught" Tuesday afternoon in Havana and driven to a police station; "threatened" with being charged with violating the notorious Law 88 if they did not halt their human rights work; and then "released" that evening, according to a report by independent journalist Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, posted at Bitácora Cubana. (Ester was also advised to do a better job of keeping her husband "calm," according to the report.)— In Banes, dissident Rorié González Martínez last week was arrested and briefly detained, according to a report by independent journalist Caridad Caballero Batista, posted at Payo Libre. Between being fingerprinted and ultimately released, González was accused of putting up bumper stickers declaring "I don't cooperate with the dictatorship," "Yes, I want change," and other anti-government slogans.
— The "release" of human rights activist Eduardo Pacheco Ortiz won't come until July, at the earliest. Pacheco, a member of the Alternative Option Independent Movement and the Council of Human Rights Investigators, had been serving a 2-year suspended sentence, after he was convicted of being a "social danger." But on Jan. 23, he was arrested and sent to finish his sentence at the Canaleta, in his home province of Matanzas, according to a report by independent journalist Tania Maceda Guerra, posted at Payo Libre.
The differences between fidelista and raulista-style repression, is really a distinction without a difference — the dictatorship retains the ultimate decision on whether you are locked up or free to go — and there have been exceptions where Raúl has more closely emulated his brother. But with "catch, threaten and release," he has maintained control, while creating an illusion in the minds of some, that he is a new breed of dictator.
When, in fact, he is a spawn of the same evil.
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