The Castro dictatorship is giving the Cuban people cell phones and computers — or at least the chance to buy them. But as for the things that really mattter — freedom, in all its forms — the regime is not in a giving mood. In fact, the dictatorship under Castro II continues to take it away, especially from those who dare challenge it.
Here are a few examples:
— Catch, threaten and release has become a common scare tactic for a dictatorship afraid of its own people, as Nereida Rodríguez Rivero found out last week. Rodríguez, a leader of the Rural Federation of Latin American Women, was arrested by officers who invaded her home and taken to the headquarters of the Cuban counter-intelligence services in Havana for 7 hours of interrogations. "The whole time, I was severely threatened to the point where I was told I could end dead on a corner if I didn't leave Cuba," Rodríguez said. She said she thinks the death threats from State Security may be related to a recent incident when an unknown assailant threatened her with a knife. Rodríguez urged the international community to monitor her situation.— The dictatorship's thugs are quick to theaten Cuban dissidents with death. A State Security captain threatened political prisoner Abel López Pérez after his medical parole was recently revoked. "You are going to die here, for being a counter-revolutionary." Lopez, 37, a member of several human rights groups, was jailed April 21, despite suffering from hepatitis B, chronic renal failure, hypertension and osteoarthritis. He was originally sentenced to 4 years in prison aftering being convicted of "disrespecting" Fidel Castro.
— Former political prisoner Pedro González Acosta was arrested and threatened with a return trip to prison if he continues meeting with other dissidents, visiting foreign embassies and going without having a job. González, 42, was released in March after serving more than 2 years in prison for being a "pre-criminal social danger."
— Police confiscated from Reina Tamayo Danger food that she had planned to take to her son, political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Tamayo indicated to Tamayo that she was taking too much food to her son.
— Ariel Munoz Rodriguez has been in solitary confinement since his arrest April 23 on a "contempt" charge. Munoz apparently got into some sort of dispute with police officers who had come to his home looking for his wife's cousin.
A special H/T to Cuban independent journalists and human rights activists for making this information available, via Payo Libre.
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