Catch.
Threaten.
Release.
Under Raúl Castro, it's become the Cuban secret police's trademark way to put the squeeze on the political opposition. It's not as messy, i.e. as likely to generate as much publicity as just throwing a dissident in jail and throwing away the key, and it gets the intended purpose across.
Among the opposition, few are bigger fish than independent journalists, who combine their skills as reporters and writers with their passion for a free Cuba. That is a combination that the thugs in the Castro dictatorship cannot stand.
So it is no surprise that earlier this week, Cuban police picked up one of the more prolific independent journalists working today, Julio Beltrán, and took him to a police station for a talking-to.
The confiscated a few "counter-revolutionary" items Beltrán was carrying, including a T-shirt promoting the "Con La Misma Moneda" campaign, subjected him to physical and verbal abuse and threatened that he risked being sent to prison if he continued with his journalism and other opposition-related work.
He was then released.
Beltrán, who has been arrested before, was not impressed.
"I give no thought to giving up journalism or the peaceful struggle for human rights to be respected in my country nor stop thinking of the day of seeing my country free of this dictatorship and exercising the right to vote democratically for a president," Beltrán said.
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