Luis Felipe Rojas Rosabal
Luis Felipe Rojas Rosabal is a great journalist, a great blogger and a great Cuban. Most importantly, as revealed in an interview published today at Pedazos de la Isla, he is a great man.
An excerpt:
3) How many times have you been detained by State Security? What was it like?
I don’t keep a highly-detailed record, but I think it has been more than twenty times. And this number is insignificant when you compare it to the number of times my colleagues in Guantanamo and Santiago have been detained, or to the number of detentions of Caridad Caballero in Holguin , and Martha Diaz Rondon in Banes.
The pestilent cells, humid and full of bacteria, are just a small sneak peak of the Inferno as described by Dante. The heat in Cuba is unbearable, even in one’s own home, so you can imagine what it’s like in a 3 x 4 meter cell crammed with other prisoners. Every time I am released from a prison scene like this one, I am sick for days, have pressure on my lungs, and have other ailments. But that is minuscule compared to what others who go straight to prison live through, it is incomparable.
I think that the objective with me has been to try to frighten me, to stop any trip I have planned anywhere, and to cause panic among those who surround me… it is a punishment for my fellow citizens, I am the example of what can happen if someone decides to follow down my path. The warning is not aimed at me. Like a slave, I have raised my hand up against my master, just like a famous TV personality once said. But every day, I think of the phrase by Adam Michnick: “The slave does not negotiate”.
Because I have chosen to not give in or give up, I’ve been subjected to more intense interrogations and they have read me the Gag Law multiple times, a document which has a few decades reserved for me in jail just for speaking what I consider to be the truth. Every single day, ever since my first detention, I wake up with the threat looming over my head of the authorities not allowing me to see my kids grow up, or of only seeing them every 21 or 45 days, according to the prison I am put in and to the level of rebelliousness I choose to display. But I am a practicing Christian and I know that nothing will happen that is not in the hands of God, and nothing that happens to me is out of his almighty reach. And that’s a fact, as solid as a rock.
Read the rest of Rojas' incredible testimonies, here.
And read his equally wonderful blog, here.
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