Cuba: Outrage, disbelief over latest dissident arrests

Cuba: Outrage, disbelief over latest dissident arrests

Detained blogger Yoani Sanchez's husband fumes to GlobalPost: Cuban
government has 'no logic whatsoever ... I want to understand what
they're thinking.'
Girish GuptaNovember 9, 2012 10:5

CARACAS, Venezuela — Cuban authorities on Thursday arrested blogger
Yoani Sanchez along with about 20 other members of the country's
opposition, in what was her second detainment in just over a month.

The 37-year-old activist — who has won numerous journalism awards, been
named on Time's 100 Most Influential list and interviewed recently
re-elected US President Barack Obama — was detained as she and others
protested the arrest of opposition lawyers and activists outside a
Havana police station. She was released late Thursday night.

The news was broken on Twitter Thursday by Yohandry, a pro-government
website which is rumored to have been set up by the state itself as a
counterweight to Sanchez's own blog, Generation Y.

Then her husband Reinaldo Escobar, a fellow activist, confirmed
Sanchez's release.

"What they do has no logic whatsoever ... I want to understand what they
are thinking," Escobar told GlobalPost in a telephone interview.

Sanchez has proved difficult to reach, likely due to her phone being cut
off, as happens frequently.

Both Escobar and Sanchez confirmed the release on Twitter late Thursday,
however there is little news of the other arrested activists.

The group was protesting against the arrest of Yaremis Flores, a lawyer
who provides free legal assistance to opposition figures in Cuba. He and
two colleagues were detained the previous day.

Among those arrested Thursday was Guillermo Farinas, a 50-year-old
dissident who has gone on hunger strikes over the years after defecting
from the government.

Sanchez was also arrested on Oct. 4 as she and her husband attended the
trial of Angel Carromero, a Spaniard who drove the car that crashed in
July that killed Oswaldo Paya, another leading dissident who in 2005 was
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

More from GlobalPost: Cuba car crash — a mission that went terribly wrong

"We were detained for around 30 hours, separately," Sanchez told
GlobalPost last week. "There was one aggressive moment when three women
tried to take off all my clothes. They nearly succeeded. It was very
ugly. I'll never get used to this."

She said she believes it was her right to investigate the death of Paya
and the government obstructed her from doing so.

Sanchez has become famous through her blog, despite her extremely
limited, slow and often illegal access to the internet on the tightly
controlled island. Her blog Generation Y is read across the world in
dozens of languages and an English-language collection of some of the
posts was published in a book, Havana Real.

She won the Spanish Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award in 2008 but was
denied permission to travel to Spain to collect it. The same was true of
Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize, which she won the
following year. She was denied the chance, by Cuban authorities, to
travel to New York to pick it up.

Under new reforms by President Raul Castro the exit visa, which Sanchez
has been denied now around 20 times, is to be scrapped in January.
However, Sanchez is not hopeful.

"I don't want to feel defeated," she said last week. "I'll go to the
office and try to get a passport. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the
illusion that I can leave."

The following is footage posted to YouTube that apparently shows Cuban
authorities detaining Yoani Sanchez:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/121109/cuban-dissident-blogger-yoani-sanchez-arrested-opposition