No injustice too petty for the Castro dictatorship in Cuba

For the brutal Castro dictatorship in Cuba, there is no atrocity against the island’s human rights activists too severe or an injustice too petty. While the regime has no compunction with violently beating and arresting the peaceful women of the Ladies in White, they also have no reluctance in carrying out the most petty crimes and harassment against them either. For Cuba’s dissidents, the constant repression by the tyrannical Castro government can manifest itself just as easily in a brutal beat down as it can in the most petty injustice meant to exasperate and discourage dissent.

Via Pedazos de la Isla:

Lady in White on Hunger Strike Demanding State Agents to Return her Bicycle Stolen by Cuban Police

“On hunger strike because she cannot tolerate that the Cuban authorities get away with so much impunity”

On April 23rd, 2012, the Lady in White Leticia Ramos Herreria was arrested by the Cuban political police as she was carrying out her work as an independent journalist and trying to photograph the collapse of the Europa Hotel in the city of Cardenas, Matanzas.  Herreria was released from jail after various hours but the agents who had carried out her arrest had stolen her bicycle during the arbitrary process.  For this reason, upon being released, the activist directed herself to the front of the Police Unit of Cardenas and began a protest in demand that they return her only bicycle, which she shares with her brother.  Her protest lasted until the following day, April 24th, when police agents handed her a brand new bicycle (instead of her own) along with all the pertaining ownership documents.  Ramos Herreria had expressed that she felt victorious after having put the Cuban authorities in a situation where they had no other option but to give into her demands and give her what was hers, or something even better than what she originally had.

A couple of days later, Herreria’s brother was riding the bicycle when a man stopped him and told him that the bicycle belonged to him and that it had been stolen.  Leticia’s brother explained that he had not robbed anything, and that the bicycle was given to his sister by the police.  As it turns out, the uniformed Cuban officials had given Leticia a stolen bicycle and, for this reason, Leticia, her brother, and the man who claimed the bicycle all presented their complaints and demands in the Cardenas police unit.

On Thursday, May 3rd, various police agents showed up to the home of Ramos Herreria with a registry and occupation warrant and took the bicycle by force.  The activist and her brother quickly filed a complaint and she and her brother were summoned to the police station for Friday, May 4th, at 9 AM.  In the unit, the agents told her brother to convince Leticia to withdraw her claim but he refused, while she also affirmed that she would not cancel her denouncement and that she would begin another protest in demand that her bicycle be returned to her.  And so she began to protest outside the Police Unit of Cardenas.

As the weekend began, the activist turned her protest into a hunger strike.  Throughout the entire time, her sister in law- Katiuska Rodriguez- was accompanying her.  At around 3 PM on Sunday, May 6th, police officials took Leticia Ramos Herreria, still on hunger strike, away from the front of the police unit, according to the former political prisoner from Matanzas, Ivan Hernandez Carrillo who published the information on his Twitter account (@ivanlibre).  When Herreria’s husband, Rudel Monteoca, tried to find out information about his wife, he was told that she had been taken to a hospital due to various health complications.  However, minutes later, it was confirmed that the activist was not in a hospital, but instead in the detention center known as Cienaga de Zapata.  A police captain by the name of Lazaro had told Monteoca this.

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