The Cuban police were out in force Thursday, May 1, looking for any signs of trouble designed to disrupt May Day festivities in Havana. They were so nervous that they even took out their frustration on a group of government sympathizers from the Union of Young Communists marching near Revolution Square, according to independent journalist Álvaro Yero Felipe.
Yero reports that more than three dozen apparently illiterate officers from State Security and the National Revolutionary Police officers moved in on about 14 marchers after they unfurled banners declaring, “Viva (f)idel.” The officers beat on the marchers with plastic batons until one of the cops realized that they were beating not on “counter-revolutionaries,” but on some of the dictatorship’s own flunkies.
Oops!
Soon after, a bus arrived and took the marchers away, and it was back to as if nothing had ever happened.
Meanwhile, Yero reports the police apparently got it “right” when officers arrested 10 government opponents marching near Revolution Square with a sign that declared, “We want to work to live.” Police told Yero they had “neutralized” a “counter-revolutionary activity” but they refused to release the names of those arrested.
Yero reports he cut short his attempt to learn the names after officers threatened to send him to jail.
(Cross-posted at Uncommon Sense.)
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Now Vesco is gone, is this an euthanasia program of Raul to kill of old and now useless foreign collaborators?
That is too funny that the supporters of castro got beaten. But I wonder if maybe raul is frightened of support for fidel versus himself?
In all seriousness what goes around…..
Marc,
The pro-castro demonstrators you mentioned were beaten with “steel batons covered in plastic.”
Sometimes I find it very difficult to feel empathy for the Cuban people. I was repulsed and sickened by those that participated in the May 1st parade. I understand that businesses were closed –as were the schools- and Cubans were forced to march on the parade, but from what I saw, many were laughing and dancing and carrying on, having a jolly good time.