Yoani Sánchez detained in Havana by Cuban State Security
The director of 14ymedio was arrested violently in the Havana neighbourhood of Nuevo Vedado. Her media outlet reported that she was thrown into a vehicle by the political police.
Arrest of Yoani Sánchez amid escalation of repression against independent press
Agents of Cuban State Security detained Yoani Sánchez this Thursday, director of independent digital media outlet 14ymedio, as she left her home in the Havana neighbourhood of Nuevo Vedado, according to elmundo.es. The journalist intended to do shopping in the vicinity of her house when she was intercepted by the political police and thrown, amid shouts, into the interior of a vehicle parked near the Ministry of Agriculture.
Sánchez's own media outlet alerted that she had been "kidnapped by the political police". According to 14ymedio, the journalist had notified her colleagues of her brief trip out and announced she would return soon, but merely ten minutes later she managed to send a message of just four words describing her situation. The detention was confirmed later by Luz Escobar, journalist at the same outlet and International Journalism Prize winner of EL MUNDO.
The arrest occurred almost at the same time that Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez was intervening at the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid to speak about democracy.
A journalist systematically harassed
Sánchez's detention is not the first. Since the founding of 14ymideo — and even before, when she was recognised as the first blogger to circumvent the information blockade of the dictatorship — agents of the regime have regularly stationed themselves in the vicinity of her home and her newsroom to intimidate her and her collaborators.
Sánchez thus joins a recent list of independent communicators being persecuted. Boris González Arenas, Adelth Bonne Gamboa and Camila Acosta were harassed by State Security in recent days. In September, agents had already arrested Henry Constantin, director of La Hora de Cuba, who has been in a punishment cell for 16 days.
"We are in the midst of an escalation of repression against the independent press. The regime is paranoid and that is why the detentions, unjust convictions and repression continue," declared Yaxys Cires, of the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH). Cires also questioned whether the foreign ministers of Cuba and Spain addressed this matter at their recent meeting in Madrid and demanded that Spain and the European Union speak out "with urgency".
Repression that also reaches influencers
Persecution by the regime is not limited to traditional journalists. Kamil Zayas and Ernesto Medina, members of the audiovisual project El 4tico, were detained at the beginning of the year and remain in prison. TikToker Anna Bensi and her mother received sentences of two years of restriction of liberty for content published on social media.
From the United States, Cuban-American representative Carlos Giménez, recently re-elected to the House of Representatives, protested against the arrest: "Enough with repression against the free press! Freedom of expression is not a crime! The regime must answer for its abuses and violations of human rights. Cuba deserves freedom, democracy and a free press!"
US sanctions with no immediate impact
The United States Department of the Treasury issued new sanctions on Thursday against six companies and two persons with economic links to the Cuban dictatorship. United States pressure, which includes an energy blockade of the island, and negotiations with the family circle of Raúl Castro have not produced, thus far, civil advances for Cuban citizens.
Source: Google News CU — La Habana