Exile, punishment that Cuba imposes on political opponents

A month after being forced into exile from Cuba For his political ideas, the artist Hamlet Lavastida affirms from Berlin that the government of his country punishes his opponents in this way for “fear”, before a new call to demonstrate on November 15.

“Artists are the best ambassadors for civil rights, cultural rights, freedom of expression” and that is “the great fear” of the government, says Lavastida, 38 years old and still haunted by the “87 days” that spent in prison.

“When they send you into exile, what they think is that, ultimately, you are going to forget all this.” “It is not like that,” he adds.

Accepting exile with her partner, the writer and activist Katherine Bisquet, a member of the protesting San Isidro Movement (MSI), was the condition for ending her confinement at the State Security headquarters in Havana, where she suffered “sustained interrogations.” and threats of being sentenced to between “15 and 18 years” in prison, according to his account.

“I have recurring nightmares about the prison,” adds Lavastida, detained on charges of “incitement to crime” after returning to Cuba after completing a residency at a Berlin art gallery.

Lavastida “has been inciting and calling for civil disobedience actions in the public thoroughfare, using social networks and direct influence on other counterrevolutionary elements,” said the official media Razones de Cuba.

The government accuses the artist and other activists who have been forced into exile, banned from entering the country or subjected to short-term detentions, of being part of a plan designed and financed from Washington to bring about a regime change on the island.

In a recent speech, President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the US embassy of “identifying and promoting leaders, especially young people,” and of “preparing them abroad” for those purposes.

For the authorities “it is difficult to believe that there is a youth that has such a vocation for freedom”, considers Lavastida.

“Increased pressure”

Forcing opponents to leave is a strategy of the communist government since the triumph of the revolution in 1959, including Cubans who fought alongside Fidel Castro, such as Commander Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, who took asylum in Spain after being released from prison in 1986.

Although the expeditious official practice was welcomed by some activists as a way to emigrate, making anti-government merits.

“The practice and the ‘solutions’ are the same, now exacerbated by the increase in pressure and the spread of dissent towards all sectors of society,” says opposition Manuel Cuesta Morua, 59 years old.

After the historic July 11 demonstrations, which left one dead, dozens injured and more than a thousand detained, a new call to protest emerged on November 15.

According to the opposition, in recent months dozens of activists received the proposal to go into exile, including dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, detained since that day, and Maykel Osorbo, co-author of the controversial song “Patria y Vida”, imprisoned since May .

The 51-year-old opponent José Daniel Ferrer “has been asked to leave many times,” says his wife Nelva Ortega.

Ferrer, who returned to prison on July 11, was one of the 75 prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003. Most were released in 2010 in exchange for exile in Spain, but he refused to leave the country and was released in 2011.

The most recent forced expatriation was that of youtuber Ruhama Fernández. “I did not leave my land, they forced me to leave and I was escorted to the same plane,” he said on Twitter when he arrived in Miami at the end of October.

Entrance prohibited

The artist Tania Bruguera (53) agreed to leave last month, after about “10 months in house arrest”, although without giving up the return.

“It is necessary to normalize that people, even if they think differently, can enter and leave the country, it is our right,” says Bruguera, who obtained a place as a professor at Harvard.

Other opponents such as journalist Camila Acosta (28), a Cuban correspondent for the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC, refuse to leave. “It would be running away from the problem,” he says. He has been in “home confinement” for more than 100 days.

Another strategy is the prohibition to enter the country. The head of Consular Affairs of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Ernesto Soberón, said in September that the number of Cubans who are in that condition is “minimal”, mainly due to “national security situations.”

This happened with 23-year-old journalist Karla Pérez, who returned to Cuba in March after completing her studies in San José, after being expelled from a Cuban university for her links with opponents outside the island.

“It is the response to our constant complaints of human rights violations,” says Pérez, who writes for the opposition media ADN. Not seeing his family in almost five years has been “the hardest.”