Don't Look Away

Don't Look Away
REGINA COYULA, Havana | Julio 06, 2015

Ailer González , artistic director of the Estado de SATS project,
called me on Sunday afternoon. Knowing it was her, I opened the
communication with the festive and very pertinent question of whether
she was a grandmother. Sounding crushed and full of indignation she let
me know that Antonio Rodiles , her partner and director general of
Estado de Sats had just arrived home. He had been savagely beaten in the
morning by several individuals dressed in plainclothes while trying to
get to the Sunday March of the Ladies in White ; he was then arrested,
and because of his injuries, taken to the hospital.

According to Ailer, the doctors were shocked by his condition when he
arrived at the emergency room. I do not believe that the doctors'
outrage goes far beyond the horror on display yesterday; there is an
invisible but powerful barrier that many Cubans don't dare to cross.

These kinds of incidents are neither spontaneous nor improvised; they
are the result of operational plans and decisions by the political
police. Antonio Gonzalez may be a figure who is detested by the Cuban
government; but he was not armed, he was not heading out to assault
a barracks, or to commit an attack.

Twelve weeks of sustained repression have been directed against the
peaceful Sunday marches of the Ladies in White, and the dissidents and
journalists who accompany them. Is this brutality and escalation? Are
they using the dissidents that have come out against the normalization
of relations with the United States to poison the normalization of those
same relations? Or are they sending a message to the population? Or both
combined?

The government should be more decent. The world is carefully watching
Cuba at this time, and actions by their own henchmen only confirm the
lack of freedoms. Once again I recall the words of Rosa Luxembourg – an
uncomfortable Communist – "Freedom always has been and is the freedom of
those who think differently."

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