Cuban Police Detain Two Members of New Left Group

Cuban Police Detain Two Members of New Left Group
June 11, 2012
Isbel Diaz Torres

HAVANA TIMES — Early Saturday morning (June 9), Cuban law enforcement
officers picked up two members of the Critical Observatory Network (OC)
and drove them to the police station at Zapata and C Street of Havana's
Vedado district.

The experience was instructive in many ways, and one of them was that it
allowed us to learn what's frightening to law enforcement officials in
this city.

The two OC members (Jimmy Roque Martinez and Eduardo A. Diaz Fernandez)
were walking along the centrally located and well-lit G Street sometime
after midnight when law enforcement officials asked them for their
identification. In addition, right there in the street, the police
searched a daypack that one of the two was carrying.

During this violation of their rights, the police discovered that the
two men were in the possession of two cans of spray paint (red and
black), which turned out to be sufficient grounds for the pair to be
frisked, handcuffed, and taken to the jail at Zapata and C, where they
had to remain for twelve hours without being charged.

Jimmy and Edward, both white, do not fit the racial profile typically
used by the police in Havana, but it seems that seeing people carrying a
daypack late at night was enough to trigger the police's paranoia. That
was all it took.

If the problem was carrying paint — "which can be used for anything," as
the suspicious police captain told me at the station — then everything
is clear.

What's curious is that this "life-threatening paint" is sold in
state-run stores and has diverse uses. Should we imprison the managers

The truth is that their detention was extended more than usual. The
reason? They had to wait for the CI (Counter Intelligence?) officers to
get to work the next morning to evaluate the matter.

What's for sure is that none of the people detained that night were
released at dawn, nor did they know when they would be released. From
what I was told, this included a black man whose sole crime had been
walking in the relatively upscale Vedado neighborhood though having a
past criminal record.

"How could you think you could wander around in Vedado with a record,
looking like that and with that color?" was what Jimmy and Eduardo were
able to hear. What was saddest was that the racist officer was himself
black.

In today's Cuba, it's not necessary to have committed a crime or
disturbed the public order to be arrested. The "preventive" nature of
police authority seems to justify the daily occurrence of this
violation, without the citizens having effective legal remedies to stop
or redress this distortion of justice.

Jimmy and Edward, together with three other people, were crammed into a
dirty cell designed for two individuals for twelve hours. Finally, at
1:00 pm, they were given an "official warning" (which they didn't sign)
and were released.

So far the OC had issued a complaint on Facebook, Twitter, and in the
organization's WordPress blog. Fortunately, new technologies are able to
accelerate the process of justice a little, though not enough to
transform such absurdities.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=72429