Cuban Police Prevent Joanna Columbié From Boarding A Plane To Mexico

Cuban Police Prevent Joanna Columbié From Boarding A Plane To Mexico /
14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 6 March 2017 – Cuban police prevented activist Joanna
Columbié from boarding a plane this Monday heading to Mexico. The car in
which she was raveling was intercepted on the way to the airport and a
State Security official warned her that she would not be allowed to
travel abroad, according to what she herself told 14ymedio after being
released.

Columbié had planned to participate in a discussion meeting of the
Democratic Action Roundtable (MUAD) to be held in Mexico City. The
meeting is scheduled for this week and four activists from various
opposition groups and social projects were invited.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa, Boris González, Roberto Díaz and Eroisis González
were the other participants planning to attend event in Mexico. So far
this newspaper has not been able to determine if those four activists
managed to board their flights or if any of them was detained inside the
Havana airport.

"The meeting was to be the MUAD secretariat with other members outside
the island," says Columbié. The activist also states that the Konrad
Adenauer Foundation participated in organizing the event.

"I left the house in a taxi and I was nearing Lenin Park when a police
patrol car with the number 784 stopped us. They told me to go with them
and they also asked me for my phone so I could not make any calls," says
the member of Somos+ (We Are More) Movement.

In the police car was a State Security official known to Columbié from
previous arrests, who calls himself Leandro. She was taken to Bacuranao
Beach, to the east of the city, where the man warned her that they would
have "a long conversation" and that she would not be allowed to travel
to Mexico.

"I asked him what the reasons were but he simply told me that he wanted
to talk," recalls the activist. Leandro warned her that in recent months
she had been "greatly elevated in her profile," and that this could lead
to her being deported to the village of Céspedes in Camagüey, where
Columbié lived before residing in the capital.

The official warned her to stay away from "the counterrevolution" and
threatened that "from now on" her life would become "very bad." The man
insisted that they would not let her leave the country.

"This is totally arbitrary," says Columbié. "They have come to the point
of taking completely arbitrary actions without even seeking a pretext."
The activist does not rule out taking legal action before the Military
Prosecutor's Office to denounce what happened.

During 2016, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National
Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented a total of 9,940 arbitrary detentions
in the country. A figure that "puts the Government of Cuba in the first
place in all of Latin America," according to the report of the
independent organization.

Source: Cuban Police Prevent Joanna Columbié From Boarding A Plane To
Mexico / 14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuban-police-prevent-joanna-columbie-from-boarding-a-plane-to-mexico-14ymedio/