Police Forces Assault UNPACU Headquarters, Activists Arrested

Police Forces Assault UNPACU Headquarters, Activists Arrested / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 8 March 2017 — The headquarters of the Patriotic Union
of Cuba (UNPACU) were assaulted by police forces in the early hours of
Wednesday. The troops forcibly entered five homes located in the
Altamira and José María Heredia areas in Santiago de Cuba, where they
arrested a dozen opponents, according to opposition sources.

Two buildings that operate as UNPACU headquarters and three belonging to
members of the movement were the object of a wave of searches carried
out by agents of the political police and brigades of the National
Revolutionary Police (PNR).

The homes were "looted" simultaneously according to activist Ernesto
Oliva Torres, who reported that at the main headquarters the troops
confiscated "a refrigerator, a television, two laptops, six cordless
phones, among other items."

The searches were accompanied by arbitrary arrests and the interruption
of the telephone communications of most of the UNPACU activists.

Among those arrested on Wednesday morning were Liettys Rachel Reyes,
Carlos Amel Oliva and his father Carlos Oliva, Alexei Martínez, Ernesto
Morán, Juan Salgado, Roilán Zamora, Yriade Hernández, Jorge Cervantes
and his wife Gretchen, David Fernández, Miraida Martín, and the national
coordinator of the movement, José Daniel Ferrer.

14ymedio was able to confirm that Carlos Amel Oliva was released on
Wednesday night, but several of the dissidents remain incommunicado.
Oliva's telephone line had serious problems that prevented the dissident
from communicating with the press.

Liettys Rachel Reyes, 30 weeks pregnant, was under arrest for about
three hours and then released. The whereabouts of the rest of the
detainees remain unknown.

Source: Police Forces Assault UNPACU Headquarters, Activists Arrested /
14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/policeassaultunpacu14ymedio/