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Call for the release of detainees in Cuba


The Tempest Collective joins organizations and individuals around the world, calling on the Cuban government to release all of the detainees who had participated in legitimate political demonstrations of July 11. These were protests against ongoing governmental austerity and the effects of a prolonged economic crisis, amplified and aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the criminal blockade of U.S. imperialism. It is our understanding that while some of the detainees have been released from jail, even these remain under house arrest. We urge an end to this repression.

July 11, 2021

In this afternoon’s demonstrations in Havana, Frank García Hernández was arrested, among other members of the Cuban left. This afternoon the Cuban people took to the streets. A people that were not summoned by any organization but by the acute economic crisis facing Cuba and the government’s inability to handle the situation. Cuba took to the streets with the ill advised slogan “Homeland and life”, but they took to the streets for reasons that go beyond a slogan, they took to the streets to demand true socialism from the government. Those in the streets were not only artists and intellectuals, this time it was the people in its broadest heterogeneity.

This posting by Comunistas blog does not seek to analyze the situation in Cuba. It seeks to denounce the violent detention of the demonstrators, to denounce that this time the repressive forces of the State put themselves in the opposite place, that they repressed Cubans, that they used pepper spray and all available resources. This posting demands the freedom of all the detainees and especially of Frank García Hernández, Cuban historian and Marxist, arbitrarily detained. For Leonardo Romero Negrín, a young socialist student of Physics at the University of Havana. For Maykel González Vivero, director of Tremenda Nota, a marginal magazine. For Marcos Antonio Perez Fernandez, a minor, a student at the Pre-University. For all those violently detained on this black afternoon that Cuba will not forget.

Comunistas appeals to the solidarity of the international Marxist community and also to the conscience of the Cuban government. This time it is about a people that needs answers and dialogue. It is about a civil society that does not want annexation, but to participate and decide the destiny of their nation. Comunistas Blog condemns the repression and says to the bureaucracy: enough.

Originaly posted on the Comunistas site.

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Comunistas is an online publication launched in June 2020 in Cuba, which aims to be a platform for expression and encounter of the voices of the critical Cuban left, in favor of the construction of socialism.