“My house woke up under siege, the entire building is surrounded by state security agents in civilian clothes posing as a town,” Garcia said Sunday morning in a direct transmission on Facebook.
An AFP team found that the street is blocked by a strong presence of agents in civilian clothes on the sidewalk and on the roofs of buildings in the working-class neighborhood of La Coronela, before the gaze of many neighbors from the street.
García, a 39-year-old playwright, maintains his intention to walk alone down a central Havana street, despite having been warned that he would be arrested.
“I am ready, as you can see, dressed in white with a white rose and when it is time I will leave my house,” he said with the rosary that he has been hanging around his neck for days.
After being exposed as enemy number one for weeks in state media, Yunior García was smoking on Friday worried about the violence that may be generated in the demonstration called for Monday in Havana and in six other provinces. That decided him to go solo this Sunday.
The political think tank Archipelago, created on Facebook by him and which has more than 30,000 members inside and outside of Cuba, in any case maintains the call to march on Monday.
In a televised appearance on Friday, the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel said that his supporters are prepared “to defend the revolution.” and “face any interventionist action against our country”, referring to the United States.
The Cuban regime took action against the Spanish news agency EFE. The accreditations to the five members of the agency’s team were withdrawn on Saturday invoking “the regulations on foreign press.”
State television accused Yunior García of being an agent trained and financed by WashingtonHe even compared him to the Czechoslovakian Vaclav Havel (1936 – 2011), a playwright who fought against the Soviet regime until he formally became president of his country in 1990.
García also showed his attendance years ago at a seminar in Madrid on the role of the army in transition processes, and revealed shipments of small amounts of money from abroad
“They have to stop trying to link any genuine Cuban citizen initiative with the same old enemy,” he told AFP.
Monday’s demonstration, declared illegal by the regime, comes at a time when Cuba is reopening borders to international tourism, children are returning to classrooms and Havana is celebrating its 502nd anniversary with street festivities.
Protesters demand the release of political prisoners, after the historic July 11 demonstrations shouting “We are hungry” and “Freedom”, which left one dead, dozens injured and 1,270 detainees, of which 658 are still in prison, according to the NGO Cubalex.
The United States maintains “key contacts before the protests” on Monday and will promote “accountability for human rights violators if necessary,” said Emily Mendrala, deputy assistant secretary for the Americas at the State Department.
In this hand in hand, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue analysis center, believes that the protesters want to “draw more international attention to the seriousness of the economic, political and human rights situation in Cuba.”
An aggressive reaction from the government would be “very costly” and would entail “tougher sanctions by the United States and Europe, “he estimated.
With almost permanent surveillance and several summoned by the police these days, the organizers planned the march using the mobile internet, which arrived in Cuba in 2018.
“Thanks to social networks, for the first time in Cuba, a truly independent civil society is emerging,” says Yunior García.
But, there is a fear that the day of the march the data internet will be interrupted, as it happened after July 11.
Source From: Ambito
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