Cuban activists and opponents denounced this Sunday acts of repression against “non-governmental” journalists and dissidents, who were trying to observe the elections for the National Assembly of the People’s Power of Cuba, which are taking place today.
According to the EFE news agency, the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Cubalex keeps a record of the incidents in a public file shared on the Internet. At 4:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. Lisbon time), 19 cases of repression had been identified, affecting more than twenty people.
The most common complaints were police surveillance and monitoring operations, selective internet outages, arbitrary arrests, and home confinement.
According to Cubalex, the acts of repression occurred throughout the country, with special incidence in Havana and Camagüey, but also in Holguín, Guantánamo, Matanzas, Santiago and Cuba and Vila Clara.
More than 8.1 million Cubans today elect the 470 deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba’s highest political body, for a period of five years. The National Assembly has the power to appoint the President and Vice President of the country.
Three opposition organizations announced, before the elections, that they intended to act as election observers in the absence of independent international staff. Today they announced that they have 75 volunteers who cover 14 of the 15 provinces of the country.
Some ‘non-governmental’ dissidents and journalists denounced, in the days prior to the elections, having received pressure and threats for promoting abstention or preparing to carry out electoral observation tasks.
Source: TSF
