March Organizer Dr. Manuel Guerra Arrested in Holguin, Cuba
The MD was handcuffed and initially taken to a police station before his transfer to the Criminal Investigation Center.
HAVANA TIMES – Dr. Manuel Guerra, part of the coordinating team of the Archipelago Platform, was arrested this Saturday afternoon in Holguín at a police checkpoint, when he was going to visit a patient.
The doctor was handcuffed and initially taken to a police station, the group denounces on its Facebook page.
Later, Guerra was transferred to the Criminal Investigation Center where he is being held, the platform denounces, which demands his “immediate release”. “We warn the authorities that they are obliged to act within the framework that the Law establishes, otherwise the case will be understood as an arbitrary arrest for political reasons.”
“We demand the immediate release of Dr. Manuel Guerra with the same firmness with which we demand the cessation of harassment and the release of all those detained, processed and punished for political reasons,” the text emphasizes.
Guerra was one of the doctors who responded to Prime Minister Manuel Marrero when last August he accused the health personnel of doing a poor job, which motivates constant complaints from patients. “Marrero, what outrage! How can he blame us doctors for his failures!” he wrote.
Last year, Guerra came out in defense of his colleague Alexander Raul Pupo Casas, who was defamed for publishing his critical opinion on the political situation on the island and resigned from his job at the Ernesto Guevara hospital in Las Tunas, where he was doing his Neurosurgery residency.
Guerra had also denounced that in October of last year State Security was investigating him in his neighborhood and at the Hospital where he worked in the Calixto García municipality, where at that time he was practicing as an obstetrician, while he was studying the specialty in this field.
“My coworkers told me that a Security agent had been inquiring about me with patients, workers at the center, even the hospital administration”, he wrote then on his Facebook account. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the political police in his own home.
However, his work problems arose long before, when in December 2018 he wanted to leave Cuba with his girlfriend for the United States, where his father also resides since 2013.
Once he made known his decision to leave the country, he was informed that he couldn’t, because “he was prohibited from leaving by the Public Health Ministry” because of his specialty. Since then, two years have passed, and he continues with a ban on leaving the island.
Archipelago is calling for marches against violence in different provinces on November 15th. They are also calling for the release of the hundreds of political prisoners held by the government.
Chas is very obviously ignorant of the Cuban dictatorship. Whereas the USA has a history of malfeasance in Cuba, with exploitation, it is not the USA which is responsible for the current power and control over every aspect of daily life, That is entirely exerted by the Communist Party of Cuba and is unrelated to the USA. It is all too easy to swallow the regime’s propaganda, that they act as a consequence of the actions of the US and that all the evident problems of Cuba are due to “El Bloqueo”. One only needs to recall the demonstrations of July 11th 2021, and the reactions at the dictate of Diaz-Canel, sending the MININT goons out on to the streets to physically attack the citizenry, to understand that power and control are essential aspects of the communist system.
It’s all about preventing the USA from controlling every aspect of life.
It is all about controlling every aspect of life.