Sunday, June 9, 2013

Nonviolent Dissident assaulted by paramilitary wielding a machete wounded and hospitalized

Changes in Cuba: From Bad to Worse
How Raul Castro responds to dissent in Cuba


Werlando Leyva Batista, 30 years old,  a member of the Christian Liberation Movement in Holguin, Cuba was attacked with multiple machete blows yesterday, Saturday,  June 8, 2013 by one of the Cuban government's paramilitary. He is apparently hospitalized in Holguin.Werlando had been previously threatened in May of 2013.

Eduardo Cardet Concepción of the Christian Liberation Movement, said that Leyva Batista had to have surgery as a result of machete wounds on his right forearm. “They yelled insults calling Werlando a worm, a counterrevolutionary, an opposition member [...] and then using a machete they attacked him,” said Cardet in a telephone message released by MCL.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/09/v-fullstory/3442706/widow-children-of-oswaldo-paya.html#storylink=cpy
Cardet reported on June 10, 2013 that Leiva Werlando is improving, today they changed his dressing, but until they remove the cast in a month they will not know if he regains all the mobility of the hand. State security ensures that the individual who assaulted Werlando is detained (his name is Amaury Diaz Hermandez)

Details about the attack and its severity are still unfolding and will be updated here as the news emerges about the attack on Werlando Leyva Batista. For more information about his plight the following phone number has been made public: +53024255102

May 2013 incident

According to Eduardo Cardet, a member of the coordinating council of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) in ACI press the May 2013 threats were in response to his work in gathering signatures for Christian Liberation Movement initiatives launched by the late Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas called "The Heredia Project" and "The People's Path."

The previous incident occurred Friday [May 3, 2013] at the Yuraguana (Holguin). Cardet said these threats, combined with the search of the home of Leyva Batista are in response to "this young man's pretty intense activism in that area and they (the police) are trying to reduce the influence he is actually exercising, particularly in collecting signatures for the Heredia Project and making known The People's Path.

Leyva Batista was also threatened with relation to the "economic activity carried out by the young man-he's winding-electric motors, old stuff that he has there. Threatening him that  had to get rid of all that he had there, and that he should quit his activism on behalf of human rights."

From Bad to Worse

On May 10, 2002 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Tony Díaz Sánchez, and Regis Iglesias Ramírez turned in 11,020 signatures for the Project Varela. Both Tony and Regis would be arrested less than a year later during the March 18, 2003 Cuban Black Spring and sentenced to 20 years and 18 years in prison respectively. They would spend more than seven years in prison recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. Other Varela Project petitioners were threatened with the death penalty.  

Oswaldo Payá appears to have been killed in an "accident" staged or provoked by State Security on July 22, 2012 along with Christian Liberation Movement youth leader Harold Cepero. Violence against nonviolent activists has been escalating over the past four years. Women have not been exempt from regime brutality. Death threats, physical assaults and the targeting of their children have been tactics carried out by State Security. Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo denounced death threats against her and her entire family. Add to this now a nonviolent activist attacked with a machete by one of Castro's paramilitary. The trend is clear.

There are changes taking place in Cuba. Things are going from bad to worse.


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