Cuban activists held a demonstration in Havana scheduled for November 15, announced this Wednesday (13) one of their leaders, despite the dictatorship having denied a request to carry out the initiative for considering it “illegal”.
“Our decision is that we are going to march. We are not calling. Let’s march and with those who want to participate,” playwright Yunior García Aguilera, the main name of the group Arquipélago, a heterogeneous online community that proposed the November 15 act, told EFE.
This platform confirmed on its Twitter account that “in the face of authoritarianism, we will respond with civility and more civility”, and highlighted that the authorities’ decision made the president of the country’s Supreme Court “look ridiculous” when he said that Cuba would respect the right of manifestation.
The act, called in the midst of an economic crisis and strong social discontent in Cuba, would demand the condemnation of violence, respect for citizens’ rights, the release of political prisoners and democratic and peaceful solutions, according to the petitioners.
The group asked for authorization for November 20, but had to advance the act by five days because the government called for military exercises and National Defense Day would coincide with the date initially scheduled for the demonstration.
The Cuban dictatorship has accused the promoters of this initiative, unprecedented in 60 years, of being supported by American institutions and congressmen who seek “regime change” and support military intervention, something activists deny.
An editorial published on Wednesday by the official newspaper Granma accuses those responsible for the summons of being accompanied by “counter-revolutionary leaders of the so-called Council for the Democratic Transition of Cuba”, which he says are “in favor of the unconstitutional coup”.
In the article titled “Reason is our shield,” Granma adds that activists “have openly acknowledged receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a front of the US government.”
García Aguilera denied, the day before, having received any type of financing from abroad. In Cuba, the rights to strike and demonstrate are rarely contemplated outside state institutions and an act of opposition to the government was never authorized.