Havana, Aug 5 (EFE) .- Cuban opponent Guillermo Fariñas remained under arrest this Friday for several hours, according to his family, who attributed the arrest to the anniversary of the protest known as the “Maleconazo.”
Fariñas’s mother, Alicia Hernández, confirmed by telephone that her son was released this afternoon, after this morning when he left his house he was detained by the police, who were waiting for him nearby. “They handcuffed him and took him away in a patrol car,” she explained.
Hernández considered that the arrest occurred because of the anniversary of the “Maleconazo”, some anti-government protests that took place on August 5, 1994.
That day, hundreds of dissatisfied people took to the streets of Havana to protest and then President Fidel Castro, now deceased, appeared to speak with some of them in front of the well-known Deauville hotel.
They were the largest protests that the country experienced in decades, only surpassed by those that Cuba registered on July 11, 2021.
Fariñas, 60 years old – of whom multiple temporary arrests have been reported in recent decades – is the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought of the European Parliament.
The leader of the United Anti-Totalitarian Front is one of the best-known Cuban opponents at the international level, particularly for the numerous hunger strikes against the Cuban system since the first one he carried out in 1995.
The longest dates back to 2003, when he fasted for 14 months, and the 25th took place in 2016 and lasted 54 days to ask the government to end the repression against dissidents.
The Government of Cuba considers the dissidents “counterrevolutionaries” and “mercenaries” at the service of the interests of the United States and denies that it has political prisoners in its jails. EFE
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