MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
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Award winning Cuban dissident prevented from attending human rights meeting in Europe
Farinas was arrested Tuesday in the central city of Santa Clara, where he lives, as he planned to go to the Spanish Embassy in Havana to pick up travel documents. An award-winning Cuban dissident who was detained this week announced on Thursday that he has been released without charge but barred from a planned trip to Europe for a meeting on human rights.
Guillermo Farinas, a 58-year-old psychologist, is a leading voice in the opposition to Cuba's communist government and won the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize in 2010.
Farinas was arrested Tuesday in the central city of Santa Clara, where he lives, as he planned to go to the Spanish Embassy in Havana to pick up travel documents.
He had been due to take part in a meeting of the human rights commission of the European Parliament.
“The main reason for my arrest was to keep me from traveling to Europe,” Farinas said.
He said the authorities freed him Thursday night but barred him from leaving Santa Clara under threat of another arrest.
Farinas added that Cuban authorities fear he uses trips to Europe to sabotage relations with the European Union.
Farinas waged a 54-day hunger strike in 2016 because, he said, jailed dissidents in Cuba are tortured, beaten and threatened with death.
Over the years, Farinas has gone on several such strikes to draw attention to what he says are oppressive policies carried out by the Havana regime. These included a 2010 fast that left him near death.
The Cuban government denies it is holding any political prisoners.
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Read all commentsCuba remains an enslaved prison camp. Highly recommend everyone spend 2 weeks in Habana as i have, living with the people in airbnbs and hostels. You will meet Ph.Ds underworked underpaid underfed undernourished living, some of them, in chicken coops in Habana Viejo, begging for snacks from tourists on park benches. Every day thousands of Cubans fill the parks with no money, nothing to do and no way to leave, because the only people allowed a passport are wealthy Cubans (Yes, they exist, they get the best food at cheaper cost than the avg Cuban can suffering the hour-long waits in line for the like of pig's knuckles), government elites and the military, which receive almost all of the tourist dollars or they would overthrow the people-hating government. Two reasons for this state of affairs, the embargo of goods and the corrupt Cuban government. If the US ever lifted the embargo the goods would pile up on the docks. But without any spending money to speak of, no one would be able to afford the items the poorest Andean Indian in Peru living in hovels can afford. It would take a few months for the people and the military to overthrow the government and bring Cuba into the 21st century. But does the like of Trump have the brain to end the embargo and force the issue? Hell no. Every island surrounding Cuba is substantially poorer, yet on every island, including the poorest, such as Barbados, which i've also visited, the inhabitants are fabulously better off than Cubans.
Feb 09th, 2020 - 03:34 am 0The UN should take up the cause of enslaved Cuba as one of the worst human rights situations on Earth.
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