Q24N – A man died in a demonstration on Monday in the Güinera neighborhood, on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, after protests broke out in some 40 Cuban cities.
“The Ministry regrets the death of this person,” according to a note published by the official Cuban news agency, Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN), which specified that the death occurred when Diubis Tejeda, 36, was participating in the clashes.
“Several citizens were arrested, and others were injured, including law enforcement officials. Among the participants in the riots, 36-year-old citizen Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, resident in the municipality itself, died (…) The rest of the injured were transferred to hospitals for care. The circumstances of this event are being investigated,” reads the ACN report.
Monday’s protest in that neighborhood, one of the most depressed areas of Havana, was broadcast in several videos through social networks, despite the fact that the Government has kept the internet connection cut off since Sunday.
In the images, only dozens of people are seen advancing through the streets shouting slogans such as “freedom” or “a united people will never be defeated.”
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A historic protest
This Sunday, July 11, Cubans said enough. What began as isolated protests became the largest call in recent times on the island. It is the first time that a large group of Cubans have taken to the streets of Havana to protest against the Government since the famous “Maleconazo” of 1994, in the midst of the crisis of the “special period”.
Why are they protesting?
The coronavirus pandemic, whose first cases on the island were detected in March 2020, has plunged Cuba into its worst economic crisis in 30 years. Every day, Cubans have to wait long hours in queues to get food and also face a shortage of medicines, which has generated strong unrest in society.
To this is added that economic difficulties have also led the authorities to apply electricity cuts of several hours a day in large areas of the country.
To top it off, the island is going through the third and worst wave of covid-19, with extremely high infection rates in the most affected regions. Cuba registered another record number of infections in 24 hours, with 6,750 cases, for a total of 231,568. With 11.2 million inhabitants, the island reports 1,490 deaths.
More than 100 detainees
More than a hundred people have been reported as detained in Cuba after the historic protests, among them some well-known opponents such as Guillermo Fariñas, the political express Daniel Ferrer, and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, according to several sources.
According to a list published Monday night on Twitter by the San Isidro Movement (MSI), a group of intellectuals and university students who demand freedom of expression and creation, 114 people had been detained or were not located.
