Spain calls for “immediate release” of Camila Acosta, ABC journalist detained in Cuba after anti-government protests

Camila Acosta, a 28-year-old Cuban journalist for ABC, was arrested on Monday (Photo: Courtesy of ABC).

Cuba is experiencing a new day of demonstrations massive against against the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel. Amnesty International has denounced that there are at least 115 missing and arbitrarily detained in the protests in Cuba, including journalists. Spain asked this Tuesday to the Cuban authorities “Immediate launch” of journalist Camila Acosta, collaborator of the Madrid newspaper ABC, arrested after the demonstrations on Sunday.

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“Detaining a journalist from a Spanish media, ABC, seems inappropriate to me,” said the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, in an interview with the Telecinco television network. “We asked the Foreign Ministry for his prompt release, We must ask Cubans to demonstrate freelyHe added. Sánchez added that we must “accelerate all reforms that allow prosperity and the rights and freedoms we enjoy in our country”.

Camila Acosta, a 28-year-old Cuban, was arrested on Monday. She had been collaborating with the Spanish media for about six months and also worked for the opposition site Cubanet, which indicated that the journalist was arrested shortly after leaving home, “When he was preparing to make personal arrangements.” Cubanet added that Acosta was covering the popular protests that took place in Havana against the government on Sunday.

“The Cuban people cried out loud that they had lost their fear. It is time to put pressure on them to withdraw. If we give in now, we will have many more years of dictatorship, ”Acosta wrote in the Last message that appears in your thread Twitter.

“They accuse him of contempt and public disorder. And the sentence can vary between 3 and 6 years in prison, of effective imprisonment in a Cuban prison ”, declared Susana Gaviña, journalist for ABC Spain, in dialogue with TN.

In the last days, in one of the biggest events of the last 60 yearsThousands of Cubans took to the streets of dozens of cities shouting “we are hungry”, “freedom” and “down with dictatorship” to protest against the economic crisis, the shortage of food and medicine and the power cuts.

This Tuesday, near fifty organizations, including Amnesty International o the Latin American Youth Network for Democracy, they condemned the Cuban government “crackdown” and urged that the violence against protesters urgently end. In a joint declaration, 44 civil society organizations defending human rights and the media, mostly Cuban, defended the freedom of citizens to demonstrate in the streets of the country against what they consider a “deep health crisis, economic and political. ”.

The organizations that signed the communiqué regretted that, despite the fact that the demonstrations convened in various Cuban cities were peaceful, the Revolutionary National Police, the Riot Brigades and the Department of State Security carried out “arrests”. arbitrary acts and physical attacks ”against citizens, including university students and journalists. They also alerted that there are hundreds of arrests and disappearances people, and although an exact figure cannot be established due to cuts to internet service in the country, Amnesty International has denounced the arbitrary detention of at least 115 people.

In addition to Acosta’s arrest, the organizations repudiated the assaults suffered during the demonstration in Havana on photo reporter from the associated press (AP), Ramón Espinosa.