Paxety Pages

(SANTA CLARA/CUBA/September 22/Cubanacán Press/Puenteinfocubamiami.org)- A "posse" of members of the Cuban Communist Party harassed over a dozen of peaceful opponents who stood in front of the Provincial Instruction in the city of Santa Clara last September 16th.

In the morning hours of the mentioned day, the dissidents gathered outside the above mentioned police unit located in the were given appointment in the police unit located in Carretera Traviesa, between Carretera Central and Carretera Planta Mecánica, to inquire about the situation with Noelia Pedraza Jiménez, who was arrested the previous night for a supposed accusation of threatening a neighbor.

About one hundred and fifty members of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC), were picked up from their employment centers in the area in order to participate in an act of repudiation where they uttered profanities and also threatened the peaceful members of the opposition.

Vladimir Méndez Mauad, a captain of the State Security informed the peaceful democrats that Pedraza Jiménez would be transferred to the Third Unit of the National Revolutionary Police (NRP), and was going to be released on bail until the day of her trial. The official advised the crowd to leave, and promised to drive Guillermo Fariñas to his home since he is in a wheelchair due to his condition as a handicapped individual.

The group of activists left the above mentioned place and were followed by close to seventy paramilitary officers, yelling obscenities at them, trying to provoke a confrontation, but they did not succeed.

The captain did not follow through with his promise to drive Fariñas home. Instead, he was left in his wheelchair all alone outside of the unit were the "posse" began punching, kicking and some used pieces of wood leaving serious wounds in the body of the Director of the Marta Abreu Social Studies Forum, demanding he yell "Viva Fidel" and the beating would stop.

Fariñas's only reply was to lower his head and put both his arms behind, infuriating even more the crowd, who began kicking him mercilessly until one of them screamed to stop, for they were going to kill him in public for all to see.

Afterwards, he was driven twenty three kilometers outside the city of Santa Clara and was dropped off in a rural zone between the October 10 Sugar Mill and San Juan de Years, municipality of Ranchuelo.

Noelia was released on bail that same afternoon and at the writing of this news report, she awaits her trial which was supposedly scheduled for last September 22th.

Reporting from Santa Clara for the Information Bridge Cuba Miami Niurvys Díaz Remond, an independent journalist with the independent press agency Cubanacán Press. Given on the 20th day of September of 2005.