UNPACU activist arrested and threatened for conducting street interviews

At 8 am on 9th December 2018, an activist from the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) was arrested at his home while he was sleeping. The reason for the arrest was opinion interviews that cell activists were conducting with people in the street. According to the activist these interviews disturbed the agents of the Department of State Security (DSE) to such an extent that they have dared to threaten with imprisonment, those who are conducting them. They also threatened the activist with confiscating the media with which they were using for the interviews. The activist learned that, the night before, members of the DSE, led by Lesnier Leiva, lieutenant coronel and head of that entity at Guantánamo, organized an operation with the intention of carrying out a search. Once arrested, the lieutenant told the activist that the objective of this operation was to search him to "clean him up" (i.e., to seize all of his property), but that they had not done so because they had received information that the things had already been moved from his apartment. The aforementioned officer also threatened the activist with taking away all the means of work he had, even telling him that they didn't care if he was sick, that if he died "one less person they would have to fight”. The activist was detained for more than 8 hours. Before his release, they warned that if he continued with the activities he was carrying out, they would forget about his illness and would put him in prison.