Ku Klux Klan lurks in Cuba

Ramón A. Muñoz González

The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) of Marianao, Havana, prepare a wave of violence against members of the Afro Cuban Independent Foundation (FACI). This Monday (July 12) the chairmen of the CDR, together with the CEO of Popular Power, searched house to house the support of several members of the organization to serve on the Rapid Response Brigades (BRR), which repress the population.

According to a neighbor who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, the president of the CDR said he did not defend "those blacks counterrevolutionaries." She warned him not to sign a commitment to integrate the BRR would lose their jobs and could be prosecuted for the "Law of danger."

FACI activists fear for their safety, since some of them have been physically assaulted in the past.

"I have been beaten four times and apparently are preparing to repeat it. And Esteban Lazo (Cuban government official and black) said at the end of the ALBA summit in Cuba were to fight racism!", said Sonia Alfonso Garro, organizer of the FACI.

Furthermore, Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere "Macandal", president of that organization to combat racism, remains guarded by a patrol of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), in their place of residence. On the afternoon of Tuesday, July 13, was arrested and taken to the unity of the PNR, but later released.

"We are constantly monitored by officers in a police car and we are hoping that this Ku Klux Klan Cuban ruling against us, we ask only for peaceful black civil and human rights. This seems the crime of the century in Cuba: being black and raising his voice", he said Garro Alfonso.