Cuba: Police Beat Preteen Girls in Blackout Protests

Riot police walk the streets after a demonstration against the government of President Mig
YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images
Christian K. Caruzo

Cuban police forces assaulted three girls, believed to be between 11 and 12 years old, on Friday during the second consecutive day of intense protests in Nuevitas, Camagüey, in the nation’s east.

Protesters rallied against the nation’s communist regime and the long blackouts that the regime has subjected them to. Nuevitas as reportedly experienced three months of rolling blackouts.

In a video posted on Instagram by the news website Cubanos por el Mundo, the three girls stated they were walking alongside the father of one of the girls – they refer to each other as cousins – when Cuban police hit them and detained the man accompanying them for having allegedly participated in the protests against the Castro regime. The girls say that they tried to beat the officers, too, but did not succeed in defending themselves.

“I was holding on to my dad, and she was holding on to my dad, and then, to arrest my dad, they police had to hit us,” said one of the three girls.

“I also hit them because they hit me,” said another of the girls.

The video Cubanos por el Mundo obtained also contained what appeared to be footage of the assault itself. As the protests occurred at night and during a blackout, the quality of the video does not allow for much to be seen, but the voices of young girls screaming that match the girls interviewed are clearly audible.

Cuba’s collapsing power grid has left its citizens facing endless blackouts throughout the year that can last up to 18 hours each. Protests against the blackouts and the Castro regime have been multiplying and spreading all across the island throughout August, in addition to 1,713 registered protests against the Castro regime during the first semester of 2022.

The Castro regime, unable to provide power to the island-nation, has implemented a strict rolling blackout schedule, and has responded to the protests with their accustomed police brutality and human rights violations.

The new wave of protests in Nuevita began on Thursday night. The citizens of the municipality took the streets after yet another blackout left them without power, with protesters chanting “El pueblo está cansado, Díaz-Canel singao,” (“The people are tired, asshole Díaz-Canel”) against the regime’s puppet president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, while singing Cuba’s national anthem.

The Castro regime responded to the Thursday protest by holding an “act of repudiation” in Nuevitas on Friday. An “act of repudiation,” which the communist regime sometimes also refers to as an “act of revolutionary reaffirmation,” is a form of mob attack that the Cuban regime uses against “counter-revolutionary” individuals or groups, and consists in swarming a location or group of people, chanting insults and “revolutionary” slogans against their targets, and, in some cases, throwing garbage or projectiles at them.

Protesters responded to the regime’s acts by taking up the streets again on Friday, with protesters throwing rocks at a police vehicle and forcing it to withdraw.

The Castro regime unleashed a new wave of repression, where the three minors were hit by the regime’s police as they arrested the father of one of them. 

After the second day of protests in Nuevitas, the Castro regime made slight adjustments to the scheduled rolling blackouts for the municipality that resulted in shorter but more frequent blackouts. The regime’s local authorities also threw a public party on Sunday, handing out food and doing children’s activities.

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In spite of that, the news website Cibercuba reported on Sunday that the Castro regime carried out more arrests of protesters on that day. 

The Spain-based Diario de Cuba newspaper reported on Monday that the Castro regime arrested three Cuban citizens, including Mayelín Rodríguez Prado, who was arrested for having filmed and published videos of the protest in Nuevitas on social media. According to Rodríguez Prado’s mother, the Cuban regime is accusing her of “corruption of minors”, “incitement to commit a crime”, “attack”, “sabotage” and “defamation.”

Through a social media post, the Non-government organization Justicia 11J reported on Sunday that at least six more citizens have been arrested for having protested against the Castro regime in Nuevitas.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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