Cuban blogger beaten up in Miami. Reason: Free speech!

Pepe Varela shows graphically what happens to Cuban bloggers who don’t follow the hard-right Miamero line.

Dr. Paula Vernimmen, whom I’ve been following since she was trapped inside the same hospital as president Rafael Correa on September 30, during the failed coup in Ecuador, has appealed via Twitter for someone to translate this into English. It’s an entry from Yohandry, a popular Cuban blogger from the island, and it’s a shocker, so of course, I had to run with it:

Although we haven’t yet found clear references to what occurred, the images above, linked by the Miami police on an official Miami-Dade website, illustrate very well what could be the consequences of exercising your freedom of expression in that city.

During a recent trip to Cuba, Varela, who edits a blog in Miami which defends the Cuban Revolution, denounced the threats he was receiving from ultra-rightist elements in the city on Cambios en Cuba.

The Miami mafia blogosphere is already delighting in the images and celebrating the bestial beating of a man who has done no more than say what he thinks and feels in a city and a country where in reality, dissenting is a crime punished with aberrations like this one.

We ask ourselves what the Miami press headlines and those of other countries are saying now about this abominable act, knowing in advance what the answer will be: silence and manipulation.

At the time, in an interview on video, Varela makes clear that the mafia has been manipulating his family, using them to pressure him, and that he had received e-mails in which he was warned that if he returned to Miami, he would be imprisoned.

It seems, according to these photos, which are worthy of an anthology of violence porn, and which is evident in how they respect human rights in the US, his enemies have managed to silence, at least for a while, the blogger Varela.

Let’s keep abreast of the situation of Varela and continue to denounce the tortures and threats to which he was subjected.

These are the photos which Repression ID wanted, and there they are. You’ll find nothing like them in Cuba.

We know that the blogger Hernández Busto, based in Barcelona, has been manipulated in the case, but we know that he, along with his cohorts in Miami, are behind this repression.

From Cuba we commence a campaign to denounce violence against those who think differently in Miami.

Signed:

Cuban Bloggers in Defence of Freedom of Expression in Miami

Links as in original.

Here’s the video in which Varela tells of the threats he received before the beating:

Seems that “freedom of speech” is restricted to those who toe the fascist line, especially in Miami. And they complain about Cuba?