This report from Yoani herself, award-winning citizen journalist/blogger of www.generationy.com –she who tells the REAL story happening in Cuba today.

yoani

A gangland style kidnapping, by Yoani Sánchez

Nov. 8 – Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. “Yoani, get in the car,” one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same “aggressors” called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.

I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, “Help, these men want to kidnap us,” but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, “Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.” In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, “What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.” I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door… blows to my knuckles… I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them.

Continue reading Generation Y

Yoani Sánchez detained and beaten by Castro’s security agents (UPDATED)

Nov. 7 –  Cuban blogger Claudia Cadelo gives an account of what happened when she, Yoani Sánchez and other young Cubans tried to join a performance in Havana to ask for a stop at the violence OctavoCerco

Famed Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said Friday she and another blogger were punched and thrown violently into a car by presumed state security agents as they walked to participate in a peaceful march in downtown Havana.

“No blood, but black and blues, punches, pulled hairs, blows to the head, kidneys, knee and chest,” Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald shortly after she and Orlando Luis Pardo were freed. “In sum, professional violence.”  The Miami Herald

Video of the performance that took place in Havana yesterday and that resulted in the beating by Castro’s Gestapo of Yoani Sánchez, Claudia Cadelo and other well known Cuban bloggers and musicians.

Nov. 6 – 8 PM Update – Oscar Haza, the host of A Mano Limpia on Channel 41 in Miami, was able to talk to Yoani Sánchez after she was released.

Yoani told Haza that two experts in martial arts, who were not wearing uniforms, forced her into a car where she was beaten before she was released in another part of the city, far from where the pacific demonstration was supposed to take place.

She said she told the people who kidnapped her: “Go ahead, kill me, I am at your mercy,” and she said she could tell that the thugs who were hitting her looked even more scared than she was.

Yoani said that they kept telling her that she must stop writing on her blog.

Claudia Cadelo, the blogger of Octavo Cerco, was also interviewed by Haza.

She was also kidnapped by force and pushed into another car and taken to another part of the city to prevent her from participating in the performance.

She said she was also beaten by those who kidnapped her.

Ironically, the performance planned by the group of bloggers and musicians was supposed to be against all types of violence.

Before they were detained by Castro’s Gestapo, the group of young men and women were singing and dancing and didn’t make any political demonstration, but the totalitarian system in Cuba would not even allow a pacific and apolitical performance.

Ciro Díaz, a member of the band Porno Para Ricardo, was also detained for participating in the performance.

 EARLIER INFORMATION – PenultimosDias is reporting that Yoani Sanchez, the blogger of Generation Y, and a group of other bloggers and musicians who don’t sympathize with the Castro regime, were detained by Cuba’s State Security to stop a “pacific performance” that they were planning on Calle 23 in Havana.

According to the information coming from Cuba, Sánchez; Claudia Cadelo; Aldo, the rapper of the Aldeanos and others were detained by Cuban police and taken by force to different places in Havana to prevent the pacific demonstration.

Yoani Sánchez was introduced by force inside a State Security car that had private license plates and taken away to an unknown location.

According to the latest information available she was later released.

It is not known if any of the others are still being detained at this time.