havana/Anthropologist and activist Jenny Pantoja Torres was expelled from the Miguel Enríquez School on the College of Medical Sciences of Havana (UCM-H). As denied this Thursday by the Educational Freedom Observatory (OLA), the choice is an act of “censorship”, made beneath stress from State Safety.
The instructor was beneath contract and on probation; Nevertheless, he had an excellent evaluation of his educating efficiency and his head within the Division of Marxism and Historical past had promised him that he wouldn’t do with out his providers. Nonetheless, she was fired in an “administrative transfer to remove uncomfortable intellectuals,” the observatory mentioned.
The harassment in opposition to Pantoja, the coordinator of the Professional Amnesty Committee for political prisoners in Cuba, goes again a very long time. On June 18, he was there arrested and overwhelmed together with her fellow instructor Alina Barbara López Hernández. After a number of hours within the arms of State Safety on the Playa police station in Matanzas, they had been launched. The 2 had been touring to Havana, the place they deliberate to show peacefully, because the historian Matanzas does on the 18th of every month.
The harassment in opposition to Pantoja, the coordinator of the Professional Amnesty Committee for political prisoners in Cuba, goes again a very long time. On June 18, she was arrested and overwhelmed
A day earlier than, by means of social networks, Pantoja Torres had reported that she had acquired threats on her cellular phone from a Cuban quantity. “How you bought to Matanzas very properly, I warn you, that is the final time you get to Matanzas,” mentioned the message filled with spelling errors.
Within the submit, the instructor defined that she was going to accompany López Hernández, as a result of she couldn’t depart him alone “on a visit to Havana the place she may mistreat the police once more. Likewise, he warned: “I’m accountable for State Safety, the Cuban Authorities and its police forces for something that occurs to me any longer.” I’ve not dedicated any crime, nor do I’ve a authorized case in opposition to me. It is simply the spirit and willingness to do the most effective for my nation that’s struggling.” In keeping with what he additionally mentioned, his home was beneath investigation by the political police.
The siege didn’t finish, regardless of being freed. On June 21, the OLA reported that it was beneath a brand new cycle of threats. ” This time, the political police went to his home and threatened to go “in opposition to his skilled profession, telling him that they’d cease him from creating his working life.”
In keeping with the testimony, agent Ariel Arnau Grillet, with “an intensive report as a reporter, was with agent Ariel”. At her home, they requested the historian to get to her home, to say “the actions she is doing with Alina.
The brokers accused her of violating a number of articles of the Cuban Penal Code, however the instructor ended the assembly by saying that she wouldn’t have a dialog with out her lawyer current. The representatives left, however issued a risk: “Do not forget to work on the college and do not forget every thing. Quickly after, they stationed themselves close to Pantoja’s residence and even ran to her office.
A State Safety agent appeared on the anthropologist’s residence and prevented her from leaving her home that day. The police threatened to inform her.
The OLA reported a month later, on July 17, {that a} state safety agent appeared on the residence of the anthropologist and prevented her from leaving her residence that day. The police officer threatened to inform her if she revealed what occurred on social media. In keeping with the observatory, quickly after a police cordon of eight officers was positioned round the home: two cops and 6 plainclothes officers: three males and three girls.
Originally of July, greater than 220 writers and artists signed an open letter wherein they denounce the “police violence” with which López Hernández and Jenny Pantoja had been handled. “Using drive, the criminalization of dissent and imprisonment don’t clear up our actual issues. All Cubans have the fitting to suggest our concepts to get out of this disaster,” mentioned the signatories, together with the author Leonardo Padura, the Argentine musician and singer-songwriter Fito Páez and the movie director Fernando Pérez.
Pantoja Torres is an skilled Cuban historian and researcher, in addition to an activist, with grasp’s research within the subject of Social and Philosophical Sciences, particularly in non secular issues.
Within the subject of educating, she has achieved a number of work in highschool and better training, being an affiliate professor on the College of Havana within the self-discipline of Anthropology. On the identical time, he has taught postgraduate programs and given lectures as a part of his time in establishments such because the Cuban Institute of Anthropology.
