The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

30 The Sunday Times November 28, 2021

WORLD NEWS

I was demonised like a Cuban Dracula

or Bin Laden — it was time to escape

As they drove by night through Havana’s

Revolution Square Yunior Garcia, a fig-

urehead of opposition to the Cuban

regime, and Dayana Prieto, his wife, felt a

surge of adrenaline.

Fearing for their lives, they had

decided to flee one of the world’s last

communist strongholds. With the help of

a European friend they were on their way

to the airport, hoping to board a plane to

Madrid, wondering if they were being fol-

lowed and would be arrested and jailed.

As they were passing the State Council,

the president’s official residence, the car

broke down in front of the guards. “I

thought, that’s it, it’s over,” Garcia said.

There was little chance he would not be

recognised. “Mine was the best-known

face in Cuba at that moment.”

A playwright activist, Garcia, 39, was

being demonised by the government

over his calls for street protests. “I was

like Dracula, Osama bin Laden, a CIA

agent, a mercenary that’s what they were

saying about me every day on television,”

he said.

The story of his escape from Havana

on November 16, recounted in detail for

the first time in an interview with The

Sunday Times, is the stuff of airport thrill-

ers, but it also sheds light on the drama

unfolding in Cuba, where President Man-

uel Díaz-Canel, the first post-Castro

leader, is struggling to keep afloat a scle-

rotic regime amid rising discontent about

oppression, shortages and the collapse of

the health care system.

In July, demonstrators took to streets

all over the island over the regime’s fail-

ure to contain the pandemic. The govern-

ment cracked down hard, beating and rit-

ually humiliating protesters, many of

whom were sentenced to long prison

terms. It was the greatest social unrest

since the 1959 revolution that brought

Fidel Castro to power.

Garcia, who joined the protests with

artist friends, was dumped in a rubbish

truck and taken to prison, but he was

released after 26 hours and an outcry

from his supporters.

He called for another, peaceful dem-

onstration on November 15 in support of

the estimated 600 protesters detained in

July — enraging the government. It cut off

his mobile phone and internet access,

deployed state security agents to follow

him and mobs to harangue him as a “trai-

tor” at his front door.

Summoned one day to the secret

police headquarters, he was told that he

would spend the rest of his life in prison if

he continued defying the regime. One

morning, his mother-in-law found two

decapitated doves on the doorstep.

“There were feathers everywhere, blood

on the wall,” Garcia said.

Fearing for the safety of his family, and

other protesters, he said he would march

alone, carrying a white rose. “The mob

outside replied that they would shove the

rose up my arse.”

As the vilification campaign intensi-

fied, he feared for his safety. “I was wor-

ried some fanatic might come at me with

a machete.”

Then the European friend, whom he

declined to identify, came to his rescue,

helping him acquire a visa to travel to

Spain. One night, the mob outside his

house vanished, allowing him to escape a

weeks-long siege. He left home in the

early hours of November 14, wondering if

he was walking into a trap.

The next evening, after spending a

night hiding in a house outside Havana,

he and Dayana found themselves trapped

in the nerve centre of the regime. “I

thought ‘we’re about to be arrested’,”

said Dayana, an actress, as the guards

outside the State Council building walked

up to the car.

Instead of arresting them, the two men

offered to give them a push. “They didn’t

even look to see who was in the car, they

said they didn’t want us parked in front of

the building,” said Garcia, who got out to

help give a push.

They abandoned the vehicle further

down the road and got a taxi to the air-

port, where they boarded a flight to

Madrid. In retrospect, Garcia thinks that

the government wanted him out of the

country. “They took a picture of us at the

airport, it was as if they were saying, ‘Go

and tomorrow we’ll destroy you, the trai-

tor who abandoned his people, the cow-

ard’,” he said.

“Lamentably that’s what happened,

that’s what they did,” he added, referring

to official media coverage depicting him

An opposition leader who fled Havana for Madrid feared the regime was planning a bloodbath to crush demonstrations

Matthew Campbell Madrid as the “traitor” who had called for people

to march in protest and then ran away.

On their first day in Spain, “we col-

lapsed”, he said. “We spent an hour cry-

ing together.” For Dayana, the most pain-

ful part was seeing some of their

supporters appearing to accept the gov-

ernment’s claim that they had betrayed

them. “There were direct attacks, per-

sonal and intimate, some from friends as

well, it was such a shame,” she said.

Garcia had fled partly in fear, he admit-

ted, but also to protect his family: his

friends and most of his relatives had their

phone and internet connections severed

and some were under surveillance.

He also wanted to prevent a blood-

bath: the government had made clear it

would not tolerate more protests: pic-

tures had surfaced of a gang of govern-

ment supporters preparing to do battle

with protesters: they were armed with

nail-spiked clubs. The Catholic Church

had urged Garcia to stand down.

He has — but the battle is not over. Gar-

cia is one of a new generation of opposi-

tion activists, the “grandchildren of the

revolution”, who have known no govern-

ment beyond the Communist Party.

Garcia said he was taught as a child to

idolise Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 to

be succeeded by his brother Raúl. He

retired this year when Díaz-Canel, 61, a

communist career official, took over.

By the age of 20, Garcia had begun to

question the revolutionary creed. Invited

one day to address a student congress in

the presence of the first Castro he wanted

to tell him about “shortages of materials

for artists, the lack of musical instru-

ments and ballet shoes”, he said. “But I

was warned to stay away from it. Or my

name would go on a blacklist.”

In 2003, the “blindfold fell”, he said,

when three “kids” were executed for try-

ing to escape the island on a raft. “That

was when I broke with the communist

youth and everything else. I started read-

ing prohibited books.” These days, he is

deeply disillusioned by the European left

for its support of Havana. “Many on the

left identify Cuba with social progress,

but it’s false, its leaders are macho, hom-

ophobic conservatives, opposed to

minorities and freedom of religion.”

Now Garcia wants to meet other Cuban

opposition supporters in exile. But he

wants to return to Cuba one day, without

knowing when or if it will be possible. He

imagines it might amount to “suicide”

although circumstances might change.

Meanwhile, there are, no doubt, plays

to write. “The thing is,” he insisted, “I’m

an artist, not a politician.”

The ambush came just after

the tourism minister had

declared at a luxury

beachfront hotel owned by

the son of the junta chief that

Myanmar was open and safe

for foreign travellers.

As Htay Aung’s armed

convoy returned from the

coast this month it was struck

by homemade mines. He

survived but several soldiers

were reportedly killed in the

shootout that followed.

The attack exposed the

hollowness of the “travel

season opening celebration”

at Chaungtha beach and laid

bare the reality of life in the

country — a war zone that has

been seized by economic

collapse, humanitarian

catastrophe and the

pandemic since the military

coup nearly 10 months ago.

Guerilla units of the

People’s Defence Force

(PDF), which is fighting the

junta, were quick to claim

credit for the incident, the

latest violent escalation in the

battle over Myanmar’s future.

On Friday the UK and

seven other nations,

including the US, issued a

joint statement condeming

“abuses” by the Myanmar

military and raising concern

at the risk of “future violence

and atrocities”.

In Yangon, the country’s

largest city, the air crackles

with daily bomb blasts and as

night falls security forces put

up road blocks and

interrogate anyone left

outside.

Across the country, from

urban streets to rural

heartlands, mass peaceful

protests have turned to

armed resistance in the face

of a crackdown by military

rulers desperate to portray an

image of stability to lure back

foreign visitors and their hard

currency.

“Now is not the time to

visit Myanmar,” said Naing

Htoo Aung, secretary of the

defence ministry of the

country’s democratic

government in hiding, the

National Unity Government

(NUG), made up of MPs from

the deposed National League

for Democracy (NLD) and

their ethnic allies.

Speaking from an

undisclosed location, he said:

“We cannot protect visitors.

The junta could attack

tourists and blame the PDF.

Please come to visit our

country after our revolution.

We will welcome

international tourists when

times are peaceful, not now.”

Violence hit new peaks this

month as the Tatmadaw,

Myanmar’s military,

deployed forces to attack

dissident groups, and the

NUG launched Operation

Swallow, a campaign of rapid

hit-and-run attacks.

Earlier this month Thein

Aung, the chief financial

officer of Mytel, a military co-

owned telecom business, was

gunned down outside his

home near a tourist spot,

becoming the highest profile

casualty yet of an

assassination campaign

targeting regime officials and

associates. More than 200

junta-appointed district

administrators have been

killed and thousands have

quit their jobs under threat

from the PDF.

The NUG has also claimed

to have killed more than

1,000 soldiers in the past two

months and staged more than

400 attacks in Yangon alone

over that period.

At first after the February 1

coup, protesters pursued the

principles of non-violent

resistance long championed

by Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD

leader and Nobel peace prize

laureate, during her struggles

with previous regimes.

Demonstrators swamped

towns and cities after the first

protest was organised in

Mandalay on February 2 by

Tayzar San, a doctor and

community librarian, who

quickly became a

recognisable face on the

barricades, with his over-

sized glasses and powerful

rhetoric. “We opposed the

coup peacefully, but we were

met by bullets in return,” he

said last week. “We had no

choice but to pursue a

defensive war, a just war. Our

armed resistance is a product

of the coup. This is not a

power struggle between

parties or politicians. It’s a

struggle between justice and

injustice. The PDF and ethnic

armed organisations are our

heroes.”

Tayzar San last saw his wife

and baby daughter in early

February and moves between

safe houses. He is one of the

junta’s most wanted, playing

a key role in supporting the

civil disobedience movement

— strikes by state employees

designed to make the country

impossible to run.

The military has failed to

subdue the country, despite

superior manpower, Russian

and Chinese weaponry and a

bloody clampdown.

The most famous detainee

is Suu Kyi, 76, who is on trial

for offences ranging from

campaigning during the

pandemic to sedition and

corruption. A year ago Suu

Kyi and the NLD routed the

Tatmadaw’s proxy party in an

election landslide that the

generals later claimed was

the product of ballot box

fraud. On Tuesday she is

expected to receive the first

of a series of court verdicts.

The junta also recently

issued orders to “annihilate”

the PDF, including by

imposing “severe

punishment” on villagers that

have contact with their units.

But even as the Tatmadaw

tries to cow its foes, the

fugitive government is co-

ordinating efforts to exploit

low morale in junta forces by

wooing defectors. “This is a

very important part of NUG

strategy,” said Naing Htoo

Aung, the MP in hiding.

“They are leaving in

unprecedented numbers.”

The group has used

encrypted apps and

Facebook postings from

defectors to encourage

soldiers to break ranks.

“The Tatmadaw may have

greater strength in terms of

weaponry, but they don’t

have unity, integrity or public

support,” said Naing Htoo

Aung. “We urge the

international community to

stand with the NUG so we can

end this struggle.”

Rebels’ stealth attacks blow holes in Myanmar crackdown

Philip Sherwell Bangkok

NUG, the government in

hiding, is luring defectors

Garcia wants to return to Cuba one

day but fears it may amount to suicide

Éric Zemmour, the hard-

right pundit who has

broken into the French

presidential race,

responds to a heckler in

Marseille yesterday.

Zemmour, 63, had

described the city on his

two-day visit as

“disintegrated by

immigration”. He is

running second or third in

presidential polls but has

yet to formally announce

his candidacy.

ALL SIGNS

POINT TO A

ROUGH RACE

NICOLAS TUCAT/GETTY IMAGES