By Daniel Trotta
HAVANA, March 2 (Reuters) – Cuba’s Interior Ministry has arrested 10 Panamanian citizens for making signs with “subversive content,” saying on Monday they had been sent to Cuba from Panama by undisclosed patrons who promised to pay them for creating a disruption.
The arrests on Saturday followed another purported attempt at subversion announced by the Cuban government last week, when heavily armed Cuban exiles tried to infiltrate the country on a speedboat, resulting in a shootout with Cuban forces at sea that killed four assailants and wounded six others, who are in Cuban custody, officials said.
Both events occurred amid an economic and energy crisis in Cuba, with the U.S. imposing a virtual oil blockade on the Caribbean island, exacerbating fuel shortages and blackouts.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the Panamanians were arrested for “acts of propaganda against the Cuban constitutional order,” citing a Cuban law that carries a penalty of three to eight years in prison for “inciting against social order, international solidarity, or the socialist state.” The law bans distributing, creating or possessing such material, written or oral.
The Interior Ministry said the Panamanians gave statements saying they had been “instructed to enter Cuba to create signs with subversive content.”
“Once this objective was achieved, they were to leave the country and, upon their return to Panama, would receive a sum of money that, according to their initial statements, ranged between $1,000 and $1,500 each,” the Interior Ministry said.
The Panamanian embassy in Havana did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Such limits on expression have been cited by Cuban exiles for decades as part of the reason for imposing U.S. economic sanctions against the Communist government.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Havana, additional reporting by Anett Rios; Editing by David Gregorio)
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