Versión Español
EspañolA hundred victims of Hurricane Irma protested the lack of official attention and aid in Cuba this week.
A group of demonstrators were reportedly supposed to be move about 18 miles from their current shelter to Ceballos 9, but they said they refused to move even if special forces came to make them.
“We will not go,” the people there were heard saying. “Let the special forces come here and bring everything they have. We won’t leave.”
It looked as if the protest was going to prove successful when officials delayed in moving the demonstrators, but eventually they were transferred, and so they began protesting again. They reportedly cut off traffic to one street, complaining about poor conditions such as flooding up to their ankles.
“I am 105 years old and I have never seen an atrocity as bad as what they did to us here,” one victim, who chose to remain anonymous, said. “Children without food, they take away the light, we are abandoned. Last night we were flooded again, and nobody does anything about it, not the government … nobody is taking responsibility for fixing the situation, and they sell the donations that people send … all they care about is tourism and collecting millions of pesos.”
“The children are getting wet, not eating, they don’t want to give us anything,’ another victim said. “Everything they say is a lie. Last night, we had to spend the night practically without sleep because we were flooded. They want to send us to the houses with just some cardboard, despite all of the goods that have been donated from other countries.”
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“There are sick people, asthmatic children, they don’t go to school. It’s really bad,” another victim said.
Protests demanding a solution to problems such as food, water and electricity shortages have popped up in several parts of the country after Hurricane Irma destroyed thousands of homes and collapsed the electrical and water supplies.
Sources: Cubanet, Cibercuba, Martí Noticias.
