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Cuban Christian influencer Anna Bensi hit back at the island’s State Security on Saturday, a day after she said plainclothes agents and police patrol cars kept her and her mother, Caridad Silvente, under siege at their Havana apartment building.
“Dear State Security: you know perfectly well that everyone you arrested and harassed yesterday is a good person. You know perfectly well that it is not a crime to think differently and to say so,” Bensi wrote on X.
Her post referred to Friday, Nov. 6, when, according to Bensi, State Security mounted “a huge operation” against activists, journalists and others who expose the reality of life in Cuba. That same day, Christian content creator Alfredito Fominaya was detained in Havana. He later described his interrogation on video.
Bensi and her mother are already serving a two-year “limitation of freedom” sentence, handed down Oct. 1, for filming and posting a video of a police officer who came to their door in March. The penalty restricts their movements but does not put them behind bars.
‘Your time is coming to an end’
The post, which opens with the line “Christ has already won,” speaks to the agents directly. “The only criminals here are you,” she wrote, adding that “your time is coming to an end.”
She vowed the pressure would not break up the circle of activists who stand by one another: “And you also know perfectly well that you won’t be able to split up that ‘little group’ that bothers you so much, because we are united by the One who HAS ALREADY WON.”
“The more you try to hurt us, the more we will come together and support each other. And the result of your actions will be the exposure of your own wickedness,” she wrote.
Faith runs through the message. Bensi wrote that no dictatorship or ideology can stop the protection, hope, peace and joy she believes come from the Holy Spirit. Then came the warning: “I hope God touches your hearts and that you can repent. Even so, justice will come upon you, whether you like it or not.”
To her followers, she wrote: “Change for Cuba IS COMING, and God will be at the center of that process.” She urged them to keep “your eyes on Christ and not on any man.”
Nurses, street vendors and a baker with no bread
Bensi said the surveillance began early and that every entrance and exit of her building was watched until nightfall. That day, she wrote, she missed a parade at the U.S. Embassy’s cultural center in Havana.
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What she did see “parading” past her building all day, she joked, were people she believes were doing State Security’s bidding by keeping an eye on her: nurses, and vendors selling torticas, rosquitas and bleach. Torticas are Cuban shortbread cookies, and rosquitas are small ring-shaped pastries.
“I mean, a baker walked by and he wasn’t even carrying one loaf of bread,” she wrote. She said the scene made her laugh hard.
The jokes did not hide her frustration. Bensi said it was painful not to be able to stand with other activists who were summoned that day:
“It was hard for me not to be able to support some of the people they summoned in person. And I could barely do it online, because communications, as you know, are horrible,” she wrote on X.
She said she felt helpless. “We all know how perverse and abusive they can be,” she wrote. She called what the agents did with the posts denouncing the injustices, as the news came in, “ridiculous and illegal.”
Anna Bensi and her mother say they were under siege from Friday morning
On Friday, Bensi posted on X that she and her mother were surrounded at their building in Havana.
“MY MOM AND I HAVE BEEN UNDER SIEGE SINCE THIS MORNING. There are plainclothes agents at every exit of my building, and there are patrol cars on Calle Ancha,” she wrote at the time.
Bensi did not identify the agents. Cubanos por el Mundo has not been able to independently confirm the deployment.
Sentenced for filming a cop
On Oct. 1, the Municipal People’s Court of Habana del Este convicted Bensi and Silvente of “acts against personal and family privacy” and sentenced both women to two years of limitation of freedom.
The case grew out of a video the two recorded and posted on March 10, when an officer came to their home in Alamar to hand Silvente a State Security summons. Interrogations and house arrest followed, and the case was reopened after the officer himself filed a criminal complaint against them.
The Cuban Observatory for Freedom of Expression (OCLE), part of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP), called the case retaliation for free speech and demanded that the conviction be thrown out.
Under the sentence, mother and daughter cannot change their address or leave their municipality or province without a judge’s permission, and they must report to the court whenever they are called.
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