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Cuba’s Anna Bensi and When the Hawk Fears the Dove

HAVANA TIMES – On this island, where official narratives are as tightly fitted as a corset and freedom of expression is practiced in secret, the figure of content creator Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known as Anna Bensi, is undoubtedly unusual.

She is a young woman of just 21 who, far from being a fleeting star in cyberspace, has become the protagonist of a real-life drama in which those in power appear as a hawk and she embodies the dove that, paradoxically, makes it afraid.

When she writes on social media, the innocent-looking young woman with long curls displays more courage and dignity than people twice her age.

Now she and her mother will go on trial, accused of violating personal and family privacy following a complaint allegedly filed by the police officer who showed up in plain clothes at their apartment on March 10 of this year to deliver a State Security summons addressed to her mother.

The messenger claims he was wronged because he was recorded while delivering the document, and under Article 393 of Cuba’s current Penal Code, this act “against personal and family privacy” is punishable by two to five years in prison.

As a result, both women were placed under house arrest and prohibited from leaving the country.

For this same reason, the young woman has already been summoned to the police station twice, most recently in July, when she was interrogated for more than 10 hours and emerged from the station in tears because of the pressure she had endured.

Another reason for this latest “interview” at the police station was that Anna planned to........

© Havana Times