Jorge FERNÁNDEZ ERA
Journalist and author Jorge Fernández Era continued to be subject to judicial harassment in 2024, mainly in retaliation for the humorous weekly column he writes for the magazine La Joven Cuba. (See Case List 2023/2024).
During the year, Fernández Era was the target of multiple arrests and other forms of harassment by State Security. He reported being informed verbally by police in January that a case against him lodged in 2023 had been dismissed, but that he had never received formal notification. On 18 April 2024, he reported being surveilled when leaving and returning to his house. On 19 May 2024, he reported harassment by the same officers who had surveilled him the previous month, who attempted to prevent him from leaving his home without due legal process. On 18 August 2024, the writer was detained for a few hours after announcing on Facebook his intention to hold a peaceful protest in Havana's Central Park. The following month, Fernández Era was summoned for interrogation by State Security, on 18 September 2024. This summons came shortly after he resigned from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) in solidarity with the expulsion of academic Alina Bárbara López Hernández (see below). This pattern of harassment and intimidation is connected to the monthly peaceful demonstrations called by López Hernández to demand democratic reform and an end to censorship. PEN International called for an end to his harassment.
Author of four books of short stories such as Cincuenta cuentos de nuestro Era (Fifty Stories of our Era) and Cada cual a lo mío. Humor en bruto para gente no tan bruta (Each to my own. Raw humour for not-so-raw people), Jorge Fernández Era, born in 1962, graduated in journalism from the University of Havana. He has worked in various Cuban cultural institutions and has won more than 20 prizes in national and international journalism and literature competitions, including First Prize in the Dinosaurio International MiniStory Competition, which he won twice, and the Aquelarre National Humorous Literature Prize, which he won for ten years.