HRW: Communist Regime in Cuba Represses and Punishes Virtually All Kinds of Dissidence

The communist regime that governs Cuba for more than 60 years continues to repress and punish virtually all types of dissent and public criticism on the island, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced in its 2022 world report.

The section on Cuba of the usual annual study on the global state of human rights highlights the brutal repression carried out in the country after the massive and spontaneous anti-government protests of July 11, the largest in decades.

The NGO collects more than a thousand arrests of protesters, mostly peaceful; systematic and arbitrary arrests of activists, artists and journalists motivated by intimidation; as well as sites of dissidents in their homes.

He mentions at this point the arrests of members of the dissident collectives of artists San Isidro, 27N and Archipiélago, as well as people related to the protest song “homeland and life”, converted into an anthem of the July demonstrations because it paraphrased the motto of the revolution “Country or Death” and criticized the repression in the country.

In this last group of imprisoned activists are Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo “El Osorbo”, who appeared in the video of “homeland and life”.

The report also highlights the detention of political prisoners, their processing without judicial guarantees, the disproportionate sentences and the use of summary trials after the July 11 protests, in which a Justice subordinate in practice to the Executive acted.

HRW especially denounces the case of the opposition José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Cuban Patriotic Union, a party considered illegal in Cuba. He was arrested on July 11 on his way to the demonstration.

Ferrer was sentenced in August to more than four years in prison, considering a court that did not “strictly respect the laws” or have a “honest attitude towards work”, sufficient reasons for imprisonment in his situation, because he was already serving a previous sentence -“arbitrary”, according to HRW- of “liberty restrictions” for assault.

Likewise, the report criticizes the restrictions on the right to information and freedom of the press and expression, tightened in the middle of last year with a new cybersecurity law. The NGO recalls that independent journalism is still prohibited on the island.

It also notes that “journalists, bloggers, social media influencers, artists and academics who publish information deemed critical” with the government are routinely subjected to “threats, violence, smear campaigns, movement restrictions, internet outages, cyberbullying, home and office searches, confiscation of work material and arbitrary arrests”.

It also accounts for the limitations on freedom of movement to enter or leave the country for activists, journalists and dissidents.

For its part, the EFE agency reported that the decisions of the Cuban authorities in recent months have decimated the team of its correspondent in Havana, where currently only two journalists can continue to carry out their work. Efe hopes to be able to recover its informative capacity on the island in the coming days.