Cuba prosecutes 11J protesters between secrecy and with requests for up to 20 years in prison

For crimes such as urging public disorder, contempt, resistance, attack, outrage against the symbols of the country and even sedition, that carry sentences of between 15, 18 and 20 years in prison, the hundreds of Cubans detained for the unprecedented demonstrations of July 11, 2021 are being tried, the largest anti-government protests in decades, spontaneous and massive linked to the serious economic crisis that the island is going through.

Local organizations have revealed that this week there will be 45 courts, with at least two under 18 years of age, and several NGOs warn about the lack of guarantees and fabrication of evidence in the processes. In Cuba, the minimum criminal age is 16 years.

The Justice 11J collective assures that this week there will be three trials, which are held in Mayabeque and Havana. The largest of the processes will take place in the Municipal Court of October 10 of Havana, where 23 people with requests for up to 20 years in prison will be tried in a common cause.

Hermeticism in processes

The precise day is not known since the Cuban judicial authorities do not usually report on legal processes, which the official media do not report on either. In addition, there is a lot of secrecy since the hearings are not public and the international media have no possibility of covering them.

Just as the number of people arrested and prosecuted for the demonstrations that erupted with the cry of “We are hungry” and “Freedom” and that caused one death and dozens of injuries is not known.

“What is happening right now in Cuba is a violation of the human rights of those people who have had the courage and self-determination to express themselves and there are no legal guarantees so that these processes can be carried out with absolute transparency and security,” says Dayana. León, Cuban journalist and professor at the University of the Americas.

León says that social networks have become a mechanism for knowing beyond what is happening on the island and that this is a strong indication of how guarantees are being affected in Cuba.

It refers that “the Cuban model must be reviewed and transformed and must have the international principles of the guarantee of what a true democracy is, with freedom, without coherence and without the involvement of various functions of the State within the guarantees of public opinion” .

Adalberto Mesa, coordinator in Ecuador of the movement We are more Cuba, agrees that the internet and social networks make it easier to know what is happening on the island and mean that the dictatorship has fewer and fewer options left.

Regime seeks to demonstrate its capacity for repression

“The practice of terror in Cuba is long-standing, it has been going on for more than six decades, and with these trials what is being tried is to exemplify the repressive power of the country so that the demonstrations are not successive,” says Mesa.

The activist adds that with these trials, the Government also demonstrates its capacity for repression with detainees in hostile conditions in maximum security prisons and that they can be worse for those who are convicted of sedition.

Mesa mentions that all those who went out to protest did so in search of change and against a government that has nothing to offer. “Our people are tired of hunger, misery, repression and not being allowed to even demonstrate their disagreement in a peaceful way,” he says.

However, the Cuban judicial authorities assure that international instruments are strictly complied with, deny that these are political processes and emphasize that they judge only violent crimes and acts of vandalism.

The president of the People’s Supreme Court, Rubén Remigio, made an indirect reference to the processes at the beginning of the judicial year at the beginning of the week, assuring that, despite the pandemic, the Cuban Justice has been able to continue prosecuting those who “committed acts of vandalism , violent attacks against authorities and officials, and other serious criminal acts.”

The Cuban Executive He has also denied that these are trials of a political nature. The country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, recently assured that “there are no political prisoners” on the island and that Cubans “can demonstrate freely” against the revolution.

However, according to Prisoners Defenders, a Spanish NGO that defends human rights in Cuba, at least 842 people were in prison on the island for political reasons at the end of 2021, in most cases for the events of July 11. . Among them, the NGO assures that there are 26 minors between 14 and 17 years old.

For its part, the Cuban NGO Cubalex has identified in its latest count a total of 1,377 detainees as a result of July 11 and another 94 for the frustrated protest of November 15. Of these, 727 (of which 15 are minors) are still under arrest. Another 361 have been tried in summary or ordinary proceedings.

The NGO Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) recently denounced to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) the situation of 39 children under 21 years of age “imprisoned in Cuba for protesting peaceably”.

International intervention is considered necessary

Given the complex situation, León states that it is necessary for the United Nations Human Rights Council to intervene and also to establish a complaint process for these situations.

“The Cuban population needs to have guarantees… those of us who are abroad have decided to tell what is happening and we are afraid for our relatives who are still in the country,” he stresses.

The academic also mentions that given what is happening on the island, it is necessary to return to the issue of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in force since 1966, which states that all peoples have the right to self-determination, but that it is also necessary that people can exercise rights and freedoms and file when these resources have not been generated.

For his part, Mesa says that all Cubans in exile seek to give continuity to what is denounced from the island and regarding the intervention of international organizations, he mentions that many times they turn a “deaf ear” to what is happening in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela. (I)