Prisoners Defenders – dwkcommentaries

More Cuban Comments on J11 Anniversary

Michel Suarez, a journalist for Los Puntos a Las ies, offered the following comments on the third anniversary of J11.[1]

“Three years after the historic protests of July 11 and 12, 2021 in Cuba , the living conditions of imprisoned protesters have worsened, in a scenario of blackouts, lack of food and more repression , activists and journalists denounced in the program Los Puntos a las Íes , from DIARIO DE CUBA.”

“There are more complaints about mistreatment and retaliation for having denounced the conditions in prison, and the State has not undertaken any procedure to review the processes and violations of guarantees that occurred during the trials and the subsequent sanction,” said Laritza Diversent, executive director of Cubalex.”

“Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders, noted that between July 2021 and June 2024, his organization counted 2,331 political prisoners in Cuba, with 1,573 new additions to the list during the three years.”

“’Over the past 12 months, the trend has continued with more than 15 new people being imprisoned each month , so the list continues to grow and repression is increasing in Cuba without any apparent restraint.’ the activist denounced.’

“Journalist Waldo Fernández Cuenca described the current situation as ‘very complicated, because there is still a lot of repression.’ He recalled that ‘many relatives do not want to talk to the press, because they are still afraid and do not want to report.’”

“Cubalex announced the upcoming publication of a study on retaliation against prisoners and their families for reporting abuses from prison . ‘There is a significant increase compared to 2022,’ Diversent said.”

“For Fernández Cuenca, the international reaction has been ‘forceful, especially from democratic countries,’ but Diversent considered that ‘there is still much to do, because the international community still does not have enough information to provide such solidarity.’”

“Assessing the provisional repressive data for the first half of 2024, offered by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights – 1,792 repressive actions, of which 432 were arbitrary arrests – Waldo Fernández considered that ‘the conditions are in place for another social outbreak’.”

“’This has always been there after July 11, and it has been seen with protests in Nuevitas, Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Matanzas, Caimanera… And now, if the blackouts and chronic shortages continue, there will be new protests.’ warned the journalist.”

“At the end of the program, [Laritza] Diversent said that in Cuba ‘we are facing a humanitarian crisis’ due to the State’s demonstrated inability to resolve the basic problems of the population.”

“’People will go out to seek sustenance and demand that the government resolve their situation. If they cannot do so through official channels, protest is the only remedy left to them,’ said the director of Cubalex.”

Other Comments

Several Cuban and international civil society organizations said that “more than 650 Cubans remain in prison for [the J11 protests]. And this April “the Cuban regime threatened “to apply severe sanctions, including the death penalty” to people who promoted or participated in demonstrations.[2]

Juan Antonio Blanco says that “this great national rebellion “showed that the majority of the [Cuban] population rejected a failed and repressive regime. The idea that the people lived happily in that society was a fabricated fallacy exported to the world. . . . The great lesson that was reiterated on July 11 is that nothing is achieved from a dictatorship without confronting it. . . J11 brought about—finally—the long-delayed approval of MSMEs . . . [and] led the government to consider that by facilitating a mass exodus to the US it would get rid of all the rioters and even reap financial benefits.” . . . [Yet] the regime has not metabolized the essence of the new phenomenon that it is facing” and [all] the country’s laws have been strengthened to penalize the slightest expression of opposition, but also of dissent. . . . To gain governability, the only thing that could be done is to change the governance regime, the system of government that has ruled until today and that remains basically totalitarian.” [3]

Emilio Morales says Cuba “has been in a state of war economy for more than six decades; it is not something that suddenly emerged at the last minute. The war economy is the very essence of the system, it is its genetic basis, it is the matrix of control that dictator Fidel Castro implemented since the triumph of the revolution in 1959 and that has lasted from then until today. It was the most effective way to achieve citizen control. Very simple: it was necessary to eliminate all sources of wealth creation in the hands of citizens, take control of them in their entirety and find someone to blame for the economic debacle that would follow.”[4]

Now, according to Morales, “the Cuban economy is a disaster, its industries are in ruins, its banks are bankrupt, the state enterprise is totally decapitalized, foreign investment is scarce . . . more than 80% of the population lives in poverty, the country practically does not export because it does not produce. The productive forces are gagged by the system, by a legal system that does not allow free enterprise and limits the generation of wealth by citizens. Today the country depends on imports of products and raw materials, but does not have the financing to maintain them, because it has lost its lines of credit for not paying its external debt with creditors. This, added to the debacle of agricultural production has led to a deep shortage of products that has generated the worst inflationary crisis in the history of the country.”

Morales concludes, “The only way to stop the inflationary explosion and all the ills that plague the country’s economy is to get out of this parasitic and hegemonic system under which the Castro family has been exploiting Cubans and stealing the country’s wealth for 65 years.”

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[1] Suarez, Third anniversary of 11J: ‘The only remedy in Cuba is protest,’ Diario de Cuba (July 9, 2024).

[2] More than 650 Cubans remain in prison for the 11 J protests, three years later, Diario de Cuba (July 12, 2024).

[3] Blanco, Cuba, three years after 11J, Diario de Cuba ( July 11, 2024)

[4] Morales, ‘War economy’: the Cuban regime’s psychological torture mechanism, Diario de Cuba (July 12, 2024).

Cuban Reactions to Anniversary of 7/11/21 Protests

“There are still hundreds of participants serving sentences despite calls from democratic governments, the Vatican, the UN, Amnesty International and other international organizations, and in the midst of a political-economic context much worse than the one that caused that outbreak.”[1]

Yet “protests in Cuba do not cease. The last year has left other large-scale demonstrations in Bayamo, Granma; in Carreta del Morro, José Martí District and El Cobre, in Santiago de Cuba and in Santa Marta, Matanzas, during the days of March 17 and 18 , which also ended with arrests, although in a smaller number. In these protests, cries provoked by the current crisis were heard, such as ‘Food and medicine,’ ‘We are hungry,’ ‘Current,’ but there were also cries against the regime, such as ‘Down with the dictatorship,’ ‘Down with communism,’ ‘Down with Díaz-Canel,’ ‘Freedom’ and ‘Homeland and Life.’”

“Many of the reasons from July 2021 are still valid and, as of 2024, others continue to appear, such as inflation and the accelerated deterioration of basic services, so that both inside and outside the Island, other outbreaks similar to those of 11J are predicted. The regime knows this, and that is why it holds more than 600 political prisoners for demonstrating on that date and is particularly cruel to those who have a greater media reach due to their activism. This is the case of the leaders of opposition projects Félix Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer, the Ladies in White Sissi Abascal and Saily Navarro, the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara or the dissident Lizandra Góngora.”

“According to an analysis published in DIARIO DE CUBA, there is a pattern of denial of parole and suspension of correctional labor with arbitrary confinement imposed by the political authorities of the regime against the 11J prisoners. For many of these political prisoners and their families, the inequality in the treatment received by a person convicted of a common crime, regardless of the crime committed or the or the consequences produced, and a person convicted for political reasons is inexplicable.”

“In this regard, the former president of the Provincial Court of Villa Clara and member of the DIARIO DE CUBA team, Edel González Jiménez, maintains that “the subordination of the judicial system to the political power of the Island is the fundamental cause of the denial of the right to release prisoners, who are victims of the phenomenon of criminalization for political reasons.”

“The regime has also punished the relatives of political prisoners who have been tireless in the fight for the freedom of their loved ones and in denouncing the injustices, torture and mistreatment that the 11J prisoners have received. In conversation with DIARIO DE CUBA, several of these relatives tell how their lives have changed since then and how they see the situation in the country three years after the outbreak of July 11, 2021.”

“In the last three years, organizations such as Justicia 11J, Prisoners Defenders, and the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights have documented that between 963 and 1,113 people are detained for political reasons. Of these, at least 671 remain in prison for their participation in the July 11, 2021 protests.”

One of the parents of Jorge and Nadir Perdomo, imprisoned in different prisons without adequate medical care, said, “I think the protests on July 11 were something basic due to the situation that existed at that time during the pandemic, the power that was constantly going out, the neighbor who was dying, it was something very sad. At this moment, the current situation can also lead to protests due to the need for food and medicine in the country . Right now we are suffering from another epidemic in the country, and also the lack of power and everything else. Something that can make the protests return.”

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[1] ‘Too much injustice, too much abuse’: Three years after 7/11, Cuban prisons remain full and the streets are getting worse, Diario de Cuba (07/11/24).

Cuba Fails To Respond to U.N. Requests for Information on Alleged Violations of Religious Freedom

On January 15, 2024, the Cuban NGO Prisoners Defenders announced that the Cuban Government had failed to respond to requests for information from five U.N. rapporteurs on the following subjects: (1) freedom of religion or belief, Nazila Ghanea; (2) promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan; (3) rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule; (4) minority issues, Nicolas Levrat, and (5) arbitrary detention. [1]

The requests focused on the regime’s alleged repression and harassment against 13 Cuban religious associations and leaders. Here is information on some of these subjects:

Ifá priest Loreto Hernandez Garcia, who has been “systematically detained and interrogated from 2011 to the present” and who in 2022 was sentenced to seven years in prison for the crimes of public disorder and contempt, due to his participation in the anti-government protests known as 11J. In prison he has suffered several health problems.
Imam Abu Duyanah (Niovel Alexander Tamayo Formén) has been “subjected to house arrest, as well as monitoring, harassment, summonses, threats and arbitrary arrests due to his activity as a religious leader… detained… when he participated in a role of spiritual accompaniment in a peaceful demonstration,”
Other religious people persecuted, threatened and prevented from propagating their beliefs are the Catholic priest José Castor Álvarez Devesa and evangelical pastors Elier Muir Ávila and Minerva Burgos López.

The subjects of the requested information were (a) the specific cases mentioned in the report; (b) “the measures adopted to guarantee freedom of religion or belief in Cuba, as well as its exercise in conditions of full freedom and security for all religious communities and confessions, without facing harassment, threats or reprisals for exercising such right;” (c) “the measures adopted to guarantee the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in Cuba, especially with regard to the existence and registration of groups of a religious nature, the establishment of their centers of worship and the celebration of their rites and ceremonies;” (d) an explanation “how the action procedures of the Office of Attention to Religious Affairs guarantee the creation and registration of religious associations under objective parameters provided for in the legislation; and (e) measures to create favorable conditions for people belonging to religious minorities in the country.”

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[1] The regime ignores a UN request for information on violations of religious freedom in Cuba, Diario de Cuba (Jan. 15, 2023); Prisoners Defenders, The UN accuses the Cuban regime of the government’s pattern of institutional religious control and repression against Islam and the Catholic, Protestant and Yoruba religions (Jan. 15, 2024).

Former Cuban Judge Criticizes Cuban Legal System

On January 13, Edel González Jiménez, a former high-ranking Cuban judge who left the island in 2018 and now lives in Peru, told a press conference in Madrid, Spain about the many problems in Cuba’s legal system. Other details were added by Javier Larrondo, the president of Prisoners Defenders and a longtime anti- Castro activist.[1]

González Jiménez’s Comments

Based upon recently released Cuban government secret documents, González said the Cuban government is holding thousands of inmates on dubious charges and has the highest incarceration rate in the world. These records show that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. (Previously the Cuban government had only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed.)

“What is important is what is behind those numbers,” Mr. González said. “People are in prison for stealing flour, because they are pizza makers and the government has set up a system where the only way to get flour is by buying in the black market from someone who stole it from the state.”

González said that Cuba’s judiciary was often controlled by state security forces that can manufacture cases against political opponents. “What happens, for example, when an issue has a political nature? Well then there is fear [by the judges of losing their jobs]. And that fear . . .can have a negative impact on justice” by “judges, fearful of losing their jobs, go along with evidence that is often flagrantly concocted.”

In ordinary criminal cases, however, judges are independent and free of government influence. González added, “I never received, in 17 years, any interference from either the [Communist Party of Cuba] or the Government.”

“The repression that I am seeing against some of my people is not what I want for my people. I have a lot of fear about the future. Every day Cubans face more fear. I don’t want blood on the streets of Cuba, I don’t want these imprisonments.”

González Jiménez also said that the majority of the Cuban people “unconditionally had accepted the system implemented by Havana more than 60 years ago.” Therefore, “the only thing we are asking for is that in the field of human rights, whether through mercy, it is understood that we have to work on the issue and that we have to take steps forward.” Indeed, “there are countless government officials who have a high sensitivity, who know that these human rights issues are hitting them and are delegitimizing even the country’s own image.” Such officials, however, are held back by their “own internal fear.”

González also raised a proposal for “national internal inclusive dialogue” between the State, opponents, dissidents and social sectors for the regulation of fundamental rights in the Cuban legal system.

Still, Mr. González insisted that there was time for Cuba to resolve its problems internally, and he warned against any outside interference. “We will not allow anybody to impose anything, that should be clear to all countries. Cubans can manage this alone without any kind of interference,” he said. This process “must be “sovereign, free and transparent.”

Mr. González also cautioned against coming to the conclusion that the high number of prisoners in Cuba was proof of a failed society and judiciary. Other countries, he said, had fewer prisoners, but that reflected a high level of “impunity” and failure to prosecute common and violent crime, while Cuba instead “maintains social order.”

Javier Larrondo’s Comments

Another participant in the press conference was Javier Larrondo, who runs an organization called Prisoners Defenders in Madrid, and who publicly announced his call for the Cuban government to respect civil rights.

“This [press conference] is an important blow to the regime,” Mr. Larrondo said.

Mr. Larrondo released Cuban court documents showing that dozens of men received sentences between two and four years in prison for offenses falling broadly under the category of “antisocial” — a phrase that can be applied to people who are unemployed, who do not belong to civic organizations associated with the state, who behave disorderly and harass tourists, and who associate with similarly “antisocial” people. In case after case, the description of the crime is identical, said Larrondo, suggesting that the police cut and pasted the language in the investigative report.

Cuban Prisoners Defenders and Civil Right Defenders reported that more than 90,000 people were in prison on the Island , where about 99% of the citizens tried are found guilty. In addition, Larrondo and Erik Jennische, director for Latin America of Civil Rights Defenders, said that in Cuba there are 37,458 people “in other situations of judicial and police control,” which gives a total of 127,458 convicted. That is an imposing number of people who, as their “first criminal sanction, are being deprived of liberty, something of extreme rigor, and really unusual in most criminal systems” and who are less likely go obtain early release.

This analysis of the data showed that Cuba is “the first country for (number of) persons deprived of liberty in the world”, taking into account its population of 11 million inhabitants. The Island would be ahead of the U.S., El Salvador and Turkmenistan, whose data has been published by the World Prison Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research.

In the files of prisoners obtained and published by the organizations (with the identity of the condemned hidden) elements are repeated such as lack of labor ties with the so-called mass organizations (controlled by the regime), being “prone to crime” for associating with “similar people,” practicing the “siege of tourism” and altering public order, as arguments to condemn citizens to sentences of up to three years in prison for an alleged “danger index. “This formula, known as “pre-criminal social danger,” frequently has been applied to opponents and other critical citizens of the Government to remove them from the streets.

This accusatory procedure “is frequently used for its speed and efficiency against dissidents, entrepreneurs and any type of person who is considered an urgent danger to the regime, which entails not only preventive detention, but very summary processes that prevent the proper exercise of the defense.”

The previously mentioned documents, according to the New York Times, showed that approximately 92 percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having a committed a crime.

Conclusion

Last year, Mr. González’s former boss, Rubén Remigio Ferro, president of the Cuban Supreme Court, told the state newspaper, Granma that although the administration of justice on the island is improving, “deficiencies” still exist, such as trial delays, misguided decisions and a lack of professionalism. More recently President Miguel Díaz-Canel told judges while inaugurating the new judicial calendar that the courts must “remain a system that is distinguished first and foremost by its ethics, its transparency and the honest behavior of its members.”

From this blogger’s U.S. perspective, González’s career as a judge and his professed support for the Cuban Revolution should give these criticisms greater weight for Cuban officials. On the other hand, it was surprising there was no mention of at least a partial explanation of Cuban prosecution of individuals for “antisocial” behavior. Cuba knows that the much more powerful U.S. has a long history of hostility towards Cuba and has recruited some Cubans to engage in activities critical of the Cuban regime. Therefore, it arguably could be a matter of self-defense for the regime to arrest at least some of these individuals.

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[1] Robles, Ex-Judge Reveals Secrets of How Cuba Suppresses Dissent, N.Y. times (Jan. 13, 2020); 8,400 Cubans Serve Time for “Pre-Criminal Social Dangerousness,” Civil Rights Defenders (Jan. 13, 2020); In Cuba ‘the fear’ of judges threatens justice, says a lawyer, Diario de Cuba (Jan. 14, 2020); Cuba’s police state exposed:’an important blow to the regime,’ Democracy Digest (Jan. 14, 2020); González: “Many high-ranking officials of the Cuban government are hurt by repression against dissent,” Archyde (Jan. 13, 2020). González also gave an extensive interview to ABC International, but the English translation is difficult to follow. (Gavińa, Edel González: “Many high-ranking officials of the Cuban government are hurt by repression against dissent,” ABC International (Jan. 14, 2020).)