Cuba: 125 opponents condemned

Cuban Prisoners Defenders Report, September 1, 2019:

PRISONERS DEFENDERS UPDATES ITS LIST OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

• The September 1, 2019 list of Cuban Prisoners Defenders casts 125 political convicts as opposed to the regime.
• 15 opponents of the list have already been named Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty International, 5 of them last August.
• More than 10,000 Cubans, not affiliated with opposition organizations, are currently convicted of “pre-criminal” accusations, without associated crime, for their disaffection and critical status with the system.

Political prisoners recognized in opposition to the Castro regime: August 1, 2019

We recognize in CPD, as of September 1, 2019, 125 political convicts by opposition to the regime, in addition to another 10 thousand convictions against civilians not belonging to opposition organizations for charges referred to in the Criminal Code as “pre-criminal”, about which we discuss in section 2 of this press release.

The 125 condemned among opposition organizations are divided into Convicts of Conscience, Condemned of Conscience and Political Prisoners of other categories. The classification of these is as follows:

Convicts of Conscience

71 Convicts of Conscience, that are prisoners deprived of liberty solely for reasons of conscience, with accusations either completely and proven false or fabricated, or of a non-criminal nature and absolutely of thought. 5 of them have been named Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty International on August 27, indicating this organization that they have only issued an opinion on a sample of the 71 Convicts of Conscience of Prisoners Defenders, but giving credit that the rest could also be given the result of the sample. The five are Josiel Guía Piloto (PRC), Mitsael Díaz Paseiro (FNRC-OZT), Silverio Portal Contreras (previously linked to various organizations but now independent), Edilberto Ronal Arzuaga Alcalá (UNPACU) and Eliécer Bandera Barreras (UNPACU). This past August the regime has imprisoned Cristian Pérez Carmenate, revoking his extra-jail condemnation. Against Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces, lawyer, independent journalist and poet, Patmos Prize for Religious Freedom in Cuba, the Guantanamo Provincial Court ratified a sentence of deprivation of liberty of one year, in the modality of correctional work with internment, for showing solidarity with a marriage of evangelical pastors sent to prison for educating their children on science, languages and humanities in their home, far from the manipulation of the Castroist indoctrinated schools. The regime has notified him that on September 12 he must appear in prison to begin serving his sentence. We request that diplomatic efforts be carried out from abroad so that this peaceful defender of the free press and human rights does not have to enter prison. Ismael Boris Reñi has been prosecuted and convicted of false crimes of Contempt to two years in prison on August 29.

Among those convicted of conscience are 4 inmates for whom the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has granted Precautionary Measures of International Protection: Iván Amaro Hidalgo, Josiel Guía Piloto, Jesús Alfredo Pérez Rivas and Edilberto Ronal Arzuaga Alcalá. Another 2 Convicts of Conscience and one Condemned of Conscience are being monitored and defended by the United Nations Arbitrary Detention Working Group. They are Iván Amaro Hidalgo, Josiel Guía Piloto, and the Condemned of Conscience who spent more than a year in prison and is now under domicile under threats, Marbel Mendoza Reyes.

Condemned of Conscience

24 Condemned of Conscience, that they are condemned who suffer forced domiciliary work, measures of limitation of freedom or parole under threats, and that the regime, in addition, usually revokes and reinserts in prison if the activist does not cease in his pro-democratic activity. Such is the case of the revocation and deprivation of liberty of Cristian Pérez Carmenate. We reiterate the threats that these condemned activists suffer, which is why it is surprisingly common for them to go back to prison after obtaining extra-prison measures, unless they submit to the political and conscientious dictates of the authorities. María Caridad (Karina) Gálvez Chiu has left this list of Condemned of Conscience and is in Uruguay, forced by the authorities to leave the island in the face of constant condemnation and retaliation, becoming another Forced Expatriation for the regime, whose the objective is to reduce the list of convicts and condemned forcing the expulsion of critics from the country, without the international community publicly even denouncing these practices of official expulsion for reasons of conscience.

José Daniel Ferrer, prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, like others in this group of condemned prisoners, are routinely detained, raided their homes, and all these situations occur without any charge or accusation, therefore on illegal and arbitrary basis. On August 27, José Daniel Ferrer suffered another violent episode of raid, robbery of his family belongings and violent detention with firearms, that police did not hesitate to put in his temple, for the umpteenth time in this 2019, being the fact condemned by Amnesty International and other actors in the defense of human rights. UNPACU has suffered this year 2019 dozens of lodging raids, where the “authorities” steal from computer equipment and books, to food, cutlery, chairs, tables and all kinds of personal belongings.

Other political prisoners

30 other political prisoners, not in the previous categories, in which there have been no releases or premature pardons, and among those are the highest sentences and prisoners with longer periods of sentences served in the jails of the Cuban regime.

10,000 prisoners of conscience for convictions named in the Criminal Code as “pre-criminal”

Prisoners Defenders also recognizes 10 thousand people who are Convicted or Condemned of Conscience for Pre-Criminal Security Measures, with penalties of 1 to 4 years. This figure was obtained by interpolation of two methods. On the one hand, two prisons have been censored and the percentage of these sentences established, and on the other hand the information has been confirmed with an internal source of the highest level of the regime.These measures, up to 4 years in prison, are applied through articles of the Criminal Code that are infamous and violate the most basic principles of justice adopted by the entire International Community and explicitly prohibited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These items are:

“ARTICLE 72. The special proclivity in which a person is found to commit crimes is considered a dangerous state, demonstrated by the behavior observed in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality.

ARTICLE 76. 1. Security measures may be decreed to prevent the commission of crimes or on the occasion of their commission. In the first case they are called pre-criminal security measures, and in the second, post-criminal security measures.

…

ARTICLE 78. To the declared in dangerous state in the corresponding process, the pre-criminal security measure can be imposed

…

ARTICLE 80. 1. Reeducational measures are: a) internment in a specialized work or study establishment [prison]; b) delivery to a work group, for the control and orientation of the subject’s behavior in a dangerous state. 2. Reeducational measures apply to antisocial individuals. 3. The term of these measures is one year minimum and four maximum. ”

The legitimacy for the application of the previous precepts is determined arbitrarily according to the criteria of the judges and without ordinary criminal proceedings with the right to defense, summarily, according to the provisions of the Law of Criminal Procedure of Cuba, in its Article 404 and in its article 415, where it expressly indicates the summary process:

‘’ARTICLE 404. It is the responsibility of the Popular Municipal Courts to know the Pre-criminal Danger Indices and the imposition of security measures established in each case by the substantive Criminal Law. ’’

“ARTICLE 415. The declaration of the index of pre-criminal danger of antisocial conduct, is summarily decided …”

Forced Expatriations

In addition to the MASSIVE use of pre-criminal convictions to control the disaffected and critical population, the regime remains very active in threats against peaceful human rights activists with the imposition that they “leave for life” on the island. Organizations such as UNPACU and Damas de Blanco are reporting that their activists are systematically detained under threat and urged to the need of leaving the island for life expatriation.

Response of the International Community?

Everything described are facts that international and European diplomacy assume as truthful and in many cases absolutely true and proven. They are the description of facts constituting crimes against humanity, in addition to being shameful and ignominious state actions. Likewise, the democratic diplomatic world knows perfectly, and they assume, the irrefutable evidence that the Cuban government has been the architect of the repression and violation of human rights in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The Cuban government not only runs over the dissents, but the diplomats present on the island know perfectly well that ordinary citizens suffer every day violations of all kinds of their rights in a systemic way, also including indiscriminate police abuse. Although it would not be necessary since the reality is overwhelming 60 years ago, it is enough as a small sample of the latter the images published by Cubanet on August 31 of this year at the Carnivals of Havana in 2019, where in a video you see unlimited police violence against a citizen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVDbrSlYEQ) or where they are capable of even attacking citizens at the Carnivals with dogs of prey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4GMSuS60kQ).

Another reality known to diplomats from around the world (and if not for any, it would be enough to read the claim admitted in the Prosecutor’s Office the International Criminal Court against Cuba referenced in this link) is that the Cuban medical staff who does mission abroad on behalf of Cuba, 50,000 a year, its government holds 75% to 91% of their own salary, does not let them stay with their family for 3 long years, holds their passports so they do not flee, prohibits them from having their academic credentials to inhibit other working possibilities, sends them to jail up to 8 years as explicitly is indicated in article 135 of Cuba’s Criminal Code (or they are prohibited from re-entering that same period) if they do not finish the whole mission or if they do not return to Cuba when they are ordered, among hundreds of other aberrant restrictions that turn these missions into a state of slavery. This has already been reported by Le Monde, Le Point, New York Times, BBC or ABC, among hundreds of the most reputed media around the world. It is an ongoing scandal that nobody defends anymore, except Cuba, Russia, China and Venezuela, among other “democratic” countries. And it is already known that this happens with all professionals in Cuba who go to work abroad, because the slavery of their professionals represents 8 billion dollars of turnover for Cuba compared to 3 billion dollars of tourism, as can be seen in the official data, even from Cuba.

All these abuses of Cuba, far from representing the left, represent Hitler’s fascism, Stalinism, Franco, Pinochet or Mussolini. With one difference, Cuba has been a longer-lived absolutist monarchy than those mentioned.

All of this, an endless and overwhelming list of execrable violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, however, does not prevent the European Union from continuing to do business with Cuba in conjuncture with the presence of a repressive dictatorship and in absolute lack of freedom, and control the European Commission for the repudiation of their acts without, at the same time, doing nothing to curb the abuse made by their companies of the exploitation of Cuban workers, whose salary of European companies is not paid to them, but to the State, retaining it percentages that in a some cases exceed a 90%. European companies are de facto paying the “blacksmith” for the work that slaves do in conditions of complete labor unprotection, investing in a country without any freedom, living with crimes against humanity and atrocious repression, while doing business in this country for profit has been in place for decades and, in recent years, has not publicly and strongly repudiated this situation.

The most serious thing is not the fact of doing business or not, because there can always be arguments for or against, but that these interests silence and bind diplomats in their actions in favor of human rights, and that such business is done without marking demands on the form and manner in which they affect the rights of citizens. The economic interests, thus created, call on diplomats to be forced to develop a job full of prebends, fears, and clippers, which do not allow them to clearly demand that crimes against humanity are not committed in Cuba.

Prisoners Defenders, being a European NGO, is truly ashamed of where human rights lie in the face of economic interests in Cuba for institutions and companies in the European Union. In Parliament, however, we find initiatives for human rights that are mentionable, but are not institutionalized at the Commission level. It is urgent that the European Union study the subject in depth, an internal commission deeps into the state of Human Rights in Cuba, and the Commission decides, with the result of the analysis, in a strong and clear way.

It is worth mentioning, for example, the Meliá group, Spanish, with 35 hotels in Cuba of its Paradisus, Meliá, Sol and Tryp brands, in which it pays the government of Cuba for salaries that they know perfectly do not finally receive their native employees, with a total lack of labor rights in accordance to Cuban legislation, making Spain the largest exploitative country of this situation, where economic benefits cause labor rights to be trampled, and where its diplomats have, for these economic reasons, their hands tied to publicly condemn violations of human rights of Cuba. We have no record of a single public conviction made by the current Government of Spain for the violations described, proven by Amnesty International and many other institutions, and it is time for Spain, with a leftist government for a year, to defend the labor rights of Cuban citizens who are trampled by a dictatorship of a fascist and monarchist type and demand their companies a minimum work ethic performance. Spanish companies present on the island should have the requirement of the Spanish government to operate with minimum requirements that respect working rights and a minimum human decency. At a time when the economic weakness of the regime could allow for demanding spaces, this does not happen in any way, nor does any initiative become public, for “not bothering the island’s government”. “This way it’s impossible to defend human rights in Cuba“, a high-ranking Spanish diplomat recently told us.

United States, OAS and the vast majority of democratic countries in Latin America

As for the United States and other governments of the American continent, it is worth noting that they have evolved from the diagnosis of a repressive and atrocious Cuba, but without danger to world stability and peace, to a diagnosis that places Cuba as the main cause and instigator of the most horrific violations of human rights in the Americas (in Venezuela and Nicaragua, among others), and the key actor in the destabilization of democracies in Latin America (with serious interference among many others such as Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia , Ecuador, Aruba, Curacao … and throughout the continent).

We appreciate this change on the diagnosis highly accurate and encourage the democratic governments of Latin America, the United States and the Organization of American States not to cease the work of denounce and diplomatically corner a regime that is a danger to world peace, until such a regime stops promoting human rights violations and the democratic destabilization of entire countries, endangering world peace.

Analysis on the duration and nature of the sentences

Regarding the duration of the sentences in force as of September 1, 2019, we see how the average of sentences in the Convicts of Conscience is located in the 3 years and 8 months, as in the previous month, being the standard deviation of the series of sentences of 1 year and 9 months.

The slightest pro-democratic activism in Cuba is being paid, therefore on average and usually, with sentences of 3 years and 8 months imprisonment:

As for political prisoners who cannot be considered conscientious (third section of the list of Prisoners Defenders) solely for having attended other circumstances in their acts (the purely political condemnation caused timely overlapped with another accusation of common type, usually of low criminal entity), 30 cases, the sentences are distributed in a more radical way, the most usual being life imprisonment:

More than 73% of the political convictions of this group of 30 prisoners, in which there has been an aggravating crime in the events of opposition to the system and that cannot be framed exclusively in the context of “conscience”, have penalties over 20 years.

Knowledgeable of the application of these terrible sentences, that is why the opposition in Cuba is only peaceful and verbal. There is no possibility of obtaining sentences under 20 years when the activist makes the mistake of performing any act contrary to the criminal code on a crime considered common, and that is why the opposition is almost completely framed in a peaceful and conscientious action.

Even so, along with Amnesty International, Prisoners Defenders has shown that the Cuban government imputes common crimes that are proven to be false to peaceful human rights activists.

Therefore, PD is making human rights organizations validate as cases of conscience penalties in which the regime falsely attributes violent attitudes to prominent members of peaceful opposition organizations, since the causes, once analyzed, are unlikely and legally unsustainable.

Most representative pacific organizations

As for the organizations to which the convicted and/or condemned of conscience activists belong, the most prominent group is the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), with 50 pacific activists, convicted or condemned, 53% of the total censored in Cuba by CPD, percentage that is higher than last month for this organization and that continues to grow without appearing to have a roof: [1]

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About Cuban Prisoners Defenders

Cuban Prisoners Defenders is an independent group of analysis, study and action, with the collaboration of all dissident groups on the island and the families of political prisoners to gather information and promote the freedom of all political prisoners, as well as to maintain the updated weekly lists of Convicted of Conscience, Condemned of Conscience,, Political Prisoners and Long-lasting political prisoners imprisoned. Cuban Prisoners Defenders is part of the Prisoners Defenders International Network, a legally registered association based in Madrid, Spain, and whose Internet address is www.prisonersdefenders.org.

The group from Cuba is coordinated by Iván Hernández Carrillo (ASIC), Adolfo Fernández Sainz (FNCA) and Javier Larrondo (UNPACU), without these organizations controlling to any degree, allowing a dedicated work to all political prisoners without distinctions and equally. In Madrid’s office, the legal reports have the contribution of another one of the founders of Cuban Prisoners Defenders, the international criminal lawyer Mr. Sebastián Rivero, who, among other experiences, has been a collaborating jurist of the Permanent Ambassador of Spain at the United Nations. The organization also has different patrons from all ideologies, among others several deputies of the National Congress of Spain of different parties, as well as D. Blas Jesús Imbroda, president of the International Criminal Bar (ICB, elected in 2017) and Dean of the Bar Association of Melilla, Spain.

The works of Cuban Prisoners Defenders are adopted by numerous institutions and are sent, among others, to CANF, UNPACU, ASIC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States, European Parliament, Congress and Senate of the United States, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, People In Need, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN for Latin America and the Caribbean, Real Instituto Elcano, Fundación Transición Española, International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, FANTU, Party for Democracy Pedro Luis Boitel, Independent Pedagogues College of Cuba, Freedom House, Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL), FAES, Ladies in White y Citizen Movement Reflection and Reconciliation, among many other institutions and organizations.

REQUEST FOR REPORTS: Entities wishing to receive the work of Cuban Prisoners Defenders (list of political prisoners and of conscience, legal studies of political prisoners, legal studies on Cuba, studies on repression and prisons in Cuba, etc) please contact Cuban Prisoners Defenders at info@prisonersdefenders.org or by whatsapp or phone at +34 647564741.           

Our official Twitter, in addition, is @CubanDefenders. our facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/CubanDefenders, and our website is https://www.prisonersdefenders.org.

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[1] On the total of the Convicts of Conscience and the Condemned of Conscience censored. That is, 95 = 71 + 24