14ymedio

Criminal Code Project Will Provide Tools for the Cuban Regime to Legalize Arbitrariness

Cilano highlights that the context for approving the new legislation is clearly marked by the July 11th protests, and its objective is to limit citizen participation. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, 23 March 2022 — If, as predicted, the draft of Cuba’s new Criminal Code is approved as is, independent activists and journalists will be “extremely exposed” to the arbitrariness of State Security. That point is stressed in a report published by the Observatorio Legislativo de Cuba [Cuba’s Legislative Observatory], an initiative of the Demo Amlat network which analyzes new norms on the Island as a result of the Constitution approved in 2019.

The document, presented on Wednesday at an online event in which specialists Johanna Cilano and Carlos Hernádez participated from Mexico, highlights the tight control and the opacity of the government on the Island with regard to the Criminal Code. This contrasts with the publicity given, from the highest authorities to provincial-level state press, to the Family Code, which has been out for “popular consultation” since February 1st.

Furthermore, the document denounces the new norms which criminalize activities that are legal in any other country such as practicing independent journalism or associating with others to protest or change a law, as well as leading a civil society, which is not permitted by the Cuban State.

For example, the report mentions Article 143 of the draft norm, which establishes penalties of up to ten years in jail for anyone who receives funding “themselves or as representatives of non-governmental organizations, international institutions, associations or from any natural or legal person of the country or of a foreign State” to “defray activities against the State and its consitutional order.” This, said Johanna Cilano during the presentation, includes paying for mobile phone minutes from outside the country. continue reading

Also, denounced DemoAmlat, “it assaults the right to finance organized civil society, as well as the legitimate limitations to freedom of expression according to the American Convention on Human Rights.”

Cilano highlighted that the context to approve the new legislation is marked by the July 11th protests and its objective is to limit citizen participation in public matters.

As stated in the report, the draft “proves to be a product of the moment, offering the regime tools that will allow it to legalize arbitrariness; deepen criminalization of independent media, journalists and human rights activists; inhibit citizen participation in social activism; censor and promote self-censorship of journalists, activists and defenders of human rights.”

Similarly, as Reinaldo Escobar analyzed for this daily, the death penalty will continue to be in effect in the new norm as a “latent threat from the regime against opponents,” according to the DemoAmlat report.

The network concludes, in summary, that the draft Criminal Code, “presumed to be approved in April 2022, without public consulation, represents a danger to the citizenry.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Diaz-Canel Appeals to Fidel Castro to Call for a Dialogue between Cuba and the United States

Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (Cubandebate)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 April 2022 — This Tuesday marks 13 years since Fidel Castro wrote – from the forced retirement of his illness – one of his famous “Reflections” in which he called for dialogue with the United States. Miguel Díaz-Canel recovered, for the anniversary, a phrase from that text that has been interpreted as a call for dialogue with Washington.

“It is not necessary to emphasize what Cuba has always said: we are not afraid of dialoguing with the United States. We do not need confrontation to exist either, as some fools think; we exist… because we believe in our ideas and we have never been afraid of dialoguing with the adversary.” The president wrote on his Twitter account.

Castro was responding at that time to a proposal from then-Senator Richard G. Lugar who urged Barack Obama, then US president, to begin negotiations that would bring about a thaw in relations between the two countries.

The leader of the Revolution pointed out: “The senator from Indiana walks with his feet on the ground. He does not start from philanthropic positions. He works (…) with the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, other state governments and human rights groups,“ he said, in line with an article by Lugar in The Washington Post asking for an understanding between both nations. continue reading

Castro added: “I am sure that Richard G. Lugar does not fear the nonsense of being described as soft or pro-socialist.” Finally, the announcement of a certain recovery in relations finally took place in 2014, although it began to take shape some time ago.

Díaz-Canel’s intention to be open to dialogue in this case is more like crying out in the desert. Although the Cuban regime had hoped that a Democratic administration in the US would be more favorable than the Republican one of Donald Trump, who reversed some thaw agreements and imposed new sanctions, the illusion is fading like a sugar cube.

Both Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, promised during the campaign to review some of the policies applied by their predecessor in office, such as the recovery of functions of the embassy in Havana and regarding the sending of remittances and travel.

However, once installed in the White House, the messages were directed more towards delaying that review. There was no rush in Washington when other, less controversial issues seemed more urgent to many potential voters in Florida.

Faced with the attitude of the Cuban regime after the anti-government protests of July 11, from which it imprisoned more than a thousand people and has sentenced them to prison terms of up to 30 years in some cases, the Biden Administration began to back down, stating that “circumstances changed.”

According to the Cuban Attorney General’s Office, 790 people have been prosecuted in the country for the July 11 protests, of which 55 are between 16 and 17 years old.

In the midst of a world storm that moves between the war in Ukraine and the economic problems that it will entail, with runaway inflation and lack of energy and food, Cuba may be the least of Joe Biden’s worries.

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More Than 46,000 Cubans Have Arrived in the US by Land in Five Months, More Than in the 1994 Rafter Crisis

The Coast Guard intercepted 1,067 Cubans in the first five months of fiscal year 2022, while in the same period of the previous fiscal year there were 838. (EFE)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 6 April 2022 — More than 46,000 Cubans arrived by land in the US in the five months from October 2021 to the end of February 2022, a figure higher than the 35,000 of the 1994 Rafters Crisis — which lasted five months — according to a report published this Tuesday by the newspaper Miami Herald.

The five-month figure exceeds that of the 12 months of 2021, which had already been a record (39,303), according to data from the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP).

The newspaper, which links the increase in the migratory flow of Cubans to the hardening of economic and social conditions in Cuba and the repression unleashed after the 2021 anti-government protests, indicated that arrivals by sea are also at record levels. continue reading

The Coast Guard intercepted 1,067 Cubans in the first five months of fiscal year 2022, while in the same period of the previous fiscal year there were 838.

Most of the Cubans who arrived across the border with Mexico have been admitted to the US, unlike those who arrived by sea, who are mostly deported, says the newspaper.

The Miami Herald mentions that Cuba is in first place in the Misery Index compiled annually by Johns Hopkins University, due to rising inflation, widespread shortages of basic goods and little prospect of recovering from the economic impact of the covid-19 pandemic.

Added to all this is the “general assault on civil liberties” that the Government launched after the protests of July 11, 2021, which led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people, including minors, adds the information.

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Iclep Director Accuses Cuban State Security of Aggression

Images released by Alberto Corzo of his state after the attack on Friday. (Iclep)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 April 2022 — Alberto Corzo, executive director of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (Iclep), was attacked this Friday in Colón, Matanzas, by two individuals who, according to complaints, had training in martial arts. The activist links the attack with State Security, since he was leaving an interrogation when he was beaten.

According to his wife, Martha Liset Sánchez, Corzo was treated at the Mario Muñoz Monroy hospital, where he was taken by a coach driver who found him on the road, with his left arm immobilized due to a possible injury to his collarbone and elbow, in addition to prescribed painkillers.

The statement, written by Sánchez, indicates that the medical center did not have X-ray capabilities and could not diagnose properly, so no injury certificate was issued. This Sunday, the activist was at the Faustino Pérez Surgical Clinic university hospital in Matanzas, where it was certified that he had a clavicular dislocation and he was hospitalized.

“He is in a daze, he can barely speak and can’t be understood. They have an intravenous drip and compresses on one eye and a bandaged shoulder. Last night his blood pressure rose a lot,” said Sánchez, who expressed her doubts this time due to hospitalization. continue reading

“Why do they have an IV on him? What medications are they giving him? Why is my husband barely able to speak? Why isn’t there a doctor to answer all the questions we want to ask and only a nurse who gives us very little information. Why is the person hospitalized next to my husband supposedly being investigated by the police, which means that where they have him it seems that he is imprisoned by the police presence 24 hours a day?” asks his wife.

The note published by Iclep affirms that Corzo wanted to file a complaint on Saturday, but he was not allowed to and says that both he and his wife have suffered “systematically, different types of aggression by the Cuban regime.”

In 2021, Corzo was attacked 33 times and Sánchez suffered “the repression and harassment of the dictatorship” on 25 occasions, including arbitrary arrests. According to the same note, the children of the marriage also suffer the consequences of their parents being independent journalists.

The members of Iclep have denounced the State’s actions against them on numerous occasions. In 2017, several of them experienced episodes of this type, such as the arrests of Raúl Velázquez, then its executive director, and María Mercedez Benítez, one of its activists. Also then, Corzo was threatened with being taken to prison for his reporting work and was reminded that he was accused of the alleged crime of contempt against a police collaborator.

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Cuba: “They Have Declared Me An ‘Enemy’ But I Am Not Going to Abandon the Cause”

Alexander Fábregas with his mother Luisa María Milanés. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 April 2022 — For Alexander Fábregas, 32, everything is a surprise this Wednesday. He has been on the street for a few hours since being released after serving nine months in prison for calling a protest on July 11 through social networks. From his home in Sancti Spíritus, he talks to 14ymedio on the phone about his time in jail and future plans.

“It is very frustrating to go to a prison to serve a sanction imposed without deserving it, for something that is not a crime anywhere in the world,” he explains to this newspaper. “I didn’t do anything to have that punishment. Until today I was in a place where I only saw walls and bars and now everything seems strange to me: the colors, the sounds, the voice of the people.”

Fabregas received no penal ‘mitigation’. “The authorities say that there are no political prisoners in Cuba, but if I had really been a common prisoner, I would have received parole in the middle of my sentence, but they did not give it to me. Only once did they allow me to go home for three days.”

“Several times the State Security officials came to visit me in prison to threaten me, but I have nothing to talk to them about. They have declared me an enemy of the supposed Revolution,” he says. “Now I am going through a difficult situation because I have a lot of stress because of the lockdown.”

“I am very worried about Luis Mario Niedas Hernández, who is like my brother, and who was denied the right to be transferred from prison to a work farm,” says Fábregas. Niedas was sentenced to three years in prison for “continued contempt of character” due to his criticism of him through Facebook against several high-ranking officials, including Miguel Díaz-Canel. continue reading

Now, Fábregas insists on the importance of the solidarity that both he and Niedas have received since the first day of their arrest: “Thank you to everyone who has contributed and I feel very honored to have been part of July 11… Patria y vida [Homeland and Life].

“I’m not going to abandon the cause, I’m not going to give up, but I have to be careful because I already have a criminal record and they will surely want to continue citing me and harassing me. But I will continue to be a defender of human rights in Cuba and, especially here in Sancti Spiritus.”

Fábregas’s mother, Luisa María Milanés Valdés, 58, also experienced this time as an ordeal. “These have been the most terrible nine months of my life,” says the woman who has maintained the complaint about the case of her son. “We have been through very difficult times and sometimes I thought they were not going to release him on the date that was planned.”

“He’s a little depressed because everything he’s had to live through has affected him psychologically, but at least he’s here, with us,” says Milanés.

Fábregas was arrested on the night of July 11 at his home, for transmitting on his social networks his call to take to the streets of Sancti Spíritus to accompany the protests that took place that day in other provinces of the Island.

Nine days after his arrest and in a summary trial, Fábregas was sentenced to nine months in prison for the crime of “incitement to commit a crime,” although he did not set foot on the street that July 11. He only managed to have a defense attorney one day before the trial, his family denounced at the time.

Although the young man belonged to the United Anti-Totalitarian Forum (Fantu), at the time of his call to take to the streets he was “an opponent on his own account,” according to his mother. In December 2020, he had already spent three days in detention, after he published a photo on social networks where he appeared with a sign that said: “No More Misery.”

Luisa María Milanés Valdés also suffered pressure from State Security and after her son’s conviction she was forced to leave the house she rented in Sancti Spíritus. The threats even made her fear that she was going to lose her job at a hospital for mentally handicapped children.

This Wednesday, the mother does not take her eyes off Fabregas, fearing that the police will knock on the door again and take him away.

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Cuban Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara Suffers Eye Damage Since His Last Hunger Strike

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara during a forced stay at a hospital to which he was subjected by the Government and in images released by officialdom.

14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — After several hunger strikes, the last one between January and February of this year, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara “is trying to recover his physical constitution by putting his best effort into exercising and trying, as far as possible, to eat,” according to art curator Claudia Genlui speaking on Monday.

The curator posted a new update on the status of the artist, imprisoned for more than eight months in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, who was able to see his family last Friday after two months without having physical contact with her.

“Luis told his family that during the time he was on strike he was paralyzed and had to be urgently transferred to a hospital,” the activist wrote on her Facebook account. As a result of this latest hunger strike, the leader of the San Isidro Movement has sequelae in his sight, with the constant presence of a black spot that his loved ones are worried about.

Although Otero Alcántara has allegedly requested medical assistance that has been denied, Genlui says that he has low hemoglobin and dermatitis. “They don’t allow him to go out in the sun or have hardly any contact with other prisoners,” Genlui denounces.

The artist, however, seems to have recovered the right to phone calls and communicates twice a week. “From there he tries to transmit strength to us,” says Genlui, who is alarmed by the terrible circumstances in which Otero Alcántara finds himself, whose health is at “constant risk.” continue reading

The leader of the San Isidro Movement has been in prison since July 11, when he was arrested before he managed to join the anti-government protests, and is accused of public disorder, incitement to commit a crime, and contempt.

These crimes were charged to him for events in April 2021, when he attended a birthday party in which the residents of the neighborhood where he resides ended up singing Patria y Vida. Although he was released pending trial, he was arrested and imprisoned on the day of the protests throughout the country and, according to his lawyer, his case is still plagued by irregularities, including lack of access to documentation or the prosecutor’s request.

“Let’s remember that Luis Manuel is an artist whom the Cuban government tries to discredit and whom it keeps in prison for charges that have been built from ignorance and censorship of art. Luis is innocent and will not rest until he is released, taken to his home, accompanied by his family, which is where he should be,” says Genlui.

Otero Alcántara is considered a prisoner of conscience by international organizations and the US government. In recent years he has become one of the most relevant voices of Cuban activism, art and opposition. Time magazine included him in its list of most influential people of 2021.

“Despite the circumstances, Luis Manuel continues to create. His ability to cling to art as a way of surviving and resisting is admirable. Luis is not alone. He knows it and is willing to continue the fight for Cuba’s freedom from all scenarios,” Claudia Genlui concludes.

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‘The Body Never Forgets’, an Essay on the Concentration Camps in Cuba

The official Cuban press extolling the work of the UMAP camps in the 1960s. Headline: Where work makes the man.

EFE (via 14ymedio), Jorge I. Pérez, Miami, 5 April 2022 — The forced labor camps in which, as in the Soviet gulag, dissidents, religious, homosexuals and artists were confined in the Cuba of the 1960s, left “a lot of pain and trauma” not yet healed, affirms the Cuban historian Abel Sierra Madero, who has just published an essay on this subject with the title El cuerpo nunca olvida [The body never forgets].

Subtitled Trabajo forzado, hombre nuevo y memoria en Cuba (1959-1980) [Forced work, new man and memory in Cuba (1959-1980)], the book brings together, for the first time, memorabilia, personal photos, testimonial sources and fictional literature on what was officially called Military Production Assistance Units (UMAP), “Because it must be said that I handle fiction as truth,” Sierra told Efe in an interview.

A specialist in studies of sexuality, concentration camps, the Cold War, memory and trauma, Sierra, who has lived in the US for years, interviewed more than 30 people or relatives of people who between 1965 and 1968 were in the UMAP. The interviews were conducted between Cuba, Miami, New Jersey and New York.

According to Sierra (1976) in the book’s introduction, “the UMAPs formed part of a more complex economic system within a broad project of social engineering.”

For this purpose, dozens of forced labor camps were created in the Camagüey plain, the Cuban province where sugar cane was best grown, and some 30,000 people passed through them between 1965 and 1968, according to data from the author. continue reading

“The UMAPs had a double meaning: re-educational, political and ideological, and also an economic one,” he comments.

“They were plantation enclaves. In the book I call it ’the development of the socialist plantation’, based on a colonial market which was that of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” he says.

“The implementation of these camps allowed the State to appropriate a large part of the workforce without having to compensate them financially,” he says.

“There is still a lot of pain and trauma. An interesting part in this book is the theme of silence; you can see how silences speak. I was interested in taking the witness to that place of remembrance and denunciation,” Sierra details.

The volume shows “how the notion of the ’New Man’, which was the fundamental term to establish the revolutionary ideological structure and architecture, also served to implement forced labor camps, to manage power and create control mechanisms.”

Retrieving “los escombros,” something he prefers to call, in English, “the debris,” processing the information and writing a 528-page essay took him about a decade, he confessed shortly before presenting his book this Saturday at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, in Miami.

The cover is an image by Canadian photojournalist Paul Kidd taken at the entrance to one of the camps in 1966. It shows an armed soldier next to a fence of 21 strands of barbed wire.

Sierra comments that the photo is the product of Kidd’s audacity, who appeared there alone and without warning.

Hundreds of homosexuals were taken to these gulags to be “cured” according to the concept of the Cuban revolution that saw the nation as a sick body and the State as a medical benefactor, the book’s publisher, Rialta, said in a presentation on Facebook.

Benjamín de la Torre, “a boy who moved in art circles, committed suicide after that experience,” Sierra points out.

Singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés entered the UMAP at the age of 23, but according to Sierra his stay there “was an open secret until he considered it important for his career to unfreeze this issue.”

About the experience, Milanés wrote the song 14 pelos y un día, in which he invokes the wire fences, which were reduced from 21 strands to 14 when international criticism began to surface, according to 14ymedio.

Sierra was unable to interview Milanés after two attempts. “He was so traumatized that when everything was ready for the interview he canceled at the last minute,” he says.

The few available sources, beyond the official newspaper archives that “tell a different story from the UMAP,” were texts written by religious inmates of the camps “from a narrative of forgiveness.”

“Then I realized that I had to carry out a deep investigation that collected the before and after of the camps, the inside and the outside,” explains the author, who included a bonus track touching on the Mariel exodus in his essay (1980).

“An archive is created to be able to be destroyed, and that is the logic in which the Cuban regime has operated: Create a mystique around the archive, create a morbidity about its existence or disappearance to make believe reconstruction is an impossibility.”

“It has been shown how a history without an archive can be reconstructed, and that is what I have done, a history of the UMAP without an official archive. I have created my own,” says this professor at Florida International University (FIU).

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The US Sells its Chicken Cheaper and Cuba Takes the Opportunity to Buy More

Chicken package sold in Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — Chicken exports from the United States to Cuba marked a milestone again in February. According to the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal with a source in the US Department of Agriculture, the amount that arrived on the island that month, 31,212 tons, is the third largest in the last two decades, behind those registered in July 2019 (33,842 tons ) and in March 2021 (32,755).

This represents an increase of 33% compared to the previous month. Likewise, in February there was a slight reduction in the price of the product, from 0.91 dollars in January to 0.87 per kilogram, which meant that Havana disbursed only 28% more.

Monreal recalls, through his Twitter account, that between 2001 and 2021, the US exported a total of 2.78 million tons of chicken meat to Cuba, for a total value of 2.368 billion dollars, 39.5 % of it from 2017 to 2021.

Imports of US chicken by Cuba in 2021 broke all previous records, as the economist disclosed at the beginning of the year. Never since records have been kept have there been more than 300,000 tons exported by the neighboring country to the Island, for an annual value of 279.7 million dollars, almost double, 94.64% more, compared to 2020, when the Island disbursed 143.7 million. continue reading

In quantity, 307,658 tons were imported in 2021 compared to 170,105 the previous year.

However, the increase in the importation of the product has not been noticed as much in stores that take payment in Cuban pesos as it has been in markets that take payment in freely convertible currency (MLC) and on internet shopping sites. The most-in-demand boxes of hindquarters, whole chickens or breasts have reappeared among the products on these foreign exchange portals.

The boxes, which range between 15 and 18 kilograms with prices ranging from 98 to 115 dollars, had practically disappeared at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, when it was only possible to find smaller packages. Customers prefer to purchase larger volumes at once to guarantee supplies in case of shortages.

However, the purchase of large quantities presents the danger that the frozen chicken will spoil during the long power outages that are occurring throughout the Island. Consumers must choose between two risks: that of buying a little at once and ending up with no chicken in the fridge or losing groceries after a long power outage.

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Cuban Intellectual Ambrosio Fornet, Who Baptized the’Five-Year Gray Years’, Dies

The essayist, editorial advisor, professor and film scriptwriter, Ambrosio Fornet Frutos. (Cubandebate)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — The Cuban film writer and screenwriter Ambrosio Fornet Frutos died this Tuesday at the age of 90, the Casa de las Américas reported on its social networks. “His work constitutes a fundamental part of the nation’s culture, which he always defended,” the institution wrote, recalling that the intellectual was “one of its closest and most beloved collaborators.”

With more than twenty texts written and edited, including El libro en Cuba; siglos XVIII and XIX (1994) [The Book in Cuba; XVIII and XIX Centuries] and Las trampas del oficio; apuntes sobre cine y sociedad (2007) [The Tricks of the Trade; Notes on Cinema and Society], Fornet won the National Publishing Prize in 2002 and the Literature Prize in 2009.

Fornet’s creative life was always linked to cinema. Among his works, the script for the film Retrato de Teresa (1979) [Portrait of Teresa], directed by Pastor Vega, stands out, in addition to his work as an advisor and professor at various academic institutions and at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.

He also appeared on several occasions as a jury member for the Casa de las Américas Award, and for other competitions, such as the Juan Rulfo Latin American and Caribbean Award and the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana.

Fornet is credited with having been the one who baptized the Quinquenio Gris [Five Grey Years], which began in 1971 with the censorship against the writer Heberto Padilla and his book Fuera de Juego [Out of the Game], marked by the excesses of dogmatism that the National Council of Culture (CN) imposed on letters and the arts. Many intellectuals agree, however, that it was “neither a five-year period nor gray,” but rather was a much longer and darker period. continue reading

Fornet exposed as antecedents of the Quinquenio Gris some controversies of the 60s, the closure of the cultural supplement Lunes de Revolución [Revolution Mondays] – directed by Guillermo Cabrera Infante – the Military Units for Production Support (UMAP, forced labor farms for young homosexuals and religious believers) and official hostility towards works by Antón Arrufat, Heberto Padilla and José Lezama Lima, until reaching the First Congress of Education and Culture, in 1971.

Regarding the Congress and what came later with Luis Pavón Tamayo at the head of the CNC, the writer born in the province of Granma said that a policy was carried out that reached a “sick degree” of homophobia and displaced those who did not qualify as “politically reliable.”

“Just as we must not forget that in a permanently besieged square, such as our country, insisting on discrepancies and disagreements is equivalent to ’giving weapons to the enemy,’ nor should we forget that pacts of silence are usually extremely risky,” Fornet said in a debate that was inserted into the so-called little email war of 2007, when dozens of intellectuals reacted to the reappearance in the official media of Pavón, considered one of the main executors of Castro’s censorship in the 1970s.

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The Arrival in Florida of Russian Rafters Coming From Cuba is a Matter of National Security

The Russian rafters arrived from Cuba to Florida in a boat of about 30 feet. (EFE)

14ymedio, Madrid, 5 April 2022 — The authorities of Monroe County, Florida, are used to the arrival of boats from Cuba loaded with Cuban rafters, but this weekend they were amazed when they saw 15 undocumented Russians and Central Asians arrive on one of them, presumably part of a group of up to 40 people. “This is something different and new,” said Mayor David Rice.

According to The Washington Post , spokeswoman Alyson Crean of the Key West Police Department explained that on Sunday around 4 in the afternoon a boat chartered from Cuba docked at the southern end of the city’s tourist district. Agents quickly realized how unusual the situation was and alerted the US Department of Homeland Security and Customs.

“All we do when immigrants of any nationality arrive is make sure they are safe, but these people were not like regular immigrants,” Rice said, explaining that the matter had been treated as a national security case. “They were well dressed, on a chartered ship, they hadn’t been adrift for a week.”

“They tied up at a dock there, disembarked and went into the cafe,” Crean said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed on Monday that the group was made up of 15 migrants (9 Russians, 4 Kazakhs and 2 Kyrgyz) and that they were being processed for deportation. continue reading

“Smugglers do not take into account the lives of migrants and too many lives are lost at sea when people make the dangerous journey in makeshift boats, rafts and other vessels poorly equipped to handle rough waters,” said Eduardo Maia Silva, spokesman of the DHS, which noted that any person who arrives in the country outside the law is subject to expulsion.

Anyone who “attempts to enter the United States by sea, without a lawful basis for entry, will be subject to removal,” he said.

According to witnesses present at the time of the migrants’ arrival, the group was much larger, about 40 people, although the DHS has not confirmed this or said it was looking for more people involved in the incident.

County Sheriff Rick Ramsay told The Washington Post the migrants were arriving with luggage and the boat was about 30 feet long. Although the official considers it premature to call this case a trend, he fears that the war in Ukraine and the tense political situation in Russia, which in recent months has increased penalties against the exercise of individual liberties, could lead some citizens of the area to look for alternative routes, like this one.

It is also unclear if the Russians had been on the island for a long time and chose to leave by boat like so many Cubans or if they had recently fled their country.

“Anything is possible, but we need more data and analysis to see if it’s something unusual, an anomaly,” the sheriff added.

Shannon Weiner, emergency director for Monroe County, said that there is also coordination with the FBI to investigate the incident, but a Coast Guard spokesman said that they are not aware to date that there are Russians or Ukrainians trying to reach the USA by sea.

On Saturday, The Washington Post also reported that there are Ukrainian refugees trying to reach the country through Tijuana, Mexico, like Latin American migrants. The Administration has urged following the legal channels, since Biden promised to accept 100,000 people, but it has yet to be determined how.

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Defeat for a Motorcycle Cop Chasing an ‘Informal’ Vendor in Havana

Some of the vendors confronted the agent saying: “Hey, officer, you can’t come in here.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 5 April 2022 — Customers of the Youth Labor Army market on 17th and K in Havana were stunned this Tuesday when they saw a policeman riding a motorcycle enter the crowd.

Three sellers of plastic bags, routine in the place despite the prohibition on selling product, left terrified, two men and a woman, but the agent only went after the woman. The girl slipped through the crowd that was doing its shopping at the market and disappeared from sight.

Some of the vendors confronted the agent saying: “Hey, officer, you can’t come in here.” The policeman, perplexed, answered them loudly: “I don’t understand why that woman who came in disappears in here,” implying that the merchants themselves had hidden her.

Without ever getting off the motorcycle, the agent turned around and went back out into the street. He was stationed at the door of the market for a few minutes with a vigilant attitude, until another woman approached him, pointing out a path – which way did the pursued person go? – and, only then, did the man leave. continue reading

“Luckily he didn’t come in at high speed, what if he hits someone?” said a customer in her forties under her breath, while protesting: “They feel impunity.”

Another young witness to the events reported: “This reminds me of the stories my grandmother told me about Batista, when the police pursued people and the people themselves hid them.”

The market, located on a busy street in El Vedado, has at least two entrances, which made pursuit more difficult for the uniformed man. With a nearby passport and identity card preparation office, plus a polyclinic where PCR tests are carried out for those planning to travel travel, the area is permanently full of people who come and go.

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Four Cubans With a Child Are Saved from Drowning in the Rio Grande Trying to Reach the US

The group, made up of 12 people, joined hands and went into the river, but the force of the current overcame them. (Capture) — The group, made up of 12 people, linked arms and went into the river, but the force of the current overcame them. (Capture)

14ymedio, Mexico, 5 April 2022 — Four Cubans, including a three-year-old child, were saved from drowning in their attempt to cross the Rio Grande from the border city of Piedras Negras to Eagles Pass, Texas. These migrants are part of one of the two groups that risked their lives this Tuesday to reach the United States.

Isabel, 25, Luciano, 31, Ángelo Luciano, 3, and another woman were swept away by the current of the Rio Grande, which had increased its level by almost three feet because this Sunday the gates of the Amistad dam were opened. “I was afraid that my son would drown with me, that’s why I turned back,” one of the migrants told local media.

The Cuban said that they arrived in Piedras Negras on Tuesday after a 16-day journey. They left Havana and went to Nicaragua and from there they made the journey until they reached the border with the United States. “The current is very strong, I tried to make sure he (Ángelo) didn’t end up in the water.”

The group, made up of 12 people, joined hands and went into the river, but the force of the current overcame them. Three were left in the middle of the current and received support from migrants who threw life jackets and ropes at them from the shore.

“I was trying to float,” said Isabel. “Until I managed to stand firm and now… there’s nothing else to do,” said the young woman, resigned, adding that her family was already on the other side. “I’m not afraid to die” and she continue reading

stated that she would try again.

Liaison members from the municipality and Grupo Beta took the data from the Cubans. “They know that it is a risk and they put the children at risk. Fortunately, there were no drownings, but they will not always have the same luck,” said Rodrigo, a member of the rescue group.

“The level of the river increased, we are talking about areas where the depth is fifteen feet and in addition there are whirlpools. And under the International Bridge II, where they passed, the water is up to nine feet deep,” added the lifeguard.

Minutes before, another group made up of eight Cubans jumped into the river. While on the Mexican side they asked them to return because of the flood, one of the women replied: “Go back to Cuba, no way.”

The migrants rejected the support of the group of lifeguards and decided to continue on their journey until they were overwhelmed by the flow. At that point they received the support of the Border Patrol, which helped them set foot in Eagles Pass.

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The Mexican Candidate to Lead PAHO is the Wife of a Cuban Accused of Slavery

Nadine Gasman, proposed by the Government of López Obrador, competes with five other candidates for the position of head of PAHO. (SemMexico)

14ymedio, Madrid, 4 April 2022 — French-Mexican doctor Nadine Gasman was proposed by the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, as a candidate to lead the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) for the period 2023-2028, a designation that the Madrid-based organization Prisoner Defenders (PD) considers scandalous.

The applicant is the wife of Joaquín Molina, representative of the Cuban side in PAHO and one of those responsible for the Mais Médicos [More Doctors] program, for which the organization has been denounced in a US court as an intermediary for channeling payments between Brazil and Cuba. The plaintiffs allege that the regional affiliate of the World Health Organization facilitates the “human trafficking network” and “slavery” concealed by the Mais Médicos program in Brazil.

PD affirms that the appointment was sponsored by Raúl Castro last summer in order to obstruct the lawsuit filed in 2018 by four Cuban doctors who were part of the mission in Brazil. According to the organization, the former Cuban president commissioned López Obrador to look for someone who could hinder the investigation of the US Justice. In addition, PD asks that “PAHO structures be shaken up and scrubbed for the good of public health and human rights in Latin America and the world.”

Nadine Gasman was named as a candidate by Mexico last February. To do this, she abandoned the position she had as president of the National Institute for Women. The official has a doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, a master’s degree in Public Health from Harvard University and a medical surgery specialty from La Salle University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. continue reading

To date, there are five people competing with her for the position, although until May 1 it is possible that more people will apply. The Brazilian Jarbas Barbosa da Silva, the Colombian Fernando Ruiz Gómez, the Panamanian Camilo Antonio Alleyne Marshall, the Uruguayan Daniel Salinas and the Haitian Florence Duperval Guillaume are her opponents for now. The vote will be held at the 30th Pan American Healthcare Conference of PAHO, between September 26 and 30, 2022.

Gasman has, according to PD, a conflict of interest to be the winner in that vote due to her marriage to Joaquín Molina. The official is one of the defendants in the lawsuit in Florida, against which he filed an appeal. Mais Médicos has three essential managers according to the NGO, on the one hand Heidi V. Jiménez, legal adviser to PAHO and collaborator of the ministries of Health of Cuba and Brazil in 2013, when Castro and Rousseff signed the agreement. On the other, Carissa Etienne, as current director of PAHO; and lastly Molina, then representative of the same by the Cuban regime.

Last week, a US court rejected PAHO’s appeal to stop the lawsuit filed by Ramona Matos, Tatiana Carballo, Fidel Cruz and Russela Rivero, the four Cuban health workers who denounced the working conditions they experienced as members of the program.

The United Nations health organization tried to stop the lawsuit using the immunity granted by US law, but the courts ended up determining that the organization’s financial activity as an intermediary was susceptible to investigation in the country, since bank accounts were used in the US to transfer the amounts. The court considers that the movements of money were necessary for the alleged human trafficking and may be the cause of the opening of the judicial process, so the lawsuit continues.

PAHO collected more than 75 million dollars through the Mais Médicos program and some 1.3 billion dollars were deposited in the coffers of the Cuban State using bank accounts in the United States, according to the documentation of the lawsuit. Of this, 85% of the amount provided for salaries went to the Cuban government, 10% to doctors, and 5% was retained by PAHO through its mediation.

“There is an international organization (PAHO), affiliated with the United Nations, that became the main force to allow Cuba to export its citizens to perform slave labor in a foreign country,” the doctors’ lawyer alleges.

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The Cuban Regime Has Deployed a Policy of ‘Extreme Terror’

The Cuban government, says the organization, “suffers from a fetishism that makes protests look like an evil that must be eradicated.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 April 2022 — The protests in Cuba continue to increase. As documented by the Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC) in its monthly report, made public this Monday, last March there were a total of 232 public demands, compared to 207 in February.

As a result of the demonstrations of July 11 and 12, 2021 (11J), the Madrid-based organization points out, the regime has deployed a policy of “extreme terror” in Cuba aimed at “de-stimulating” any demonstration. However, since then, the OCC has registered 2,267 protests, “an increase of more than 60% in relation to the eight months prior to 11J.”

Among the acts of protest documented by the NGO, 149 had to do with the defense of political and civil rights, the majority of which (134), related to police repression and abuse, including, says the Observatory, “judicial arbitrariness and convictions of peaceful demonstrators on July 11, as well as torture and ill-treatment in prisons.”

For economic and social issues, there were 84 protests, focused mainly on the consequences of the so-called Ordering Task*, especially on inflation, and the shortage of basic products.

The OCC highlights that during March, Cuba was rated as the “least free country in the Americas,” according to the annual evaluation by Freedom House, and its economy was rated as “the most miserable in the world” according to the annual Hanke index. continue reading

The Cuban government, the organization says, “suffers from a fetishism that makes protests look like an evil that must be eradicated without realizing that they are a reflection of the serious conflicts that have accumulated without being addressed or resolved.”

Meanwhile, the document continues, “frustration over the widespread internal crisis and lack of freedoms, as well as the disproportionate convictions and other abuses against peaceful 11J protesters continued to galvanize critics of the government in March,” critics which include, according to highlights the OCC, supporters of the regime.

In this regard, he highlights the statements of Silvio Rodríguez, who said that such high sentences for demonstrating did not seem fair to him. “As far as I know they didn’t kill anyone,” said the musician.

Cuba, concludes the Observatory, “continues to be a social bomb with a short fuse,” and warns: “If the government continues in its position of hardening, the protests can become violent.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others.

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Cuba Will No Longer Require PCR Tests or Vaccination Certificates to Enter the Country

A group of tourists at the José Martí International Airport in Havana. (EFE/Ernesto Mastrascusa/File)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 April 2022 — As of this Wednesday, April 6, international travelers arriving in Cuba will not be required to present a PCR, antigen test or even proof of vaccination to enter the Island, measures currently in force to counteract the covid-19 epidemic.

As reported by the Cuban News Agency in a preview through its networks and confirmed minutes later by the Ministry of Public Health, the decision has been made taking into account the high percentage of vaccinations in Cuba.

The use of masks, both indoors and outdoors, will continue to be mandatory and the “random search” is maintained. Also randomly, samples will be taken from those who come from countries where the incidence of the virus is higher.

If a positive is detected, they will be subjected to “the protocols established for these cases,” that is, they will be admitted to the designated health institutions depending on where they are located. continue reading

All direct contacts of these travelers will be isolated for eight days, either in designated centers or in houses, if these have the necessary conditions to guarantee compliance with the measure.

The relaxation in the protocol for travelers coincides with the collapse of the tourism sector, which cannot raise its head, despite the fact that other destinations similar to the Island, such as Mexico or the Dominican Republic, have recovered remarkably.

In addition, it contrasts with the harshness of the statements by Miguel Díaz-Canel, who last Monday called for “extreme sanitary measures” to avoid a new wave of infections.

According to the official Granma newspaper , the scientists who advise the Cuban president on the pandemic predicted a progressive increase in confirmed cases and hospitalizations.

This Monday, in its daily report, the Ministry of Public Health reported that 7,647 people are hospitalized in the country, of which 4,140 are suspected of carrying the coronavirus and 3,483 are active cases. No deaths were reported. During the month of March, Cuba accumulated a week without deaths related to the disease.

According to official figures, close to 10 million of the 11.2 million inhabitants of the Island have received the complete immunization schedule with local vaccines (a few received the Chinese Sinopharm), that is, 95% of the vaccine-eligible population. In addition, 6.2 million Cubans have received the booster dose.

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