Yariel Alfonso Puerta left the Island with a friend last Friday. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 19 May 2022 — The 27-year-old Cuban Yariel Alfonso Puerta, who jumped into the sea last Friday along with his friend Alioski Quintero González and left the island to avoid a trial for his participation in the July 11 demonstrations in Matanzas, is on a US Coast Guard Cutter conducting his “credible fear” interview.
América TeVé journalist Mario J. Pentón confirmed the information directly with the United States Coast Guard this Tuesday, after Yariel Alfonso was in custody for several days in Florida waters and after pressure from the Cuban community in exile not to return the two young men to the Island. If they manage to show that their personal integrity is in danger (“credible fear”) should they be deported to Cuba, the two rafters will be able to continue their political asylum process to stay in the United States.
Yariel Alfonso’s mother, Yamilé Puerta, confirmed to 14ymedio that Democratic congresswoman Federica Wilson, who is helping in the case, has asked the family for permission to inform the press about the current situation of the young people and whether they will be able to continue with their legal process for asylum.
Alfonso Puerta set sail from the Island with his friend in a homemade raft with a sail and four oars. That same day, the police went to look for him to take him to court for having participated in the 11J demonstrations. continue reading
His desperate mother hopes that the US authorities will not return him to Cuba. “If they return my son, his life is going to be miserable,” she told 14ymedio from the Valencian town of Villarreal, in Spain, where she arrived more than six years ago with her husband, Yoenis Martín González.
The woman was in contact with her son until Saturday at nine in the morning, when the young people were already in international waters. Until then, she maintained communication with him.
She even broadcast a video call with the young man at the precise moment that the Cuban coastguard intercepted them, the day before. “They have them in the water, they aren’t letting them move,” the mother denounced, but later they were able to continue their journey.
According to the Cubalex legal organization, an NGO, Alfonso Puerta faces a six-year prison sentence for the crimes of public disorder, disobedience and resistance.
On August 2, when a rafter who was a police officer in Cuba managed to pass the “credible fear” interview on the high seas, lawyer Willy Allen told América TeVé that these types of migrants do not continue their asylum process in US territory.
“Let’s be clear, he has no entrance to the United States,” he said, referring to the rafter identified by a relative as Ernesto Urgellés, who had been intercepted along with other Cubans by the Coast Guard. “Under the rules that exist, no person who is found to have credible fear in the Coast Guard cutter enters the United States.”
Allen explained that rafters who manage to pass the first “credible fear” interview are transferred to the Guantánamo naval base where they are processed for asylum. The lawyer said that being admitted for this reason does not make the migrant an asylum seeker, it only allows him to argue his case and then carry out the entire process before Immigration. In addition, he added that they can send the rafter to a third country while their request is analyzed.
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They dropped us off at a gas station in mid-trip, and again they put us back in a minibus. (EFE/Juan Manuel Blanco)
14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, 30 April 2022 — Three hours into the trip, on the way to Monterrey, I had cramps on my buttocks. Imagine eleven more hours. Luckily, I took a paracetamol which relieved the pain, but after a few hours the pain was back again. I asked them to please let me stretch out my foot but I couldn’t: there was no room.
There, I heard a very interesting story. There was a Nicaraguan who worked in a Managua restaurant, where President Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo love to eat. Although he did not like what the leaders were doing to the country, he was very happy when they came to the restaurant for dinner, because they left each one of the servers a 100-dollar tip, and according to what he told me, there were sometimes as many as 14 to 16 servers. The Ortegas went to eat at the restaurant as often as once a week, the Nicaraguan declared, and he told me that when Díaz-Canel was in Nicaragua for the inauguration, they asked them to close the place, because he was going to go with Ortega, although at the end, they changed plans and went somewhere else.
The individual I was talking to was also one of those who were not running away from the political situation. Only one of the ones I met was leaving for that reason. The rest were leaving to make some money and then return.
They dropped us off at a gas station in mid-trip, and again they put us back in a minibus. We spent an hour waiting for some guards to leave the area we had to cross, and from there, we went to a small desert town, with a sun so strong that it burned you, although it was not as hot as in Cuba.
They put us in a warehouse at that location, with a swimming pool; they call those rural houses in Mexico una quinta (a country house). They had divided us into two groups: we were going to Monterrey, and the rest, to another place. Then a woman told us: “Look, please, those who have swimming suits may change and go swimming; the rest, stay around here. Let’s put on a little music. In case inspectors come, you guys rented this property and are celebrating a birthday.
Those who went swimming had a nice day, but in the end, everything was so-so, because they told us that we could not drink the tap water, so we were not able to drink anything until around three in the afternoon, when they showed up with two 5-liter water bottles of water, but there were more than 60 of us! Then they brought two tacos per person and some weird beans, with a little bit of meat, but it was terrible. I looked at it and thought: “Well, I’ll have to eat it, who knows how long we will be here and if they will bring us food again.” Good thing, because we were there all day, all night, and until late the next dawn.
The vans that were to pick us up at 10 o’clock had to go to the other place, because half of the people in the other group had been put in a container and they didn’t want to go because they were suffocating. They started banging and banging, and, luckily, the driver stopped and about 20 or 25 got out: they complained that they had paid thousands of dollars and they didn’t want to continue in the container where they were suffocating. continue reading
“The others, stay around here. Let’s put on some music. In case inspectors come, you guys rented this and are celebrating a birthday“
The vans finally appeared at our location at 5:00 in the morning. Only women and children slept in the house, the men had to mostly sleep outside. In the desert it is terribly sunny during the day, but at night it’s three times worse, because it turns very cold.
The vans, thank God, did have heating, and we were able to take off our coats for a little while. The trip turned out to be much longer than anticipated, because we had to avoid several control points, and the trip, supposed to be completed in five hours, took us about eight.
Upon arrival in Monterrey, we waited at a place in the city for some taxis, in which they divided us up to finally board a closed truck, which had openings on the roof, at another location. There were 42 people there, and we stayed together until the end. I was the only Cuban, the rest were Honduran, Nicaraguans and Guatemalan. There was a warehouse where we stayed locked-up for a day and a half, and it was also very cold and the conditions were bad. There weren’t enough sleeping matts for all of us, and we squeezed in as best we could.
At least they did bring us good food, and the things they sold us were cheaper than in Mexico City. However, I had another anxiety crisis, because everything was closed, and when I called my family, I exploded: “This can’t be real. I don’t understand what’s happening, they didn’t tell me it would be like this.” They always paint everything in rosy colors, that’s the hook, and, despite everything, I can’t complain, because there are people who have a worse time of it.
From there they took us to a small field where there were three or four trucks, in which we already knew there were some people, although not how many. We got the biggest truck, one like the ones used in Cuba to transport sugar cane, with high railings in the back. When we got on, there were already almost 200 people there. We were all pressed as tight as possible, without the possibility of holding on. It was a short but hard trip. There were several people who injured their ankles, including me, although nothing that prevented me from continuing.
At midnight we arrived at a point near Reynosa where we stopped, because there was a checkpoint with seven patrols. Apparently, a truck like ours, trafficking undocumented immigrants, had overturned. They allowed us to get out of the truck, the temperature was zero degrees, but we were able to smoke and eat some cookies, until we were able to continue at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.
Then we got to another place where we were divided into two groups. Each of us had a code that they gave us in Monterrey, which the cartels assign to you, and it is the one that you have to give the cartel, so that you are allowed to continue or to take you to the border. There were many, many of us, in several trucks. There had to be more than 400 people, because I was number 367. We looked like merchandise.
Forty-two of us were picked up at that warehouse, in two vans. That was the last warehouse before crossing, the one in Reynosa. In it, I met a Honduran who had been waiting three months for a supposedly special trip, because he was physically disabled, but his son, who was in the US and was paying for everything, was taken and sent back to Honduras. The guy had been there for three months, waiting for his son to have enough money again, because he couldn’t go around like the others to avoid controls.
It was extremely cold in that place too, although the coyote treated me very well. They were not used to Cubans and they asked me about many things, and they treated me differently because I was from Cuba. We stayed there for three or four days. The conditions were not the best, the food was not the best, but at least we were relaxed after so much travel.
When they came for us, they separated us into lists: Cubans, Nicaraguans, and women and children, one from El Salvador and the other women from Honduras. They are handed over because they are not rejected: if they are accompanied by small children, they are allowed entry. The Hondurans and Guatemalans had to stay and wait for another list to make their escape. They cross and begin to circle to avoid the migration guards; quite the opposite of what we do, those of us who are delivered. We cross and we have to look for the guards to turn ourselves in, so they can take us prisoner.
When they came for us, they separated us into lists: Cubans, Nicaraguans, and women and children, one from El Salvador and the other women from Honduras.
On the fourth day it was my group’s turn. They came for us in a van, we were nine adults and two children, and they took us to a place very close to the Rio Grande. They screened us through a person who gave us some numbered blue bracelets with the word “delivery” on them. For each migrant who crosses, the coyote has to pay the cartel, and that is carefully controlled, because sometimes they try to pay less, which has resulted in many deaths. That’s why now they do it like this, all square: person for money.
I was lucky, because a few days ago I was able to talk to the guy who used to be my barber in Havana, who now lives in the US, and I noticed he acted very strange. This is not the David I know, I thought. The point is that he crossed through Piedras Negras, Coahuila, with about 120 others, at 3:00 in the morning. He says that they threw a small raft for the children and a rope from one side to the other. That’s where adults had to go. The deepest part of the river covered his nose, and he is about five-and-a-half feet tall. He was helping a girl who, at one point, became very nervous, but she was holding on well to the bottom and they managed to cross about 70 meters of river. Ahead of them was a Nicaraguan woman who started to say: “I’m drowning, I’m drowning”… And before they could see her, she was gone. She vanished.
He was traumatized, and, at that moment, his legs did not respond, he could not cross, he lost consciousness. Luckily, the immigration officers caught him and wrapped him in blankets, but he told me that he thought he was going to die. His journey was shorter than mine, but it was less safe: they took him prisoner in Honduras, they had a bus accident, then this last thing on the river… Everything was quite ugly.
Then they made us hide in a bush and wait for them to come and give us the signal.
Tomorrow
They put 15 of us on our knees on a raft to cross the Rio Grande
Translated by Norma Whiting
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Meanwhile, the Network denounces in a statement, “the Cuban Parliament approved a new Criminal Code that includes increased penalties for dissidence, but does not explicitly condemn femicide.” (14ymedio/Archive)
14ymedio, Havana, 17 May 2022 — The latest confirmed femicide on the Island, the eleventh so far in 2022, shows unusual cruelty. As denounced on Monday by the Red Femenina de Cuba [Cuban Women’s Network] the young Yusleidy Aguilera Fernández, 21 years old and with two small children, was viciously stabbed to death and had her breasts cut off. The information was confirmed by the feminist magazine Alas Tensas, which specified that the children are 2 and 5 years old.
According to the independent platform, the events occurred in the Vuelta del Caño district, Granma province, and the murderer, originally from Havana, was arrested in Manzanillo.
Meanwhile, the Network denounces in a statement, “the Cuban Parliament approved a new Criminal Code that includes increased penalties for dissidence, but does not explicitly condemn femicide, and maintains the death penalty.”
On April 30, Odalys Lavin, 55, was murdered at the hands of her husband, who committed suicide after the crime. On the 12th of that month, Yamilka Silva died in Báguanos, Holguín, murdered by the father of her daughter, in her parents’ own home, where she had taken refuge, according to the observatories of the magazine Alas Tensas and #YoSiTeCreo in Cuba. continue reading
Before her, the femicides of Eriday Soto Martínez, 26, and her five-month-old son were reported, which occurred on March 24, in the Argentina Sur neighborhood, in Jobabo, Las Tunas.
Up to then, Alas Tensas had verified six femicides in Cuba, those of Mailén Guerra García, Mislaidis Carmenate, Darlín García, Lisbet Machado and a 21-year-old girl in San Luis, Santiago de Cuba, and another of a 24-year-old from Cárdenas, Matanzas, whose names were not provided.
In 2021, the same organization recorded 36 murders of women, of which 29 were committed by partners or former partners. In 2020, the figure was 32, although it is impossible to verify if the number has increased or the problem is becoming more visible since there are independent organizations that keep the count, since the Government does not have a public record of this type of murder.
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Ángel Rolando Castillo Sánchez, father of Rowland Jesús Castillo, jailed for the July 11th (11J) protests. (Cubalex)
14ymedio, Havana, 29 May 2022 — Ángel Rolando Castillo Sánchez, father of Rowland Jesús Castillo, one of the minors in prison for his participation in the 11J (July 11th) protests at the corner of Toyo, Havana, was sentenced to two years in prison this Wednesday in an express trial, according to statements made on social media by his son’s mother, Yudinela Castro. The process took place with a public defender and the family was notified just hours before.
Castillo had been in jail since May 5th, when he was accused of coercion by a friend of Rowland, Giuseppe Belaunzaran Guada. This child, the grandson of a Cuban official, had also been convicted for 11J, but was not sent to prison, serving his 10-year sentence under house arrest.
According to Castro, the young man, not only a friend of her son, but also of other protesters, made a video defending them but his mother accused Castillo of pressuring Giuseppe to film it.
Castro stated that the case had been fabricated to put the brakes on Castillo’s protests demanding freedom for his son and other 11J protesters. At the end of April, the man spent several hours at the police station in San Miguel del Padrón along with Brandon David Becerra Curbelo’s mother, Yanaisi Curbelo, and Lázaro Noel Urgellés Fajardo’s mother, Maylín Fajardo. They were all headed to a march to demand rights for their children and ended up being arrested. continue reading
Since his last arrest in May, Castillo has remained in the Vivac penitentiary, where he was on a hunger strike and refusing medical attention.
Rowland Castillo was 17 years old when he went to the streets on 11J to protest and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sedition. His mother, Yudinela Castro, has also had to face an arrest at the end of April and was accused of contempt, but after being held for 15 days in Villa Marista prison, she was freed on provisional release on March 10th.
A few days later, the woman, who has leukemia, was admitted to Julio Trigo hospital in Havana after attempting to take her own life. Family sources told 14ymedio that she was recovering and was receiving psychiatric treatment.
“It is difficult to accept so much cruelty, like what we are experiencing,” said Castro on Wednesday, after hearing the news. “As Rowland’s mother, I will go wherever I need to go and do everything I need to do through legal means. Freedom for Ángel Rolando and Rowland Jesús,” she demanded.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Under the current rules of the game, remittances are more profitable through informal channels. (EFE)
14ymedio, Madrid, 18 May 2022 — Ending the limits on remittances sent from the U.S. to Cuba — one of the measures announced by Washington on Monday, in addition to resuming flights — seems to be one that could have the greatest impact on the Island. It is for the benefit of Cuban families, which are going through hardship, but it is feared that the regime will take advantage of the situation to regain a major source of income, second only to the medical services it commercializes in many countries.
“We must remember that half of the remittances arrive by ‘mulas’ [mules]. No one in their right mind wants to do it through legal means. The official exchange rate is at 25 pesos to the dollar whereas in the street it is at 100. Who should send dollars legally?” explains Emilio Morales, of the Havana Consulting Group.
A search on social media is enough to see where things stand. “In the U.S. for $110, they deliver in Cuba 10,500 pesos, or for $115 they deliver $100.” “Deposit $130 abroad and we will deposit 100 MLC* [into your account] or, if you prefer, 11,000 pesos. For every 100 dollars, receive 10,000 pesos, for 130 dollars receive 100 [dollars in your account].”
The list of offerings is infinite, but the quantities are similar. In the parallel market, intermediaries or mules charge up to 30% commission, but the money received is golden, since, on average, it is at four times the official exchange rate. continue reading
Official foreign currency exchange business has been partially stalled since 2019, under orders from then President of the United States, Donald Trump, who imposed a limit of $1,000 per person per quarter. Furthermore, he also prohibited business deals which involve Cuban military personnel.
This was the case for Fincimex, included on the U.S. Treasury Department’s black list in June of 2020. Up until that point, the entity managed the flow of currency, mostly through Western Union, which decided in October of that same year to close its outlets when faced with the sanctions that would apply if they continued operating. The permanent closure took place at the end of November.
The events coincided with border closures due to the pandemic, which continued for part of that year and 2021 and affected the amount of currency received by the Government. According to data from the Havana Consulting Group, in 2019 deliveries of currency sent in cash exceeded $3.171 billion, while deliveries of merchandise were about $2.9 billion, a combined total of $5.071 billion. In 2020, this declined by more than 54%, with a combined total of only $2.967 billion. In 2021, currency received barely exceeded $1 billion, 70% less than two years ago.
The Cuban government made an important move, which will allow it to regain some income, removing the military from the equation, but it has systematically maintained control over a portion, which amounts to more than 6% of the GDP, according to several independent organizations. Some associations proposed that the deposits be centralized in a European entity, in a trust that would guarantee it would not end up in the hands of the regime. But this solution was not considered either.
In February, the Gaceta Oficial published a resolution of the Central Bank of Cuba, which authorized a new entity, Orbit S.A., to “manage and make international transfers from abroad through its own infrastructure.” The company had one month to present its registration, but nothing has been heard about it since, much less who is hiding behind that name.
Another attempt, from abroad (Canada), was RevoluPay, an app from RevoluGroup, created by Emilio Morales himself, which promised to circumvent the military, but which was not without controversy and mistrust.
In the interim, other things have happened. Implementation of the so-called ‘Ordering Task’** in January 2021, which assumed, among other things, that unifying the currency would maintain the exchange rate between the local peso and the dollar at 24 to 1. That has never been realistic and the measures had not yet taken effect when economists began to warn that the informal currency market would dictate the dollar’s true value.
Since then, the value of the American currency began to increase at a steep pace and six months later it was trading in parallel markets at 70 pesos. Half a year later, in January 2022, it had exceeded 100.
Companies that send remittances have not announced any plans following Biden’s announcement. Their commissions have been between 5% for Western Union and 10% for AIS Remesas, the option recommended by the Government until it temporarily stopped offering services in October 2021 and no updates have been provided since then. The regime used to charge a 10% commission for the service and an additional 3% for dollars, however that route has been on hold until now. Other options were to send Canadian dollars from Canada or euros from Europe, though these were the minority.
Nonetheless, the reopening of borders has put the mulas, once again, in the market and their service is more acceptable — including the large amount of cargo they bring to the Island to nourish markets — despite the high commission, because the currency can be sold at rates 4 or 5 times higher than the official rate. The ball is in the Cuban government’s court to create a better alternative if it wants to recoup a very juicy business.
Translator’s notes
*MLC (Moneda Libremente Convertible) is freely convertible currency, that is foreign currency such as dollars or euros.
**Tarea ordenamiento: The [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ is a collection of measures that include 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 many other measures related to the Cuban economy.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Walfrido Rodríguez Piloto received 10 years in prison. (Cubanet)
14ymedio, Havana, 13 May 2022 — The record kept by the independent associations Cubalex and Justicia 11J shows that the appeals of those convicted for the July 11th (11J) protests of last year are barely serving to modify the sentences. According to the list, to date 40 people have received a response to the review of their sentence in the first instance, of which only one achieved notable success, going from one year in prison to being acquitted.
Omar Córdovez Hernández was sentenced by the Popular Municipal Court of Jovellanos at the beginning of January to 12 months of deprivation of liberty for instigation to commit a crime; the appeal was favorable for him, and he was not only acquitted, but also his confiscated money and belongings were returned. But his case is a drop in an ocean where the judges are reluctant to rectify even a comma approved by their colleagues at the municipal level. Another relatively significant case is that of Jesús David Rodríguez Prevost, who, after appealing the sentence of 3 years and 8 months, had his sentence reduced to 2 years and two months.
Most of the remaining cases, at least 32, have kept the sentence intact or, in some isolated cases, have modified the form of imprisonment or reduced the time of internment by one month.
Despite the fact that the data confirms that the sentences are basically dictated by the system and that the result of appealing is almost null, the organizations that defend the rights of the prisoners have invited the families at all times to resist and not give up a right that could be useful to those close to their family members, however difficult it may be.
In this context, today begins the appeal trial of some of those convicted in La Güinera by the Municipal People’s Court of Diez de Octubre, in Havana. It is the same instance that sentenced 128 people to almost 2,000 years in prison in total, all of them protesters in that neighborhood and the Toyo corner. continue reading
Emiyoslán, Mackyani and Yosney Román are three brothers convicted in that process whose appeal begins this Friday. Their father, Emilio Román, told Martí Noticias that his children are in good health and looking forward to this day. “Emiyoslán turned 18 while already in prison and is currently in the Jovenes de Occidente Prison. He feels himself to be in good health despite the difficulties in the prisons, but he constantly asks me when when the appeal would finally be made to find out what they will determine in his case, if they sentence him to study and release him,” he said.
Yosney, the eldest, is 26 and is in the Combinado del Este maximum security prison, while his sister, 24, is in the El Guatao women’s prison, in La Lisa.
“They are young, but they are desperate, they are crazy to get out of those penitentiary centers and they hope that their sanctions will be reduced in the appeal trial, because they were given sentences of too many years. In addition to sedition, they also imposed charges for attack and public disorder,” added Romero, who has said that another neighbor with three children in the same situation as his is also in the group of those who appealed and added that the families are prohibited from entering the court and must wait outside.
Martí Noticias also reported on Thursday the sentence for four demonstrators who participated in the 11J protests in the Havana neighborhood of El Palenque, in La Lisa, and who were sentenced to between 11 and 7 years in prison.
Among those affected is Walfrido Rodríguez Piloto, who told the media that the Prosecutor had been more benevolent on this occasion than the court had been, something rare and it had fallen like a bucket of water over him when he was sentences to 10 years in prison rather than the 9 years the prosecutor asked for.
Rodríguez Piloto is in the Valle Grande prison and has announced that he is willing to go on a hunger strike for justice. José Eduardo Jardines Rodríguez, sentenced to 7 years in the same process, joins his protest.
The others affected are Richard Echavarría López, sentenced to 11 years, and Frodelián Hernández Bautista and Adonis Garvizo Otero, both with 9 years in prison. All were accused of instigation to commit a crime, public disorder, contempt and attack.
Rodríguez Piloto was also convicted of carrying and illegal possession of weapons and explosives. “The repressive media were the ones that started the blows against the demonstrators and to that action, the people reacted. So they [the authorities] want to consider our reaction as a terrorist act when it was the repressors who started the violence. They threw stones and they broke the windows of the hard currency store to blame it on us. They provoked the people,” said the activist.
This week, Raucel Ocaña Parada, former prosecutor of Palma Soriano, in Santiago de Cuba and now exiled in Europe, said in an interview that the sentences are decided by the party and are imposed on the courts, which are not independent. Ocaña is in the process of applying for asylum in Switzerland.
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The ‘Juan Sebastián de Elcano’, a training ship of the Spanish Navy. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 12 May 2022 — The Spanish Navy training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano made landfall this Thursday morning in the port of Havana and quickly attracted onlookers and passers-by to see the four-masted vessel.
Although it positioned itself in front of Havana Bay yesterday, it was not until the morning of May 12th that it entered the capital and, to announce its arrival, fired 21 salvos as a salute to the city.
Some official media announced the planned detonations, but almost no inhabitant of the city noticed that information and when hearing the sound of the salvos, some ran scared, others were startled by the tragedy that the city experienced almost a week ago with the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and, a few days later, a house in Old Havana, which has kept the inhabitants with their nerves on edge. continue reading
The Juan Sebastián de Elcano has a displacement of 3,770 tons and was received by the ship’s captain Juan Vázquez Reyes, head of the Department of the Revolutionary Navy and the Spanish ambassador to the island, Angel Martín Peccis. This visit marks the 13th time the ship has come to the Island. The vessel was launched in the shipyards of Cádiz, Spain, on March 5, 1927.
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Extraordinary session of the Cuban National Assembly, last Sunday, in which the new Penal Code was approved. (Cubandebate)
14ymedio, Havana, 18 May 2022 — The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) has been forceful in criticizing the Cuban Penal Code approved last Sunday in an extraordinary session, and has insisted that it returns the Island to “dark ages, when officials distanced themselves from the people through abuses and privileges.”
In a statement made public this Wednesday, the IAPA regrets that the new legislation “criminalizes the freedoms of the press and expression, as well as the freedoms of association and assembly” and has described the rule as retrograde.
“The Code has elements akin to military accouterments, which the regime will be able to use to attack and undermine information and independent opinions of dissidents. Citizens will not even be able to use social media or call their friends to protest freely,” the IAPA statement says.
Regarding the updated crime of contempt, the president of the IAPA, Jorge Canahuati, regrets that “Cuban authorities travel to the past, against the developed world, to obscurantist times, when officials distanced themselves from the people through abuses and privileges.” continue reading
The organization’s statement also includes the opinion of Carlos Jornet, president of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, who affirms that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela “Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are among the few countries to contravene the American Convention on Human Rights precepts by criminalizing foreign economic assistance to human rights groups and independent media.”
“We already have the experience on how these provisions, under the excuse of the defense of sovereignty, are used to muzzle the independent press and silence dissident voices,” asserts Jornet.
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For the organizations it is “very valuable that this dialogue has been carried out” with the Committee against Torture, and that the UN has “placed emphasis” specifically on the July 11 protests. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Madrid, 18 May 2022 — On Wednesday, in Mexico City, fifteen civil organizations presented new testimonies proving that torture is practiced in Cuba, in addition to recounting other human rights violations on the island, such as arbitrary arrests and the forced labor of the so-called medical ’missions’ .
The group, made up of Civil Rights Defenders, Cubalex, Article 19, Justicia 11J, Prisoners Defenders and ten other NGOs, detailed some of the systematic punishments in Cuban prisons.
One of them is being handcuffed with one’s arms raised, as documented by the Cubalex legal organization with a source in several of the prisoners themselves and announced on their social networks.
“This form of torture consists of handcuffing the inmate on one arm and the attaching the handcuff to a high place, so that the limb is suspended and in a position in which the person cannot sit down,” explains Cubalex, a position in which “the prisoner is left for prolonged periods of time that can even reach 24 hours or more.”
One of the prisoners cited by Cubalex is Alexis Sabatela, a collaborator with the Cuban Human Rights Observatory, who claims to have been handcuffed to bars in the Kilo 7 and Kilo 9 prisons in Camagüey, where “it was common to hang prisoners with their arms high, whether open or closed.” continue reading
Another testimony collected is that of Félix Navarro about the Canaleta prison, in Ciego de Ávila, where he was imprisoned for several years after being arrested in the so-called Black Spring of 2003. There, the opponent had denounced, it was common to hang inmates a whole night and, in winter, every so often throw buckets of water at them.
In the maximum security prison of Agüica, Matanzas, where Navarro is now after being sentenced to nine years for the demonstrations on July 11, the government opponent José Díaz Silva, leader of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic; detained since July 3 March, he was also handcuffed to the ceiling for several hours, reports Cubalex.
Ángel Yunier Remón, who suffers from osteoarthritis as a result of the torture he was subjected to with handcuffs, told this NGO that when he suffered this punishment, “you feel pain, your hand cramps, you don’t feel it. It turns black, cold. You can’t even move your shoulder. It immobilizes you.”
The rapper Maykel Castillo Osorbo, in prison without trial since last year, has said that he was also handcuffed, “but in a different way.” In his case, “they made him put his hands and feet through the bars and stand in that position with his limbs handcuffed.” They could leave him like this for up to three days, “causing him a very strong pain in the torso and shoulders.”
The organizations gathered this Wednesday at a press conference celebrated that the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT), after reviewing the situation in Cuba between April 21 and 29 in Geneva (Switzerland) , has asked the regime for “precise information” on the matter.
Specifically, the UN demands that the Cuban State respond, no later than May 13, 2023, regarding “an independent inspection of places of detention, the situation of human rights defenders, journalists, activists and artists in the Island and the investigation and sanction of the events of July 11, 2021.”
For Darcy Borrero, a member of the Justice 11J group, which has followed up on the demonstrators arrested after the protests that day, it is “very valuable that this dialogue has been carried out” with the Committee against Torture, and that it has placed the “emphasis” precisely on the protests of that day, as well as on the appropriate sanction for the agents who subjected the demonstrators to punishment, arrests and interrogations.
Borrero also describes as key the attention of the UN to the case of the murder of Diubis Laurencio, in La Güinera, shot in the back by a policeman on July 12.
In its most recent report on the Island, and among other considerations, the CAT regrets that a national human rights institution has not yet been created in Cuba, that there is no independence of the judiciary, nor is the independent exercise of the legal profession guaranteed, nor are there guarantees so that military courts do not try civilians. On the Island, in short, the “fundamental safeguards against torture of all detained persons” are not guaranteed.
In his speech on May 11 in Geneva, and after reviewing the complaints and testimonies collected by different civil organizations, the vice president of the UN Committee against Torture, Sébastien Touzé, asserted that the Cuban State has taken measures “manifestly contrary to to the Convention against Torture.”
Touzé also said that the “high number of arrests,” especially after “the events of July 2021” offers “an alarming vision.”
The interventions of the Cuban Government before the sessions, on April 21 and 29, were of little use; according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they presented “the broad and solid system of laws, rules, regulations and policies that guarantee in Cuba the integral protection of the person, in accordance with the provisions of the Convention,” as well as “the actions conceived and applied to prevent acts of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment from occurring in the national territory, frequent before 1959 and radically eliminated and prohibited by the Cuban Revolution.”
Before the beginning of this session of the Committee Against Torture, last April, the same group that presented testimonies from prisoners this Wednesday in Mexico warned of worrying issues in current Cuban laws and in those that are about to be approved.
Similarly, the Madrid-based NGO Prisoners Defenders also presented a report to the Committee in which it identified up to “15 patterns” of mistreatment and torture of prisoners on the island, including deprivation of medical care, forced labor outside the the criminal conviction, solitary confinement as punishment, physical assaults and deprivation of water or food, sleep, and of communication with lawyers and relatives. The conclusion of that document was forceful: the use of torture is systematic against the political prisoners of Cuba.
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The crash took place on the section of the central highway located one kilometer from the town of Martí. (Facebook/The Voice of Bayatabo)
14ymedio, Havana, 16 May 2022 — A traffic accident between a truck with passengers that covered the Camagüey-Bayamo route and a car with tourists left at least “two dead and seven injured,” the provincial government in Camagüey published on its social networks. “Assistance was provided at the scene.”
The injured, it was specified, were transferred to the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Surgical Clinical Teaching Provincial Hospital in Camagüey and the Armando E. Cardoso General Hospital.
Preliminary versions, quoted by the official press, indicate that the “truck crossed over to the opposite side of the road from which the tourist car was coming.” Both vehicles caught fire after the collision.
The crash took place on the section of the central highway located one kilometer from the town of Martí and ten kilometers before reaching the municipal seat of Guáimaro.
According to official figures, the number of deaths on roads – a large part of them pedestrians and cyclists – increased by 24% in 2021, with 589.
The secretary of the National Road Safety Commission (CNSV), Reinaldo Becerra, pointed out last April that a total of 8,354 accidents occurred in 2021, with an increase of 8.32% (632) compared to 2020. continue reading
The provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Havana — the capital — concentrated the largest number of claims.
Among the main causes of traffic crashes, highlights the CNSV, are drivers’ inattention, failure to comply with the right-of-way and speeding. But the poor condition of the roads and the aging vehicle fleet on the Island, where cars over 50 years old sill operate, also have an influence.
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Yariel Alfonso Puerta left the Island with a friend last Friday. (Collage)
14ymedio, Madrid, 16 May 2022 — The 27-year-old Cuban Yariel Alfonso Puerta, who threw himself into the sea on Friday to avoid trial for his participation in the July 11 demonstrations in Matanzas, is in the custody of the Coast Guard, in Florida waters, along with his friend with whom he left the Island, Alioski Quintero González.
The rafter’s mother, Yamilé Puerta, confirmed this Monday to 14ymedio the news from the journalist Mario J. Pentón with a source in the US Coast Guard. According to Pentón, the coast guard found two individuals in a raft with the characteristics that he himself provided of the boat.
Alfonso Puerta set sail from the Island with his friend in a homemade raft with a sail and four oars. That same day, the police went to look for him to take him to court for having demonstrated on 11J (July 11th). According to the Cubalex legal organization, the young man faces a six-year prison sentence for the crimes of public disorder, disobedience and resistance.
His desperate mother now hopes that the US authorities will not return him to Cuba. “If my son is returned, his life will be miserable,” says Yamilé Puerta, who has lived in the Valencian town of Villarreal, Spain, for more than six years with her husband, Yoenis Martín González, breaking into tears. continue reading
Yariel lived with her until just under a year ago. The young man, who has a three-year-old boy in Spain, decided to return to Cuba, says his mother, “because here the issue of papers and other things was difficult for us.”
Very shortly after, the demonstrations exploded on July 11, which he did not hesitate to join in his city, Matanzas. “He calls me and tells me: ’Look, mom, we finally woke up, the people took to the streets,’ and I told him: yes, yes, yes, do it, go ahead!, and I supported him,” Yamilé says between sobs. “I don’t know if I made a mistake, but at that time, the excitement of seeing that your people having finally woken up… Do you understand? Now I’m regretting it.”
The woman was in contact with her son until Saturday at nine in the morning, when the young people were already in international waters. Until that moment, she was in contact with him at all times.
He even broadcast a video call with the young man at the precise moment that the Cuban coastguard had intercepted them, the day before. “They have them in the water they don’t let them move,” denounced the mother in some images released by Mario Pentón.
In the same communication, the boy explains that the coastguards struggled with them, trying to get them on the boat to take them back, and that in that trance, they lost two oars and the sail of their precarious boat.
“It’s just us,” Yariel said, pointing to his friend Alioski. “The only thing we ask is that they let us continue calmly. If we drown, it’s our problem.”
Minutes later, the Cuban coastguard is heard pointing out to the young people which is the safest way to continue the trip. “They heard that I told them that I was going to report them and that I was going to upload it to social networks, it seems that’s why they helped them,” Yamilé explains to this newspaper.
In that video call, Yariel declares: “I am a political prisoner, I am going to the United States of America by rowing, because I do not want to continue in the dictatorship. If something happens to me, it is because they sank me here.”
Now, he is waiting for his maternal uncle to meet with Democratic Congresswoman Federica Wilson and expose the boy’s case so that he is not deported. Various exile activists, both in the United States and in Europe, says Yamilé, are mobilizing to collect signatures in favor of his case.
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Daniela Rojo and her children in a shelter in Germany, waiting to receive asylum. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 18 May 2022 — The activist Daniela Rojo is with her two children in a refugee center in Frankfurt. The young woman, age 26, girl arrived in the German city on May 15, where she immediately requested political asylum, but she had not wanted to make it public until now.
“Here, my children and I are safe and I will not be persecuted for my political ideas. My eternal thanks to the German authorities, who have treated us like family,” Rojo wrote in a brief message on Facebook along with a photograph with her two sons. The activist added that she has received many messages and promised to give more details about her escape.
The young woman was moderator of the Archipíelago platform and the architect in Guanabacoa of the initiative for the march called for November 15 throughout Cuba. Although she no longer belongs to the opposition organization, she was one of the members who suffered the most harassment and threats from State Security.
Rojo was kidnapped by the political police and spent five days in a house belonging to the Ministry of the Interior under the custody of several agents shortly before the peaceful protests called for November. continue reading
At the beginning of that same month, the Minors’ Body of the Ministry of the Interior cited her for the way in which she raises her children, which Rojo described as “a very subtle form of emotional blackmail that would understandably make any mother give up.”
From her departure from Archipíelago, she clarified that she needed to “shelter” her family, “the one that has suffered the most from this process, especially my children.” Although she would continue to advocate for “a plural and democratic Cuba and especially for the release of all political prisoners.”
In addition, for participating in the demonstration on July 11, she spent 23 days in prison, and all “for exercising my constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully,” she denounced through 14ymedio .
Daniela Rojo was accused of public disorder and contempt, both common crimes, for which the Prosecutor’s Office requested five years in prison; She was released on August 3 after paying 2,000 pesos bail. Then, in November of last year, she reported being detained for five days in a State Security operation, an arrest she expected to take place on November 14, before the protests.
Rojo joins a long list of Cuban opponents who have had to leave the island in recent years due to the harassment and repression of the Cuban regime, such as the artist Hamlet Lavastida, the poet Katherine Bisquet, the rapper Denis Solís or the playwright Yunior Garcia Aguilera.
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Under the new Constitution, journalism not controlled by the Cuban Communist Party faces a demonizing of the access to funds from international organizations. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 17 May 2022 — The new Cuban Penal Code, recently approved by the National Assembly and which will enter into force in the coming days, is a detailed compendium of the main fears of the ruling party. Like any authoritarian model, the island’s regime is forced to break down each prohibition and enumerate all the punishments, trying to anticipate even the new forms of confrontation and rejection that may arise from the citizenry.
When reading between the lines of the new regulations, and separating what it inherits from the previous Code in terms of penalizing common crimes, the great panics that keep Cuban leaders awake at night emerge. The independent press, activism, popular protests in the style of the one that occurred on July 11 (11J), and the possibility that individuals unite in initiatives to revoke the economic political system, these are at the center of the tremors that run through the Plaza of the Revolution.
Journalism not controlled by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) bears one of the worst parts of this new legislation, which further demonizes the access of the independent press to funds and resources from international organizations and foundations. In a country where a group of men uses the public coffers at will to support their media of ideological propaganda, those same individuals try to cut off any financial oxygen that allows the existence of newspapers or magazines that annoy power. Only the PCC can carry out the exercise of content dissemination, under supervision and with censorship’s scissors ready to cut everything that does not benefit the Party.
However, the current twist already had its antecedents in the Gag Law for which 75 dissidents went to jail in the Black Spring of 2003 and which has never been repealed. So it can be interpreted more as an update to the new realities than the beginning of an unprecedented raid against the free flow of news. The growing popularity of information portals managed by independent continue reading
journalists has put in check a dictatorship that, for decades, ruled from secrecy and absolute control of information dissemination.
Something similar occurs with article 120.1 of the new Code, which penalizes anyone who “arbitrarily exercises any right or freedom recognized in the Constitution of the Republic and endangers the constitutional order.” As in the Constitution the PCC is considered the superior force and leader of society; trying to change that and erect another alternative will result in a serious, very serious crime. However, a similar straitjacket already existed with the popularly called “constitutional mummification” which, without meeting the requirements of a referendum where voters were asked their position in favor or against the proposal, was imposed in 2002.
In short, if much of what is penalized in this legislation was already prohibited, in one way or another, in decrees, regulations and resolutions, it is worth asking the reasons for reinforcing this veto and expanding the punishments in the new Code. Everything indicates that it is a victory for the forces of immobility; we are facing the image of those bridges, the ones dynamited by the most retrograde to prevent democratic change from coming from within the Island, from springing up from ordinary people. This is, in reality, a glossary of the terrors of Castroism and its desperate attempts to stop what will come no matter what.
The Penal Code designed to bind us all points to the fact that it has been drafted by a system sunk in mistrust of society and in fear of the future.
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Image of the protests held on July 11, 2021 in Santiago de Cuba. (14ymedio)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 16 May 2022 — On Monday, the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, accused the United States Embassy in Havana of “reviving what happened” in the anti-government protests of last July 11.
During his speech at the closing of the extraordinary sessions of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP), in which former president Raúl Castro (2008-2018) was present the president spoke out against Washington. He accused the United States of promoting actions to “provoke a social outbreak” on the Island.
According to Díaz-Canel, the United States — whom he accused of “cynicism” — has constructed “infamous versions of the trials” against the 11J protesters. “Blind with frustration, the empire and its employees resort to old practices of attack with modern techniques of unconventional warfare,” Diaz-Canel charged.
The United States and the European Union, as well as Cuban and international NGOs, have denounced irregularities in the processes and criticized the high prison sentences, which have sometimes reached 30 years. continue reading
Díaz-Canel also rejected the accusations from Washington that accuse the island of imprisoning minors under 16 who participated in the protests. “From the country that holds world records for incarceration and prison mistreatment of girls and boys, we are accused of having tried and sentenced minors under 16 years of age,” he criticized. The minimum criminal age in Cuba is 16 years, according to the Island Prosecutor’s Office.
In recent weeks, the president assured that “the established legal procedure” was applied to 27 children under 16 years of age. Ten were interned in schools for comprehensive training and conduct and 17 were given “individualized attention” in their own school.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders, for its part, reported in its last count that at the end of March it had registered measures against at least 26 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17.
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Martín Guzmán Fernández made a 78-day journey to reach the United States. (Ernesto Guzmán)
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 17 May 2022 — Leave Cuba? The grandchildren and children had already done it years before. Martín Guzmán Fernández did not have a hard time deciding. On Saturday, after 78 days of travel, he arrived in the United States, “he crossed through Arizona and this Sunday la migra picked him up” along with three other Cubans who accompanied him, Ernesto, the son of this man from Havana, tells 14ymedio.
He was released from the migrant detention center on Monday. “He was there less than 24 hours and they treated him very well,” confirms his son, on the way to the place to pick him up and reunite him with the rest of the family.
“My father is part of one of the lost generations, from when the Revolution triumphed. Deceived like many,” says Ernesto by telephone from Panama, where he is currently visiting his sister and nephew.
At 82 years old, Guzmán “had to continue working in the Ministry of Construction because the retirement pay was not enough for him,” says Ernesto. “My father is diabetic and he has problems with a vein. He had a heart attack.”
Leaning on his cane, this octogenarian had to “line up at the pharmacy from two in the morning,” all to get told, when he arrived, that “there were no medicines.” He walked miles to buy food, “because in order to eat he had to have currency they he didn’t get paid in.” continue reading
Guzmán was afraid, but not of leaving the island, “he was afraid of not seeing us again,” says Ernesto. The way out was given on February 26, like most Cubans, by air through Managua (Nicaragua). The marked route indicated Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, as the second point, and from there to Guatemala to later travel to Tapachula, Chiapas.
There was some “desperation” in Tapachula, “when I had been waiting for a humanitarian visa for 25 days,” says Guzmán’s son. Eight days later they were able to leave and undertook a 3,500 kilometer journey by bus to the border with Arizona.
Martín Guzmán Fernández, this Tuesday, after being released by the immigration authorities. (Courtesy)
According to the latest preliminary figures from the Customs and Border Protection Office to which The Washington Post had access, almost 35,000 Cubans were detained on the southern border of the United States in April alone. The number was much higher than the 16,550 that were counted in February and higher than the 32,141 in March.
Ernesto left Cuba five years ago and remembers that “the emigration of the family began in 2012. The first were my two children, then my wife and I.” Before arriving in the United States, he was an administrator at Esedip, dependent on the Ministry of Construction, on the island. He set up a vehicle repair shop in Panama. “I would buy wrecked cars cleared by insurance, fix them up, paint them up and sell them.”
His training as an engineer earned him a chance to join the construction team of Line 2 of the Panama Metro. In addition, he set up a hostel to help Cubans passing through that country.
In recent days, several groups of more than 100 Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Hondurans and Guatemalans have crossed the Rio Grande to reach Eagles Pass in the United States.
Through the borders of Tijuana and Reynosa, Cuban mothers are being allowed to stay with their children, but the men are being returned to Mexico. “They don’t tell you anything, they just turn you back and tell you to wait,” says Roberto, a Cuban who has been in the Senda de Vida shelter in the border state of Tamaulipas for 12 days.
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14ymedio, Havana, 19 May 2022 — The 27-year-old Cuban Yariel Alfonso Puerta, who jumped into the sea last Friday along with his friend Alioski Quintero González and left the island to avoid a trial for his participation in the July 11 demonstrations in Matanzas, is on a US Coast Guard Cutter conducting his “credible fear” interview.
