Photo: Marcelo López Bañobre

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

Like many compatriots, I sat down to watch the appearance of General of the Army Raul Castro during his recent speech before the National Assembly of People’s Power.

I talked with other lawyers about his words before that forum and, unsurprisingly, some were interested in certain aspects of his speech, while others fixed on different details.

Personally, he caught my attention when he said:

“We have to have the Party Congress set the course to update the Cuban economic model and to achieve a sustainable and prosperous socialist society, a less egalitarian but more just society .  . .”

It’s with regards to …”a less egalitarian but more just society”… that I want to reflect about. Continue reading →

Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

On the 160th anniversary of the birth of José Martí, it occurs to me to say something about two of his writings. The first, extremely well-known: the letter that the Apostle* wrote to his friend Manuel Mercado hours before his death in Dos Rios.

In this letter cataloged by some as his political testament, the Maestro* says:

I lived in the monster and I know its entrails and my sling is that of David.

 This phrase has been repeated countless times by all media in Cuba since 1959, in schools and colleges and has been part of countless political texts. Continue reading →

Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

One of a country’s most precious things is its traditions They constitute the people’s soul and shape identity and belonging.

And culture and traditions are shaped by the nuances and vicissitudes of popular history over a long period of evolution and development of nationality and personality.

We Cubans have many and they are and very beautiful. For their authenticity, they have remained despite efforts to make them disappear following the dictates of an absurd and dogmatic social engineering.

One of these was the Christmas festivities and, among them, the gifts placed under the tree to be opened on the morning of the birth of baby Jesus, and the pleasant and emotive sound of a Christmas carol.

That was an experience so beautiful as to never be forgotten.

Then there were no more Christmases or New Years, or Three Kings or gifts under the tree or under the bed.

Then came adulthood, after maturity, and it has not crossed my mind that the possibility of a return with a huge cargo of human warmth, familiarity and Cubanness.

However, unexpectedly, they have returned, no less than in these last Christmases, to receive a gift that fills my heart with joy and hope, and it comes from an unexpected place: INTERNET tells us that the Cuban Law Association (AJC) ends 2012 with more than 110,000 visits to its blog.

The fact that a blog of legal issues, often highly technical and difficult to understand, created with much effort as we try to write in an understandable way for those not versed in the law, has reached that impressive figure can only fill us with joy and a sense of accomplishment in a fair fight.

Within Cuba are more than 1,200 entries to the AJC blog. In a country like ours, without INTERNET and where the overwhelming majority of the population does not have a computer, that number is not negligible.

Of course this involves us more, but now, we want to thank from the bottom of our hearts all who come to read to us and give us their comments, which are almost entirely respectful and encouraging.

Thank you all for this delightful, stimulating — and very emotional for us — NEW YEAR’S GIFT.

January 17 2013

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

One of the fundamental elements required for a credible trial is PUBLIC.

While not synonymous with total transparency, a public trial allows us to be informed about it, as the events take place before our eyes and actions of the court are exposed to the severe scrutiny of those who are watching. Especially when it comes to judicial proceedings that, no doubt, feature in the nation’s history and in the personal history of its players.

When the trial is public and allows any interested party to attend, it’s difficult for things to happen that are not observed and so, to undermine justice.

Thus the importance for participants on both sides.

The trial for the event that cost the life of the winner of the Sakharov Human Rights Prize, Oswaldo Paya Sardinas — promoter and executor of the already historical Varela Project — which was held against the Spaniard Ángel Francisco Carromero Barrios, the person who was driving the vehicle in which Payá was traveling with his collaborator. Harold Cepero and a Swedish citizen, was held in secret.

This event sparked, from the beginning, a series of controversial opinions because the Cuban authorities always considered it an accident and a great many of the government’s opponents did not share this opinion.

They should have acted, then, in ways that would not allow any doubt about this troublesome issue, where it was clear that we were in the presence of an unfortunate accident. Such a practice could only be achieved by strict adherence to the provisions of these cases.

Thus, in the Criminal Procedure Act (LPP), Article 305, we read:

The trial is public unless reasons of state security, morality, public order or the respect due to the person aggrieved by the offense or their relatives suggest it should be held behind closed doors.

The trial was held behind closed doors with a large police presence around the court. If indeed the authorities did not consider what happened as a mere traffic accident, why did not declare their privacy for reasons of state security which is much closer to the real facts and why did they publish that the trial would be public?

Later in the same article 305 mentioned above, we read:

The only people who will attend the sessions of closed door trails are the parties, their representatives, advocates, support staff and people that the President or the Court authorize.

But, inconceivably, they did not allow the children of the deceased, Payá Sardinas, access to the courtroom of the Tribunal in clear contrast to what we just read in Art. 305 of the LPP. Would these two young people have been able to cause public disorder in the courtroom? I doubt it.

Finally, the article we are discussing closes:

The Court can make this decision before the trial, or any state thereof, or upon its own motion, stating on the record the reasons to support that decision.

We already have experienced how simple administrative processes trials are held in secret and with a police deployment without any explanation for it.

In any event, I would like to read in the minutes of the Court the reasons for acting the way they did in this case. But I doubt that’s possible with everything we’re seeing … and despite what is reported at international events about our justice system.

October 12 2012

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

As our readers know, the legal education of the national population constitutes one of the founding purposes of the Cuban Legal Association.

Given the importance of the topic and its need, we intend to continue working in this direction in this space, to assist with the preparation so necessary for everyone given current conditions.

So, we begin with a question and an answer: What is the Criminal Code?

Usually a Criminal Code is a compilation of those human behaviors deemed detrimental to social harmony and therefore  punishable because of theirs damage to the established order and organized peaceful relations that should exist in any civilized human community.

When the dangerousness of a human act (or even a failure to act) or conduct for the rest of the people in society is defined by the state as seriously harmful, it is considered and then defined as a “crime” and comes to occupy a place in the conduct to which we referred in the previous paragraph.

Each and every one of those human behaviors designed and offenses are listed, then retained and reflected in articles written consisting of the Criminal Code in question, so that individual behavior can be collated as described in the article prohibiting it, and which is understood that if it occurs, the subject’s behavior is criminal.

If the behavior of the subject in question does not match closely to the provisions of the letter of the law, then there is no crime.

So, in short, a criminal code is not simply the compilation of state-forbidden behavior, but also cover other aspects relating to the adequacy and enforcement of criminal justice.

Non-observance of its precepts will entail the suffering of a punishment (sentence) imposed by the state apparatus established for this purpose (the judicial system).

The Cuban criminal code, opens with some Preliminary Provisions which describe the objectives of the code in force in our country and which, in my opinion, it would be interesting to analyze in detail in future editions.

October 17 2012

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

We are at a difficult time in our history. So difficult that even nature seems to have conspired to bring us trouble. You have to be totally blind not to see the continuing and rapid deterioration of Cuba’s social health.

What happens around us is not new for history lovers. Similar situations have occurred in other places and other times. No wonder scholars say that “history repeats itself every so often.”

The deterioration of the environment should not lead, however, to loss of internal values. These values are the only ones that can save us amid the general disaster.

And it can’t happen, that between ourselves we have same situations that we criticize and fight. That is something that should be very clear to all of us in the Cuban Law Association.

Every day we see (and deal with) corruption, crime of all kinds, the little or no integrity of entities which should be paradigms for the country, constant violations of the law, ignorance or evil intention of their agents … all types of misconduct.

It is, moreover, what Cubans have called “to resolve,” that is, to get money by any means, without considering how in order to alleviate the shortages and general need we all suffer.

But beyond  all the hardships and vicissitudes, is the legacy left to us by the founding fathers of the Cuban nation and the sense of probity that we maintain at all costs. And that legacy reads verbatim:

When there are many men without decorum, there are always others who bear in themselves the honor of many men. Those are the ones who rebel with terrible strength against those who rob a people of their liberty which is to rob men of their decorum. In those men are thousands of men, a whole people, human dignity.

We will not and cannot renounce these paradigms . This would be to lose everything in this country and to sink the few handholds with which we can rescue the nation tomorrow.

The Cuban Law Association will always require absolute adherence of its members to the previous paradigms at any cost, even that of running out of members. And the lawyers who are not at the level that this time requires and who are carried away by human misery to which we may be exposed, because we are in Cuba, must abandon the Cuban Law Association, without distinction of person.

Because all we need now, greatly need, is LOYALTY AND INTEGRITY

November 5 2012

By Lic. Wilfredo Vallín  Almeida

Three youths were arrested violently, forced into a police car, and taken to a national police station where they were held for about 24 hours under interrogation by the State Security.

The reason: Handing out leaflets for the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba which, weeks before, had been delivered by its developers to the People’s National Assembly where it was received and given the number 1207, on June 20, 2012.

Although police violence is a fact that occurs almost daily in our country — the record of it is shown in photos, videos and interviews by independent media, bloggers and others — this case in particular, by its connotation, deserves special consideration.

When we speak at the police station with the agents of the political police who handled this case, we noticed several things to be discussed below.

First they told us that these young people had been arrested “for distributing propaganda in the public street.” Although they didn’t use the term “enemy,” it was obvious that in referring to propaganda it had to be, because otherwise there was no justification for the arrests.

When we showed the agents that this document had been delivered to the National Assembly of People’s Power without objections on the part of those who received it, they then went on to say “they resisted arrest.”

We will not detail here the argument under International Law that an arrest that begins by being illegal it is not valid for the powers-that-be to later turn it into one that is. That is, at least for now, another issue.

What the agents seemed to look at most strongly was where those sheets had been printed. So what is “important” to them is the printing, not the content. And that can be logically understood because what really worries them is not the actual printing, but the issue that plays out on those sheets.

And the issue is the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Human Rights, both of the United Nations (UN).

And we can understand the official concern because:

Cuba is a member of the UN.

Cuba participates in the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

It is seen as an International Rights Organization violating rights, which they reserve to themselves.

There is a plan, for the second or third time, for a UN rapporteur for torture to visit the Island, it’s not known when.

The Cuban government signed its intention to introduce these Covenants on the island on February 28, 2008.

In the case of such documents they cannot characterize them as an “imperialist maneuver against the country” or something like that.

Nor can they imprison those who disclose these covenants or support this campaign because this act would be wholly inconsistent with the principles of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

They know that, across the whole country, if their content and perspectives are made know to Cubans, there would be countless citizens who would support that demand.

The problems with the UN are not the same as with the harmless, unarmed and defenseless peaceful Cuban opponents.

And this only highlights some aspects of the problem.

Now the question is, of course, very difficult, in the hands of those who can resolve it, or who can conceal it Cuba, if they continue to speak in the tone of arrogance and power with which they spoke with us at the Sixth Police Station.

I think that for those who run things in the government in the country, the defining word today is: CROSSROADS.

September 13 2012