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The CPD notes “that the achievements of freedom for such cases are not attributable to changes in the regime,” but rather to the regime’s interest in avoiding international condemnation. “It is necessary, we remind the diplomatic corps, to be braver and less opportunistic, if we really want to achieve effective changes in this regime that has been deceiving the entire world for 60 years,” they ask in the report.

In the second group, Cuban Prisoners Defenders classifies 24 prisoners as “convicted of conscience” because “they suffer forced labor at home, measures to limit freedom or probation under threats, which the regime also usually revokes and returns them to prison if the activist does not cease his pro-democracy activity.”

In that list is the revocation of parole and deprivation of liberty of Misael Espinosa Puebla who, “in spite of complying with the requirement that he periodically appear before the authorities during his sentence of home confinement, he continued with his firm position against the regime, and has been returned to prison in June.”

According to the report, these prisoners are forced into work unrelated to their “professional qualifications and that does not even allow for a minimum of sustenance,” which demonstrates humiliation as a method of psychological torture in those convicted of [crimes of] conscience to avoid their pro-democratic recidivism.”

The other group that makes up the list includes 30 political prisoners, including Elías Pérez Bocourt, who was released last month after serving a sentence of 27 years and 192 days convicted for the crimes of “accomplice of murder and piracy,” in the case of the  of Taará Nautical Club, where four police officers died.

Particularly serious is the situation of the 10,000 people who are in prison, according to the CPD’s count, for crimes of conscience classified in the Criminal Code as “pre-criminal.” The figure, the organization indicates, has been provided by a senior government official with whom they maintain contact, “an important regime leader, reformer and contrary to the state of current uncontrolled repression.” In Havana 1,800 people are imprisoned as “pre-criminals.”

These types of sentences have been denounced on multiple occasions by organizations such as Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which warn against a law that punishes citizens with penalties of one to four years in prison for an alleged crime that they have not yet committed. To this is added the strategy, widely used in recent years, to forbid activists and journalists from traveling outside Cuba by telling them that they are “regulated.” The organization Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) also warns that, lately, another control mechanism is being used consisting of offering dissidents the opportunity to “voluntarily” leave the country as an alternative to their expulsion.

Prisoners Defenders has also analyzed the duration of the sentences, whose average is 3 years and 8 months, two months longer than the previous year.

If the case of prisoners from whom a common crime overlapped with a crime of conscience is added, the figure skyrockets, the most common penalty being life imprisonment.

In more than 73% of convictions for political reasons an aggravating crime has been added, a common practice so that these inmates cannot be considered exclusively “prisoners of conscience” and therefore the organization recommends that any protest or act of opposition be peaceful, thus avoiding the possibility of receiving more than 20 years. Prisoners Defenders says it is continuing to get human rights organizations to consider these as cases of conscience.

Unpacu, with 49 activists of conscience convicted or charge, accounts 51% of the inmates tallied by the organization.

Cuban Prisoners Defenders, linked to Unpacu, is a group engaged in analysis, study and action, and collaborated with groups of Island activists and relatives of political prisoners to collect data.

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Wilfredo Allen, one of the most prominent immigration attorneys in southern Florida, has agreed to provide legal representation to García, who told authorities he fears being returned to the island.

“I spoke with García Duarte’s family on Friday and Saturday. I also spoke with him over the weekend. I have agreed to be his attorney and am hopeful my client will be able to win this political asylum case,” said Allen in a telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald.

“The first thing we will do is request an interview to demonstrate ’credibe fear’ as soon as possible. After the interview we will ask that he be released on parole,” added the attorney, who said his team is already preparing a political asylum case.

Even if García is released, he might not be granted legal status under the Cuban Adjustment Act because, according to Allen, entering the country as a stowaway is illegal under U.S. immigration law.  The 26-year-old has been transferred to Krome detention center in Miami-Dade county.

“If we manage to get him out on bail or on parole, we will have a political asylum trial in a Miami court. If he is not granted political asylum, he will be defended at Krome,” Allen added.

“A defense can be made based on political persecution resulting from past events or from possible consequences of a person’s actions. I think we can present a strong case of future persecution against Mr. García Duarte,” he explained. “Given all this, I am hopeful that we will be successful and he will be allowed to stay in the United States,” he said.

García has received massive support for his actions on social media. Groups of Cubans living in Florida have called upon local politicians to help the stowaway remain in the United States.

“Those of us who familiar with the sad reality of Cuba know that, if he is deported, he will be sent directly to serve a long sentence in one of the Castro dictatorship’s dungeons. I therefore join in calling upon immigration officials to issue a parole release that would allow him to remain in the United States,” wrote the iconic exiled singer Willy Chirino on Facebook.

A petition campaign on Change.org has recieved more than 25,000 signatures in little more than seventy-two hours. It asks the American government to grant the young man asylum.

Back on the island, his family has still not gotten over the shock. “He didn’t say anything to us. Yesterday he came home, he bathed, he ate and he went to work as usual,” said his sister, Yudeysi García, on Friday in Havana. The stowaway’s 2-year-old daughter remains in Cuba.

More than a dozen Cubans have escaped the island as stowaways on airplanes. Most died while making the attempt. The official Communist Party press has not reported anything about the incident.

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Mesa Valenciano cites the case of another professor, again without citing his name, who, in her opinion, “initiated a strong criticism of the decisions of the” Cuban leaders, “without perceiving that, with his irresponsible behavior in the comprehensive education of his students he confused them and showed them a wrong path.”

The official borrows a phrase from Fidel Castro, where he defined the educator as “an activist of the revolutionary politics” of the Party and an advocate of ideology. Mesa Valenciano adds to the citation that whomever does not feel this way “must give up being a university professor” on the Island.

Her statements have been questioned on social networks. The journalist and university professor José Raúl Gallego strongly criticized the official’s words. “This is being said by a Deputy Minister of Higher Education in Cuba, but also published by the official website of that institution. The Cuban university undermining human rights,” he denounced on Facebook.

“While the networks are scandalized with the exclusionary, dogmatic and antidemocratic statements of Vice Minister Mesa Valenciano; the University of Camaguey shares them calmly on its Facebook profile and calls for “reflecting together for Cuba, for higher education and especially for the young people we educate,” Gallego added.

The journalist, currently residing in Mexico after being expelled from his position at the University of Camagüey, reported that just this Thursday the rector of the University of Havana, Miriam Nicado García, was invited to give a speech at an event on university autonomy in Mexico. “It is a pity that I did not find out in the morning so I might have gone there and read the article of Vice Minister Martha Mesa to her fellow rectors, to see what they think of university autonomy in Cuba,” he said.

The headquarters for higher learning in Cuba has been criticized for the expulsion of students and teachers due to political issues. In June 2017, the professor and philologist Dalila Rodríguez was expelled from the Central University of Las Villas and was relieved of her credentials due to her proximity to groups that promote religious freedom.

University student of journalism Karla Pérez González was expelled a few days later, after being accused of belonging to the Somos+ (We Are More) Movement and “having a strategy from the beginning of the course to subvert young people.”

Her case sparked a wave of indignation and speaking in her favor were ‘official-friendly’ voices such as the singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, who wrote in his blog: “How brutish we are, coño, and decades go by and we don’t learn.”

The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC) added Carmen Mesa Valenciano to its list of “white collar repressors.” Other officials who are on the FHRC list are Sergio Luis Peña Martínez, rector of the ISDi; Ernesto Fernández Sánchez, Deputy Assistant Director; Milvia Pérez Pérez, Dean; and María Deborah Maura López, Department Head.

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The young man is a specialist in video game heroes, he knows perfectly the story of Anti-Mage, Earth Spirit and Shadow Fiend, characters of the popular DOTA 2, but suddenly he has been caught in a saga of “revolutionaries” against “mercenaries,” according to the State Security officer who spoke more as the meeting continued. “You crossed a line, because you were summoned very close to the Plaza of the Revolution and there were minors among those who were there,” he was warned.

“If this Saturday, August 17, you reappear there, we will respond with the full weight of the law, and those who called the meeting will be responsible,” concluded the agent, who only identified himself with the brief name of Camilo.

In the conversation, some SNet administrators were accused of having sold themselves to imperialism and were told on the web “things happen that undermine morale and there are people who are lining their pockets.”

The largest wireless network that exists on the Island, with more than a decade of existence and 40,000 users, is experiencing days of internal tension. A group of node administrators has decided to abide by the new regulations that came into force on July 29 and accept the official offer to be subordinated to the Young Computer Club (JCC), a decision that will make them lose autonomy and scale.

If these conditions are accepted, SNet users will have to wait for the JCCs to evaluate videogames and other tools that they want to add to the network and they will have to go through a commission that determines whether or not they have political problems, or if they threaten morality, ethics or the figure of national political leaders, as was clear in a meeting held on Monday between several administrators of SNet, officials of the Ministry of Communications and executives of the JCC.

Some of those who called the public protest a few meters from the Ministry of Communications for August 17 have retracted and have called on social networks for people not to attend. For that reason there is great confusion about whether SNet users will come next Saturday.

Chen’s story agrees on several points with the complaint made early this Thursday by Ernesto de Armas. On his Twitter account, the young man reported that State Security stopped him at home a few hours earlier. “They threatened me, falsely accused me of things, even threatened me with jail. I am very sad that this happens just for defending SNet in my country. I don’t hurt anyone,” he wrote.

Armas has been one of the most active Internet users in favor of the permanence of the wireless network and has published numerous messages with the hashtag #YoSoySnet (I Am Snaet). After learning of his arrest, dozens of Twitter users responded with words of encouragement and showed their support. “Be calm Ernesto, that’s the way things are here, don’t worry much, nothing happens, they’re just creating a bit of terror, don’t let them do it. Raise your head and move on,” a tweeter advised.

Among the arguments put forward by State Security officials who have interrogated several members of SNet is that the call for protest has been made in a place very close to the Plaza of the Revolution, “a strategic point that the enemy wants to defile,” one of those detained who preferred anonymity told this newspaper. “They repeated that all this is manufactured by the same people who staged the LGBTI march of May 11.”

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“In the end, what has become clear is that we will pay the salary increase from our pocket,” said a butcher in the afternoon, when any the product he had to sell at less than 45 Cuban pesos (CUP) a pound had “flown”  off the stand. While flicking the flies away, and in the small space without refrigerators where the ribs and the pig’s legs are sold, the merchant displayed his disagreement with the official decision.

“All the money we no longer earn along with what the producer doesn’t get to invest in his business and fatten his animals, is what they have put in the pocket of state workers; you can’t tell us it’s not a gift from the Government. ” The man, becoming an instant economist, opined that “in two months there will be no pork fat here.”

A lady, happy that cassava does not exceed 4 CUP a pound, took the opportunity to fill her bag with a dozen of these roots, although she also criticized that the cabbage, of poor quality and small, was also selling at 4 CUP a pound. This is the new ’capped’ price and she noted that before “it didn’t cost even half that.” Such are the new measures, which force the traders to lower the prices of some products while offering a comfortable margin to raise them on others.

The variety common to the San Rafael market barely suffered. The vendors did not protest but the customers did not seem to be partying either. During the first 24 hours of capped prices, each party played its role and followed the script. When the store opened its doors this Friday, the young man with the Chevrolet had not arrived, the butcher warned shoppers to make an orderly line because he had few steaks, and the cassava stand was empty.

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The activist was held in El Guatao prison, in Artemisa and then transferred to a prison in Ciego de Ávila. Due to the worsening of her state of health, she was transferred to Havana, her home.

Cruz Miranda, a former political prisoner, had also belonged to the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu). In 2016, she was arrested after she shouted anti-government slogans in the area of the Capitol building in Havana.

Soler told Diario de Cuba that Cruz Miranda is still in the intensive care ward and listed in serious condition. “It is still in the hands of the La Covadonga doctors service and under the responsibility of the DSE [Department of State Security] and the Cuban regime what could happen to her.”

“Cruz Miranda was taken to prison in good health last year and it has been three months since her condition has deteriorated gradually and every day she has gotten worse, being imprisoned, in the hands of the DSE and paramilitary medical personnel,” she said.

Soler clarified that the extrapenal license “is a conditional release” so the activist continues at the mercy of State Security forces.

“To go anywhere and do anything, including temporarily leaving the country, she will have to ask permission from the Cuban State… We are making arrangements so that she can receive the best specialized care,” she added.

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The smugglers, under the control of Los Zetas, organized a boat to pick up Puig and three other people on a Cuban beach and took them to the Yucatan Peninsula where they remained hidden in a motel room until the traffickers received the payment demanded.

Upon arrival in the United States, Puig signed for the majors with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Currently, the 28-year-old slugger has hit .357, with a home run and six RBIs in 11 games with Cleveland.

Last Monday, the player decided to withdraw his appeal to a three-game suspension for his participation in a brawl when he was a member of the Cincinnati team.

Puig will begin serving his suspension from Monday’s game in which the Indians, who are tied at the top of the Central Division of the American League, start a series of three games against the Boston Red Sox.

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“I have never been able to completely rehabilitate a person with this disorder,” adds the doctor, who says that the majority of Cuban wanderers are of working age and that “alcoholism is one of the most frequent causes for falling into this behavior.”

Around the tourist areas, in the most central streets of the cities and in the vicinity of markets it is common to find these homeless, most of the time asking for alms, with ragged and dirty clothes or with religious images accompanied by a container where passersby can place some coins.

“The majority are people who lost their homes, their families, their jobs, and end up living on the street without commitments or a sense of belonging anywhere,” Garcia explains.

For the psychiatrist, one of the great difficulties in helping these needy people is that “they refuse to institutionalize themselves, to establish a classic social life, that is, to live in a family, to accept social norms and there comes a legal, ethical and social conflict, because you can’t force a person to stay home.”

The article includes several testimonies citing the reasons that have taken these wanderers to the streets. From an HIV patient who does not have a home, to a woman who says that when her husband left she stopped liking her home and now prefers to sleep in front of the Capitol building.

During the decades of the 60s and 80s, the so-called Idler Law was in force in Cuba and penalized those who did not study or work. Citizens who were prosecuted for this crime were forced to take a job, generally in agricultural work, street cleaning and other occupations that most rejected because of the difficulty of the work and the low salary.

With the arrival of the crisis of the 90s and the appearance of an incipient private sector, the State could no longer guarantee a job for every person of working age and the legislation was repealed, one of the reasons that the report points to as a trigger for the increase in the number of homeless individuals who roam the streets.

Garcia references several initiatives — the Caballero de Paris project is one example — which have been created to focus attention on these homeless people. In 2015, an action protocol was established in the capital for admission, diagnosis, care and social reintegration, which has not achieved its objectives due to the distrust of many of the wanderers.

For his part, Ramón González, an official of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of the Old Havana municipality, recognizes that Havana is “the Cuban province where there are the most wanderers in the country. Every day at nine in the morning a bus leaves, paid for by the labor department, to pick up those people.”

The bus circulates through the main streets of three municipalities of the city: Old Havana, Central Havana, and Plaza of the Revolution, and then heads towards the Social Protection Center known as Las Guásimas, just outside the city. But, along the way, many destitute people hide to avoid being caught.

Frequently the independent press denounces the forced collection of wanderers, clandestine vendors and people with psychiatric disorders when some official visit is passing through the area where they circulate or spend the night.

González, however, believes that “due to the ignorance generated around the program, some of the citizens who see the bus collecting people, imagine that we will imprison them. Especially since, sometimes, we have to adopt verbally aggressive behavior, but some are capable of attacking us.”

The bus collects around 30 people daily to transfer them to Las Guásimas. Some stay for a while in the center but others escape at the first opportunity to return to the streets.

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As Alejandro Hezquez Sánchez, an expert immigration lawyer, explained to El Nuevo Herald, until now, a birth certificate was considered proof of Cuban citizenship in the United States.

“The USCIS documents affirmed that the passport was the best proof of citizenship, followed by the birth certificate issued by the Ministry of Justice or failing that the consular certificate, issued by the Cuban consul. In 2017 the consular certificate was eliminated as proof of citizenship,” said the lawyer.

Since 2018, to issue a birth certificate to a foreign-born Cuba, the applicant must ask from the document from at least one of their parents and registration in Cuba’s Department of Immigration and Aliens. As of now, USCIS no longer considers this document valid to qualify for the Adjustment Act.

“Basically the children of Cubans have to continue taking the same steps: they register at the consulate, wait for a birth certificate to be issued before the Civil Registry, but then they have to take a third step which is the registration before the Department of Immigration and Aliens which issues a ’resolution’ of Cuban citizenship, or letter of citizenship. Only when that file is completed can they request  a Cuban passport,” explained the lawyer.

Another lawyer who is an immigration expert, Wilfredo Allen, told the press that “the most serious thing (…) is that it prevents applicants from appealing the decision if it is negative”

“Over 20 years I have accompanied many Venezuelan descendants of Cubans in their process to regularize [their status in the United States] through the Adjustment Act. This further complicates the procedures for this group that is in a vulnerable situation,” he said.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.