14ymedio, Madrid, 1 March 2023 — The Santander City Council (Cantabria, Spain) unanimously approved on February 23 an institutional declaration in favor of the freedom of Cuban political prisoners and advocating for the fulfillment of Human Rights on the Island.
The motion was approved by 25 votes in favor and one abstention, that of Miguel Saro, representative of the regional party United for Santander and a member of the United Left and the Communist Party.
The declaration was presented at the proposal of the Cuban Association of Santander with the support of the Cuban-Basque Association Demokrazia Kubarentzat, which represents the natives of the Island who reside in these two regions of northern Spain.
The text extols the Cubans residing in Cantabria, whose emigration “has come about due to the lack of freedoms that govern their daily lives in the land where they were born” and for which they are willing to risk their lives.
“The Cuban people live subjected to a military regime of the Single Party, an entity that decides on every citizen, what he is and what it wants him to become. The absence of freedoms, the denial of political pluralism and the permanent violation of human rights is joined by an economic model that causes a chronic shortage of food and medicine,” continues the declaration, which goes on to recite the mismanagement of the pandemic and of a political and social system that shows “in the most emphatic way the inequalities and deficiencies existing in the country.”
“July 11, 2021 [11J], was embedded in our hearts for feeling the awakening of a people who took to the streets inflamed by material deprivation and lack of freedoms,” says the statement, which continues to point out the repression that has happened to that day and which places the number of “11J” prisoners that the associations counted at 891, with a total of 1,027 prisoners of conscience. In addition, they add, relatives of the prisoners, journalists and intellectuals, see how this violence also extends to them.
The City Council of this city of 172,000 inhabitants says that it cannot remain on the sidelines of the “legitimate demands of a people that continues to demand real changes” and denounces the situation in line with other organizations that it cites, such as the Parliament of Cantabria and the European Parliament, and calls on the Congress of Deputies and the Government of Spain to do the same.
To this end, they call on the Cuban government to raise the bar and to “take firm and determined steps towards democratic and economic opening” and to carry out “the necessary reforms so that citizens can enjoy all the rights and all the liberties.”
“For this, it is necessary to support a peaceful transition to democracy in which all the people of Cuba can freely decide their political future, urge the Government to continue with its policy of dialogue and aid and cooperation, as well as its desire to restore democracy and human rights.”
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