THE CONSULTATION
HONOR TO HIM WHO DESERVES IT
Wilfredo Vallín Almeida, 27 September 2010, La Víbora, Havana
Since launching this section, The Consultation in the Digital Spring, we have received a great number of communications in different ways. Many of them from people with different types of problems: from a housing issue to police harassment, from threats based on gender to people condemned to twenty or thirty year sentences for both common and political reasons.
The sad — and unusual — thing is that often the problems are created because they were given the wrong advice from the legal standpoint by… the authorities of this country. And, in these authorities we include the police all the way to the courts and even higher.
Furthermore, we are showered with questions that are also very different. We try to help in specific cases of legal problems and to answer questions, always in accordance with our knowledge and the legal information at our disposal, both of which don’t always cover the entire spectrum of the inquiries.
In this situation, the great majority of problems that come to us are that, PROBLEMS. Thus, they represent, to us, a great satisfaction when we what we can communicate is not a problem but a SOLUTION that can be given to… the appropriate authorities.
For more than a year, in this same column, we have published a case titled “It Being Proved That.” I am going to reproduce a brief fragment of this to set the stage for the reader.
“…I have before me a copy of the record of Yamil Domínguez Ramos, U.S. citizen (Cuban law does not accept double citizenship), with the Sentence No. 3 of 13 January 2009 of the Supreme Court, that was sent to me by his family and where his appeal for a violation of the law and the ratification of his ten-year sentence was dismissed, and if you read carefully the entire history of this case… it is far from being absolutely clear that anything was ‘proven’.”
Before our involvement, and in a supportive action that we had not seen before, a large group of people within civil society decided to help Yamil and his family and started a beautiful campaign for his release, added to which was a brave hunger strike launched by he himself, leading eventually to a letter from the First Vice-Minister of Justice directed to the appropriate court.
To our immense satisfaction, the letter is completely in line with our own appraisal of the case and does proper justice to the case of Yamil Domínguez. Given this case, we were sure that the courts involved would review the investigative phase of the case, to the benefit of, and justice for, the accused.
It’s possible that we do not agree ideologically with the First Vice Minister of Justice, but in the same way that we bitterly criticized this entire unjust and arbitrary action on the part of the authorities, it is also our duty to acknowledge every just act on their part, and with regards to the First Vice Minister, we do so in this case.
Honor to him who deserves it, as we were taught by the greatest of all Cubans.
With regards to the person of this Vice Minister we offer our acknowledgment for her civic valor and her actions upholding the law. It is an example of what we always ask from the authorities: to act in strictest conformance with the law, without distinction with regards to persons, because we are all equal under the law according the Constitution of the Nation.
And for Yamil, his family and all who desire good (because this is a formidable young Cuban), and who are delighted, our congratulations for your happiness, which is also ours.
October 10, 2010