14ymedio, Madrid, 2 August 2021- – The massive demonstrations of July 11 “transformed Cuba”. The latest report of the Observatorio Cubano de Conflictos (OCC/Cuban Observatory of Conflicts) is conclusive in this regard: more than 187,000 Cubans participated in a total of 584 demonstrations throughout the island last month.
Not only has the number of protests in Cuba increased, notes the Miami-based NGO, but, above all, the number of people involved in them. The growth is dramatic compared to June, when 1,600 Cubans took to the streets in 249 protests, most of them small acts by a few or one individual.
“The public has been incubating a deep resentment fueled by the indolence of the authorities in the face of growing misery and their disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says the Observatory, which notes that the song Patria y Vida “galvanized this sentiment on a national scale and became an anthem of national insubordination.”
Faced with this, the organization denounces, the response was “police and paramilitary brutality… The repressive method is no longer a surgical one against organizations and dissidents but a massive one: neighborhood raids, beatings, expeditious sentences,” details the OCC, which includes the figures of detainees from Cubalex and Human Rights Watch: 745 people.
“The military caste has found that the citizenry has lost its fear of the repressive apparatus, so now they turn to terror,” the report says. “This is a war against all the people.”
The Observatory points out that of the protests in July, 435 (74%) were related to political and civil rights, and the remaining 149 (26%) were linked to the demand for economic, social and cultural rights.
It also highlights the “public break of renowned artists with legal trade union institutions (UNEAC), the denunciations of relatives and friends in support of the prisoners and disappeared, as well as the graphic documentation of repressive brutalities” in the second half of the month.
Translated by: Hombre de Paz
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