Amnesty International said that the regime uses four tactics “to suppress dissent”
14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2024 — The organizations Prisoners Defenders (PD) and Consorcio Justicia denounced to the United Nations a “scandalous repressive escalation this quarter against peaceful demonstrators” throughout Cuba. In a report published this Friday, they point out that between October and November, there have been at least 216 people arrested in the country in an “indiscriminate and arbitrary” manner.
The document presented to the international organization indicates that the freedoms of association, assembly and demonstration on the Island are prohibited by a legal framework that runs through the Constitution, the Criminal Code and the Law of Associations to “multiple legislative rules” that “criminally make it impossible to exercise the least of these rights.”
Presented before the Mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the complaint highlights how the Constitution itself, far from guaranteeing freedoms, “acts as a blank law* (a legal concept that subjects one rule to another leaving arbitrariness open), where it subjects these alleged rights to lower norms that proscribe them, and where there is no court of constitutional protection for legal norms that, flagrantly, contradict fundamental rights.”
There is also a “remarkable absence of freedoms for political association, in a Cuba where, by law, only the Communist Party can exist”
Likewise, it explains that the Law of Associations makes it impossible to “register an association without State approval,” so the Government “is the only entity that has the power to create organizations in the country.” In that way it can control the population while simulating an environment of guaranteed rights for civil society.
There is also a “remarkable absence of freedoms for political association, in a Cuba where, by law, only the Communist Party can exist,” the text adds.
This regulation, the report emphasizes, has made it possible to suppress any attempt at mobilization that, in turn, has skyrocketed in recent months due to prolonged blackouts and shortages of all kinds.
Between October and November, PD registered 48 new political prisoners, 34 (71%) of whom belong to the civilian population, with no known affiliation or political activism. In the complaint, the organization says that the criminal proceedings against these people are “fabricated.” In most cases, they are accused of public disorder: 18 in Villa Clara, five in Santiago de Cuba, three each in Ciego de Ávila, Granma and Camagüey, and one each in Pinar del Río and Sancti Spíritus.
PD also points out that there are currently 1,153 political prisoners in the country, and since the nationwide protests on 11 July 2021, more than 1,790 innocent people have suffered political or conscientious imprisonment on the Island.
It also indicates that among the political prisoners there are 650 with serious medical pathologies and 70 who suffer from serious mental health disorders, without access to adequate medical and psychiatric care.
In a statement, the organization said that police authorities use “short arrests” as a “control and intimidation tool”
Amnesty International (AI) said that the regime uses four tactics “to repress dissent.” In a statement, the organization said that law enforcement authorities use “short arrests” as a “control and intimidation tool.”
For the NGO, having a person under arrest for a few hours or days “sends a message of terror to those who dissent.” That practice has become more visible in recent weeks, with the arrests of dissidents such as Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, and the independent journalist Henry Constantín, who was released this Thursday after seven days of arbitrary imprisonment.
Likewise, AI pointed out that internet cuts are used “to silence protests.” In many cases, they are selectively applied to activists, who “see their internet service interrupted several times during the year.”
Another tactic is the criminalization of opponents who express themselves freely. AI remarked that “they are criminally prosecuted if they do not give up in their fight for respect for human rights.”
Finally, it highlighted that people who raise their voices against the Government are fired from their jobs, a tactic designed to “punish dissent and force conformity.”
*Translator’s note: printed legal form with blanks to be filled in depending on the circumstances.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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