The figure includes more than a dozen of the cases reported in the previous month.
EFE/14ymedio, Madrid, May 17, 2024 — The NGO Prisoners Defenders (PD) reported Friday that at the end of April, it registered 1,100 people imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba, more than a dozen more than those included in its previous monthly report.
The organization, based in Madrid, explained that in April it added 13 people considered political prisoners to its list and that five others left the registry after full compliance with the sanction or measure imposed.
The report, published on the NGO’s website, explains that 30 minors – the minimum criminal age in Cuba is 16 – remain on the list of prisoners. Of these, 27 are serving sentences and three are being criminally prosecuted.
PD denounced that “15 of the minors have already been convicted of sedition,” with an average sentence of five years of liberty deprivation, most of them under the regime of “home confinement or forced labor without internment.”
15 of the minors have been convicted of sedition, with an average sentence of five-year imprisonment
The statement adds that 225 people – mostly convicted of participating in the anti-government protests of 11 July 2021 – have been charged with sedition, and at least 222 have already been sentenced to an average of ten years in prison.
According to PD, there are also 118 prisoners (including several who are transgender) who “still have political and conscience convictions .”
“All trans women of conscience in prison have been and are imprisoned among men, which is also the case with common trans prisoners, who thus suffer indescribable situations among men based on their gender identification,” denounced PD.
The NGO added that it identified “297 prisoners with serious medical pathologies without adequate medical treatment,” it also confirmed that “all are suffering from various medical pathologies due to lack of food, mistreatment, a repressive environment and lack of appropriate medical care for all of them.”
Recently, Prisoners Defenders sponsored the Foreign Affairs Committee for the Spanish Congress of Deputies to present a non-legislative proposal “regarding the possible evidence of human trafficking and modern slavery in Cuba’s collaboration missions abroad .” In a session attended by 35 deputies, the proposal was approved by a minimum margin, with 18 votes in favor and 17 against.
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