14ymedio, Havana, 22 July 2020 — The United Nations has dedicated a total of 19 resolutions in the last 15 months against Cuban State Security, according to a statement from Prisoners Defenders released on Wednesday.
The independent organization, based in Spain, recalls that on July 13, the UN published a resolution by several rapporteurs and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention accusing the Cuban Government of persecuting religious freedom, destroying churches and seriously affecting, for reasons of religious discrimination, the lives of more than 100 people.
According to Prisoners Defenders, Cuban officials have been ordered not to respond, even exceeding the maximum two month deadline to do so, as long as the rapporteurs’ resolution is not made public by any entity. “It is the modus operandi of State Security,” says the organization, to always evaluate mechanisms to silence these events. When they respond, on the other hand, they do so in a shameful way, changing the date of preparation of the letters (so that it is recorded as prior to the two-month period), and without entering the matter, because the officials who respond do not have the truthful information of the facts that are imputed nor can they even make independent investigative actions.”
In addition, Prisoners Defenders reports that “in the midst of the arbitration process” the United Nations has also sent the accusation of this organization to Cuba in the case of the arrest of José Daniel Ferrer. The Cuban Government responded to this, but the organization denounces its allegations as alien “to the procedural reality that has occurred and the proven facts.”
The communiqué compiles the 19 UN resolutions against Cuba, all of them, points out Prisoners Defenders, “related to actions where State Security has been ultimately responsible.” The statement adds, “many of [the G2 officials] have reluctantly been forced to play an unfortunate and shameful role.”
Among these resolutions, apart from the one that refers to the cases of José Daniel Ferrer and Fernando González Vaillant, those related to Pastor Alain Toledano, Eliecer Barrera Bandera and Josiel Guía Piloto stand out. Also listed are resolutions on others, the human rights abuses suffered by more than 30,000 Cuban doctors who participate in missions, the harassment of human rights defenders, journalists and activists, or the filtering and blocking of messages that called for a negative vote in the constitutional referendum of February 24, 2019.
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