While the Cuban Regime Announces the Release of 553 Prisoners, Sentences for Crimes of Opinion Continue

Prisoners Defenders fears that these are actually releases, but without cancellation of the sentences

Three mothers of 11J prisoners demanding their release. / Facebook

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 15 January 2025 — All eyes are watching to see who will be the 553 prisoners on the island who will benefit from the agreement between the Cuban regime and the Vatican to obtain, in exchange, the removal of Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism dictated by the president of the United States, Joe Biden. There is no clue as to their names for now, but neither is there any clue as to another, no less important issue: the conditions under which they will leave prison.

The organization Prisoners Defenders (PD) warns that the ambiguous vocabulary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invites fears that there will be no liberations, but rather releases, two words that appear to be used as synonyms in the government statement, without being so. “If this were confirmed, the news would not be as positive as the Cuban regime wants to make it seem. To release, in Cuba, is not to free. In that case, some would obtain conditional freedom, others perhaps extra-penal licenses, and others a series of subsidies of sentence, including forced labor without confinement,” says a text released by the NGO after the news became known.

PD celebrates, in any case, the future release of these prisoners, but notes that this December alone there were 16 new political prisoners, as well as 58 in the last quarter, for a total of 1,801 since July 1, 2021, for a total of 880 at this time. “A total of 1,219 political prisoners have been on the list in the last 12 months, all of them tortured,” underlines the document, which regrets at the same time that, even in the impossible case that all the beneficiaries of the agreement were prisoners for political reasons, “hundreds of people would remain behind bars, imprisoned only for expressing their opinion or demonstrating.”

“A total of 1,219 political prisoners have been on the list in the last 12 months, all of them tortured”

Just hours before the agreements were made public, a new and severe sentence was announced for two young Cubans who received four and five years in prison respectively for calling on social media for a protest against the government that never even took place, but which the Santiago de Cuba court considered a crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order.”

Felix Daniel Pérez Ruiz received the longest sentence for a post on the social network Facebook in which he said – using “rude words,” according to the sentence – that he was “fed up” with the Government and called for a “demonstration against the Cuban political system.” Cristhian De Jesús Peña Aguilera shared his friend’s call on social media and will now have to serve four years in prison, while two others investigated for the same activities were acquitted.

The sentence was condemned by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, which stressed that the regime is “on the hunt for any dissent.” Its executive director, Alejandro González Raga, who was exiled to Spain in 2008 after almost five years in prison, has called for all political prisoners to be “released immediately, without any conditions of any kind and without the obligation to leave the country.”

Justicia 11J also reacted to the announcement of the releases with fear, given the doubt that they will be forced to leave the country, as happened with the majority of those belonging to the group of 75, imprisoned during the Black Spring. In that case, also mediated by the Vatican and Spain, all those who agreed to leave Cuba in 2010 were released, and a year later those who refused to leave were also released.

“We denounce the Cuban regime’s inhumane practice of using people’s bodies and dignity to obtain political and economic concessions,” wrote the NGO, which noted that the benefit obtained in exchange for Cuba’s removal from the US blacklist represents “just relief for prisoners and their families,” but does not diminish “the repressive nature of the Cuban regime, which has often re-imprisoned dissidents who do not submit to it.”

“We denounce the Cuban regime’s inhuman practice of using people’s bodies and dignity to obtain political and economic concessions”

For its part, the Council for the Democratic Transition of Cuba welcomed the release of those who “should never have been in prison,” but regretted that the human rights agenda is being subordinated “to the foreign policy of the United States.” The group advocates a general amnesty and that the “conflict” returns to its “main origin, that which exists between the Cuban government and its society.”

The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP) also spoke out on the matter, flatly rejecting the fact that the regime did not mention in its announcement of the releases the obvious link with the removal from the US blacklist. The NGO considers the regime’s discourse to be an “insult when presenting the gradual release of 553 political prisoners as part of the just and humanitarian nature of Cuba’s penal and penitentiary systems, when thousands of families have been separated for the simple fact of thinking differently and physical and psychological repression, lack of medical attention and murder are common in prisons.”

Specifically with regards to Biden’s decision, and on a personal level, there is division among some well-known opponents of the regime. Radically opposed points of view are held by Guillermo Coco Fariñas, who has described the measure as “a betrayal of the Cuban people and the freedom of all peoples of the world,” and Alina Bárbara López, who sees it as correct — if the releases do not translate into forced exiles — although incoherent. “If there were no reasons to include it, why was it there? The sanctions have affected the entire Cuban society, not just those responsible,” she points out in a Facebook post in which she also considers the suspension of Chapter III of the Helms-Burton Act to be positive, although she finds it “inexplicable that those people and institutions directly responsible for repression of Cuban citizens are not sanctioned.”

“It is inexplicable that those individuals and institutions directly responsible for repression of Cuban citizens are not punished.”

’11J’ prisoner Angélica Garrido, released in 2024 and with her sister Cristina still in prison, welcomed the possible releases “but they are negotiated for something that the world knows, that Cuba not only sponsors terrorism, but that Cuba exercises state terrorism against its own people.”

Ángel Moya, a former prisoner of the Black Spring and, therefore, affected by a release similar to this, also gave his opinion on both the announced releases and on Biden’s measure. “The communist regime of Cuba obtains a temporary certificate of good conduct with benefits included,” he said in conclusion. The husband of the Lady in White Berta Soler made it clear that the regime has always “taken advantage of Cuban political prisoners by using them as bargaining chips and achieving benefits.” However, he added: “except in the previous four years of the Trump government, neither the embargo nor any other measure to strengthen it worked. And if they have ever worked, it is at half speed, there are plenty of examples.”

The families of some of the prisoners most in the spotlight, such as Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel Osorbo Castillo, the father and daughter duo Felix and Saily Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer, are keeping quiet for now. Meanwhile, on social media, a group of activists has launched a campaign to accompany the publication of a photograph of a political prisoner with the hashtag #todos to promote the fact that no political prisoners remain in Cuban prisons.

____________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.