Sentenced to four years in prison, Meivis Mulen Díaz was “subjected to cruel treatment”
14ymedio, Havana, 6 November 2024 — Activist Meivis Mulen Díaz, 54, was released this Monday from the Cetem forced labor camp, called Bidot, in the municipality of Jimaguayú, in Camagüey. The political prisoner was sentenced in 2022 to four years for “public disorder” for participating in the massive Island-wide popular protests of 11 July 2021 (11J).
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), which announced the release, did not provide details on Mulen Díaz’s legal situation. According to the organization, during his stay in Bidot, the opposition leader “was systematically subjected to cruel treatment, starvation and even a lack of medicine for his illnesses.”
According to the prisoner register also kept by the NGO Prisoners Defenders (PD), the activist suffers from hypertension and malnutrition.
Imprisoned since February 2022, Mulen Díaz, who had no criminal record, had been arrested for the first time on 11 July, when, like thousands of Cubans on the Island, he went out to demand freedom, in his case in Camagüey.
State Security did not stop harassing him, even trying to force him to change his original statement
As he himself recounted in a video published by the OCDH, he was released three days later under house arrest pending trial. However, State Security continued to harass him, even trying to force him to change his original statement.
“My life, after the 11th, has been an ordeal,” he said in that recording, in which he said: “My home has been besieged by henchmen and front men of the regime, who have not stopped watching me constantly.”
Before him, last Thursday, Pedro Albert Sánchez, also an 11J prisoner, was released after spending 11 days on hunger strike. The 68-year-old professor left prison 1580, in San Miguel del Padrón, in Havana, without the prison authorities clarifying his legal situation.
On Tuesday, the activist was to learn more details about the status of his five-year prison sentence, but when he went to the Guanabacoa Prosecutor’s Office, his appointment was postponed until next week, due to the imminent passage of the hurricane.
At least 1,584 people were arrested in the context of the 11J protests. Of them, more than 600 remain in prison
According to the NGO Justicia 11J, at least 1,584 people were arrested in the context of these protests. Of these, more than 600 remain in prison, the organization said during the 190th regular session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), last July. Prisoners Defenders, for its part, documented before the UN in 2023 the cases of 520 11 July prisoners, which led the international organization to issue, last April, six injunctions to the Cuban regime for violating due process.
In addition, at least 26 prisoners died in Cuban state custody during the first half of this year, Cubalex reported on September 11, which is equivalent to four deaths each month. The NGO attributed the deaths to the “cruel and inhuman treatment” suffered by Cuban prisoners. The authorities, it explained, use punishment cells in an arbitrary and discretionary manner, and exceed the time stipulated in their own regulations for this practice.
In a previous report, the same organization had reported that there were 56 deaths of people who were under the care of the authorities, between January 2022 and January of this year. Of these, 34 were prisoners, nine were in police stations and there were 11 recruits for the Military Service.
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