More than 700 detainees are documented in Cuba in 13 days

Arrest of a young protester in Havana, during the July 11 protest against the Government. / Afp

The Human Rights Observatory calls on the European Union to “clearly condemn the repression of the regime” and support a transition

The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights has documented, from last July 11 until last morning, 757 people arrested or disappeared “arbitrarily” in Cuba for “demonstrating peacefully and asking for social rights and political changes,” as reported yesterday by its director of strategy. , Yaxys Cires. Thirteen days ago thousands of people took to the streets to protest the shortage of food, medicine and other basic products and the long power cuts. Of the total number of detainees since that citizen outbreak, 601 are men and 157 women, and there are at least 13 minors.

Cires called on the international community to support a “transition to democracy” and urged the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, to “choose” between “repression” or the new generations of Cubans and “correct his course.” In a press conference, the representative of the Observatory also demanded that the European Union and, specifically, the High Representative of the Community for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, “are up to the circumstances of what is happening in Cuba”. “One of the words that was repeated the most in the protests was ‘freedom’. People are asking for a political change and what happens in Cuba is not the product of foreign interference, “he said.

“We believe that the EU and Borrell should be clear in condemning the repression of the regime that is violating human rights,” reiterated the Cuban lawyer, who highlighted the support of the United States by announcing “individual sanctions against an official, a minister and a sector of the security forces ».

They ask the UN for a commission of inquiry to verify the number of people in prisons and their procedural situation

The OCDH further requested that the UN Human Rights Council “establish a commission of inquiry, with the participation of experts from independent human rights organizations, to assess the nature of these events, determine the number of victims, document the number of victims. people in prisons, know the crimes that are charged and verify compliance with due process, if there has been the commission of crimes.

Summary trials

Among the detainees who have not yet been released are well-known dissidents such as the former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of the leaders of the protesting San Isidro Movement (MSI), a group of intellectuals and university students who demand freedom of expression and creation. The MSI denounced on Twitter on Tuesday that Otero Alcántara was “transferred to the maximum security prison of Guanajay” in Artemisa.

Last Wednesday, twelve of those arrested received sentences of 10 months to a year in jail after a summary trial in which most did not have a lawyer. This was denounced by the brother of one of the inmates, the filmmaker Anyelo Troya, director of the video clip ‘Patria y Vida’.

On the island, voices such as those of the singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez and the leader of the duo Buena Fe, Israel Rojas, called for freedom for the detainees who have not been involved in violent acts, while the executive director of the OCDH, Alejandro González Raga, urged the Government by Miguel Díaz-Canel to stop the repression and the “manhunt.” “The regime continues to repress, imprison and detain people for peacefully demonstrating. That is arbitrary detention and torture, “he lamented.

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source https://pledgetimes.com/more-than-700-detainees-are-documented-in-cuba-in-13-days/