It is a new mass trial which was held in Havana between Monday January 31 and Thursday February 3. For four days, thirty-three Cubans were tried for “sedition” by the court of the 10-October district. They are accused of having participated in violent acts – throwing stones and bottles and a damaged police car – during the demonstrations which rocked the island on July 11, 2021. On that day, thousands of people came out spontaneously in the streets of fifty cities to the cry of ” We are hungry “ and “Down with the dictatorship”. The prosecution requested up to twenty-five years in prison against them.
The previous week, the accused for “sedition” numbered thirty-nine. And in mid-January, they were fifty-seven. Since December 2021, not a week has gone by without trials against protesters taking place in Cuba. So much so that the regime of Miguel Diaz-Canel, which had recognized a death and dozens of injuries among the demonstrators of July 11, but had never quantified the number of detentions, finally had no other choice. than to lift the veil on the extent of the repression which fell on the Caribbean island, where the trials are not public.
On January 25, in a press release published in the newspaper grandma, the General Prosecutor’s Office admitted that 790 Cubans, including 55 minors between the ages of 15 and 18, were charged with “ acts of vandalism”, “attacks on the authority of the State” and “serious alterations to public order” following the most massive demonstrations ever recorded on the island since 1959. Ten minors under the age of 16 – the age from which criminal responsibility applies – were also interned in “integral training and driving schools”.
“Make of Justice”
For NGOs, there is no doubt that the Cuban regime wants the sentences to serve as an example and prevent any new uprising in the country, while anger is brewing against a backdrop of food and medicine shortages.
“Since the revolution, there had not been such a wave of mass trials,” points out Javier Larrondo, the president of the Prisoners Defenders association, based in Madrid, in reference to the televised trials of hundreds of Batista regime officials after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. ” The system of government, he adds, wants to create a real climate of terror with a sham of justice: the lawyers are not independent, the police are in charge of the investigation, the witnesses are agents. » To these trials were added, on January 28, the first chilling testimonies, on state television, of the mothers of demonstrators asking, between sobs, “sorry to the country”.
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