Prisoners Defenders, a non-governmental organization that fights for human rights in Cuba, has released another monthly report on the current situation of political prisoners in the Caribbean country, in which it states that currently around 1,062 people are detained on the communist island for political reasons, racial, gender, ideological or simply exercising their fundamental human rights.
According to the document, published this Monday (13), the list of political prisoners includes 118 women, 34 minors (30 boys and 4 girls) and 224 people who are in pre-trial detention facing charges of rebellion. According to Prisoners Defenders, all of these people are suffering from violations of due process and effective defense.
The report highlights the case of Alina Bárbara López Hernández, who was detained, falsely accused and tried in a summary and arbitrary manner for expressing her opposition to the Cuban communist regime, led by Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The NGO denounces that Alina’s trial was postponed until November 28th of this year, coinciding with the Universal Periodic Review of Cuba at the United Nations – where the country sends data on human rights to the UN, a mechanism that, according to Prisoners Defenders, is “easily manipulated by the Cuban regime to hide its true situation of repression and violation of human rights.”
The report also draws attention to the existence of more than 11 thousand prisoners for “pre-delinquent social danger”, a legal norm that allows the Cuban communist state to condemn people only for their behavior in contradiction with the “norms of socialist morality”. In other words, they are convicted without having committed or attempted to commit any crime.
The NGO claims that the new Cuban Penal Code, which came into force on December 1, 2022, keeps this capacity for “pre-delinquent” convictions intact, through new articles that allow the application of prison sentences without a possible defense.
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