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Havana (AFP) – Ten months after the massive protests that shook Cuba in July 2021, considered the largest demonstrations against the Communist Party government in six decades, the Cuban Parliament “unanimously” approved a new Penal Code, which penalizes as crimes that attempt against the “interests of the State and the people”.
The new law “classifies as crimes the most serious and harmful acts for society and protects the interests of the State and the people,” said the president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Remigio Ferro, when presenting it to the plenary.
On July 11 and 12, 2021, thousands of people staged the largest protests against the Communist Party government in 60 years in 50 cities, leaving one dead, dozens injured and hundreds detained.
According to Ferro, this law also protects the “individual interests of the people as a guarantee of the stability of the nation, legal security and citizen tranquility.”
“There is no place for alternatives”
The new Penal Code replaces that of 1997 and complements the 2019 Constitution, together with the Law for the Protection of Constitutional Rights and the Penal Enforcement Code, which will be put to a vote in an extraordinary session of the National Assembly, which began on Friday and which will run until Monday, May 16.
Among its novel aspects are “its application to infractions and illicit acts that affect the radio electric spectrum, the environment and natural heritage,” according to Ferro.
“The most serious violations related to the abusive use of constitutional rights, participation in subversive activities and attacks on information and communication technologies are penalized,” he added.
For the Cuban jurist Harold Bertod, based in Spain, “the Penal Code expands the catalog of criminal behaviors related to the constitutional order to confirm a reality of the political system: there is no room for alternatives in the political sphere, and the right to demonstrate” .
The right to demonstrate “will only be allowed if it is in a sense of ‘confirmation’ of the State’s policies and never in a ‘contradictory’ way,” Bertod told the AFP agency.
“It is a law that collects, updates, all international concepts, adapting them to the conditions of Cuba,” said deputy Jorge González, the doctor who in 1997 directed the location and recognition in Bolivia of the remains of the Argentine revolutionary- Cuban Ernesto Che Guevara and his fellow guerrillas.
Death penalty, maintained “on an exceptional basis”
The new law maintains the death penalty “on an exceptional basis”, in 23 crimes, and suppresses it in four compared to the previous regulations. It will be able to pronounce basically “in crimes against the security of the State, terrorism, international drug trafficking and murder,” said the prosecutor.
In Cuba, where the “wall” was applied very regularly in the 1960s, a kind of moratorium has been in place since 2000, only broken in 2003 by the execution of three armed hijackers of a passenger boat.
“We do not agree with the death penalty. We are not convinced from our faith,” said deputy María Yi Reyna, an evangelical minister, in one of the rare discordant criteria in Parliament.
Criminal liability at age 16
The new Criminal Code maintains the requirement of criminal responsibility from the age of 16 and contemplates “multiple provisions for differentiated treatment for those between 16 and 18”, with which “the convention on the rights of the child,” the prosecutor said.
Several of those sentenced to prison terms for the July 2021 demonstrations are between 16 and 20 years old.
Four of them, under 20, were released this week and will serve their sentences at home, opposition sources reported this Saturday.
House arrest and community service are introduced as new sanctions in the text. For their part, pre-criminal security measures, rejected by many sectors of society, are abolished.
with AFP
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