Prisoners Defenders denounced that there are more than a thousand political prisoners in Cuba

Police arrested a man on July 11, 2021, as people demonstrated in a street in Havana, Cuba. According to the latest report by an NGO defending prisoners, there are currently 1,066 political prisoners in Cuba, and all of them have been tortured.

“The NGO stated that in the past 12 months alone, we have confirmed and added 282 new political prisoners to our list in Cuba.”

The list includes 34 minors, 30 of whom are still serving sentences, while the remaining four are the subject of criminal proceedings. In January, 11 new political prisoner cases were recorded, “essentially due to the persecution of activists who collaborate in solidarity with the families of political prisoners to make their situation visible”. However, 22 prisoners were removed from the list, with the vast majority having fully served their punishment imposed by the regime.

Prisoners, he added, are being subjected to “judicial sentences or provisions limiting freedom by prosecutors without any judicial review or legal defence, in flagrant violation of international law which protects guarantees of due process and an effective defence.

From the current list, 210 protesters have been charged with sedition and at least 208 have already been sentenced average over 10 years deprivation of liberty each.

At least 116 women (including several transsexuals) are still awaiting orders and political convictions and conscience. All the trans women in prison of conscience they were and are imprisoned between men, undergoing indescribable situations for their sexual condition, specified the NGO.

defending prisoners file a complaint with the United Nations “which demonstrates with all legal rigor the systematic violation of rights in all cases of political prison in Cuba, with numerous patterns of violation of fundamental rights at all phases of the criminal process, from arrest to conviction”.

The common violations found in all already more than 400 cases analyzed detailed in the complaint are as follows:

—Absence of judicial protection for preventive deprivation of liberty

—Lack of independent defense lawyers in Cuba

— Absolute organic dependence of the hierarchy and judges of the penal system vis-à-vis the political power

—Criminal proceeding in which all charges, without exception, are supported only by “witnesses” depending on the Communist Party and that they are articulated with the fraudulent use of “expert” evidence authorized only at the Ministry of the Interior.

—Criminal processes where they are seriously criminalized and systematically and openly persecute an infinite range of Fundamental rightsfreedom of expression, demonstration or association, to leave or enter the country, to privacy and many other rights that make impossible the normal development of society and a justified state of psychosis and permanent panic of its citizens.

—Use of Criminal Code Criminal Types which, by their nature, scale, severity and regulatory indeterminacy, allow for the unlimited criminalization of any behavior the regime wishes to sanction.

— Regular use of unlawful and/or summary military criminal proceedings very violated rights.

Of the 1,066 political prisoners verified for their exercise of the defense of their fundamental rights, 787 are convicts of conscience, 248 of convicts of conscience and 31 cases of other political prisoners, according to the NGO.