Thousands of Cubans had come down in the street this summer in the cries of “down the dictatorship!” And “we are hungry!”. These unpublished manifestations resulted in a death, dozens wounded and nearly a thousand arrests.
Le Monde with AFP
It’s a sentence for the example. Roberto Perez Fonseca, 38 years old, a protester participating in the unprecedented movement of July 11 in Cuba, was sentenced to ten years in prison, the heaviest sentence inflicted as a result of this event, learned the France-Presse agency (AFP ), Saturday, October 23, with his relatives and a human rights organization.
The San José de las Lajas court, 35 kilometers from Havana, sentenced Roberto Perez Fonseca to “Purger ten years” in prison for offending offenses, aggression, disorder to public order and incentive to commit an offense, according to the judgment dated 6 October and consulted by AFP.
Building on the testimony of a local police officer, the three judges of the court said that Roberto Perez Fonseca had prompted “people to meet, throw stones and bottles”. The protester, father of two children, had been arrested five days later by the policeman at his mother’s home.
The sentence “is excessive and violates all the guarantees of a regular procedure,” reacted to the AFP Laritza diverse, CurboEx Director. According to this human rights NGO, it is the heaviest punishment to date against a demonstrator of July 11th. M me diverse has denounced a sentence “for example” to “instill fear and fear” in society.
According to Liset Fonseca, the mother of the convict, the heaviness of the sentence is explained by the fact that his son broke a portrait of Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution. “Breaking the image, it does not forgive,” she believes, indicating that the family intends to appeal the decision.
Arbitrary detentions
On July 11, thousands of Cubans had gone down in the street in the cries of “down the dictatorship!” and “we are hungry!”. These unpublished manifestations resulted in a death, dozens of wounded and nearly a thousand arrests. About five hundred people are still detained. The government accuses the protesters to want to reverse power with the support of the United States. The NGO Human Rights Watch recently accused the Government for arbitrary detentions, undergo abuse of prisoners and conduct trial simulacra.
Cuba crosses a deep economic crisis, where the effects of galloping inflation are exacerbated by the pandemic of Covid-19 and the strengthening of the American embargo, which has aggravated the shortages of food and medicine.
Thursday, the Cuban parquet floor warned the organizers of a demonstration, scheduled for November 15, to demand the release of political prisoners.