Mexico City, Mexico. – Cuban independent civil society has several prioritized consensuses: the demand for freedom, the release of all political prisoners, the achievement of democracy, the rule of law and respect for all human rights. Other consensuses are less urgent, but equally solid: it is the generalized rejection of the specimens created by totalitarianism, a court of repressors, political and cultural commissioners who support in public opinion the interests of the oligarchy of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC ).
One of the most visible is Humberto López, a member of the Central Committee of the PCC and a lawyer, who has made a career in the “Hacemos Cuba” segment of the Cuban Television Newscast. That space invites officials from the Ministries of Justice and the Interior to make a “discretionary” interpretation of the laws on the island, especially those that criminalize the civil, cultural and political rights of Cubans.
Illegal attributions
Humberto López himself has made legal interpretations of the laws, without being an official of the Ministry of Justice or a member of the Supreme Court. So it happened in a special program Cubadebateof November 28, 2020, in which the Castro spokesman justified the violations of due process in the case of rapper and activist Denis Solís, an illegal attribution of functions to a journalist or television presenter.
Ten days before, the lawyer Eloy Viera Cañive had already had analyzed all the irregularities of the process against Solís, who was kidnapped, held incommunicado and tried in 72 hours. To appeal the sentence, the member of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) had only three days. But his family and friends found out a week after the trial. The abuse of power by the policeman who illegally raided his home never came out in the judicial process or in the aforementioned program, dedicated to denigrating the MSI. The habeas corpus presented in favor of Solís was also denied by the authority.
Murders of reputation, public and unpunished
The assassination of reputation or media lynching has been recurrent in the official Cuban media, especially against US civil organizations, against the OAS and against the US government itself.
As of the entry into force of Decree-Law 349, in 2018, and the MSI protests against that norm, the lynching of activists, journalists and artists became common, not only through the official space of Humberto López, but also through through other official spokesmen, from various media, such as Enrique Ubieta, Raúl Antonio Capote, Iroel Sánchez, Miguel Henríquez Lagarde and Javier Gómez Sánchez, true cultural commissioners at the service of the dictatorship. A troop of ideological watchdogs that would not exist in any democratic regime with freedom of the press.
Specifically, López has carried out the assassination of the reputation of the following Cuban intellectuals, artists, journalists and activists: Tania Bruguera, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel Castillo (Osorbo), Carlos Manuel Álvarez, Iliana Hernández, Anamely Ramos, Omara Ruiz Urquiola, Katherine Bisquet, Hamlet Lavastida, Denis Solís, Camila Acosta, Yoani Sánchez, Carolina Barrero, Aminta de Cárdenas, Luz Escobar, Julio Llópiz Casal, Mauricio Mendoza, Yunior García Aguilera. In short, all the members of the San Isidro Movement and all the intellectuals and artists who participated in the sit-in in front of the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020. We are talking about nearly 400 people who were ignored, defamed and criminalized for carrying out peaceful civil actions. common in public space.
Likewise, Humberto Lopez included in his defamations Eliécer Ávila, the journalist Elaine Díaz, the political scientist Armando Chaguaceda and the president of the Ladies in White, Bertha Soler. But also personalities like Carlos Alberto Montaner, whom he unblushingly described as a “CIA terrorist.”
Propaganda goebbelian
In their programs twenty-one Y May 24 this year, López interviewed the second head of prisons in Cuba. The regime’s spokesman wanted to highlight the idyllic, clean and caring environment, and the respect for rights that reigns in Cuban prisons. But in reality, in those programs they only referred to three prisons, out of a universe of 300, and they did not present the punishment cells, the prisoners’ food, the prison infirmaries, the rooms and beds of the hospitals where they treat prisoners. prisoners nor the medical supplies and medicines with which they are treated. No political prisoner was interviewed; while the head of the prisons appeared with satisfaction figures, extracted from a supposed survey carried out by the MININT in the national territory, and according to which the overwhelming majority of prisoners are satisfied with the Cuban prison system.
It is necessary to remember that for 33 years no international or national organization independent of the PCC has been able to inspect Cuban prisons, and that the testimonies of thousands of prisoners in the last six decades contradict the PCC’s propaganda.
Violation of legality on Cuban TV and lawsuits against Humberto López
Humberto López also has to his credit the presentation of minor prisoners, with their faces uncovered and self-incriminating for having participated in a cacerolazo or having filmed popular protests in his neighborhood. Faced with these flagrant violations of the presumption of innocence, Laritza Diversent, director of the Cubalex Legal Information Center, has denounced the violation of the rights of minor prisoners. More recently, Cuban lawyer Julio Ferrer Tamayo questioned on social networks the illegal nature of Humberto López’s interventions on National Television.
Independent lawyer asks that Humberto López be withdrawn from Cuban Television
On the other hand, Tania Bruguera filed a complaint against Humberto López for continuous defamation against him in the Provincial Court of Havana, on May 10, 2021. The organization Plebeya Articulation also presented a complaint for defamation in the official media, on December 22 and 23, 2020, in the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, the National Assembly of People’s Power, the Ministry of Justice and the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.
Humberto López vs. Yeili Torres Cruz
The activist Yeili Torres Cruz tried to confront the official spokesperson outside a house where her alleged lover lived. Although Umberto hit herleaving a crack in one arm and another in one of the cheekbones, Torres was prosecuted expressly, served 10 months in prison and had to pay a fine of 3,000 pesos.
Humberto López’s actions show the aberrant levels of impunity of the ideological watchdogs of the Cuban dictatorship. Will this spokesman for the regime continue mocking the citizenry, trampling on the rights of all?
OPINION ARTICLE
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