(EFE) Castro’s dictatorship”, which, according to what they say, is breaking the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (ADPC) with the community organization.
“The European Union cannot continue to financially support the projects of a dictatorship that refuses to be reformed and, instead, intensifies human rights violations,” says the letter presented this Wednesday in Miami, Florida, at a press conference. by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC), which encompasses 35 civil organizations from inside and outside Cuba.
“A very important part of this intensification of repression in 2023 is the new Penal Code, approved by the dictatorship to prosecute the population. Amnesty International has called the new Penal Code ‘terrifying’,” the letter states.
The letter was made public this Wednesday during a press conference at the Miami headquarters of the Cuban Historical Political Prison, also known as Casa del Preso, in which exile leaders and former Cuban political prisoners such as the human rights defender Jorge Luis Garcia Perez antunezone of the signatories of the letter.
They expressed their “disagreement with the financing projects developed by the European Union in Cuba, despite the fact that the Castro tyranny violates the human rights of Cubans,” according to a statement.
“A very important part of this intensification of repression in 2023 is the new Penal Code, approved by the dictatorship to prosecute the population”
“As political prisoners, we deeply know the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship, and we are concerned about the intensification of repression since July 11, 2021,” the letter read.
The text affirms that, since then, “at least 1,812 citizens have been arrested (including 59 minors), and 675 citizens remain detained without trial, violating their legal rights.”
Currently, it details, “122 women are political prisoners and dozens of people have been sentenced to forced labor camps.”
“We ask for solidarity and firm support from the European Union for universal human rights and democratic values that we share. The violation of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement by the Cuban dictatorship must be responded to by a significant change in the bilateral relationship with the European Union”, adds the letter sent to Kristersson.
Cuba and the EU relaunched their relations with the signing in 2016 of the historic Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (ADPC), provisionally in force since November 2017, and which put an end to 20 years of restrictive “common position”, which conditioned relations from the community bloc with the Island to advances in human rights and democracy in the country.
“At the annual meeting between the European Union and the Cuban regime, held on January 18, 2023 in Havana,” the text of the letter cites, “the regime demonstrated that it has no intention of following any of the Union’s suggestions Union, contained in the ADPC, in terms of human rights or respect for the rule of law”.
“We call for solidarity and firm support from the European Union for universal human rights and democratic values that we share”
During this meeting, he adds, “the dictatorship categorically refused to release the political prisoners or change the new Penal Code.”
“We know that one of the four work priorities proposed by Sweden will be ‘democratic values and the rule of law.’ We welcome this decision and believe that the Cuban case must be taken into account,” the letter reads.
Last January, Sweden began six months of rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, before passing the baton to Spain in the second half of the year.
Among the signatories of the letter are former and imprisoned opponents such as Félix Navarro, José Daniel Ferrer García, Donaida Pérez Paseiro and José Díaz Silva, as well as Antúnez.
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