MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban Women’s Network (RFC) launched this Friday the call for an international demonstration against gender violence and femicides, and for the immediate release of all Cuban political prisoners.
“Our duty as feminist activists and as Cuban civil society organizations requires us to speak out, denounce, and protest these human rights violations,” the RFC said in a statement.
“Next March 8, Cubans will be demonstrating in different parts of the world, so on-line and physical, demanding the cessation of gender violence and femicides in Cuba; and for the immediate release of all Cuban political prisoners,” the statement details.
The civil society organization justified the call in the nearly 1,000 political prisoners who are kept in Cuban jails (106 women) and the vertiginous increase in reports of extreme violence against women on the Island.
The independent observatories of the feminist magazine taut wings (OGAT) and the YoSíTeCreo platform in Cuba registered 16 femicides in the first two months of 2023 alonea figure that the RFC described as “alarming”.
“The persecution and harassment against activists, journalists and relatives of political prisoners has intensified after July 11 [de 2021]by the Cuban regime”, he also recalls the call, to which he had access CubaNet.
The RFC specified that in Madrid (its headquarters), the collective Las Afueras and the magazine taut wings They call to gather at 6:30 p.m. in the Plaza del Museo Reina Sofía, Atocha, to join the massive demonstration that takes place every March 8 in Madrid as a group.
So far, in 13 of the 15 provinces of the country, at least one femicide has been reported during 2023.
From 2019 to the present, YoSíTeCreo in Cuba has been able to register 129 femicides in the country, which is barely an underreporting, since the State does not publish the official figures of these crimes.
When confirmed the most recent femicideon March 1, YoSíTeCreo qualified the current scenario as “alarming, worrisome and hopeless, given the immobility of the Cuban authorities.”