HARRISONBURG, United States. – Amid the news clutter of last week, filled with political events of profound significance, the declarations of former Cuban judge Melody González Pedraza to Cuba Diary were quickly displaced by the dynamics of the news media and social networks.
Melody was favored by the program of words U.S. humanitarian Upon arriving in this country he was denied entry due to his ties to the Cuban dictatorship. So, he requested political asylum, a cleverness that the gentleman did not have. Livan Fuentes Alvarezformer president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power of the Isle of Youth. Since then, Melody has been detained awaiting a court decision on her case.
The event has been followed by several independent media outlets, while the dictatorship remains silent. In her first statements, the former judge limited herself to imploring credibility by stating that she now had a different opinion from the one she had defended until recently in Cuba, when she acted in compliance with the ukases of the State Security and the PCC. In those first statements, Melody let slip this platitude: “It is very difficult for people today to understand that I think differently.” She added that on the Island she acted under coercion and threats.
But, on July 16, Cuba Diary public an interview conducted by Yusimí Rodríguez López, in which Melody offered compelling evidence of the lack of impartiality and independence of Cuban judges due to the control exercised over them by the political police and the Communist Party, something that anyone who has worked in collective law firms, the courts or the Prosecutor’s Office knows perfectly well.
For more than 30 years the Agramontista Current of Independent Lawyers of Cuba, led by the Dr. Rene Gomez Manzano ―one of the most brilliant and worthy lawyers our country has ever had― has been documenting and denouncing this situation through his newsletter, a task that was later joined by Cubalex and other groups and jurists. What Melody has said is an absolute truth; the difference is that now that truth has not been said by “employees of the empire or agents of the CIA”, but by someone who until very recently was part of the judicial apparatus of the dictatorship.
The American authorities and international organizations in charge of monitoring judicial activity should not underestimate her statements, because Melody has not only exposed the hypocrisy of the top leaders of the dictatorship and its diplomatic representatives in the UN and the Human Rights Council, but it has also demonstrated the extent of the lack of judicial protection faced by Cubans. It has shattered the chimera proclaimed in Article 1 of the Constitution approved by the Cuban regime.
Did Melody decide to “burn her bridges”? Is she really now a different woman from the one who presided over the Municipal People’s Court of Encrucijada? Obviously, I don’t know. This doubt is accompanied by another question: is she also part of a very well-structured plan by the dictatorship to undermine the unity of the Cuban exile community fighting for the restoration of democracy?
Cuban authorities have acknowledged that from 2021 to date More than a million Cubans have left the countryaround 10% of the population living there. The bulk of this figure has settled in the USA.
The number of former police officers, former members of the Ministry of the Interior, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, State Security, former leaders of the Party, People’s Power and mass organizations of the so-called Cuban civil society who have been part of this exodus and now live here is striking.
Established in Kentucky is Arelys Casañola Quintanaformer president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power of the Isle of Youth, former member of the Municipal Committee of the PCC of that territory, former leader of the Federation of Cuban Women and graduate of the Higher School of the Party “Ñico López” with a specialization in National Defense. Now Arelis is “politically persecuted.”
Less than two months ago the aforementioned Livan Fuentes Alvarezwho succeeded Arelis Casañola Quintana in office, arrived at a Florida airport under the cover of the program words humanitarian. Because the Immigration Service authorities had been warned about his background and ties to the dictatorship, he was not allowed to enter.
In Brandon, Florida, lives Anabel Campos de Castrodaughter of two notorious front men for the Cuban dictatorship in Guantanamo. Anabel, a graduate of the University of Computer Sciences (UCI), was the main witness for the prosecution in the trial against evangelical pastors Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito. Several opponents have said that since her work in the Guantanamo Youth Computer Club she participated in smear campaigns against the opposition. Now she is also another “politically persecuted person.”
In Tampa lives Amalio Alfaro Matosformer president of the Criminal Chamber of the Guantánamo Provincial People’s Court, who has presided over several trials against political opponents and has committed numerous injustices from that position. One of them was denying me the right to an appeal hearing in August 2021, when I was detained and savagely beaten by the police in front of the Guantánamo municipal court, when I was trying to find information about the trial of the aforementioned evangelical pastors.
The former Camagüeyan prosecutor is on the Mexican border Rosabel Roca Sampedrowho acted in several judicial proceedings against some of the citizens who participated in the protests of July 11, 2021. She is also waiting for the interview that will allow her to enter the United States because now she is another “politically persecuted.”
Only God knows whether Melody is now “another person” and deserves or not the possibility of asylum.
OPINION ARTICLE
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