MÉRIDA, Mexico.- The legal information center Cubalex recorded 589 repressive incidents in Cuba in November, according to the most recent report of the organization, published this Wednesday.
The document emphasizes that during November There was an intensification of the crisis in Cuba, marked by the occurrence of natural phenomena, the worsening of the shortage of basic resources and state repression.
According to the organization, the Cubans They faced blackouts of more than 20 hours a day, food and water shortages, as well as a lack of transparency in the distribution of international donations.
In the midst of a context in which citizen protests increased over this situation, the regime intensified repression, and 262 violating acts and 589 repressive incidents were recorded.
Repressive acts
“The arrests arbitrary arrests, forced transfers and threats were frequent. Our monitoring team documented at least seven deaths in state custody due to violence, poor conditions and lack of medical care. Notable cases include the murder of Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas and the beating of José Daniel Ferrer,” the report stated.
seven deaths in custody are the result of the “serious problems faced by Cuban inmates,” among them, the organization highlights poor nutrition, lack of adequate medical care, terrible prison conditions and uncontrolled violence by prison guards, as reflected the case of the political prisoner Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas.
Cubalex registered a total of 48 protests in ten provinces and 44 people were arrested in these demonstrations. Some 23 remain imprisoned, the organization said in the text.
The most repeated repressive incidents were violations against people deprived of liberty (105 incidents), transfers to prisons or detention centers (75), arbitrary detentions (65), the use of violence or harassment (35), the threat or coercion (32) and police and surveillance operations (29).
The report highlights that the provinces where the greatest number of violating acts were recorded were Havana, Villa Clara and Santiago de Cuba and among the municipalities, the highest figures were recorded in Guanabacoa, Santa Clara and Encrucijada.
A total of 128 people (63 women and 165 men) were victims of at least one repressive incident.
Harassment against organizations
In this regard, Cubalex warned about the vulnerability of opponents, human rights defenders and independent journalists to repression, fundamentally the Ladies in White, the Opposition Movement for a New Republic (MONR) and the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), the organizations whose members suffered a greater number of harassment actions.
“The situation in prisons, where the largest number of rapes come from, remains critical,
aggravated with the arrival of winter and the increase in contagious respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis,” the organization noted.
J.osé Daniel Ferrer, opposition leader of the UNPACU, was “brutally beaten” in the prisons of the Castro dictatorship in November.
Ana Belkis Ferrer, sister of the political prisoner, reported in X (formerly Twitter) that a source who managed to see Ferrer at the Boniato Hospital described him as “very thin, brutally beaten and with a wound on his face.”
Likewise, he said that the authorities of the Cuban regime limited access to the hospital to prevent other people from seeing him and reporting his condition. In this regard, the family demanded proof of José Daniel Ferrer’s life.
