Officials of the Ministry of Education (MINED) and the Prosecutor’s Office of Cuba again denied the occurrence of Children’s kidnappings in Cubarumors that are disseminated these days in messages of messages in WhatsApp and Facebook.
“There is no evidence of a child who is absent from his home or denouncing a family regarding the fact that his child, at the exit of the school, tried to kidnap him,” Maricarmen Rojas Torres, director of Activities, told Cuban television, director of Activities MINED special educational.
In an appearance in the magazine Good morning of Caribbean Canalpresenter Humberto López referred to audios in which the arrival of a truck to schools is narrated, where they ride children and take them.
“There is a band of drug traffickers, they give the children and take them to Mexico” or “There is a person in the corner of the school, catch the child, he takes it, he has a white weapon” are some of the false stories out Of the networks, according to López, which mentions cases, even, with videos that include people giving testimonies in the town of Mantilla, in Havana.
“That is false,” said the official, who says that executives of the girl’s school that appears in the video – and that television preferred not to transmit to avoid the exhibition of the child – visited her house and verified that it was of “a total manipulation.”
The “kidnappings” of Matanzas
The authorities of the municipality of Cárdenas, in Matanzas, denied at the end of January “categorically” the circulation of rumors about alleged kidnappings of minors in the local schools.
According to the newspaper Girón On Facebook, the Ministry of Interior (Minint) and the Education Directorate confirmed that no complaint related to these facts “neither in police units nor in the educational centers of the territory.”
Authorities in Matanzas denies rumors about children’s kidnappings in schools
The versions that mentioned kidnapping attempts in schools such as the Primary of Cantel or José Martí high school “lack verifiable legal or testimonial support,” said the medium.
The misinformation, he added Giróndisseminated through informal networks and groups of WhatsApp“It generated alarm between families and teachers, some of whom replied without confirmation warnings about an alleged danger.”
By the way, the local government and the minint said that “schools continue and will continue to be safe spaces”, reiterating that in Cuba “children are sacred.” In addition, they warned that “those who spread false news” or “try to alter order” will face “legal sanctions.”
The law and false news
In the same interview, the ViceFiscal of Havana, Yaimara Angulo González, recalled that it constitutes a crime “the dissemination of false information” that has a purpose “to create alarm, discontent, misinformation, panic among the inhabitants and undermine citizen tranquility.”
More damage does, adds the vicefiscal, when it is done in the environment of social networks, because they allow the massive dissemination of information and this “expands the scope of people who can have access.”
In these cases, the law provides sanctions that reach up to five years of deprivation of liberty, precisely “because of the effect it causes on the population and the consequences that this can generate to maintain public order.”
In October 2024, just to disseminate false information, The authors of a news about the alleged failure in the Los Seats damof the municipality of San Antonio del Sur, in Guantanamo, were “investigated and processed” for “creating panic in an affected population” also psychologically “after the passage of Hurricane Oscar.
The news, released at the National Defense Council meeting, the shared in your profile in Facebook The journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso. Neither the reporter nor the television report specified more details on the subject.
