Havana/Seven years in prison was the sentence received by activist Alexander Verdecia Rodríguez, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), for the alleged crimes of “propaganda against the constitutional order” and “instigation to commit a crime,” after publishing slogans against the regime on Facebook. The information was released this Tuesday by the legal advice center Cubalex, which indicated that the trial was held in September, but that the sentence was not notified until December 24.
Initially, the Prosecutor’s Office requested 10 years in prison for Verdecia Rodríguez, who has been held since February 6 in the Las Mangas Provincial Prison, in Granma, where he reported at the beginning of December that he was beaten and harassed by the authorities, reported Martí News. According to the tax petition to which he had access 14ymedio Last June, the activist, “in the month of January 2024, conceived the idea of disturbing citizen tranquility in the municipality of Río Cauto, province of Granma, and stimulating in the citizens residing in this territory the desire to create confusion and disrespect against the social order and the Cuban socialist State, by making publications on his profile on the social network Facebook.”
In that document, five messages were credited, some of them from January 14, 2025, although only the date was specified in one of them, the last: “The repressive actions of the regime against those of us who oppose its dictatorship demonstrate the violation of our rights to freedom of expression. The regime does not respect the human rights of Cubans, it tramples on them. Down with the terrorist Castro Canel regime, we demand respect for our human rights.”
“The regime does not respect the human rights of Cubans, it tramples them”
The prosecutor’s request also alluded to the fact that the activist is a member of Unpacu, and assured that he “regularly” visited Santiago de Cuba. Jose Daniel Ferrerleader of the organization and imprisoned at the time, and who “tried to create cells” of that organization in Río Cauto.
The true reasons for Verdecia Rodríguez’s conviction, according to Cubalex, “are political in nature: her peaceful activism and her critical publications against the regime on social networks.”
The organization also stressed that this case “reflects repeated patterns of criminalization of the exercise of fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression, association and political participation.” Likewise, he stressed that the application of the crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, formulated in a broad and ambiguous manner, “allows the State to punish peaceful expressions of dissent and non-violent civic activism.”
This sentence is not the first for Verdecia Rodríguez, who has been previously imprisoned for his activism.
This sentence is not the first for Verdecia Rodríguez, who has previously been imprisoned for his activism. In 2015, he was sentenced to three months of house arrest and shortly after to six months for refusing to pay a fine of 2,000 pesos. In 2016 he was imprisoned for a year for alleged contempt of authority, and in 2018 he was sentenced to another two months of house arrest. Hence, the Prosecutor’s Office has indicated in its request that the activist had a “criminal record.”
Verdecia Rodríguez’s conviction is not isolated and the crime charged against him, propaganda against the constitutional order, has been widely used by the regime to repress political dissent. Just this Monday, Cubalex also reported that eight people from the province of Las Tunas They could be sentenced to sentences of between six and nine years in prison, for the same acts: using social networks to protest against the Government.
Eight people from the province of Las Tunas could be sentenced to sentences of between six and nine years in prison
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Javier Reyes Peña, Adisbel Mendoza Barroso, Guillermo Carralero López, Carlos Manuel Santiesteban Saavedra, Carlos Alberto McDonald Ennis, Enrique González Infante, Pedro Carlos Camacho Ochoa and Maikel Hill Ramírez sought to “stimulate adverse opinions” and generate dissent about the Cuban political system, after interacting “on social networks, especially Facebook,” recording and publishing videos “in which they expressed political positions, the dissemination of critical content and the exchange with other users inside and outside the country, and the possession of printed matter and brochures, including materials related to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
