On November 25, a delegation of high-ranking military personnel offered their condolences to Blanca Rosa Durán. His 18-year-old son Carel Gutiérrez was crushed by “seven steel pipes” that fell from the ceiling in the Los Jejenes unit in Artemisa, where he spent his Active Military Service (SMA). The Fool of Artemis.
Durán remembers that his boy did not want to enter the SMA. Six days after entering the camp “forced by this dictatorship in that place, this happens”, declared. According to the independent newspaper, the tubes were poorly placed on the ceiling and “rolled under the influence of a breeze when the young man plating“.
The mother remembers that the young man, a resident of the Calle Ancha neighborhood, in the Guanajay municipality, “was very sad and tearful when they put him in the truck. He was just a child.” Military service on the island exposes young recruits to situations that put their physical integrity and even their lives at risk.
The mother remembers that the young man, a resident of the Calle Ancha neighborhood, in the Guanajay municipality, “was very sad and tearful when they put him on the truck”
At this writing, testimonies have arrived of the conditions in which young Cubans are recruited for what the regime considers “an honorable duty” and forced to carry out cargo tasks in containers, even to repress protesters.
Reports of deaths from accidents, suicides, and murders among recruits are rarely mentioned in the official Cuban press. Nevertheless, independent journalists they have recorded numerous incidents that, in many cases, involve the use of regulation weapons.
Self-harm to obtain demobilization are also widespread, to the point that in 2019, the Supreme People’s Court, through an extraordinary publication of the Official Gazette, announced that it would begin to sanction recruits who resort to this practice.
The entity acknowledged that the drastic measure responded to the “increase in acts of self-harm committed by soldiers that extinguish sanctions in the Western Disciplinary Unit El Globo”, where recruits who commit indiscipline are imprisoned, according to the rules of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Among the most frequent self-injuries that the Gazette recognized are “the ingestion of objects (screws, washers, blades, etc.), with the intention of evading the fulfillment of the activities of the disciplinary unit and the obligations of military service.”
Independent journalists have recorded numerous incidents, in many cases involving the use of regulation weapons.
The constant pressure from the officers, the poor conditions of the shelters and food, the work without respect for the hours of a working day and the use of these soldiers as political shock troops also increase stress and discomfort among these young people. who are recruited when they are just 16 years old.
On July 11, the day of mass marches, the infirmary of the Managua Tank Unit, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, Havana, was full of young people from the SMA. One of them told 14ymedio that his unit was summoned to repress the protesters. They were given a stick and ordered to “hit anyone who gets in front of them with it.” Many, he said, “never understood why they were sent to hit the population.”
Others, who had already completed their military service for months, were taken from their homes on the grounds that they were “reserves” to “fight” the protesters, as told by a mother from Matanzas. “The officer said that he was going with them to fight the ‘counterrevolutionaries’ or imprisoned.” The boy spent more than a month dressed in green doing posts in various places in Cárdenas and some towns in Matanzas. and luckily “he didn’t have to face anyone”.
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