MIAMI, United States. — The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC), a political platform that brings together opponents and activists of different political tendencies, recalled this Sunday that the anti-government protests of the July 11, 2021 (J11) “they marked the first citizen revolution in the entire history” of the country.
In a statement issued on the occasion of the first anniversary of 11J, the CTDC highlighted that despite the repression and persecution to which most of the participants in those protests have been subjected, Cubans continue to fight for their freedom.
“The agitation due to the proximity of the events, due to the pain of many families, due to the permanent repression of the government and its systematic attempt to erase the events of 11J, a year later, seem to weaken the perspective and the historical meaning of the days of July 2021, but they marked the first citizen revolution in the entire history of Cuba,” the statement said.
The platform recalled that the unprecedented demonstrations of 11J made clear the open opposition of a good part of Cuban society to the communist regime in Havana.
“Hundreds of thousands of citizens, from all walks of life, from all social strata, from all generations, from all ideologies or religious creeds, regardless of their skin color or sexual identity, expressed from below and peacefully, without an intellectual or political plan, a shared fundamental demand: that of freedom. Something like this had never happened on the island.”
The CTC also referred to the role then played by the young people who took to the streets of the Island.
“They gave the voice, the energy, the imagination and the rhythm to a revolution, with its closest antecedents in the San Isidro Movement and in the 27N, peacefully epic. His song was Homeland and Life. Also his motto. His tour, national. Its duration, the time it was able to remain in the streets and on social networks, the noble expression of necessary, beloved and heartfelt demands, in the face of the crude repression of a regime with a revolutionary narrative and violent institutions.”
For the CTC, the 11J protests once again exposed the true autocratic nature of the Cuban regime.
“Unlike the one in 1959, this revolution was not prepared in Mexico, it originated inside. It was not forged by a fragment within a social minority that disembarked in Cuba from abroad through a hidden place, but rather it was born in the minds and spirits of hundreds of thousands of citizens, springing up spontaneously, what reveals its authenticity.
The platform also once again declared its support for the 11J prisoners, mostly young people, and their families, and thanked the statements of solidarity from actors of various political tendencies.
“At the CTDC we want to reiterate our support and solidarity with the political prisoners, with all of them, and with their families. We also want to add our voice to that of those who appreciate the solidarity that democracies, human rights defenders, intellectuals and internationalists have expressed and have been expressing from the first moment towards the prisoners of 11J. Of course, other voices are missing: those of a certain left that refuses to admit that the revolution in Cuba today is led by other actors.”
“And we continue to work for the freedom of those who are on the front line for freedom: the political prisoners, most of them young, who were the true and excellent protagonists of this first citizen revolution in Cuba. Our proposal for the Law on Amnesty and Decriminalization of Dissent is on that path”, the statement concludes.
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