The activist and businesswoman Saily González has presented a demand to the Municipality of Santa Clara for moral damage to dignity and honor, in his name and in the name of the signatories of the notification of the Civic March for Change. Miryorly García Prieto has done the same in Havana, and it is expected that in the next few hours they will follow the initiative in other cities, such as Cienfuegos, which joined the initiative on November 15.
The members of the Archipelago group respond in this way to pronouncement of the Prosecutor’s Office on the March of 15N, which he declared “illegal.” That response, considers Saily González in statements to 14ymedio, “It was the precedent for all these accusations against us to appear later in the official press and in the Round Table.”
“If we break that precedent, if we oppose it, more people will realize that the truth is on our side,” he explains.
For her, presenting these demands “is a civic exercise”, which responds to the fact that “we have been defamed, by some people who act in a personal capacity but who represent power.” A power, he says, “dictatorial, defending itself by attacking us with lies.”
This, he concludes, is “one more sample of civility, of recognition of our rights, even though the dictatorship refuses to recognize them”
“One of the fundamental problems here in Cuba has historically been that citizens do not know their rights or the mechanisms to exercise them,” continues González, “and that is one of the things that attracted me the most since the beginning of the Archipelago: responding to authoritarianism with civility “. This, he concludes, is “one more example of civility, of recognition of our rights, even if the dictatorship refuses to recognize them.”
In the documents presented, the activists address the mayors of Santa Clara and Havana, respectively, reminding them that the official response “considers that the march is ‘illegal’ because the reasons that justify it are ‘illegitimate’.” However, they argue, “it does not offer any legal basis that protects the illegality in Cuba of public expressions against violence, in favor of respect for the rights of all Cubans, the release of political prisoners and the democratic solution and peace of the increasingly evident differences within society “.
Specifically, the lawsuits refute three points made by the municipalities: that “the promoters (of the petition) and their public projections have the intention of promoting regime change,” that the petition “is part of the regime change strategy. for Cuba, tested in other countries “and that” some of the promoters of the petition maintain links with subversive organizations or agencies financed by the United States government. ” Of none of these claims, the documents say, do the mayors present evidence. “The interpretation of the mayor is based on personal criteria that are politically influenced and that imply prejudice and unfounded labeling of the signatories,” they express.
Not a day goes by without the Government trying to discredit 15N somehow. This Thursday, in the closing speech of the Seventh Ordinary Session of the National Assembly, President Miguel Díaz-Canel barely flew over the serious problems that plague the country, such as the energy crisis, the Ordinance Task, the covid-19 pandemic , the fall in GDP or hyperinflation, and assured that “No one is going to spoil the party”, referring to that day 15, in which the total reopening of the country is also planned after the restrictions due to the covid pandemic.
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