MIAMI, United States. — The Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC) registered 651 public protests during January of this year, said the last report issued by that independent platform.
According to the organization, in January 2023, 651 public protests took place in Cuba, of which 393 were spontaneous and 258 as part of permanent campaigns.
The protests registered on the Island included direct individual and collective questions to the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, as well as to the functionality of the current system.
The number of spontaneous protests that were reported last month was higher than those registered in the same period of 2022, adds the OCC report.
The Observatory recalled that the 600 manifestations of discontent compiled in January “occurred despite the entry into force in December of a new Penal Code, which leaves no legal room for criticism.”
Of the 651 demonstrations of nonconformity that occurred in January, 284 were related to political and civil rights (149 focused on various forms of repression against opponents, political prisoners, journalists, civil society activists, and ordinary citizens), while 367 were originated by demands for economic and social rights.
The NGO indicates that among the predominant issues of those based on economic and social rights were “the constant rises in food prices, the deplorable state of public services, organized campaigns against the internal blockade and investments for the benefit of the elite; and social problems such as gender violence, the growing number of homeless and the massive exodus of young Cubans and its consequences for the country”.
Last Monday, students from the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana denounced in a letter the prostitution of justice in Cuba. Likewise, two university professors, one of them from the pro-government Round Table, deplored the exodus of young Cubans for not being able to build a future or crystallize their dreams in their country. These were just two of the open complaints against the crisis that the Island is going through.
In its conclusions, the OCC’s January report states that the authorities’ refusal to introduce profound changes that would lift the population out of misery “not only kept alive the flame of popular rebellion on the island, but also continued to fan it.”
According to the platform, “the situation may become more compromised for the regime in the coming months as Cuba has started 2023 with a handicapped economy, characterized by falls in its main sources of foreign currency (except for family remittances), agriculture hitting bottom , lack of access to credit or fresh loans and its image and reliability damaged by more than a thousand political prisoners and numerous unpaid debts”.
