Madrid Spain.- Journalists from the Association for Freedom of the Press (APLP) were threatened by the Cuban State Security with being implicated in criminal proceedings when the article of the Penal Code by which the regime could sentence those who, according to its considerations, has not yet been approved. receive foreign funding to support anti-government actions.
According Radio Television Marti, José Antonio Fornaris, president of APLP, was summoned by the police on April 12; while Amarilis Cortina Rey had been summoned on April 9 and Julio César Álvarez later, on the 13th of the same month.
When attending the summons, they received threats of legal reprisals for receiving economic aid from abroad destined for the association, based in Havana.
According to Fornaris’s statements, “the political police say that APLP receives financing from abroad to carry out its work and that this will be punished by law very soon,” as well as warning them of a search at the headquarters of the organization and the retention of means of work.
“The goal is to put an end to the Pro Freedom of the Press Association” and “the Cuban independent press,” Fornaris denounced. He also condemned the Cuban government for using “all public funds in their partisan and caste interests.”
“We are a non-profit organization that is dedicated to protecting Human Rights and this is something that has been authorized, since December 1998, by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in a meeting where, logically, some representative was present. of the Cuban government and where it was agreed that this type of organization could receive financing for the development of its work in favor of Human Rights”, pointed out the president of the APLP.
In January 2022, the Supreme People’s Court of Cuba published a blueprint of the Penal Code that will be presented to the National Assembly of People’s Power this month, which establishes that “whoever, by himself or on behalf of non-governmental organizations, international institutions, associative forms or any natural or legal person of the country or a foreign State, supports, encourages, finances, provides, receives or has in its possession funds, material or financial resources, with the purpose of defraying activities against the State and its constitutional order, incurs a sanction of deprivation of liberty from four to ten years”.
If this legislation is approved, the Cuban government will have another repressive legal tool.
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