The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, insisted this Saturday that in Cuba there are no minors under 16 years of age detained and in prison for the peaceful protests of July 11, despite the documented cases presented by human rights organizations such as Prisoners Defenders (PD) and Justice 11J.
“Those who committed crimes, fundamentally violent, have been prosecuted. No person has been prosecuted for speaking out against the revolution. That is a lie,” he said in a radio interview with the Argentine political scientist, Atilio Borón, who is on the island for the International Book Fair (FIL) in Havana.
The Cuban president added that no one has been imprisoned for criticizing the revolution and that the convictions of 16 and 17-year-olds have been carried out with “extreme judicial rationality.”
However, according to the data documented by PD, there are children up to 13 and 15 years of age in jail for having participated in the demonstrations last July. The minors make up a list of 13 cases that the NGO included in a report submitted to the United Nations.
In its report presented to the United Nations, Prisoners Defenders denounced the detention of minors under 18 years of age, after the protests
In the report, PD denounced the detention of minors under 18 years of age, following the protests and the forced separation of thousands of parents and children involving the internationalist brigades. With these cases, the updated list of detained minors rose to 36, and only 22 are legally detailed in the report.
Justice 11J indicated, on April 4, that 14 minors remained in prison, another 22 had been tried and six were pending trial. The organization kept four more cases under verification, according to publications made on its social networks.
According to the Cuban Attorney General’s Office, a total of 790 people have been prosecuted for the July 11 protests, of which 55 are between 16 and 17 years old. The minimum criminal age in Cuba is 16.
The Public Ministry has also said that “the established legal procedure was applied to 27 children under the age of 16: 10 were admitted to schools for comprehensive training and behavior, and 17 were given “the measure of individualized attention” in his own school.
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